The end of the Monkey + Seal Blog...forever

Hi everyone.

First off - I want to personally apologize for leaving you all hanging for so long.  It's been more than two years since our last post, and while I think, in the long run, it's been better that we've focused our energies elsewhere, we never let any of you know about the change.

When Eve and I started this blog way back when, we barely knew anything, were still in art school, and were honestly just trying to share what little knowledge we had while trying to promote our artwork.  We were pleasantly surprised when people would come up to us and tell us how they constantly read our blog and how it's helped them deal with their own lives as creative people.

We tried to constantly post relevant, helpful material, and at one time we were actually posting three times a week (that seems crazy now that we haven't posted for two years- gads!).

Anyway, I wanted to thank all the loyal readers who have asked us when we're coming back, and as a bummer it is to disappoint people, we won't be.  At least not on this blog.

However, I want to let everyone know that sharing everything we've learned as artists through the years and helping other artists grow and succeed has actually become a huge priority in our lives.  In the past years, both of us have gotten involved in teaching at a much greater level - Eve had a stint teaching beginning digital painting at Expression College, and Rick is still currently teaching entrepreneurship and business for artists at Academy of Art University.

Over the years, we've decided that Monkey + Seal would act as our joint shop - where you actually can buy merchandise, so we kept on thinking that this blog should more act as a place to talk about upcoming show and products and the like.

But we never could really get all that writing about art out of our system (I mean, we just ended up doing it as professors instead of here).  That, matched up with both of our frustration with how some of the education systems are working, led us to create a new home for our writing on art and inspiration and success: Lift Off Art.

Lift Off Art is something that has been sort of Rick's backburner project for years now.  As soon as he stopped writing here, Lift Off (in various forms) has been his end goal.

Lift Off is solely focused on arts education.  We've really been working to create something more than just a blog (although there we always plan to write blogs and articles).  Now that Eve is an Art Director, Rick has freelanced and owned companies and hired people, and we both got picked up by different art material sponsors, we want to share what we've learned over these past few years leveling ourselves up.

We have learned wanted to change the way art is taught, and we're doing that by launching a Kickstarter in March to really launch our first course offering.  We've found that business books are often the antithesis to artists, art success courses don't have any hard evidence or data, and neither offers the psychological and emotional support that artists so often need.  That's what we're trying to do with Lift Off Art.

So if you're interested in that, please make sure to sign up for the Lift Off Newsletter, and we'd love it if you helped spread the word about our launch via Thunderclap (free and easy),

But regardless, if you've found any of our posts here valuable, we'd love to see you over at Lift Off.  Thanks again for an amazing seven years.  We love all of you!

Cheers,
Rick

PS - Easy update for your bookmarks: http://www.liftoff-art.com/category/blog/

New Year's Resolutions: Take Baby Steps (or Say NOPE!)

Happy 2014 everyone!

We hope you all had a safe and fun NYE, whether that meant sleeping through it, raging at some club, or playing board games or painting, we hope it was good for you.

This is the time of year when people often make resolutions about what to change.  We all want improvements in our lives (human nature, who doesn't?), but we think that often times we go about things the wrong way.

Two suggestions:

1) Scale back your resolutions into something absurdly simple.

2) Practice vulnerability and embrace who you are as enough.

Now, the explanations.

1.  Changing resolutions into something that fits who YOU are, and making them realistic.

Monkey keeps reading about how successful people wake up at 6am to get in some reading and crucial work done before the day starts.  Monkey is not a morning person.  Instead of fighting his nature and trying to do what others do, he has realized that he's much more likely to do work late into the night and then sleep in.  Instead of fighting who you are, embrace it and figure out how to mold advice into something that is possible (and easy) for YOU to do.

For artists, often we may say that we want to create more.  A typical resolution is to "draw everyday."  Well, if you're having trouble drawing once a week, maybe a new resolution you can make is "draw every week."  Make a resolution something that is REALISTIC.  If you work two jobs, are raising a kid, and have to check her homework every night, then it's probably not super realistic that you're going to be able to focus on your craft every single day.

