10 Things I learned from "Beeple: Everydays, the first 5,000 days"
I first heard about Beeple when an NFT of his work sold for $69 million in March 2021. I watched a few video interviews and started to learn more about him. BEEPLE is Mike Winkelmann. His website and and general approach are very refreshing! https://www.beeple-crap.com/
This book is pretty massive: it weighs 5 1/4 lbs. You can see all 5,000 images in chronological order.
So far I have only spent a few minutes with the book and his approach is very inspirational. The art is not for everyone's taste.
Apparently this book is all of the same images that someone "bought" in the NFT. The NFT is "The First 5000 Days NFT, 21,069 pixels x 21,069 pixels (316,939,910 bytes). Image courtesy of the artist and Christie’s." https://news.artnet.com/opinion/beeple-everydays-review-1951656. The images in the book are mostly in higher resolution.
1. "You do not have a lack of ideas, you have a lack of deadlines" - Beeple
This is very true! The DAILY practice of anything is what counts.
2. His early work in 2007 was really rough, REALLY rough!
You can see the daily progression. From his website: 'He makes a variety of art crap across a variety of media. some of it is ok, but a lot of it kind of blows ass. he’s working on making it suck less everyday though so bear with him... :)"
3. In about 2014 he started making work that was visually "stunning" to me
Some of this had to do with more powerful computers and better software, most had to do with 7 years of DAILY practice!
4. His goal was always to learn something and get better
The "good" art happened by accident or as a side effect of getting better. "Mike Winkelmann: Yes and no. I guess if you want to find the system, what I'm doing, it's Everydays. The system is doing something every single day. I would say is the best advice I can give to somebody, in terms of what you could copy to get better. But in terms of what I'm doing with the Everydays, I have a focus per year of what I'm trying to learn. This year, honestly I don't even remember, I think it's trying to get better at composition or something. The last couple years, I'm just trying to overall get better at making images. I haven't been super stringent on what focus. In the past, I had done ZBrush and I did V-Ray, I wanted to learn V-Ray back when V-Ray didn't suck." https://www.schoolofmotion.com/blog/beeple-podcast
5. He made learning the features of the software that he was using part of his "Everydays" goals
This is something that I can do!
6. He has themes that he revisits and visual memes
He has a lot of work with floating orbs and floating structures. He also has a thing about Buzz Lightyear and has used variations of that image repeatedly.
7. You can tell when his “tool” changed and the styles that he was able to execute changed
8. He has opened Beeple Studios in Charleston SC
Following in the tradition of Andy Warhol (maybe?) he created an enormous (50,000 sq feet!) studio and factory for experimental art: a huge warehouse. https://beeple-studios.xyz/about/
No comments.