Category: Inspiration

bookmark_borderFear of Promoting Yourself with Video?

Posted on by savethesavages

Fear is a strong word and not the word I prefer to use, but merely wanted the title of this post to jump out at you.

I’m sure you are aware of this already – people are posting more videos these days, whether it’s on Snapchat, Periscope, Vine, or YouTube. Do a Google search and you’ll see that YouTube is in the top 5 of the world’s most visited websites.

I feel like I’m one of the very last people on planet Earth to get on board. Why?

I’m not exactly new to video marketing; I’ve posted some videos on behalf of the company I work for. But no real, live people were involved; and I only used my voice, once. It was awkward, at least for me. The videos were mostly made in After Effects with existing photos and audio. I’m still learning how to edit in Premiere.

I’m terrified of the thought of people looking at my face, let alone watching me talk. I know I’m not the only one, right? Plus when you come from a graffiti subculture where your painting skills were more important than your face (NOBODY ever showed their face)…you kinda see why this is a challenge for me, right?

It’s not like I’m hiding or am deliberately antisocial in everyday life…video is just very new territory for me when it comes to myself.

Although for me personally, I’d rather go with the artsy type of video like this one. It just seems like people are starving for content though – like how to videos, tutorials, life hacks, etc. If you are a business owner or just promoting yourself it’s just not enough anymore to have a website or blog, or to just post on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. Video is pretty much already part of the internet landscape. A lot of people don’t even want to read anymore, for fuck’s sake; they’d rather watch a video. I like to do both.

Anyway, so I’m trying to figure out how to leverage using video for my stuff. I guess the main obstacles are:

1) come up with a video that will be of use to others and
2) get over myself and the fear of my face being shown in video :/

The video above was made in After Effects – just playing around with the CC Mercury and Particles plugin. Then I made the movie into a GIF in Photoshop. If you pull the file down, you’ll see that it’s a 10.7 MB file with 353 frames, lol. Your GIFs shouldn’t be that big but I did it anyway. Maybe I’ll make a tutorial soon once I have the steps down…

If you happen to be reading this and have posted videos on YouTube, how do you get over being nervous when it comes to creating videos that feature yourself?

Not sure what to post or vlog about? I searched for 10 Simple Vlog Ideas for You to Try Out

bookmark_borderThe Masonic Influence

Posted on by savethesavages

I just realized that I have a lot of original content that I created for myself to use for social media stuff and really just for the sake of creating and experimenting; for example this one was my old Facebook cover photo from 2013. I always like things to match to the point where I become obsessive over it, like my cover photo and my avatar. What can I say, it’s one of the few things I CAN control.

I used an old drawing that I scanned (the woman with a rose and a skull); I then played around with colors and gradients in Photoshop. For some reason I was drawn to using bright colors, triangular shapes and checkerboards at the time – not really knowing the significance of each. I then created a black square shape, duplicated it and layed it out, grouped them together, flattened them and used the Perspective tool to create the floor. The white part is just one big shape.

I hope to type up a decent tutorial soon on how I create my graphics, so my blog posts can be more useful and have some kind of value to you, the reader.

Here is a good reference of the meaning of the checkerboard in Freemasonry

What is the star of the macrocosm?

In Western occultism and esoteric philosophy, the “star of the macrocosm” is the six-pointed star (hexagram or Seal of Solomon), formed by two interlocked triangles. It symbolizes the vast universe and the absolute, while the five-pointed star (pentagram) represents the microcosm (the human being). [1, 2, 3]
Symbolism and History
  • The Macrocosm vs. Microcosm: Esoteric traditions (noted by figures like Paracelsus, Heinrich Khunrath, and Éliphas Lévi) use the hexagram to represent the great cosmic system () and the pentagram to represent humanity ().
  • Literary Reference: In Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s play Faust, the main character gazes upon the Sign of the Macrocosm to feel a surge of divine connection to nature and the universe.
  • Geometric Design: Often depicted with planetary symbols or the sign of Mercury at its center, surrounded by the interlocking triangles that signify the unity of opposites (heaven and earth, spirit and matter). [3, 4]

Would you like to know more about how the hexagram compares to the pentagram in ritual magic, or are you looking for its appearance in a specific work like Faust?

AI responses may include mistakes.

bookmark_borderThe Unicorn: A Magical Symbol

Posted on by savethesavages

Most girls grow up loving unicorns when they were young, I was definitely one of them. I had an insane collection of My Little Ponies and She-Ra’s unicorn.

As I learn more about spirituality, metaphysics and symbolism – I’ve come to realize that the unicorn is not just a mythical creature to be adored but also a symbol of magic – a symbol that you can meditate and draw upon when you need some imagination and creativity in your life.

The unicorn is synonymous with imagination, dreams, fantasy, magical things, otherworldly realms, thinking of the impossible. And I totally get it now.

Here is an old drawing that I made into a GIF.

So today, dare to dream. Dare to imagine that anything you can think of is possible.

bookmark_borderThe Absence of Color

Posted on by savethesavages

Black is modest and arrogant at the same time. Black is lazy and easy – but mysterious. But above all black says this: ‘I don’t bother you – don’t bother me.

– Yohji Yamamoto

Still one of my favorite quotes. I don’t know anything about fashion nor does it interest me all that much, but I really wanted to know about the person who said these powerful words. I did learn that Yohji Yamamoto is a Japanese fashion designer.

bookmark_borderPersonal Brands and Such

Posted on by savethesavages

For a long time I thought I screwed myself over by changing my site name from “SHERMGRAFIK” to “SAVE THE SAVAGES”. Deleting everything and putting it back up didn’t help either. If you view it from that perspective, I guess I kinda did; I lost visitors, I lost my spot on Google’s first page for search engine results and I really don’t have much of an internet / social media presence anymore. I basically lost my audience.

That you should stick to your ‘personal brand’ so people will remember you, that you should ‘build up an audience’ and ‘gain more followers’ …that you should do this or do that.

That’s all blah blah blah to me now, only because I’ve finally reached contentment, I have no desire to achieve those things. And I want to remove the phrase “I should” from my vocabulary forever and replace it with “I can”.

Being content is not the same as being complacent.

And after learning how to do this for my employer, I’ve come to realize that people can buy or even cheat their way into popularity and brand awareness – by stealing other people’s content or buying followers and likes, just to name a few.

This sums it up for me, it’s a quote from what Cameron Crowe learned from David Bowie on Mashable:

His takeaway, though, is what sticks out bright in his mind today: “He was always obsessed with music and art and never the business.”

“The thing I just wanted to say — I’ve had the last couple of days to think about it — [is that] David Bowie’s impact is so huge in that he presents himself now as a role model to artists who may need to remember that it’s not about branding, it’s about a restless need to be creative and to continue being creative,” he said.

“David Bowie was the anti-branding artist.”

Don’t get me wrong, branding is great – it gets your name out there. But for artists, it’s not a hard and fast rule. You don’t have to stick to a style of creating because the masses like it, you have to create because it’s what you’re born to do whether you have an audience for it or not.

And that’s my take on it.