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This is a long post... but after reading things in this thread I think there's a good number of people who will understand why I'm bringing this here. So this past weekend I had a rather odd experience... and I'm still really trying to process it. I'm part of a team where the genericized description could be "we're a creative arts team exploring what can be done with fine art portraiture with a nerdy direction." Basically we're into cosplay and cosplay photography. Though we do a good chunk of original material. And it's all studio/location work. None of our organized work is done at conventions. This summer we were able to line up some solid presence at events. One was putting on photography demos at a small anime convention. The second was guesting at a retrogaming convention. And the third is guesting and putting on a panel at a pop culture event at a library. Putting on the photography demos at the anime convention went really well even with the small audience. One thing we wanted to do was to bring people out of the panel audience to actually be a part of our demos. This went amazingly well especially for our light painting demo. People had fun not only being the subject but also being a part of how things came together. We were really happy with how those went. The weekend after was our guest spot at the retrogaming convention. Now admittedly the way we got into this was because I did a ton of photo coverage (primarily around the music portion) for all the years this event has been ran. The people running the event really appreciated the work and liked how a lot of things behind it were explained so they were happy to have us on board. For what it's worth our booth setup was not typical for what you'd see for people in the realm of cosplay. We had a pretty large monitor set up in the back of our booth going through a slideshow representing a lot of our work. Along with prints and some character charms for sale. We had quite a few people come up and ask "So... what exactly is it that your group does?" And some of these people were people I've known for years. The others on the team would default to me to explain things... and after that it seems like people got it? I know with nerd-centric/pop culture conventions people expect the 'just cosplayer' dynamic. But to see so many people just not expect what we were doing... we were really surprised by that. And also surprised by how many people understood once it was explained and asked further questions. We all knew when we started that we were really going against a lot of the typical presentation for work that's close to ours. We immediately understood how it could go with social media. But to have so many people right there asking you about it... it was pretty startling for me. For me personally I've always said that I refuse to believe we're the only group doing this sort of thing just because of probability and math. We do know of some people outside of the US who are doing such things. And holy poo poo the stuff they do is amazing and it inspires us. Also at times we're kinda jealous because we're all "we wish we could shoot in a place like that!" But to get so many instances of "so what do you do" in that short of a timespan... as a creative I'm trying to think through why that was.
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Aug 2, 2019 10:02
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That's a lot of words that left me wondering what exactly you do! You might want to work on your elevator pitch some. Do you have any photos you can share?
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Aug 2, 2019 13:41
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I was not able to tell what exactly your group does based on what you wrote. I thought at first that you just did studio portraits of cosplayers, but then you mentioned light painting and I don't know what you mean by that so - what is it you all actually do? It sounds interesting, but your writing has a tone of "intentionally vague and non-specific" so if that's how you're presenting things at your events that may be part of the problem.
