 Hey, doing good. I can hear you, but only in from my phone. Oh, really? Hmm, even though the headset is on, we'll try to turn it on and off again. Okay. Ooh, are we live? I don't know, are we? I have no idea. It's set preview and... I'm seeing comments. Hello. I saw comments. Hello, are we live? You're live! That's what he says we're live. Fantastic. We're old men and technology. It's a wonder that we're even here. And you guys, can you can hear me okay, Kim? I can hear you, but I need to figure out... Oh, did we lose him? I think we lost Kim. And see, I don't know if he's gonna... Okay, sorry. Now I hear you. There you are. You froze for a bit. I was telling everybody I said, I don't know if you're gonna hit me with the ink monster. What is... So are you doing pinktober? Yeah, I sort of, right before Inktober started, I sort of... Someone asked me if I would do the pinktober list. And with that... It's just another Inktober thing. Okay. Is it for a cause or something? I should have researched this before I said yes, but I didn't do anything. I just said pink. That sounds cool. And the problem is I'm really hating a lot of the prompts. Which makes it extra fun, because then I have to draw things like this. Oh, gosh. I love it. I love it. Are you mixing your own pink or did you buy some or...? I have a couple of ones. I'm always out of almost out of this Eco-line pink watercolor from Talence. But when that is out, I still have some reflex rose from Daler Rowney. Okay. I'm wondering if I can mix this with a little white and make some... Yeah. What's today's prompt? Oh, I haven't checked. You are woefully unprepared for today, Kim. I am woefully unprepared. If anyone could go to Stuart's samples pinktober, 23 prompt list and see what it is. Because actually, I'm straight from the gym. Right, like five minutes ago, I came in the door from the gym. I haven't showered. You could probably smell me over the internet. I just want to say bravo for still keeping fit. I'm happy if I can get a little planking, some push-ups in every day and maybe some walking. And I miss going to the gym. I hate working out, but I know how I feel after I go to the gym. Yeah, working out is the worst. It is. But it is necessary, at least for me. Yeah, yeah. I think we've talked about this first, but it's the grueling realization that the head is connected to the body. Yes, exactly. Let me get, I'm going to make some pink for myself. Today's, ooh, I think this is correct. Today's prompt is acceptance. Acceptance. Acceptance. This is why I hate the pinktober list. How do you visualize acceptance? Yeah. Oh, God. I love doing lives with you, but I also hate doing lives with you because of things like this. It's a bit like exercise. Yeah. You hate doing it, but you love the feeling after. I love the feeling, yeah. So what I've been doing is I've been signing or at least labeling all of these before I start. And you don't have to do pink if you don't want to. I want to try it. I've been all over the place lately. I really burnt out a lot. And so I took at least three weeks off and did a bunch of mental health stuff for myself. Oh, hey, Donna's here, my wife's here. Excellent. And then I did, I just said, I'm just gonna paint something for myself. Screw the algorithm. I'm gonna do something that's gonna take me three weeks to paint because I was tired of doing 90 minute pieces of art and I, ooh, this is looking a little more purple than this pink or lavender. But I wound up doing like a Gothic vampire then I just had such a blast just doing every little book and every little skull on the shelf and battle, you know. And it did really well, like for some reason the algorithm was like, not a problem. And it was just like, here's an update. I inked a little more and that was it. And so that became a thing. And then I just decided, I'm just gonna do 80s music alphabet. And then it became, I'm gonna do, someone recommended Octel Bear. And so I did a little show of their dresser. And I'm like, you know what? I'm enjoying just doing whatever the heck I feel like and not worrying about the algorithm. It's like, it's so frustrating. It's so frustrating to base your happiness on an algorithm. It's just drawing. Definitely, definitely. So are you doing it like you do the ink monsters? Are you just splotching or are you just... No, most of these I've started with just painting. But on this one, I'm still completely blank. But I have no idea what we're gonna do or what I'm gonna do. Acceptance, huh? Acceptance. So I'm thinking it must be something about balls to the walls by 80s metal band, accept. That's what I was thinking of except for you. Yeah. Perhaps not. That's a little in-jokey, I think. And hello, Donna. I didn't say hello back. I think you and three other people, probably the people from the band remember accept. So I'm not sure if they remember you. They are two bands now. They are both Udo, the vocalist and accept with a new guy. So yeah. Really? There it is. Old guys can't remain friends. We'll split up soon too, huh? Yeah, yeah. Never. Do you know what I found out? Because when I was in the 80s, you know, I was totally into all of the hair bands and whatnot, my friend