Moving!

Hello all,

This blog will be moving from here to my home website at:

dansilber.com/blog

The next week or two I will be posting some articles that had been here, so I apologize for the reiterations. Things will also be nicely catagorized, so it should be easier to navigate around.

Thanks for you patience through this transition!

-Evil Dan

pixel background

Here is a pixel background that I made for kicks one day. Then I made palette swaps for it. Gotta keep up the skills. It's weird but I just love pixel work.

And go here to see it animated (it loads fast)

Speakeasy animation

I've uploaded an animation that I created for speakeasyDC onto youTube - check it out here:

speakeasy animation

speakeasyDC is a group that puts on storytelling events for adult audiences (not in the nude/moneyshot way - its just not mother goose stuff, that's all). I have been to several and they are extremely entertaining.

For more info, visit their website at:
speakeasyDC.com

Desert Scene

Here is an image I built using Flash.

Check out how I built it here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SURTSecqBJM

Or buy the image here:
http://www.redbubble.com/people/dsilber/art/2113537-2-desert-scene

Rembrandt

YouTube Video Monster

Hey all, I've just uploaded a clip of me making one of these monsters. Take a looksy:

Monster Guy

bioMonster

This one's a portrait of my sister. Just kidding, it's yet another monster. The black and white one was done a few months ago using a program called ProMotion at a pretty low resolution. Then I went back in and colored it in Photoshop.

Seriously though, my sister scares the hell out of me.

Recently I blew up the image and have gone back in to make the higher resolution picture look nice. That was kind of a pain, but worth it so that it will look nice as a poster.

And... You can buy the poster here:
redBubble

More Hospital Stuff

Hospital Paintings

These were supposed to be backgrounds from a little game for an independent company I was working with - A puzzle game that has a back story that has to do with doctors/medicine. These were painted in Photoshop.

I haven't heard from the company in over a year, so I figure that there is no harm in posting these. These are the first few, I will post the others soon.

Toad Monster

Here is yesterday's monster. I drew it in pencil in my sketchbook on the subway on the way to work. Later I went back in with Photoshop and colored this guy in in.

You can buy a card with this dude here:

Toad Monster Card

Platformer Art

Here is a link to a little example of a pixel animation that I created a few weeks back. You MUST click in the window and use the LEFT/RIGHT ARROWS to view the animation.


pixel animation


Pixel work is cool because it is all about doing the best possible work under major resolution and palette restraints. I love the problem-solving necessary.

Monster Wearing Pants

I have created a self-imposed project of creating a monster a day for a while. So far I've been creating these guys using ink in my sketchbook. Here is the first post (although not the first one created because I haven't scanned the others yet). I decided to color this guy in using photoshop.

Fun stuff. If you like it you can buy a print here:

monster (B & W)

monster (color)

More content will be coming your way soon.

Less Talk, More Art

This blog is in the process of evolving. I've realized that I am not very consistent with the writing down of my ideas, so I am adjusting this blog to better suit my abilities.

I will now be updated this blog on a regular basis (at least once a week) with new visual Art. This is the bread and butter of what I do, which will make the process better for me and far more consistent for you.

It is likely that I will jot down some thoughts from time to time, but that will take second seat from here on out.

Enjoy!

Hurray for Failure!

We have a tendency to avoid and dislike failing, so it tends to get a nasty reputation. I’d like to put my two cents in and stick up for my buddy Failure – we’ve coexisted happily for quite a long time.

Failure first introduced himself to me in school in Geography class. At the time I wasn’t really receptive to his company and wanted him to just go away. But he didn’t. He came back into my life over and over again.

It really wasn’t until 11th grade that I started to accept Failure's company. I wanted to draw pictures. Failure decided that he likes pictures too, and wanted to stick around with me while I drew. So my pictures came out ugly. But that year my relationship with failure shifted slightly: I liked drawing more than I disliked Failure.

So we hung out for a long time drawing pictures together. Failure taught me a lot about Art, and after a while my pictures got a bit better. In time they got better and better and eventually Failure decided that he didn’t want to hang out with me any more – at least while I was drawing. He said that he didn’t really have much to teach me any more. Occasionally he would still join me for an Art competition, but most of the time I was drawing pictures with his twin – Success.

I never would have met Success if it weren’t for Failure.