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Aug 2, 2019 14:03
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ReverendHammer posted:This is a long post... but after reading things in this thread I think there's a good number of people who will understand why I'm bringing this here. "we do fine art photography with cosplay" (to people that don't know cosplay) "we take fine art photos of cosplay, which is costumes of pop culture characters" keep your explanations brief & your work can speak for itself. also, sharing some of your work here would help us understand if there's anything we didn't understand from your post
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Aug 2, 2019 15:54
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lofi posted:That's a lot of words that left me wondering what exactly you do! You might want to work on your elevator pitch some. Do you have any photos you can share? gmc9987 posted:I was not able to tell what exactly your group does based on what you wrote. I thought at first that you just did studio portraits of cosplayers, but then you mentioned light painting and I don't know what you mean by that so - what is it you all actually do? It sounds interesting, but your writing has a tone of "intentionally vague and non-specific" so if that's how you're presenting things at your events that may be part of the problem. a hole-y ghost posted:(to people that know cosplay) Bleh, I could have written this better, couldn't I? That's a fail on my part. Here's our Instagram for a quick glance at our photos and our website if you want to deep dive. Doing cosplay and cosplay photography is a good chunk of what we do. Though I will say we go about it differently. We're less about trying to replicate a scene from a film/game or frame from a comic book. We really like exploring what we think these characters would be like in certain situations. While we appreciate emulating existing media as a technical achievement we just feel if we were to go the same route that we wouldn't be saying anything about us. One other big piece we want to do is to educate people about multiple aspects of what we do. Not only on the practical aspects like costume/wig/prop making or the technical pieces of photography but also on all of the creative parts that are involved with us coming up with an idea for a project and what we needed to do to see it through. Right now most of that is delivered through our writing but we're also trying to take this directly to people by way of panels and demos. And not just in a one-directional "sit behind a table and talk about stuff". When we can we want to make these heavily interactive and bring people up out of the panel audience to be a part of what we're doing. Really to show how much fun can be had when they give themselves the space to do so and also how a lot of what we do is easily achievable by them as well. Going back to being asked "so what is it you do" there's one important part I did accidentally leave out: people would ask this question before we said little more than "Hello". And this would happen after they looked through the prints we had for sale and seeing an image slideshow on the 55" monitor in the back of the booth. As I mentioned earlier once I did explain things people were interested and they would ask further questions (and it did lead to possible networking opportunities which is great). But what was it about them initially encountering our work that drove them to ask that question?
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Aug 2, 2019 19:24
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That's still kinda word salad-y and your site link is broken but the vague impression I've been getting is y'all are doing a collision between pro portrait photography and cosplay, and you're trying to distinguish yourselves from literally everyone else running around cons with a phone or dslr out because of the sheer accessibility of recording devices now?
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Aug 2, 2019 22:42
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can a mod just go ahead and give me a probation for trolling cause lets just cut out all the effort (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Aug 2, 2019 22:50
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crabrock posted:can a mod just go ahead and give me a probation for trolling cause lets just cut out all the effort
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Aug 2, 2019 23:04
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"What do you do?" is probably just intended as a friendly invitation to talk about your work, not actually complete ignorance, but I agree that your current presentation is a bit confusing. Even looking at your Instagram page, I'm not exactly sure what your focus is or how I'm intended to interact with it as a consumer.
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Aug 2, 2019 23:05
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https://www.makethemawesome.com/whothehellarewe You might wanna tone down the 'look at those sheeple, all doing cosplay the same way' vibe, it comes off as a bit insulting at the moment. Lose the snark, just be 'hey, we're trying to get really loving good shots to match the effort people put into making the costumes'. The idea of pushing what you can do with costume/photography is interesting, but it doesn't feel like you're really pushing what you or the medium(s) can do - they're more 'nice photos' than 'pushing the envelope' at the moment. Where's the lighting/colour balance, the environment, playing with focus, cropping, etc? I'd swing by the dorkroom, I bet they have a portrait thread (e: they do!) - it feels like the aims (to show character through photography) are much the same, even if the character and clothes are invented. You've said you don't find con photography satisfying, have you looked at more fine art portraiture? If it works for you more, what works about it, and how do you want to pull that into your work? Photography isn't really my thing, but portrait art is, and all the ways you can show atmosphere and character outside of the character themselves fascinate me. I'd recommend Framed Ink if you haven't read it, I've found it really helpful in getting me thinking about composition, all the stuff I'm saying in every shot. It's like the body language of art, you can do so much with it to communicate your ideas better.
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Aug 3, 2019 00:08
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Not to be a dick, but it looks like generic portrait photography, but with costumes? I don’t really see what you’re doing so special that merits all of this differentiation spin you’re trying to put on it.
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Aug 3, 2019 00:17
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Antivehicular posted:"What do you do?" is probably just intended as a friendly invitation to talk about your work, not actually complete ignorance, but I agree that your current presentation is a bit confusing. Even looking at your Instagram page, I'm not exactly sure what your focus is or how I'm intended to interact with it as a consumer. main thing behind fine art — what is it supposed to make the person experiencing it feel? then: is it successful at that? the latter is something you should try to figure out when talking to interested visitors/viewers, especially when they ask questions like that.
