Rubbing

If you've checked out my website, you've seen this image already. I modeled everything in Maya,textured using Photoshop, enhanced the still's texture in Photoshop and it was lit by the very talented Alejandra Velez (she built a light rig I moved around.)

When I first started this blog, I promised not to make anything very personal, but I enjoy analyzing styles and artistic choices of friends. In particular, I love seeing how a style reflects a personality and how styles rub off on each other. The bits and pieces we take from our friends and interpret in our own voice demonstrate what is strongest about that friendship.

For example, a guy I dated in college is very, very meticulous. It is his extraordinary, almost obsessive attention to detail that I adapted as my own. Proportion and a willingness to go extremely dark in tonality was something I used to ignore. But after seeing how well it worked for him, I adopted it. I still think about him from time to time, and I hope the very best for him, because I can see how much perfection means to him and how hard he comes down on himself when he's anything less than perfect. He'd almost rather NOT do something unless he knew for a fact that he could do it very well.

Once that relationship started to go stale, I paid more attention to a long time friend of mine, Ariella Goldstein. She's known by many for a multitude of talents: videography, photography, special effects make up, graphic design, website building, dj'ing, film editing and fine arts. We met in high school and I had always admired how much of a free spirit she was/is. She dropped out of high school, never went to college, but is very rarely out of work. I guess the difference between us other than my more academic background is that she's a lot more social than I am, and being social is a huge skill to have.

One style we riffed on with each other were these swirly things we're both infamous for.



I did this some summers ago. The main picture was taken at an ex's old apartment (the same ex I talked about in this blog.) The rest were taken in my room in my Brooklyn apartment. All Photoshoped from the comfort of my couch, using my Cintiq.



I did this in the aforementioned summer that I became closer to Ari. It's a keyframe for an experimental animation piece I have abandoned but have since decided to go back to.

Anyway, I've always been a huge fan of clowns. I love the dichotomy of how funny but evil they can be.

Most recently, I've begun dating a long time friend and creative partner. He's also very into clowns. I think we relate on our duality of spirit: being one part childishly innocent, and another part perversely sinful.

We've been working on a new film for which he is doing the character design and animation and I'm doing the writing and backgrounds.



It's a work in progress, and I'll let you know more as time goes on.