At first I found myself infatuated with Success. I loved the way that she would flatter me and would spend as much time in her company as possible. It’s weird, though. After a while I found her a little bit shallow. She was very attractive, but didn’t have as much to teach me as Failure.

So I often found myself trying new things. Each time I picked up a new interest Failure would be there waiting for me with open arms. And for each interest, Success would be hanging out just out of site waiting for Failure to get tired. She would always look beautiful to me – and each time I would run to her, forgetting how short-lived our happiness seems to be.

So Failure and Success hang out together. If you want to meet Success, you are likely to have some interactions with her brother Failure.

People get so bent out of shape about experiencing Failure. He’s not so bad. He’s annoying and seems to show up at inconvenient times but most of the time he is harmless.

Besides, you can learn a lot from him and his sister is hot.

Goals

There are lots of different types of goals that people try to achieve in their life. This morning I decided to break them into 4 categories.

1. UPKEEP GOALS – These are small goals that are accomplished, but need to be redone frequently. Some examples would be:

• Doing the dishes
• Walking the dog
• Getting the oil changed on your car
• Balancing your checkbook

Because of the frequency of accomplishment, and the relatively small reward these have a tendency to be dissatisfying. It is also difficult for most people to be successful in all aspects simultaneously, which can give a false sense of failure.

2. GOALS OF AMBITION – These are larger goals that have higher difficulty, and usually take longer to accomplish. They rely on some degree of external measurement or validation. Some examples would be:

• Making $1,000,000
• Getting a Masters or Doctorate Degree
• Having your work published
• Becoming Famous

These goals have a high level of challenge and the reward can sometimes be life changing. After achieving an ambitious goal, one is likely to feel elated for a time. Often these goals of ambition are really goals of self mastery in disguise.

3. GOALS OF SELF MASTERY - Goals that are self imposed that test self discipline. These do not rely on external validations, and are occasionally done purely for the sake of challenge. These are often physical in nature. Some examples would be:

• Running a marathon
• Giving up smoking
• Communicating frustration without yelling
• Never being late
• Facing a fear

These goals do not have the same intense climax as the Goals of Ambition, but tend to be satisfying over a longer period of time. When achieved, these goals contribute to a higher level of confidence.

4. GOALS OF CONTENTMENT – These are self imposed goals where the measurements and results are entirely emotional & internal. These do not test self discipline. Some examples include:

• Letting go of anxiety and worry
• Appreciating what you have
• Accepting uncertainty
• Self forgiveness
• Being ‘in the moment’
• Feeling happy and contented

These goals have no climax and no timeline. They are continual in every moment. They tend to be so abstract that they are not always acknowledged as goals. They are achieved or failed on a moment to moment basis.

As you may or may not have noticed, these descriptions have a bit of a progression to them. We have moved from external goals to more and more internal goals.

Our society focuses very much on external accomplishments – Where did you go to school? How much money do you have? Do you have a fancy car? Are you famous? What is your importance? Do you have political clout? But these things seldom correlate with our individual contentment.

So you finally made a million dollars – that’s great! Or is it? After the original elation wears off, you find out that there is a negative side to having all that money**. Your friends act funny around you now that you are ‘rich’. People expect new things from you. You quit your job and suddenly you don’t know what to do with yourself. The structure of your week is gone and everyone else is working during the day.

And you become anxious that your money will disappear. You have more resources than ever before but you desperately hold on to your money, terrified of going back to your old life. Your goal has been achieved, and you can see nothing to look forward to.

Alternatively, let’s say that you have had a great deal of success appreciating what you have and feeling happy and contented. Suddenly these ‘upkeep goals’ don’t seem like pesky chores any more. From this vantage point they are not something that you are getting out of the way to attend to ‘more important’ things.


**Just so you know, I am not against acquiring wealth. My point is only that riches have little or nothing to do with happiness.

Not Fair!

You want to be happy. You are attempting to be peaceful. You are trying so hard to be nice.

But then someone comes along and says something attacking that is hypocritical/untrue/irrelevant. Or maybe you are chewed out for something that is beyond your control. It could even be a genuine accident on your part that was blown way out of proportion.

Often it comes from a loved one or someone you generally respect. You might have even been going out of your way to help that person, making the attack feel even more inappropriate.