Why not instead focus on doing something every week, or if you want to really prioritize the art making, maybe your new resolution could be "Pick up a pen and make a single mark in your sketchbook."  While this sounds incredibly easy, that's the whole point.

This is how habit formation works, and while making a masterpiece or a finished piece might be too intimidating, making a single mark seems almost stupid.  But that's the point.  As you keep making a single mark, or writing a single word of your novel, or painting a single brushstroke, you'll find that since you're already started, you'll probably want to keep going, just for a bit.  After a while, working on your craft, no matter how small, will be such a habit that you'll be creating more and more and you'll have integrated it into your daily life.

2.  Embracing yourself as "Enough."

Like we said earlier, it's in our nature to want happiness, and we often think that maybe we have to change to get it.  While often we can change (and need) to change our behaviors in order to change the results we get, we also need to recognize that we, as human beings, are good enough as we are.

In our hyper-media-saturated world, we often hear about other who are richer, happier, better looking, etc. etc. etc.  Since we're always being sold something, we often think that we aren't good enough or skilled enough or ____________ enough, and that we need more.  However, real happiness can't be bought.

Especially if the resolutions you were considering are thing that you think you need to do to be a better person, we highly suggest reevaluating them and seeing what it is that you're really after.  It's very easy to get caught up chasing the carrot, when really you've had some lettuce in your pocket the whole time.
Like we always stress, you should create art for you, not for anyone else.  It shouldn't be for the fame, or the recognition, or the love, or the chance to meet sexy people.  Creating art should always be about doing something that makes YOU happy.  Creating should always be about creating, not the end product.

Yes, fame and fortune are nice, but embrace the artist that you are RIGHT NOW, and you might find happiness is a lot closer than you think.

Best wishes for a happy 2014.  Keep your head up, and let's have some fun creating this year!

Monkey + Seal is BACK, baby!

Howdy everyone!  Whew!  Long time no see!

First off we'd like to apologize for falling off the blogging bandwagon this year.  There were a lot of changes in our lives this year, and unfortunately, since we always talk about taking care of your artist self and sustainability, we had to follow our own advice and thus the blog suffered.  We wanted to let you know that we are bringing it back (!) in 2014, but with a few changes.  

1) Monkey will be writing here much less frequently.  He'll be focusing his energy and writing over at his new project: Lift Off Art.  He launched Lift Off as a way to really focus on the psychological issues that artists face as well as the marketing and business aspects of it.  Monkey will still be around here (obviously, as it's Monkey + Seal), but if you're a reader interested in progressing forward as an artist, we recommend you go and subscribe to the Lift Off newsletter and blog.  

2) Seal will be holding it down over here at the good ol' M+S blog, but we realized that with our schedules as artists and teachers, we can no longer commit to the weekly post.  We'll post when we can, and will send out a newsletter when we do post.  

Cool, thanks for being understanding!  

Anyway, today (versus tomorrow), we thought it'd be prudent to talk a bit about 2013.  We're always big fans of creating a review of your year in order to remind yourself of all the stuff that you have both accomplished and also stuff that you need to work on.

2013 started out pretty tough. We had a lot of crazy personal stuff happen early on in the year, including bad family health diagnoses, deaths in the family, and close calls making rent early on in the year.  Monkey also had a trip to the ER, and both of our wallets got hit pretty hard with some dental emergencies (don't forget to brush and floss, kids).  However, we also read a lot of great books by amazing authors (Geneen Roth, James Altucher, Danielle LaPorte, etc.) that changed the way we think about life and creating and overall we feel like we had a great year.  

Some of the 2013 highlights are:

- Seal finished work on the Japanese animated feature "Space Pirate Captain Harlock."  The film was released in September in Japan and will be coming to US theaters early next year (so soon!).  You can check out the trailer below (but make sure the English subtitles are on, if you don't speak Japanese).

-Monkey became a sponsored artist for three different art material companies: Crescent Cardboard LLC (a very inauspicious name for the world's leader in mat board), Savoir-Faire (the sole US importer and distributor for Fabriano, Sennelier, Cretacolor, and other high-quality international art material companies), and KRINK (uber-aggressive graffiti ink markers and paint pens).

