Otis Funkmeyer, The Ph.D. of Popping

So life has been good for the past few days. I’ve been really preparing for my trip to New York and to move away from the house in Los Angeles. VV and I are off to a 10-day silent meditation retreat beginning the day after Christmas, and we’re both really excited about the chance it’s going to give us to sink in to ourselves and relax before the windstorm that we are both sure 2008 is going to be.

With that said, I decided that I wanted to make a business card for myself. Here it is:

Front:

Back:

I want to have this for a few reasons. When I’m street performing, I want to be able to give out the card to encourage people to go to the website and subscribe or buy things. Second, it’s about time for me to have something to give people when I meet them. Third, I designed the card to be the card I have always dreamed of receiving. I’m so over the question “what do you do?” but at the same time, I’m really fascinated by people and what they do and what they’re into. But it can take so long to get it out of them, or in my case, to explain all the different things I do and that I’m into. So the card is a great way of answering the question. The person can then pick up on any of the things they are interested in and the conversation can proceed from there.

So, that prepares me for 2008. A big, momentous year of really going for it.

My priorities are 3:
1) Street Performing
2) Theater Performing (one man shows)
3) Ordinary Miracles movie

My primary focus is money. I want to make a lot of it and I want to spend it freely and I want to have a savings account and I want to give it away. Primary focus is something that Steve Pavlina writes about so eloquently it hurts. My primary focus for 2007 was women and relationships and that worked out pretty well!

And my goals in New York are as follows, in no particular order:

• Write “One Sun Salutation A Day” eBook with tips and exercises and philosophy of the idea
• Perform my existing one man show “Bite Scratch Claw” over and over and refine and update it
• Add a video element to “Bite Scratch Claw”
• Write “Breakdancing Aliens and God: Sixty One-Minute Freakouts”
• Do instructional lessons while street performing–dance, social, juggling, etc.
• Write transformation of consciousness lecture
• Work on popping routine with a group
• Develop a street performance SHOW with dancing, beatboxing, juggling, hat tricks, singing, and an audience interaction. Tell a story about creativity and how I knew a guy who thought he couldn’t be creative but he just keep trying and how the guy is me and how he was scared of people but now he’s OK.
• Make movie with VV
• Keep making music
• Do some kind of project with my friend Tony
• Do some kind of project with my friend Andrew
• Do some kind of project with my friend Todd
• Perform in my apartment
• Perform at the Bedford L stop and all along the L line
• Learn waaay more about After Effects
• Go to After Effects New York user group
• Take dance class with Jazzy J and Archie
• Battle Jazzy J
• Work with Buddha Stretch on party dances
• Do some kind of project with Cruxy
• Compete at the House Dance Conference Battle
• Take Boxing Lessons
• Learn to Beatbox
• Take Vocal lessons
• Learn the Piano
• Go to Figure Drawing Classes
• Do the “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain” exercises
• Do Consciousness Transformation/Psychokinesis Lecture Workshops
• Teach dance at a club like they do with Salsa
• Get in a fight with a guy and win
• Work on Ordinary Miracles with VV
• Work on After Effects FX for Ordinary Miracles movie
• Get a show with Next New Networks
• Make dance music videos
• Make dance lesson videos
• Make vlogs
• Make dance interview videos
• Seal the deal with Alex
• Become a better actor
• Hang out at Chapel of the Sacred Mirror
• Have some Adam Apollo/Miranda/Commander type of friends (i.e. amazingly awesome people)
• Snuggle with VV a lot
• Take VV out regularly
• Live more abundantly than ever!
• Make money from ebooks
• Make money from videos
• Make money from music
• Make money consulting
• Make money doing psychic readings
• Make money performing
• Make money lecturing
• Make money teaching dance
• Make money on Ordinary Miracles
• Make money dancing
• Make money street performing
• Make money on eBay
• Make money on software instructional videos
• See art in small venues–local galleries, local theaters

Tags: business, card, new year’s resolutions, goals, money, primary focus, steve pavlina, vv, new york, williamsburg,

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Wow, I am delirious right now. I have spent hours upon hours making this 10-second video. I both love that I have done this and am paying for it with shoulder and neck pain. I don’t know what else to say except here it is!

This is the title sequence for my Vig Vlack Vlog series of videos. Maybe next time I’ll actually make a video with some real substance. Only time will tell!

Oh yah! This is my first time ever rapping. Hah! And I made the beat! I just wanna be the next Da Vinci!

Happy holidays and all that!

Tags: vigvlack vlog, intro, title sequence, motion graphics, visual effects, hoolanders, after effects, brit wolfson, big black brit

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This is the song that I used on the intro video for my “How to Pop” series and it’s off of my album called “My Beats Are So Hard They Make Rocket Science Look Easy.”  The song is called “I’m From Another Planet” and I hope you enjoy it.

That album was like my second wave of music after first learning how to make music on the How To Do The Robot Soundtrack.

