How To Free Your Work video

Here at last is the video from my first How To Free Your Work workshop, given at NY Foundation for the Arts in Brooklyn, October 5 2011. You can get all the information contained herein as easy-to-read instructions at QuestionCopyright.org. If you want me to give a workshop like this to your group, please … [...]

I am awesome

I was neither prepared nor in a particularly good mood when I did this “webinar” for Agora I/O. It was eerie having a “conversation” in which I could neither see nor hear the other participants. It was just me and my own voice, with questions and comments occasionally popping up in text on another … [...]

Synfig help needed in New York

I want to learn Synfig. If I succeed, I can then teach it to others. I bought a used tablet PC for this purpose, but I have never installed Linux, and am used to a Mac. If there are any Synfig users in New York who would be willing to help set up my … [...]

Creative Commons’ Branding Confusion

About a year and a half ago I released my film Sita Sings the Blues under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license. That license allows truly free distribution, including commercial use, as long as the free license remains in place.  But my experience is that most people see the words “Creative Commons” and simply assume … [...]

Inspiration (a.k.a. Artist’s Prayer)

Our Idea
Which art in the Ether
That cannot be named;

Thy Vision come
Thy Will be done
On Earth, as it is in Abstraction.

Give us this day our daily Spark
And forgive us our criticisms
As we forgive those who critique against us;

And lead us not into stagnation
But deliver us from Ego;

For Thine is the Vision
And the Power
And the Glory … [...]

Frederick Douglass is always relevant

“Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom … [...]

Quality, Freedom, Money: Choose Two

People seem to want to believe that just freeing works is some magic recipe for success. It isn’t. But since people crave simple business models, I came up with one this morning:

Quality
Freedom
Money
______
Any Two = success

A very good (Quality) film can succeed if it is Free (Freedom) OR has a big promotional budget (Money). A … [...]

More examples: TMI?

OK my peeps, your feedback on the preceding post has been excellent. Here are 3 more images to compare and contrast:

What’s happening here? Do we even need to put it into words?

How about this? Does the addition of the flowers help, or hurt, or just make it different?

Same idea, different rendering. This one has … [...]

How much hand?

I’m working on a new project – a book, or comic book, or illustrated book, or graphic something about free culture/free content. I’ll probably use a mix of styles and techniques, since that’s how I roll. But I’m trying to figure out the dominant one.  And the question is: hand drawing with ink on … [...]

Advice

Sometimes I’m asked if I have any “advice” for the young’uns. I seem to give a different answer every time. Today’s answer is:
ADVICE:

Stop taking advice and stop asking for it.

The world is unlimited! There are a zillion ways to do things. Don’t be afraid of doing things wrong. The only way we make progress … [...]