-Seal also joined the ranks as one of Savoir-Faire's demo artists too!  Woo!

-We did our usual circuit of craft/art shows and had a blast (as per usual) vending at APE, SF Zine Fest, and Bazaar Bizarre SF Holiday show.  We also tried some new shows (for us) including the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival and CthulhuCon (LA chapter) and the Lower Haight Art Walk.

-We had a bunch of awesome live paint opportunities and cool gallery shows.  We participated in group shows at Modern Eden and 111 Minna, and live painted for Oracle, the National Association of Asian American Professionals, and of course, Big Umbrella Studios.

-Seal worked on producing art assets for two different film pitches for a Norwegian film titled "Cargo," and "The Good Citizen" by Khmasea Hoa Bristol.

-This year teaching became a big thing for us, as we taught a team-building art workshop for a team from Apple, Monkey started Lift Off Art, and he also became an instructor for the Academy of Art (he will be teaching two sections of LA 291: Designing Careers next Spring).

-Seal continues to work on two short films (one animated, one live action).  Seal's been working as a Production Designer for two years and a half on LaNoria, an animated film, and as an Art Director on an untitled live-action taking place in San Francisco. La Noria is moving towards the animation phase, and the live action film is currently in post production.

-Monkey started developing table-top games, and is currently collaborating with a friend to playtest one of the many different ideas.

-Seal shifted her focus toward two of her own film ideas, "Skyace Wasteland"(some of you might have already seen and own her early concept art) and "The Ogre and The Daughter," (both working titles) and is currently editing the scripts and producing pre-production visdev assets.

-Seal also took up a position as a Lead Artist for a mobile communication start-up!  Phew!

-Monkey's screen printing business, The Lords of Print, took off, with live print gigs at the Moscone Center, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and many more!  It keeps him busy!

-Seal went to the CTN animation expo and met up with some of the top names in the industry!  Woo!

-Monkey got to go on some cool business trips, including Minneapolis (snow!), and Miami's Art Week (sun!).

So all in all, we feel like while we're going to take a few punches every year, we're really thankful for all of our opportunities and support we've received this year and we can close it the year feeling really good about it.

Next year (tomorrow!  Gads!) has a lot of stuff already going on for us, so we're looking forward to a lot as well:

-The first film Seal worked on three years ago, a feature animated film for Unicorn Studios, is slated for an international release next year!

-Monkey's new gig as instructor for AAU (if you have to still take LA 291, he'll be teaching sections LA 291.16 and 291.20 on Mondays) starts in late January!

-Monkey will be teaching his Artrepreneurship 101 course at the Fine Art school at AAU!

-Expect to see Monkey + Seal at your local Bay Area artist supply store doing demos!

-We're looking to expand our craft show circuit to include WonderCon and Maker Faire, among others!  More shows! Better booths!  And new products in development!  At least, that's what we're hoping :)  Perhaps a new shiny website (although realistically, we've been talking about this for years...)

-New art books and comics in the works!  Gah!

-Just MORE ART.  Monkey + Seal are both doing a lot more speed paints, so look forward to those!  Sharpen that saw!  Practice practice practice!

ANYWAY, we're definitely looking forward to start back up the writing, and we want to thank you for your patience and your support all these years.  We hope you'll continue to read, make art, and follow us on our journey.  Hope you have a safe and happy NYE tonight, and stop by tomorrow for our first post of the 2014!

Much love,
Rick + Eve

The Other Side . . .

Throughout city college, I worked at Starbucks located in a bookstore. I grew up in a working-class city. I had an incompetent boss who was inching for his retirement package and co-workers who were nice enough and though had good hearts competed for the few-hour shifts that were available. I was making $7/hr. If I bought coffee from my own store at retail value, that was more than half my hourly wage. Many of the barista girls including myself were schooling ourselves through college. At the end of the night when the company ordered us to throw away 2-day old pastries, we snuck them home to our families. Most of my dinner when I came home at 1am after closing shift was stale, brick-hard croissants. One of my good friends from high school studied for his college exam at the cafe there, but pretended not to know me. A random date my friends set me up on for homecoming years ago would repeatedly come in with his prized girlfriend and gave me the sleaziest wink, then asked me to microwave his Tupperware in the company breakroom. At that time, the biggest dream I could believe in was that someday I would be standing on the other side of the counter and able to afford coffee whenever I wanted.

