Creative Metaverse Podcast

Jama Jurabaev is a concept artist working at Lucasfilms and is founder of BigMediumSmall Studio.  Recently complete design work for episodes of Boba Fett on Disney +.

In this episode, Ryan and Jama go through his twitter feed to talk about Jama's amazing artwork and the tools he uses.  Along with being a recognized artist in our industry, Jama is also a powerful educator and shares many of the workflows that he uses on a daily basis on his twitter and Artstation.

Make sure to learn more about Jama at the links below.

Learn more about Jama: https://www.artstation.com/jama

Jama Jurabaev Twitter: https://twitter.com/jamajurabaev1

Big Medium Small Studio: https://www.bigmediumsmall.com/

Learn more about Vertex School: https://www.vertexschool.com/

Want to learn skills for creative tech jobs in games, film, XR and the Metaverse? Apply for your spot in our upcoming Game Arts Program here: https://www.vertexschool.com/game-arts-program

Andre Holzmeister is the artist behind ArtMonkees' upcoming NFT release. In this podcast, we catch up with Andre just as he finishes up the last piece of art.  Andre goes on to talk about how it has been his dream to create a toy collection and how that dream was impossible or insanely complicated back in 2007 but now is within his reach because of the power of non-fungible tokens.  

He also mentions how Doritos' beat CryptoPunks to the market by over 10 years. Make sure to check out the podcast to learn more about Andre, his upcoming project, and get an inside look at what it takes to put together a 5,000 character NFT drop. 

Artmonkees goes live January 23rd on the Solana block chain January 23rd. 

Learn more about ArtMonkees: https://www.artmonkees.io/

Learn more about Andre: https://www.andreholzmeister.com/

Learn more about Vertex School: https://www.vertexschool.com/

Want to learn skills for creative tech jobs in games, film, XR and the Metaverse? Apply for your spot in our upcoming Game Arts Program here: https://www.vertexschool.com/game-arts-program

Have a listen to our chat with Doug and James from Super Pop Drop as they talk to us about digital artists in the fashion metaverse space! Think digital wearables and all the other assets that you need to create a fashion show like avatars, runways, lighting setups etc... 

You'll hear all about their journey to Super Pop Drop from their days as creatives in luxury fashion and how to find jobs with companies like theirs who are seeking out 3D artists.

Doug and James were photographers and branders for luxury brands for Neiman Marcus, Diesel, and Loreal. They created the first images for Amazon fashion and photographed countless celebrities like Kate Moss and Kylie Minogue before they started Super Pop Drop. Super Pop Drop has partnered up with model coach extraordinaire Miss J Alexander and DressX to create a digital wearables NFT collection and an online Shopify store that solely sells luxury NFTs.

With the next Metaverse fashion week upon us there is much to learn about how digital artists fit into this space and how to find jobs with a wide variety of companies.

Learn more about Vertex School: https://www.vertexschool.com/

Learn more about Super Pop Drop - Crypto Couture: https://superpopdrop.com/

Want to learn skills for creative tech jobs in games, film, XR and the Metaverse?

Apply for your spot in our upcoming Game Arts Program here: https://www.vertexschool.com/game-arts-program

Have a listen to this fascinating chat with digital sculptor Auriea Harvery from her home in Rome and Vertex here at the Leona art gallery in the heart of East Austin, TX. 

Auriea Harvey is a digital sculptor producing simulations and objects that bridge physical and virtual space. Auriea Harvey is a boundary-breaking artist originally from Indianapolis, Indiana. She talks to us about her journey as an artists in the digital space from student to video games to NFT's. 

After plumbing the depths of net art and video games, she has now turned her attention to digital sculpture, 3D printing, and mixed reality. The work is presented as sculptures that blend digital and handmade production. She is half of the artist duo Entropy8Zuper!/Tale of Tales/Song of Songs, known for their pioneering works in Internet art, video games, and XR. Auriea lives in Rome and is a Professor of Games at Kunsthochschule Kassel. Her work can be found in the permanent collections of the Walker Art Center, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the RF.C Collection, and Rhizome’s Net Art Anthology. 

Her video games and VR works have had international success, including exhibitions at the Tinguely Museum, Basel; the Victoria & Albert Museum, London; the New Museum, New York; Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York; and ZKM, Karlsruhe. She is the recipient of a Creative Capital grant and a winner of the Independent Games Festival Nuovo Award. She is represented by bitforms gallery, NYC.

Learn more about Vertex School: https://www.vertexschool.com/

Learn more about Auriea: https://www.instagram.com/auriea.harvey.studio/?hl=en

Want to learn skills for creative tech jobs in games, film, XR and the Metaverse? Apply for your spot in our upcoming Game Arts Program here: https://www.vertexschool.com/game-arts-program

Omar Awediah is the Character Art Lead at Sucker Punch Productions and a mentor at Vertex school. Before that he was a character art lead at Amazon game studios and Obsidian entertainment and Cloud imperium games. 

Omar gives us a glimpse into many aspects of his life as an artist creating characters for a major studio. You get to hear all about Omar's journey in art from being an intern all the way to a character art lead. He talks about how to be a better artist with critiques, and how to overcome a lot of the vulnerability that comes with the territory.  Have a listen to our chat taped live at the Yellow Jacket Social Club in Austin, TX and his home in Seattle.

Learn more about Vertex School: https://www.vertexschool.com/

Learn more about Omar: https://www.artstation.com/thatguyomar

Want to learn skills for creative tech jobs in games, film, XR and the Metaverse? Apply for your spot in our upcoming Game Arts Program here: https://www.vertexschool.com/game-arts-program

Giovanni Nakpil, Creative Director

Gio, has been a digital model supervisor for Industrial Light and Magic, worked on principal creatures for "Star Trek" and "The Avengers," amongst other notable Hollywood films before switching gears to designing and building video game assets for Valve Corporation, then onto Oculus and now working at Adobe. Listen to Gio's thoughts on education, apprenticing yourself, perfect practice, hierarchy of forms, listening to your gut and software evangelism (yes, that's a real thing). 

Learn more about Vertex School: https://www.vertexschool.com/

Learn more about Gio: https://www.artstation.com/gionakpil

Want to learn skills for creative tech jobs in games, film, XR and the Metaverse? Apply for your spot in our upcoming Game Arts Program here: https://www.vertexschool.com/game-arts-program

Start projects and never finish?  What does this say?  To help you understand it I read a poem by Jack Gilbert called "Lovers".  It's pretty neat.

This lesson helped me honor my own work more and see myself differently. Hopefully it can do some good work for you as well.

Much Love,

-Ryan

P.S. This is the last of the special series of podcast episodes talking about the creative process for the holiday break. Let me know if you want to hear more like this.

What is mastery?  How do you build skill as a creative?  These are questions that drive me to this day.  They drive my work at Vertex School, the classes I run and my own practice as a 3D Artist. 

In this episode, we look at the idea that mastery is not magic, it's process.  Learn the process and you become the master.

Enjoy!

-Ryan

In this episode we talk about my own journey as a creative man and a bit about how I learned to allow myself to be open to joy and that spark of inspiration.  As a man, I have always struggled between the joy of creating and my need to provide for myself and my family.  While there is no easy answer for this, knowing and accepting yourself is key.  Remember to make time for yourself and give yourself space to create.

Much Love,

-Ryan

Discover your rules for what makes art... what makes you an artist... and what you MUST do to finally give yourself that pat on the back that we all need.  This exercise changed me and helped me understand how I was screwing up my creative life.  It took longer to stop doing it but this was step one to accepting myself and my own process.

Much Love,

-Ryan