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Aug 3, 2019 04:44
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Thanks for all the feedback everyone. There's certainly a number of things to think about. When we first started out we really wanted to highlight just how much opportunity there is for everyone if they break away from the "this only happens at conventions"thought pattern. And really just how much fun there is with doing that. Though at least as far as social media and blogs go (which is not the best representation but is the most accessible for research purposes) we're having trouble finding people doing similar work with cosplay, at least in the US. But when we look at fine art portraiture it does feel closer to what we're wanting to do. I think that's why in my head I think of what we do as more fine art than cosplay. The fun part is really trying to figure out where the definition of what we do lies between the two. Fine art has been around a long time and people have a good understanding of what it means. Where cosplay is so new comparatively that right now a lot of people only know a small example of presentations. And maybe that's the issue I'm having where I'm trying to figure out how to get people to easily understand. It's possible we could just say something like "let's take cosplay outside of the convention and have a lot of fun with it!"
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Aug 3, 2019 15:27
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Is this a good thread for tablet advice? I have a wacom and I set it up but when it comes to screen settings I have to set the tablet or my main monitor as main screen. But whichever I choose the resolution on the other turns bad. I like to be able to switch between tablet and keyboard/mouse but I want to be able to alt tab to check a browser etc without the resolution being all screwy.
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Aug 3, 2019 18:09
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Eschenique posted:Is this a good thread for tablet advice? Not sure what the issue is, but there's a Wacom tablet thread for questions like this one. ReverendHammer posted:I think that's why in my head I think of what we do as more fine art than cosplay. The fun part is really trying to figure out where the definition of what we do lies between the two. Fine art has been around a long time and people have a good understanding of what it means. Where cosplay is so new comparatively that right now a lot of people only know a small example of presentations. And maybe that's the issue I'm having where I'm trying to figure out how to get people to easily understand. It's possible we could just say something like "let's take cosplay outside of the convention and have a lot of fun with it!" I guess I'm still having trouble figuring out what exactly makes your method of photography so vastly different from someone like this, other than that the person I linked to doesn't focus solely on cosplay and also does normal portrait photography. If you can figure out how to explain that difference in one sentence I think you'll have an easier time of things, especially since most cosplay photoshoots I've seen aren't actually in a convention setting - they're staged in front of various backgrounds, with professional lighting, in formal poses.
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Aug 3, 2019 20:41
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Eschenique posted:Is this a good thread for tablet advice? what are your: cpu operating system graphics card monitors ?
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Aug 3, 2019 23:16
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is there a thread for sewing/puppetry? I'm getting into this stuff recently and i wanna ask about stuff/post progress of what I'm working on.
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Aug 4, 2019 01:42
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Not that I'm aware of - but it sounds interesting, I've seen some amazing stuff done with puppetry. What sorta thing you making?
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Aug 4, 2019 02:02
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Post in here if you can't find anything specific.
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Aug 4, 2019 02:21
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 I'm currently calling him 'Jerk the Sherk'. so far I have a square yard of pleather to make him a leather jacket, and some squishy white foam to make him some teeth. It's my first time doing this sorta thing, but the local non-profit art studio has people teaching me all the important parts of working with fabrics and sewing. I'm just really excited to be doing something different, and hand sewing the ladder stitches is really therapeutic.