I’m excited to get my music out there through my dance videos because I think it’s pretty good. Also, I’m always excited about making more!
Here it is: I’m From Another Planet

Tags: music, song of the week, beats, i’m from another planet, elastic illusion, cd, mp3

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Here is a story where Bashar, who is an alien channeled by a guy from LA named Darryl Anka, tells the history of the grays, the hybrids, fractured space-times, genetic codes gone awry, the fact that if you are listening to this you already went down the right path and he knows that because he’s there 2700 years in the future looking back at you and telling you, encouragement to wake up and spread the message in the way that brings YOU joy, love, lights, crazy sci-fi awesomeness.

What more can you ask for in half-an-hour?

I’ve been so excited about getting this up and into the world. Yeehaw!

Bashar Tells the Story of the Shalania

Much love and enjoyment and please let me know what you think!

Tags: bashar, channeling, abraham, law of attraction, aliens, 2012

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So I’m just putting the finishing touches right now (meaning, uploading the DVD to kunaki) on my first real professional design gig.

I got the job through VV and it was to design the cover, insert, disc face, and website for her project “Electric Aquarium,” which is this awesomely trippy ambient jellyfish video.

Check a preview here:

This was my first real well-paid professional design gig and I learned a lot from it:

• If you are good at something, make sure to charge a lot for it, because being good takes a long time. I went into this job in a sort of just rush it through, no problem, no real time involved, very little effort, sure I can do it sort of way. This didn’t happen at all. I was dealing with professional people who expected professional results, the elimination of all minor errors, the best work I could do, and a lot of attention, because they were paying me.
  
  
• Doing a good job at something takes sooooo long. I know that this is basically the same thing as the first one, but let me just re-emphasize. Wow. It takes a long time, way more than I would have ever expected, to do that last 10%. The people who came up with that cliché about how the last 10% takes 90% of the time were not kidding. I spent so much time fixing up minor errors, reuploading, re-encoding, re-emailing, and on and on and on. I thought it was going to be one draft, upload, get check. Not hardly.
  
  
• All the talent in the world is only going to get me so far. It is just hitting me more and more everyday that (I’m loving percentages this post) it’s 10% inspiration, 90% perspiration. I had all these dreams about how talented I was and how the world was going to be blown away by all I was capable of. These days, I have all these dreams about OH MY GOD it’s going to be so much work to make something that is even halfway presentable!
• Get really clear with a client at the very beginning of the job. I was kind of flying by the seat of my pants on this one and just kind of took things as they came. But dealing with email after email about little things and having to hold hands through different processes was both draining and made me realize why it’s important to charge a lot! In the future, I would get a very clear understanding of what exactly the job requires and will entail, in writing, and if the client was unable to give me such, I would add that to the price.
  
  
• With all that said, experience is payment in itself. As my good friend Bashar says, the only thing SUBSTANTIVELY REAL about reality itself is your experience of it, and so the experience is its own reward. I learned so much from this project about what it means to be a professional, I got clarity on how I want to move forward in my life and my career, and I got the opportunity to work on something and forge bonds with people that could last a lifetime. Not to mention networking and referrals and before you know it, it seems like a pretty good deal indeed.

This feels like another step in my direction of growing up and being an adult and taking care of myself and handling my business, both literally and figuratively.

And after that mouthful, here’s the work I did:

Tags: electricaquarium, design, vv, jobs, professional, work, thoughts, lessons, learned, adulthood

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Yesterday, I had high hopes for the day. I thought I was going to finish up the scripts for my popping lessons, do a lot of stuff in preparation for the move to New York, and make the intro/title sequence for the series of “How to Pop” videos.

Well. Sometimes that one thing takes all day. For the first time in many moons, I jumped back into Adobe After Effects, actually having to apply what I’ve been learning for the past six months. It was amazing how much I’d forgotten and how time-consuming it really is to do something when you try to do it well.

I learned from my partner Ace about actually tweaking something it until it’s really good. I have a tendency, and you’ll know this if you’ve seen any of my work, to just GO FOR IT. One take, that’s it, all done. But I always notice that when Ace does something, it ends up looking much nicer, much more polished than the things I do.

So I decided, ok, I’ll try that way. I’ll try polishing.

And there went the day.

All was not lost, because I did come out with a wonderful mostly finished intro sequence for my “How to Pop” videos. I am very proud of it and I think it will last a long time, which is what it’s intended to do.

Without further ado, here it is:

This was a brand new experience for me. I don’t know that I’ve ever really polished anything. I’ve always turned in term papers at the last minute after whipping off a single draft, I’ve always performed improvisations where preparation just meant going for it, and I’ve always had a tendency to leave things half-done. They looked like they had the POTENTIAL to be good, but who would know–it wasn’t done.

So let’s just call this a turning of a new leaf. Don’t know how long it will last, don’t know if it’s leading to anything, don’t know much psychology.

But I do know that I love you. And I know that if you love me too, what a wonderful world this would be.

Til next time, when I will discuss the recent conversation I had with the aliens. They told me that they are here, looking in, peering at us, waiting for us to open up the window–the window of course being our mind/perception/belief.

Tags: popping, how to pop, tutorial, after effects, motion graphics, intro

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