You have to start somewhere.

After my first day of work as a barista and messing up on orders since there were several recipes to remember, I asked to take home the company manual along with its recipes. During breaks, I would memorize. I learned drinks had to made within certain minutes or the customers get it free. During down times, I practiced the recipes and rearranged the area to make it more efficient and systematic. The bookstore manager noticed. I was trained to be a bookseller. I wasn't very fast in math, so I borrowed a few math books from the library and copied the practice sheets and did the exercises during my other odd jobs of being a stage hand for the local theater. I became very proficient in numbers and alphabetizing all the books. It became much faster to find the books and serve the customers in the check-out line. I was generating more sales than average and co-workers couldn't figure out how. If you fix the root of the problem, the surface becomes clearer. I was handed the vault key. Because other booksellers didn't want to deal with customers they often sent them to me. I ran a lot of my co-workers errands and came to know both the bookstore and cafe better than the managers. When the cafe manager retired, I became a trainer for new employees. But the booksellers needed more experienced employees so I was offered lead position in both. As a lead, my new pay afforded to buy "fancy coffee" now and then. Though I couldn't buy one every day or whenever I wanted, I stood on the other side of the counter. The new pay afforded my books and tuition at city college where I eventually transfered to UC Berkeley.

Watching my dad work odd jobs, I learned that it doesn't matter what you are doing, as long as you do it well. You can make any job into a craft. And it would be even better if that job is exactly what you love.

When I graduated art school, I learned quickly that my skills in art were still lacking. When you are no longer a "student" you are now competing with other professionals in your industry, including your former teachers. I had to start at the beginning again. I had to put in "my dues" - though I caution, it was not in a disciplinary way, but came of love of the craft and curiosity. (Only resentment comes from disciplined practice.) "I wonder what would happen if I did this . . . " or "how can I get better at x? I really want to learn . . ."

A lot of my paintings now have robots and trees. Funny, those were the things I couldn't paint when I was in school. My landscapes looked like shit and I couldn't paint metal and didn't know how to mix color. So after I graduated, during job searches, I practiced. I practiced out of love and wonderment.

It doesn't take away from the frustrations of being a small fish at times, but it helps to see that life is a bit of cycle. You'll always be a beginner and you'll always be a master in something. You don't have to master everything, especially the things you don't like to do (leave that to other masters of that field)

But the point is, you have to start someplace. You have to have a vision of where you want to go, even if it is just a step towards the other side of the counter. And you have to take actions to manifest your vision and enjoy the process. Because sometimes it's short and sometimes it's a long road between your dream and its reality and your life is made up of the spaces in between here and the "other side."

When someone believes in you . . . (Part I)

As a junior in high school, I knew I wanted to be an artist. I gathered my random drawings and doodles and applied to Art Center College of Design. I received a four-semester full tuition at their illustration department. During the rest of my high school years, my mother was diagnosed with cancer, my father was laid off from his office job due to work politics, and my sister developed manic depression. So when I finished senior year and couldn’t afford to continue at Art Center, I took on two jobs and schooled myself through city college while helping to pay the bills at home. The first semester of junior college, I took painting, acting, and dance classes. To this day, that was one of the most memorable years. As I immersed myself at my jobs and academics, I slowly lost track of my direction. My parents, though well-meaning in their quest for our family’s survival, told me to “stop dreaming,” that “art was just a hobby,” and “it won’t pay the bills.” They told me that even if an artist were even able to “make it,” it would be because they started out already really, really good, that they had talent and had wanted it since at a very young age. Since I didn’t express my interest in art until high school, I believed them: I believed that whatever passion I had for art, was not enough to begin with. I didn’t show an overwhelming promise. I didn’t start early enough, I thought. They took me aside and looked at me with pleading eyes, “You don’t really want to go into art now, do you?” I was confused. I nodded. I would forever regret my own collusion and betrayal.

