Great New Artists

I have to admit something: I’m a fan of Tay Zonday. I can’t figure out really what the big deal with him is except that his voice is so wierd! Alright so that’s not exactly a review but still…it’s true.

The actual musical value of the songs he…creates?…doesn’t carry a lot of weight on the side of great musical talents of the 21st century they’re obviously words written around canned music either from a synthesizer’s pre-recorded music or from the internet I vote for the synth myself since he is rather a good keyboard player. But when he does stop with the crazy music he is quite intelligent and I’ve often wondered why he’s not doing voice-overs for movie trailers yet. 

When I first got on YouTube I wasn’t a very big fan of vlogs in general (very strange thing for someone on YouTube) but then I discovered that some people were actually making quite good ones. Here are a few of my favorites:

1. missxrojas–Not as avant garde “art form-y” as some but she says a lot of good stuff and proves that other people can speak eloquently about their life and make total strangers care about them.

2. vlogbrothers–a YouTube project started by writers.

3. communitychannel–a vlog which I discovered more recently than the others and one which most uses the indie-film influences which are increasingly popular these days.

4. hotforwords–watch it, you might learn something.

The point is that I think people are really harnessing and have harnessed the concept that YouTube has opened the door to more creative freedom which we didn’t have before it came along. That’s why they’re here.

January has been a successful month so far here so I thought I would do a little time-out housekeeping-type post for all my lovely readers.

So far 2009 has seen a lot of new artists from YouTube and other sites on the internet but I thought it would be in keeping with my more academic nature if February took a slightly different track. I feel it is neccessary to understand old art in order to truly appreciate new art so the month of Feb will be dedicated to some of those old favorites with short descriptions of why they were so great.

Hopefully the rest of 2009 will get back to my roots here at Great New Artists and find some more great painters &ct. making great new art for everyone. Since the summer is usually pretty heavy with this kind of thing floating around we’ll keep our eyes peeled for that around that time.

Not since Free Hugs have I seen a YouTube video that made me cry quite as much as The Beckoning of Lovely. It all started when Amy Krouse Rosenthal made a video called 17 Things I Made in which Amy chronicled some of the things she has made including the ordinary and not so ordinary.

Through this video audiences learned that she is a writer, a mother and a maker of things including an 18th thing which she promised to make on 08/08/08 at the Millenium Park Bean–That’s where The Beckoning of Lovely began.

The Beckoning is not over yet as you will see at her blog and on the videos so this is only the first in a series I will do on her work in the coming days. I may even do a Suite 101 article about her later.

I love Meekakitty! There I said it. I love her for the same reason I love everything I write about here–she’s brilliant (otherwise why would it be called Great New Artists?).

The videos that prompted this post were both posted very recently. One to her Meekakitty channel and one to her other channel which is collaborative 5awesomebuckfans.

I think the idea for these videos started with the challenge posted by another member of 5awesomebuckfans to post a video which showed something about your life either silently or not (she obviously chose silent) which was a brilliant idea (BTW I do watch 5ABF but only because Meekakitty’s is a member not because I love Michael Buckley).

Meekakitty is really a model named Tessa and she has a MySpace page too.

Was this post too stalkery…? I may want to ask her about that (she would know)

I’m actually not sure I should have put this video in the category “film” but here it is and it’s my blog. Anyway in keeping with what I said about doing more posts and reviews of YouTube stuff this year I decided I had to blog about this video.

AmazingPhil  describes himself as a student in York, UK who likes lions which pretty much is all you need to know when you see this video although he also could have added that he has a majorly emo hairstyle too.

I discovered his channel through Meekakitty’s channel (who I will profile later because she’s a model and I LOVE HER!

AmazingPhil is one of those YouTube celebrities that I’m still trying to decide if I like or not. Everyone else seems to…but I’ll leave it up to you. There are some major cool tricks in Creation though.

I found this animation done for the 25th anniversary of 4th Estate Books which is an imprint of Harper Collins. It is absolutely brilliant. It features a cut out of a man done from a page of a book walking through a city made of books which is highlighted by the covers which decorate the buildings as if they were billboard advertisements.

Speaking of whcih it is awfully noticeable that the video is an advert for the publisher but that being said it is photographed well and the sound effects are very believable. The sound is one of the main reasons it works so well actually.

In keeping with the tradition of counting down and looking back which seems to transcend generations and religions every year round about this time I decided to write about some of the best new artists I found this past year.

Valsartdiary I actually found out about her a while ago before 2008 started but her style is classic.

Katarina Sokolova one of the best digital painters I have ever seen.

Kawaii Goods.com great little shop full of pink stuff.

Graffiti Paris is a book not a person or organization but it still counts as one of the best art related things I found this year.

Of course there have been a lot more great things this year than just these but it’ll be more fun if I don’t tell you what else to like

I have a confession to make; I am a Nerdfighter (if you don’t know what that is then go here). Actually this confession is not so shocking once I tell you what I have to tell you in this post but nevertheless I think it’s something that doesn’t get said enough.

The reason I brough you this news is that the Project for Awesome is coming up once again on Dec. 20 and it was started by, you guessed, John and Hank Green who wanted to further the Nerdfighter’s cause of decreasing world suck by bringing attention to charities that Nerdfighters in the YT community liked.

I will be participating this year for the first time making a video about two charities Free Rice and the Christmas Day Art blog network which raises money to drill wells in Africa. What’s unique about these two charities is that they don’t require supporters to give money they both get all their support from ads (sponsorship for Free Rice and Google AdSense for Christmas Day).

Watch the video and visit the site to learn more about the Project for Awesome. Also visit Christmas Day Art you can also score some free clip art and learn about some other cool stuff.

My main goal for this blog is to focus on more posts about music because there’s some great stuff going on there. Also indie filmmakers will be featured more because I don’t think they got nearly the attention they deserved from me in 2008. I will also be a lot more dilligent with my posts (I promise!).

Starting tomorrow posts will be posted on a regular schedule throughout 2009 becasue there are two things I don’t want this blog to be: a copy of coolhunting.com and a flash in the pan, throwaway blog (’cause that would be sad ;( ).

I’m planning some exciting things which I will also keep you guys updated on mostly to do with YouTube and you should expect to see some more YouTube related posts as it has become quite the thing to do with me.

BTW: I designed the above new graphic for the blog, how do you like it?