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Aug 4, 2019 02:34
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oh hey robot guy! sorry for busting your balls so much over the robots before. it's good to see you back! How did you make the general shape of the shark? I know nothing about this sort of thing
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Aug 4, 2019 02:38
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It's no issue, honest! The head shape is actually a template you can find online. to get a shape that holds together, you would get some 1/2-1 inch thick craft foam, cut it to the shape of the template, then hot-glue (might actually be some glue cement stuff? it's been awhile since I did the actual foam part of this) the sections together. after that, you do the same for your fabric, just with a bit more playroom so you can sew the seams together cleanly. after that it's just turning it inside out and pulling it over top of the foam. The mouth is probably the trickiest part? You have to make a cardboard/fabric cutout and then either glue it in to the inside foam or maybe just sew the mouth in? I used cardboard then glued black felt on top of it. E: I'm having a hard time finding the exact template. I think it's this one? http://puppetsandstuff.com/community/index.php?action=gallery&g2_itemId=25122 maybe you'd just cut the arm bit off? the guy who showed me the template I think got it from Puppetbuilding.com, and that site seems to be dead. Diabetes Forecast fucked around with this message at 05:08 on Aug 4, 2019 |
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Aug 4, 2019 02:45
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a hole-y ghost posted:sounds like it's probably a monitor / gfx card thing rather than the tablet, unless it doesn't happen when the tablet's unplugged Sorry maybe resolution was a bad word. I meant the windows user interface. Everything is so small when the tablet is set as main monitor but things look wrong on the tablet when the actual monitor is set as main. Intel core i7-3770k windows 10 Geforce GTX 680 BenQ g2420HDBL Currently I have the tablet on a separate computer for this reason but it does ruin my work flow a bit.
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Aug 4, 2019 04:40
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ohhh gotcha it's a screen tablet could you post a screenshot of monitor as main screen vs. tablet as main screen? e: actually yeah maybe post it in the tablets thread tho
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Aug 4, 2019 05:12
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Eschenique posted:Sorry maybe resolution was a bad word. I meant the windows user interface. Everything is so small when the tablet is set as main monitor but things look wrong on the tablet when the actual monitor is set as main. Have you set them up as a split screen, or do they both work as your main screen?
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Aug 4, 2019 10:38
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Sharpest Crayon posted:Have you set them up as a split screen, or do they both work as your main screen? One has to be set as primary screen snd that is then duplicated to the other. But the user interface on the non primary screen us messed up
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Aug 4, 2019 11:17
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I asked about that in the Wacom thread, but - duplicating (mirroring) one monitor onto the other, meaning that you're seeing the same image on both screens, isn't really (in my experience) the ideal way to use a Cintiq. Set it up so that the desktop extends onto the second monitor - this lets you set each monitor's resolution independently (so, you can have a 1080p and a 4k monitor running concurrently at their native resolutions). This also gives you a second screen to throw references, movies, email, Something Awful, etc. on while you draw on the Cintiq.
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Aug 4, 2019 14:12
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Yeah seconding that, try extending you desktop. I've got a Huion screen tablet that I've set up as my "right side" secondary monitor. Lets me use the whole tablet screen for drawing while I look at chats and references on the main "left side" monitor. The only thing is that you gotta drag your drawing program window onto the "other side" of the screen and then that's where it'll always open unless you wanna start switching back & forth every time. So you always gotta dig up the tablet when you wanna look at your drawing program, but that's a small price to pay.
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Aug 4, 2019 14:45
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does anyone else feel like they have i don't know creative bi polar disorder for lack of a better term? i feel like i have this cycle where i will manically crank out one thing after another for 8 hours straight and then for weeks i can barely put pen to tablet. is that a normal thing or should i get checked out for regular bi polar disorder?
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Aug 5, 2019 20:56
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Follow your heart, but that sounds normal to me.