was more into metal. And so you kind of just listened to everything. And I was, you know, my family was evangelical Christian. So I, of course, got into Striper. Remember Striper? Yes, I remember Striper. Okay, so I just discovered, because I was researching something about Boston. I forget what it was. I was researching something about the group Boston. And oh, I had played a record, you know, while cleaning the hobbit hole and I put on one of Boston's albums. And someone in the comments said, my art teacher, no, my guitar teacher or my music teacher, I think is, is Boston's new drummer. And so I was like, oh, and that sent me down a rabbit hole. And down that rabbit hole, I found that for like a period of four years, Michael Sweet, the lead singer for Striper was the lead singer for Boston. Ooh, I didn't know that. That, it was, it blew my mind. Like, like of all people, how did he, and it was just like for, and then they, I guess Striper got back together. And so he left Boston, but I was like, that was just the craziest, I don't know, I think crazier would have been if, you know, for four years, Michael Sweet was the lead singer for Iron Maiden or something, but. Yeah, that would be stranger. But so basically, he rejoins Striper and left Boston, but did he also leave the band? Yeah, I think you, oh, I can't. I don't know what I'm gonna say to you. Oh God, good. All right, I'm just, you know what, I'm gonna pour this stuff over here and I am going to, because this is acceptance. I'm really tempted to look up. Look up Udo, did he snide it? He is really, really tempted to do that. Yeah, that's quite a voice he had or has. Angry little man, very, very funny. Hmm. Yes, speaking of your mental health break, I'm sort of, I think it's time for me to like secretly sneak announce something right now, that I've revealed it to my patrons and to a few others, but I'm in the middle of the most insane, I'm not in the middle, I'm in the beginning of my most insane project yet, which is sort of has to do with mental health, but also not. And that is, you know, I've been trying to do exercise for my health sake and for my mental health sake, but that doesn't quite work for me. So, you know, because when I'm depressed, I, when I'm depressed, I want to destroy my health. I want self-destruction, so health isn't a good goal. So instead of health, I'm going to exercise for vanity. And I'm going to train bodybuilding with a bodybuilder for nine months, full-time. So art will be my hobby, art is my hobby, from the 15th of September to the 15th of June, art is just my hobby. And I'm going to try to make a YouTube series about it called Vanity, and every month I'm going to model for an oil painter who will be painting my progress. Instead of doing progress photos, we'll do old school progress oil paintings. So I'm one month into the training. The first month was just getting into training again on my own and seeing how far I could get on my own. And I've come far on my own, but I noticed that I need help. And the next month, which starts like tomorrow, will be trying to get into the bodybuilding regime and doing all the dieting and doing all the regimented, like so many days a week. I was gonna ask if you were gonna do the food part of it too. Yeah, I'm going to live on rice and chicken for nine months. I'm going to have to do a backpack, no, not backpack, but food, what's it called? When you bring your food to lunch for, I'm gonna have to pack my food every day. Yeah, yeah. So that chicken and rice is pretty much what I already live on, so I've got that part down. So, and then I'm going to try to make a video make each episode be about different things regarding everything from body shaming to philosophy to the Greek heroes and the Bible and our body, mind, dichotomy, as it's called in the fancy language. And all of that fun stuff and capitalism and art. And yeah, and we did, at the start of this month or last month, we did the first progress, progress painting of me. So now I basically have a hard drive. There's a professional photographer documenting all the painting sessions with both filming and photography. So now I have a hard drive full of nudes of myself, which is very strange, and I'm not going to be able to get that on YouTube. So we have to figure that part out. Okay. Do you have instructions to your family to delete that part of the drive if you die? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, spread it with a win. They are, I can't say my wife is happy about this, but she knows when it's possible to stop me and when it's not. So yeah, so that vanity is my... And as part of that project, I also have the idea was also to start drawing more anatomy, but I haven't gotten that far. Yeah. I think it's fantastic. I love that you're constantly... Oh, by the way, yeah, for everybody that's asking, so I'm seeing comments of, what are you guys talking about? I can't wait to say that he's trying a regiment for it, was it six months? Or he's gonna find his nine months, where he's gonna focus on being a bodybuilder. And apparently a part of this regiment is nude photos of him. And in oil painting? Nude oil painting, yes. Classical, I mean, that's