Sketch Theatre

Grandma By Vincent Hui

Wouldn't it be cool if you could watch your favorite artists start on something from scratch? To watch the mistakes, the edits and more importantly, to see the process? Well, now you can.

The good people over at Sketch Theatre do just that. The basic premise is to create a spot for other aspiring artists to watch streaming video of some of the most creative contemporary artists doing the thing that they first fell in love with... sketching. Featured artists include Corey Miller, Steven Daily, Gary Baseman, Cameron Davis, Vincent Hui and so many more.

But wait, there's more... Rifling through the website you'll find cool streaming music (from Mountain Goats to BRMC) to get you inspired, contests that you can enter in to win cool stuff and exclusive merch that will keep this site afloat.

For anyone that was ever put a pencil down to paper, I'll wrap this post up with Sketch Theatre's mission statement:

Sketch Theatre serves to motivate and inspire artists from all walks of life. Here, aspiring artists are exposed to contemporary artists and the various career paths taken by these like-minded individuals who all began their careers with the primary process of putting ideas and expressions down with a pencil & paper. The brilliant myriad of artists featured on Sketch Theatre strip down and expose raw sketches on camera, never failing to captivate and inspire. Enjoy the show.

Spike Spends Saturday With Kanye West.

You should never feel completely satisfied. You should always feel like you could do something greater...

Spike Jonze overload tonight. Just found an old series of videos from VBS of Spike interviewing Kanye during the coloring session for the Hype Williams-helmed "Can't Tell Me Nothing". It's an interesting look at Yeezy's thoughts regarding his process, his expectations of himself, the relationship between fan and artist and how that changes with success, his arrogance as overcompensation for his fears, etc. Highly recommended for people that love Kanye. Even more highly recommended for the people that hate Kanye.

P.S. If you thought the dude was cocky before, this won't change that belief. At least it's not an interview of Lil Wayne.

Drop.

As you watch the video you will start to see weird stuff happening...

Plenty of people remember Pharcyde's video for "Drop". You know, the one where dudes are rhyming forwards but moving backwards? The one with the cameo by the Beastie Boys? The one directed by Spike Jonze before he became a hipster household name?

I'm a big fan of seeing other peoples' creative processes, so finding Spike's original video treatment for the video at the Delicious Vinyl site was a goldmine for me. As you can see, it's an exercise of sheer simplicity and clear vision. It's amazing to see how something so bare-bones ended up with so much life and detail. It's like Spike was the Woody Allen of music video: he delivered what he promised on-time and on-budget.

Check out the video below. For extra geekiness, click here for the video unreversed (re-reversed?) to see how the shots looked as they were filmed. Looks like fun.