And you feel your blood begin to boil at the injustice! You feel an instant need to set them straight and clear your maligned name.

Hold on there, partner. There are a couple ways this could go:
1. You could ‘set them straight’ and defend your position. Or
2. You could ‘accept’ the barrage of negativity without taking a position.


Let’s consider the two options.


Scenario Number 1 – You point out the flaws in the other person’s argument. You masterfully argue your side logically and mask your inner rage (with great effort).

For some reason, the other person only becomes more unreasonable. Now they are bringing up issues from the past that aren’t directly relevant to the current situation. They are citing times where you did the exact same thing. What a shit storm!

You can’t understand why the other person is fighting you so hard. You wish you had a microphone to record the conversation so that you could share it with the other person when they are feeling more rational.

Eventually, the discussion/argument is discontinued without resolve. You just barely escape – but you still feel resentful. Neither party has gotten resolution from the ‘discussion’.

Sometimes the other person apologizes for the actions. Sometimes not.

And if the other person doesn’t see your side of the argument, you never fully forgive them because in your heart you know that you were right.

With time, the bad feelings fade and life goes more or less back to normal but your connection with this person has been weakened.


Scenario Number 2 – **You sit and listen while the other person attacks. Instead of using you masterful understanding of logic to contradict the other person, you focus that logic silently on figuring out why this person is attacking you.

You are already secure in the fact that you did nothing wrong. You don’t need to prove that to anyone else. So you listen. And ask questions. And an interesting thing happens.

After a bit of time, the two of you realize that the REASON for the attack has nothing to do with CONTENT of the attack. Even though you were chastised for something unfairly, it will eventually come out that there is an underlying issue.

Again you choke back the urge to point your finger at them screaming “See! See! Don’t you see how UNFAIR you were being!” – because you know that this would start another wave of attacks, citing times where you did the exact same thing, etc....

You find out that the person has some big issue that is clouding their judgment. You realize that whatever insignificant thing that you did was only a catalyst that opened the door to their deeper feelings. Usually it has something to do with feelings of fear on some level.

By not engaging in the argument, you have shown that you will not judge their feelings. You have indirectly made the environment 'safe' for talking about the deeper feelings of fear.

You realize that you no longer feel the need to be right. You understand their feelings and why your insignificant action ignited such a strong reaction. You still feel that their reaction was unfair and out of place, but you forgive them.

You forgive them because you understand why it happened (whether justified or not). You forgive them because they have gotten their temper out of control and you want to enjoy their company once again. But most of all you forgive them so that YOU can move on - so that you don’t have to carry around resentment.

It is unfair. But this is an important component to maintaining happiness.

Why do we always feel such a compulsion to be right?


**Note – I know that some feel that this would be ‘backing down’ or ‘being weak’. The truth is that it takes a tremendous amount of strength not to engage when someone is egging you on. It’s easy to indulge in your negative emotions. Keeping positive throughout someone else’s negativity is way harder.

Entrepreneurial Mindset

The other day I took my daughter to the local neighborhood playground for a play date. While there, I had a grand time chatting and joking around with the other parent. Eventually I mentioned my interest in personal finance and entrepreneurship and that steered the conversation in a new direction.

I told this other parent that I don’t believe that a job is a very logical way to earn income and he found this curious and a bit shocking. Then he politely asked just how one could earn income other than a job.

I said that there are actually a lot of different ways but growing up with traditional middle class ideals doesn’t expose us to anything different. We learn both explicitly and implicitly to pick a profession so that you can get a ‘good’ job.

Then I used this analogy for the mindset of the entrepreneur:

• Suppose you earn your living mowing people’s lawns. You can mow 8 lawns in a day at $20 each. You are earning $160 a day. So you make roughly $40,000 a year (before taxes, etc) - not so bad for something so straightforward.

• The middle class mindset is to learn more about landscaping and become an expert so you can charge $30 an hour. Then you buy the best lawnmower, so that you can mow a whopping 10 yards in a day! Now you’re making roughly $75,000 a year before expenses. Wow, now you are rolling in the dough!

• Now in walks the entrepreneur. He heard through the grapevine that you are making some big bucks doing some simple lawn mowing and decides that this might be worth pursuing.
  