just a part. That has to be, they're a part. That's fantastic, that's fantastic. But he's doing the whole food and whatnot. But I think... I'm not doing the whatnot. I'm doing the natural bodybuilder. Yeah, not the whatnot. That's illegal in Norway. Really, when I got to meet Sylvester Stallone, he was 69 years old and he was so jacked from all of the steroids that he was on. And he had hair plugs and teeth whiteners. And I said to myself, I said, you know what? God bless him. When I'm 69, 70 years old, I'm gonna take whatever it's gonna be to keep me looking young. I actually, I should have been repulsed, but I mean, I don't know what kind of water and damage that's gonna do to him, but I was just like, man. Because standing next to him, and he was just muscles and veins and he looked so much better than me. And I was in my 40s at the time and I was going, oh God. So, natural is great, but if a drug can get me there, I think I might, because I'm lazy. Yeah, laziness helps, but it's still a lot of work. Yeah, I mean, Stallone has worked a long time and I don't remember who asked me when I told them about the project, but someone asked me like, what are you planning to look like Sylvester Stallone? And I had to be honest and say, no, I'm much taller. Yeah, most people are. But yeah, but no, yeah. It's funny that people- Nine months isn't as a benchmark. Nine months isn't long enough to look like Sylvester Stallone, so. Yeah, I spoke to a couple of actors I know who had to do, they had to get their, we'll just call it their Marvel physique. You're gonna be like for the money shots and whatnot. And they said it was so much work, but the hardest part is the week before you film because they have to get rid of all the water in their body. And that's the hardest part. You're so weak and dehydrated and you're supposed to get on camera and look like you're at the peak of your health when you're feeling the crappiest. Because you're just depriving yourself of just water. So I was thinking of my friend, Carter Goodrich, did a book called, oh God, I forget, hold on, let me go get it. It's, oh, nobody hugs the cactus. And that made me think of acceptance. Because this is the book, Nobody Hugs a Cactus by Carter Goodrich. Oh yeah, his art is gorgeous. Yeah, so this is his cactus. This is Hank lived in a pot, a pot sat in a window, the window looked out at the empty desert. It was hot, dry, peaceful and quiet, just the way Hank liked it. And so basically it's all of these different, the tumbleweed comes by, a tortoise comes by, a hare, basically he is just cranky. He is just a cranky little cactus. And that's fantastic. That was a great cowboy. Yeah. Trying to figure out what eventually happens to him. It's been a while since I read it. Oh, he gets a little flower, I guess. Oh, the tumbleweed hugs him. Okay, I was like, who hugs the, you know, anyways, and then he's not so cranky. And that made me think of acceptance. So I don't know. And then I saw a kind of a crab-like thing in the Ink Monster. Yeah, what is that thing? That looks like Sebastian. Yeah. Yeah. Under the sea, under the sea. Under the sea. Yeah. So I had, I think since last we did our, by the way, hello everybody. I'm seeing some, we're obviously not doing, Donna's not here, we're not doing the thing where someone's reading the comments. So I will glance up and maybe see some comments and my apologies. But Kim and I are really using this time to just catch up. Yeah, but right now, you know, I'm finished with my drawing. So I can, I have time, I can read some comments. Do anyone have any questions for me or Scott? Are you seeing the comments too? I'm seeing the comments. Okay, good. And I have no idea what my piece has to do with acceptance, but I started with a squiggly shape and then it went into this and that is my acceptance piece. I love it. It's not my acceptance speech unless I win an award for best pink acceptance related art made before 1623 today. But the chances are rather small of that. These are... I don't know why, but I'm feeling the urge to give him a butt crack and I don't know why. So... Always a butt crack. It just feels like he needed it. Scott, can you do a drawing of Jason Schechterler? Schechterler, I don't know who that is, but apparently he's an awesome person and a huge inspiration. I will look in... I will try to remember that name to look it up. But yeah, I like drawing awesome people. Okay, so a question for me, when did you start making Ink Monster? So it was, I think, in the fall of 2018. I started doing the daily Ink Monsters, but the Ink Monster exercise and related exercises are, there's tons of art schools doing it, kindergartens doing it. It's as old as time to do random things and monsters fit with random things. So I remember I did actually daily Ink Monsters for a while in the early 2000s as well. But when I started this round of my daily Ink Monsters, I didn't remember that I'd ever done it before. And it just slowly came back. But we had another question, which was how can I improve my watercolor portraits? And I think that's a question for you, Scott. Okay. I'll always say the first thing is practice. That's always gonna help you with everything