OP Delivers

Here's the drawing I said I would do.  Look at me, being all productive like!

Love,

Benjamin

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Senior Stuff!

Dear Internet,

So I presented my senior project last week and I am pleased to announce that the pitch went well! Everyone really liked the song, which was a huge relief for me.  The professors decided that I needed to draw more though, so I will do something fun to generate a bunch of work: I will make a little bowl with lots of different papers that have names of shapes.  For one week, I do exploratory drawings each day based on the combo of shapes I get from the bowl! I will be posting todays results later today.  Thanks to all for the great meeting! Let's do work!

Love,

Benjamin Kroll

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Summer's Almost Over... And I Have A Song DONE!!

Dear Professors Of Mine (and other readers),

I haven't been drawing as much I should have. I figured I should confess now instead of much later. Well I should qualify that statement, I haven't been drawing abstract stuff as much i should have. I've been drawing plenty of other stuff. I made some fake Pokemon for my friend Adam's board game maybe.  And I tried to start one graphic novel, hit a wall and decided to stop, tried another idea, finished and didn't like it, so i started another, and just drawing other silly stuff like i do. But nothing really abstract. I could try to justify it by saying I have enough of an idea of what shapes I will use, i was waiting for my song to be done blah blah blah. Truth is I shouldn't have given up on that.. but hey! I have a song done!! Here are the lyrics, and the link to download it.  Let me know what you think!


Love,

Ben
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http://www.mediafire.com/file/arx66itgpaqpnoq/Labyrinth.m4a

Labyrinth: by Benjamin Kroll
background (we can't see it but we feel it, see it but we feel it)x8
We feel ourselves inching closer to the center
are we aware that by moving we are pointing to His presence?

bridge: subtle changes in the flow
some will stay and some will go
some stay hidden, some will show,
where it's going no one knows

Chorus: Immutable

We feel ourselves inching closer to the center

are we aware that by moving we are pointing to His presence?

bridge: subtle changes in the flow

some will stay and some will go

some stay hidden, some will show,

where it's going no one knows

Chorus: 

background (we can't see it but we feel it, see it but we feel it)x8

Immutable

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Drawings For Senior Project

Okay so I've been super busy with my new job, which is cool because I'll be able to get a computer thanks to God's provision!  But I also realize that I must capitalize on the time I do have to draw, which I have kind of been doing, but I'm slowly building momentum.  I'm sure if I keep drawing the pace will pick up!  I have been thinking about ways to start off the piece, and I think that having some shapes at the beginning that are indicative of flowers and suns, sperms and eggs, etc, would be good to start with since those are pretty intuitively understood as being the start of life.  It'll be more complicated as the piece goes though, so I'm going to have to do some more thinking. Maybe little lines rushing around on a grid to signify the busy-ness of life as we get older or something? I don't know, but I do think linking the labyrinth "feel" and images of a lifespan are a good place to start. I'll be getting my first paycheck next week, so hopefully it'll be big enough to start shopping for some computers so I can get going on making a song!  But enough chatter, here are some pieces I've done so far. And sometime soon I will post some of the other side stuff I've been doing, regarding the rewrite of the graphic novel I did sophomore year.  And before I forget-
Artists that will be looking to for influence my style: Henri Matisse, Vincent Van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, Marcel Duchamp, Kurt Shwitters, Max Ernst, William De Kooning, and of course Jackson Pollock. Well, gotta go pack my lunch for tomorrow.