  So he hires someone to start mowing lawns – 8 a day. He pays the new employee $18 a lawn and withholds $2 for himself/the company. Now the employee gets roughly $36,000 a year before expenses, and the entrepreneur only gets $4,000. But the entrepreneur doesn’t work for it.
  
  So after a little while, the entrepreneur decides that he wants to earn a bit more income. So he hires 9 more employees. Now there are 10 folks all on the work force earning their $36,000 a year before expenses. Now the owner is making about the same as the employees. At this point the entrepreneur is working pretty hard to obtain clients.
  
  After some legwork, business continues to expand. Word of the company has gotten around and there is more business than the 10 employees can handle. So the owner hires 5 more people and better lawn mowers to speed up the process. He also increases the price of the service to $26 a yard.
  
  The owner splits the price increase with the employees and now they are each mowing 10 yards a day and making $52,000 before taxes. The owner is now making roughly $187,500 a year before taxes.
  
  Business continues to pick up and the owner, so he hires 10 more employees – bringing the total up to 25 people. Then he increases their share of earnings from each lawn from $21 per lawn mowed up to $22 per lawn mowed. The workers get a little bump in salary to $55,000 a year before taxes.
  
  The owner is now making $250,000 a year before taxes and expenses. And he doesn’t mow any lawns. What's more is that now the business is stable, he is free to start a second business on the side if he chooses to.

And that is the entrepreneurial mindset.

Creative Evolution

What role do clones play in the creative world? Do they simply feed off of another’s hard work? What value can the end product be if it is simply a facsimile of what has already been created? What can be gained by simply cloning another’s work?

As an Artist and someone who makes video games - and have a push/pull emotion when I see clones being created. But a great deal can be learned by simply copying a master’s work.

As a youngster just opening up to the field of Art I copied artwork directly out of comic books. Soon after, (in Art school), I made copies of renaissance Artists’ and Post Impressionist works – emulating their style and technique.

I found that even when I could reproduce the image with success, it was kind of empty. Although I had learned something, there was no real statement being made with the pieces.

In a true clone, the creative process will stop here – A direct copy of the original. This occurs sometimes in the game development world: Tetris clones, Chess clones, etc. Even when executed superbly, there is nothing new being added to the creative community.

But in the majority of cases the creators will add something unique in the second generation. Maybe the technique is refined. Sometimes a new element is added. Perhaps the context has changed giving it new meaning.

Even if the core idea is the same, each generation has an opportunity to add something significant.

Example from the video game world:

• Space Invaders
• Galaxian
• Galaga
• Raiden
• Ikaruga
  

[We could also many, many others but I like the above example because you can clearly see how each one has built on the framework of the previous]

This is part of the natural evolution of creative media.

Of course, there are plenty of times where an attempt to clone or innovate on an existing idea fails miserably. Often this is a result of poor execution - there are many reasons for this, many of which are out of the creator’s hands (too little time, too little budget, imposing publisher, etc).

There is another part of the evolution that I would like to mention, and that is the cross pollination of genres. This is innovating on an old idea specifically by fusing it with another old idea.

This can have some interesting results. For some reason this kind of methodology tends to have much more volatility in quality. It seems to breed both the most inspiring pieces of Art as well as the biggest turkeys. There is less precedent. It involves more risk.

But then again, why not be risky? No one’s life is hanging on the quality of a piece of Art (career maybe, but not life).

Strange Vessels

Our bodies are strange vessels.

We identify with a state of being that is tangible and stable, but that is not entirely so. Our size and shape changes constantly. We perceive ourselves as solid – we are and we are not. When we touch something solid, we stop. But we have many cavities throughout our body. The pocket inside our mouths. The passage to and inside of our lungs. One could also argue that there is the space between the atoms. That being said, these cavities are efficient beyond anything made by humans. When we close our mouth, the tongue and teeth and jaw and roof of the mouth contract into a perfect tightness. Our bladders expand and contract depending on the liquid they hold.

Our bodies change frequently – changing temperature with sickness. Gaining mass with food consumption and loosing mass when we excrete. We shed skin cells and hair. In my case lots of hair. Our hair and fingernails grow. Our skin changes color when we bruise or burn. In our younger years our size changes dramatically in short periods of time. Through childbirth, a woman’s internal organs will change location. We get wrinkles with old age.