I doubled my focus on work and academics and found that I loved Literature. In my last year of English class at city college, my teacher Ms. Allison Murray assigned the class to write personal essays based on the UC school application themes. It was a required final essay to pass the class. I turned mine in, not expecting much. “You should actually apply to the UC with this essay, “ she confronted me in the hallway. I thought of my entire extended family, most of who never finished beyond junior high. I thought of my mother who finished her masters in engineering, whose degree wasn’t recognized in the US, who worked at Gatorade bottling juice and vacuumed offices as a janitor, and my Dad who would glue little tabs unto A frames so when people had displays at stores, these A frames would stand properly. At that time, I worked two jobs and didn’t even pass the ESL test even though I grew up in the US, there was no way a four-year college was possible for me. For the next two weeks, Ms. Murray pestered me, emailed me, called me, “Did you turn in your essay and application to the UC?” The answer was always the same, “I’ll think about it.” Seeing my mother worried about bills at night by the kitchen light, my father pulling double work shifts, and my sister struggling through her own school, I didn’t think I had a right to apply.

I prepared myself to disappoint Ms.Murray by telling her I wasn’t going to apply after all. After class, I took my time to leave, hoping to talk to her alone. She said goodbye to the students leaving and our gaze met, her eyes narrowed, her voice quieted and slowed with intensity she said, “You.Can.Do.This.”

I thought about why it was I was drawn to art and literature in the first place and even though it was hard to pursue, why I wanted to continue: I wanted to find the key to myself and I wanted to express myself through art and writing. I also wanted to encourage others to climb their own mountains and grab a hold of their own individual keys. I turned in my essay to the UC system. In the spring, I was accepted to all of the five schools I applied for: Berkeley, UCLA, Irvine, Santa Cruz, and San Diego.

When someone believes in you, it is the greatest selfless love that one can give.

Has someone believed in you and made a lasting impact on your life? Be sure to thank them and let them know how you’re doing!

I have many people to thank in my creative and self-discovery journey (Rick, Martha, Carlos to name a few) and they all deserve their own post and recognition.  So please stayed tuned for Part II of “When Someone Believes in You . . . “

Creating Good Habits

Sometimes people have things that cause them to do the same thing over and over again.  Invisible scripts.  Inherent trait X.  Habits.   Whatever you want to call it, we all have them, both good or bad.  Sometimes our bad habits get in the way of being awesome, and you may stop and think "Ugh, I wish I didn't always do X."  Whether "X" is spending too much time reading celebrity gossip, or constantly checking your email instead of working, how do we break them?

First off, we have to understand why are habits so hard to break.  Habits are really neurological pathways that have been reinforced over years and years of doing them.  It's no wonder that they come so naturally to us.  They are literally wired inside our brains.  In fact, the lame part is that once we have a habit, the pathway in our brain never goes away.  So the downside is that if you have a habit of always criticizing your art as soon as you're done with it, no matter how much work you do to change that, it'll always be there, no matter what.

However, there is good news.  We can create new, positive habits that will reinforce what you want to do.  Besides, making things habitual is easier in the long run, than constantly fighting your current bad habits.

How to create positive habits?  It's about designing systems that allow you to create the habits you want through a reward system.  We need as much help as we can get when trying to replace old habits with new ones, so by creating an outside system that will encourage you to follow through.  

Want to wake up earlier?  Have an early-bird friend call you every morning to hold you accountable.  Give that friend $60 at the start of a month, and every time you don't answer your phone, they get to keep $2.  Buy your favorite breakfast food (whatever you want, whether that's Lucky Charms or creme brulee), but you only get to eat it if you wake up early.  Basically, the more reward/punishment systems you can set up to hold yourself accountable, the better. The good news is that rewarding good behaviors works faster than punishing not following through.  So make sure to get that extra box of pop tarts.