Love,

Benjamin Kroll

 

 

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I'm Doing Stuff I Promise

    Okay, so this past week or so I've been doing research and what not for my senior project!  So far, I've looked at Wikipedia (always a good jumping point) for the term labyrinth. It turns out that it's not necessarily synonymous with maze, and there's more to it than just a Minotaur. A labyrinth is a path that winds around to a center, whereas a maze is more like a puzzle that has one correct path but a bunch of different paths that are there to trick you.  In medieval times, the labyrinth was seen as an important metaphor concerning their spiritual lives, with the entrance denoting "birth" and the center being God.  I also found a movie with a very interesting format called In The Labyrinth, which features an odd arrangement of 5 screens placed in a cross.  If you want to watch a tiny bit of the original seventy-nine minute movie, you can go here:
Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1BT1xt6yq8
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsT-wO4Nv5I&feature=related
 
    As I was watching it, I came up with a possible idea; maybe I could relate the journey through a labyrinth to an audience by having stuff on the periphery at the beginning, right in the middle have it all come to the middle, then spread out for the last part, returning to the beginning kind of.
Oh, I also found some sweet visual DJ videos and other stuff that I'll be looking at for influencing my project.  Some I like best are here:
Color Dots
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3FJAr1-g-A&feature=related
Some Datamoshing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2GmE_ozLZM
Anyways, that's enough for now. If I can figure out how to get a nice scan from my scanner, I'll put up some art I've been doing.  If I don't for a while, now you know why.  It's not cuz I'm a slouch. Nope.

Love,

Benjamin

P.S. I'm also rewriting and redrawing an idea for a graphic novel I did my sophomore year.  It's about cannibals and the world going crazy.  Is it God's judgement? Or is it just in our genes? Find out soon! ;)

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This Summer... What will I do?

Okay so hi. I've been majorly slacking off these past few months on drawing like I said I wouldn't.  So, I'm sorry...  Take me back! I promise I won't not draw again!! I LOVE YOU- too soon? Anyways... where was I? Oh yeah, this summer! This summer I plan on using this blog for several things.  One, I promise to upload daily drawings, most of which will consist of abstract doodles and other things. I also promise to start working on boarding out Key Mage over the summer, which means I'll have to crank up my efforts in the putting-together-the-whole-story department.  I also promise to post neat stuff that influences me, like music and junk.  So, here's to moar posts coming your way! Huzzah! A cooked goose for everyone!

Love,
Benjamin

P.S. Picture is of some neat art. You know, for kicks!

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Key Mage, the Comic Series?!?!

    So I had a big epiphany type thingie. In two parts.  All thanks to the wonderful artists we get to talk to in my Inspirational Design Class.  Let me explain: One of the artists, Stephen McCranie, talked to us and he said something to the effect of, "A lot of people are imitating the Japanese manga style because it's so popular.  One of the reasons Scott Pilgrim was successful was because he understood how to pace his work like a Japanese manga but he kept his style uniquely his own."  This got me thinking: My gigantic big huge idea for an anime someday, which I'm calling Keymage, has been brewing in my mind and has undergone some monumental (at least for me) shifts in perspective, what the story was about, etc.  But the art style I had been drawing all of the people in was manga-ish.  Perhaps I should try drawing them more cartoonie, I thought to myself.  I did some sketches, loved what was coming out, and made this.  This represents a paradigm shift in terms of style for this story I've been working on, and i'm excited.  I'm even thinking of doing my drawing-a-day's about Keymage from here on out, with breaks for Fridays and if I feel like doing other stuff, but mostly this.
  
    You see, I need to start doing these drawings because I am planning on creating a graphic novel version of this story.  This is going to be a big undertaking for me, so I'll start small and use what advice I was given through another artist named Doug TenApel (which we only saw on video, we didn't talk to him like Stephen McCranie).  He said he would have the beggining middle and end for his story on notecards, then make beginning middle and ends for each of those notecards, and then he would do it once more.  this was exactly what I needed to hear to start off this project, so I'm going to be doing that.  I'll have something of a rough plot-point outline down, and once I have that, I will  try and think of important images to sum up each one of the notecards, which I will then post.  neat huh?
Well, that was a lot more writting then I thought it would be! But yeah I can't help it because I'm so stoked to start craking on this! wish me luck!
And the drawing was just me playing with really hard blocky shadows.  The guy on the right is the main character, Amirr.

tldr;I'm going to be working on a comic idea I've been thinking of for a long long time.

Love

Benjamin

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