And oddly, we usually use this constantly changing vessel as the basis of our identity. We look in the mirror and obsess over the color of our hair or the shape of our nose. We forget that this body is just the container for our consciousness. We think about the color of our eyes more often than we consider their role in visual perception.

So if our bodies are only the exterior shell for our true being, what are we? What is the deeper meaning of being human?

I have more ideas to jot down on this subject, but must end this article now because I’ve needed to use the restroom since writing the part that says “Our bladders expand and contract depending on the liquid they hold.”

Perception

The past couple days I’ve been contemplating perception. What does it mean to perceive? Is it to simply become aware of something? We can look at a flyer on a bulletin board and have many different levels of awareness/perception about it:

• Sometimes we walk past it dimly aware that it exists at all save for a small element our environment. Other times we can look at that same flyer and read the content written. In other instances it is a trigger a deeper awareness connected to input that we have already acquired (examples: If you had seen the missing dog displayed on the poster at the local dog park. Or if you knew the person who posted the flyer, and know how sad they are that their dog is missing. Or perhaps it triggers feeling of sadness from when you lost your dog…).
  
  We can also perceive this flyer as a visual entity. Behold the yellow of the flyer stands out against the brown bulletin board. Notice how it casts a delicate shadow on the surface below.
  
  One may be able to judge how long the flyer has been up on the cork board by the color and texture of the paper.
  

Our perceptions are always incomplete. When we look at something, we are not looking at the true object. We see only the reflected rays of light that define that object to our (limited) vision. When we hear something – we actually only perceive the waves given off by the original energy. When we touch something, we don’t feel the thing itself, but rather the force it exerts against our finger.

What about an individual? We still can only experience a person through our five senses. But it gets more complicated. We can perceive a person’s energies through sight, smell, taste, touch, hearing a person… but that is not all.

We can perceive a person through their indirect energies also. When a person has created ANYTHING, we can also perceive their energy. Whey a loved one has written us note, that is an imprint of their energy. They are in your awareness, whether standing with you or not.

Going back to the flyer of the missing dog - that flyer is an imprint of the creator’s energy. It is one of the ways that we are able to perceive and acknowledge the creator’s existence.

But it is not only when we intentionally create something. People emit their presence all over, unconsciously. Have you ever walked into your office and known right away that a certain person was in that day - although you hadn’t seen them yet? Maybe they left their slightly askew. Maybe there is extra paperwork on their desk. Maybe a book was still open, or a pen and paper were left out.

This leads me to a few more questions. If there are various imprints of peoples energy left about, are there varying degrees of one’s presence? Could there be a situation where a person is only ‘somewhat present’? And what is a person’s body? Is it simply the most concentrated amount of a person’s presence?

Can several people imprint their energy in one place? It seems like they can. Is that what creates “office atmosphere” (or any atmosphere for that matter)? Does that mean that there are collective energies?

Yesterday I road the subway to work. I watched people (as I always do, people-watching on the subway is often really interesting) and tried to imagine these strangers as bodies of energy. It was really interesting. I was surprised that I could do this, and it was actually fairly easy to visualize. I found myself noticing a pair of somewhat contradictory things right away:

1. People’s appearance gave some insight into their personal energy, and gave a degree of their experience. People’s scars were physical documents of accidents in their life. You could see that a person had dyed their hair, and roughly how long ago that occurred. Their postures would give some information about their self confidence and conformability. You could read their emotional mood too, to some extent.
2. People’s appearance hid the nature of their personal energy. At points I found myself drawn to people because of their attractive/charismatic appearance. When this happened, I found my ability to imagine them as energy would melt away.
   
   
   I also thought about how we can perceive from a distance. You can look at a building from far away and know it is residential rather than commercial. You can sense roughly how many people are likely to live in the building. You may be able to guess at the occupants' financial status depending on the condition and location of the structure.
   
   As I ate my lunch, I thought about how out bodies take in and spit out energy. That samwich is about to become part of me.
   
   So what defines the borders of our identities? We shed physical parts of ourselves like hair, skin cells, blood, and excretion but it hardly reflects what we are.
   
   We also shed (give birth to) information in the form writings, physical construction, inventions, videos, music, etc. We identify with these creations. They partly define us. They also affect the beings around us, and help to inspire more creation – whether in addition, or in reaction to the original creation.