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Aug 5, 2019 21:12
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Al! posted:does anyone else feel like they have i don't know creative bi polar disorder for lack of a better term? i feel like i have this cycle where i will manically crank out one thing after another for 8 hours straight and then for weeks i can barely put pen to tablet. is that a normal thing or should i get checked out for regular bi polar disorder? It sounds normal as far as "creatives" usually go, but if you have health insurance and can afford a therapist or counselor visit, a quick "Yo, my head on straight?" visit can be a good thing for calibrating yourself even if you feel otherwise OK. My former employer had an EAP that included counselor visits at no cost, I was feeling...not depressed, but decidedly not happy and went for a visit. All I did was talk about some girl problems I was having, and the counselor pointed out a few behavior patterns that I hadn't realized I had, and then basically said, "What you're feeling is normal, you're doing OK and things will be alright." She didn't really do a whole lot, and there wasn't really a commitment on my part outside of a couple of visits, but I left feeling a lot better than I started even though she basically just told me that I was normal and my feelings were OK to have. If I hadn't had insurance/access to the EAP resources, though, I definitely wouldn't have gone because god drat any sort of mental health care in the US is expensive.
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Aug 5, 2019 21:52
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gmc9987 posted:It sounds normal as far as "creatives" usually go, but if you have health insurance and can afford a therapist or counselor visit, a quick "Yo, my head on straight?" visit can be a good thing for calibrating yourself even if you feel otherwise OK. Ha, snap.
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Aug 5, 2019 21:56
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im not really worried about my overall mental health except for that one behavior, it can get so bad that i wont even get up to pee when im in that state. i did use an EAP once for a different issue, all they did was refer me back to my health insurance plan's mental health coverage which i already couldnt afford lol but im glad its useful for people sometimes
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Aug 5, 2019 22:00
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Al! posted:does anyone else feel like they have i don't know creative bi polar disorder for lack of a better term? i feel like i have this cycle where i will manically crank out one thing after another for 8 hours straight and then for weeks i can barely put pen to tablet. is that a normal thing or should i get checked out for regular bi polar disorder? re politics in comics, i started working on mine back in like 2004 and one of the main characters was a muslim war orphan who had to trek across southeast asia during world war iii while everyone tried to kill him because muslims were blamed for kicking off the global unrest and were being ethnically cleansed from the whole subcontinent. it seemed wildly speculative back in the day. but now...
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Aug 6, 2019 01:24
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so now it's like, do i change the whole backstory of the comic because i was a teenage prophet and what makes for great sci-fi when it hasn't happened yet becomes incredibly insensitive and offensive fifteen years later when it's actual fact? who knows. luckily i'll never actually make the drat thing so the point is moot
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Aug 6, 2019 01:36
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sebmojo posted:Follow your heart, but that sounds normal to me. I want to but my dead end non creative job as a house painter pays the bills and nothing less than that can afford me the house and the lifestyle I've become accustomed to  gently caress me I want to drop everything and do something else. I wish I was a 20 something student living with my parents or a small apartment on government support. I would pick a creative craft and just spend 10 hours a day studying and practise that so I could get some dream job a few years down the line. Instead of 34 with a stable well paying job I mostly hate. I could put one year on the tablet and maybe one on programming and just master all the crap I don't have time for. Instead I wake up at 3 Am heart racing and just overwhelmed with all the things I need to do and all the things I really want to do. Prepare my lunch box and just leave for work at 4 because I might as well get started on that iceberg of work that needs to be finished by the 25th. I wish I had played fewer videogames in my youth Eschenique fucked around with this message at 03:50 on Aug 6, 2019 |
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Aug 6, 2019 03:45
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Why not use some of the extra morning time to work on the stuff you want to?
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Aug 6, 2019 07:11
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Al! posted:im not really worried about my overall mental health except for that one behavior, it can get so bad that i wont even get up to pee when im in that state. That sucks. EAPs definitely vary from place to place, I was lucky at that job but very unlucky in my following jobs so I get it.
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Aug 6, 2019 08:22
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it's a very 21st century form of solipsistic western guilt to see genocide and mass destruction on tv and think "wow just like my high school webcomic" but that is the reality of these weird loving times
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Aug 6, 2019 12:13
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maybe the collapse of civilisation will make "wandering artisan" a viable career path again and we'll all be set for life
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Aug 6, 2019 14:50
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