During times like these, webinars are all the craze. I’d say it’s a perfect thing to focus on as you get to become more familiar with subjects or people that you’ve always held an interest for. It becomes much easier to reserve a spot and to ask questions as well. With this, I attended a webinar hosted by FITC (Future. Innovation. Technology. Creativity.) where the guests were two popular visual artists that I’ve been following for years: BEEPLE and GMUNK.
This webinar was pretty off the chain. As soon as the host, Hoss Gifford, mentions the sponsor, Media Temple, he then tells the audience about time when he absolutely hated the company. He mentions that he didn’t like the idea of it at all up until he spoke to the owner at a bar one night. It’s an interesting way to open up the conference but it definitely set in stone the mood we’d be expecting.
Questions that were asked towards the guest speakers proved to be the primary takeaway of the event; discussing topics that I never thought I’d hear two artists I admire even mention. Going from how BEEPLE manages to put time aside each day for his everyday series, where GMUNK found and stuck to his artist handle, to what the two artists thought about cryptoart auction sites (such as Nifty Gateway) and their stance on drugs. Through these questions, I learned many really insightful ideas that artists should try to understand and apply as soon as possible. One question that brought about a really great answer was how do they come up with ideas to create their art. GMUNK mentions another artist that I look up to (Ash Thorp) and his advice when it comes to cleansing your social media palette. Ash tells GMUNK to unfollow every single person and then only follow the people that inspire you to create more. Following 1k+ people and constantly looking at things that don’t really matter to you keeps you from changing your lifestyle. This stuck with me because I tent to use social media to post and keep up with people but within the same account, follow a ton of musicians or artists that I typically don’t view or interact with on said platforms. There were many other great answers but to keep it brief, this one moved me the most.
Being that the artists are digital artists, the host had asked what software are they currently using or plan to use in the future. BEEPLE talks about how he uses a few photoshop plugins from Topaz Labs to get his desired finishes on his pieces. GMUNK talks more in-depth about his use with a software I recently heard about called EmberGen (which I really, really want to get into someday) and how he plans on dedicating 5 years to learning Houdini (a fantastic simulation + 3d rendering software) to get better control over what he was able to make in EmberGen.
The event overall was pretty solid. There was a bit of banter between all of the speakers (mainly talking over each other) but I could assume it’s due to things being strictly online making it difficult to immediately grasp social cues. Aside from that, I thoroughly enjoyed being able to hear these two artists talk about their real experiences and not something that is “meant” to encourage smaller artists. It definitely felt more raw compared to other talks where it’s positive outcomes only. There was a follow up email that just mentioned how the event is available to view online if interested but that was all.