Additionally, when you do reward yourself, make sure that you enjoy the reward, guilt-free.  If you are rewarding yourself with time allotted for video games, then don't play the games and think about how you "should" be working.  Just play the games for that set amount of time and have fun.  Just like if you're rewarding yourself with cookies, don't mourn the amount of butter in the cookies, just enjoy the cookies!

To help out anyone wanting to change a habit, we'll even offer to help you out.  Email us (info [at] monkeyandseal.com) with your name, email, and habit that you want to create, and we'll email you once a day for a week to offer words of encouragement and check in with you.  You can do it!  Start building a good habit today!

Monkey + Games Part 2: Finding Your Dream

Hola, everyone.  This is part two of a two-part post by Monkey about his recent discoveries via Facebook online games.

Hi everyone.  So last week I talked about procrastination, and how, if you're a semi-spastic, easily distracted person like myself, you can turn it into productivity.   Today, I wanted to talk about how you can find out what you really want by really looking at your actions.

The title of this mini-series is "Monkey + Games."  You see, I've long had an adversarial bout with gaming.  As much as I love playing games, my addictive and competitive personality really used to put game playing at odd with my life.  A slightly embarrassing truth is that Seal and I have had only three major issues to overcome in our relationship, and World of Warcraft was one of those three.

I would get repetitive stress injuries from computer use, but not from typing, but from playing WoW or Bejeweled Blitz.  Sometimes my shoulder would hurt too much to paint.  Other times I'd be playing board games with friends for 14 hours straight.  People would be absolutely exhausted, but I would want to keep playing.  Not the healthiest way of pursing a hobby.

However, for games to be such a large part of my life (I also played Magic: the Gathering fervently for nearly 8 years), I still couldn't reconcile them in a healthy manner.  I always saw them as a guilty pleasure, or a waste of time that could be better used elsewhere.  However, I recently came to (at least what seems to me) a life-changing conclusion.

I am meant to be a game designer.

I came upon this conclusion when talking to Seal one night.  I shouldn't really say that I discovered it or anything, as Seal just straight up told me "You know, you should be a game designer."  We were talking about me and whether I would ever be able to go back to a "day job."  We agreed that a majority of jobs with fixed work hours and a fixed location probably wouldn't be for me, and somehow Seal came upon the epiphany that I should be a game designer.

So after being intrigued by the notion of this new job I had never really thought about, it all made sense.  While I love painting and illustrating, I also love writing stories.  I also really really love games.  I like playing them, and discussing how to tweak sometime ambiguous rules in order to create a better game.  I made a board game in elementary school, and created my own card games in junior high.

Okay, so it's obvious I love games, writing, and painting.  What sort of crazy job would let me do all three at the same time?  I thought no one in their right mind would pay someone to, you know, design a  game that has really cool art and a great storyline...

Lightbulb.

So while I am in no way giving up my dreams of being an established gallery artist, or of having short stories published in major magazines and anthologies, I have now found a position that might be able to encapsulate all my interests into one package.

I  think that if you look at what really gets you excited and can keep you up at night, maybe you can find a job you never knew existed.  Like reading celebrity gossip magazines?  Maybe you should be in the guest relations industry, where you get to talk to lots of people, or maybe you should go into journalism or blogging.  Really into beer?  What about becoming a professional brewer, or a bartender at an establishment that has a huge beer selection.  Maybe a buyer for a beverage store?  Like doodling?  What about becoming an illustrator?

My point is that if you have any reservations about a hobby or interest because you think it's a waste of time, or that you can't get paid for it, think again.  While it might be hard to find a job that pays you to eat pizza all day and watch television (TV producer, maybe?), you can find something aligned with those interests.  Just as I don't expect to be illustrating all the concept art for a game but I can offer my own illustrations as ideas, maybe you can find a job that allows you to do an aspect of your interest that is the most appealing part.

So while games might have been my muse for these past two posts, games don't have to be your inspiration.  Whatever inspires you, and makes you happy, and makes you want to keep on living doing just that - well, you should go do more of it (in a productive way, of course).