for improving. But other than practice, if you're doing watercolor, you always wanna make sure you're going from light to dark. These are your lightest colors. It's a transparent medium. So you're gonna go from light colors to dark colors or light values to dark values. And then if you're having trouble getting the likenesses, trace it. There's no shame in tracing it. You can practice, practice, practice. But if you look at, say, my 80s music alphabet, I would say maybe half of them looked like the musician. The other half were off. It's, you're playing Russian roulette when you're doing stuff freehand. And whenever I had to do stuff professionally, like if I was doing a cover for a Star Trek or something like that, I traced it because you're being paid to make sure it looks like that person. So it really depends on if you're going for more of an impression of that person or a character of that person or a stylized version of that person or if you're wanting to look exactly like that person. If you're trying to get exact, trace it. No shame in that whatsoever. Every professional will do it. So a question about tracing. Now, when I worked on a lot of comics, I did trace backgrounds once in a while and found that rather, that worked for me. I could do that rather well. But when tracing aces, I have huge problems. And I sort of see that a lot of people who trace, they make these sort of fields of, this field will be one color and this field will be one color. And it looks like a mess and then they start laying down the colors and it's just instantly beautiful and everything is in the right place. So how do you go about your tracing? For me, the tracing is only for the proportions to make sure all the parts are in the right spot. So if I'm gonna trace someone's face, I just wanna make sure that I've got all of, you know, like the difference, the space between the eyebrows and the hairline, the space between the two eyes, you know, the shape of the eyes. That's all I'm doing, so it's very quick. It's just to make sure that I've got everything in the right spot. And then the rest of it is, you're just looking at the photo reference because I want to add my own feel to it. I'm not trying to make it look exact. Now, that's what I do currently. What I used to do when I was doing covers for Star Trek for like Marvel and DC and whatnot, I was doing colored pencils and my work was a bit more, an attempt to be more photorealistic. And so I would do these very detailed full tracings and then go over it with the colored pencils and just try to match exactly like a photo, which now at 54 years old, I'm like, God, that's so boring, you know, you're just basically copying a photo. But, you know, back then it was all I knew. So now I just use it as a guideline, you know? I use it to speed things up because I find that when you do stuff freehand, you wind up erasing and adjusting it. I was doing, it's right here because someone had asked for it, but I was doing Taylor Swift live. And the pencils, it doesn't look anything like her. And I kept redoing the eye and redoing the eye and redoing the eye. And eventually I was just like, oh well, it's gonna suck, it's gonna suck. But something happened when I got into the paints, it, everything kind of started to look a little bit more like her and I liked it. And so I think what happens is sometimes it needs more than just lines. Sometimes it's in the values or it's just the colors or something like that. And so it never feels right when you're drawing it. And so you kind of need to just see it through and just see what happens. But I don't know, I don't know. I'm definitely no expert on it, but I really like tracing for, like even I've been doing my little octal bear, when I did the first one, I traced it. So that way I don't have to redraw but you can get all the proportions right. So that way they're consistent with everyone that I do. And then I'm just working on the design. I love that Michael Jackson one. Yeah, little zombie bears in the back. But it makes sense if you're gonna be doing something repetitively to trace it. And I don't know, I just, I hear so many younger kids, a little conflicted, young artists who say, isn't it? Let's say young brats. Yeah. Is it cheating? Is it cheating? And I go, there's no such thing as cheating in art. There's no rules in art. You can do whatever you want to. But I think there is one type of cheating in art and that is taking credit for other people's things. That is, but again, that's not cheating, that's stealing. And that's what I tell them is like, cheating means that there are established rules and you're cheating, you're not following the rules, but there are no rules to art. There are copyright laws, which I know you're against, but there's also just, you can technically steal and copy someone else's work. And there's the only, as artists, the only way that we have to protect ourselves against that is legally. And to do that, we would have to go under some sort of copyright rule. But when people say, can I copy your art? I always say, yeah, please do. Copy it exactly. It's morally, you could say, right, to credit the artist. Actually, I'm going to have to, I'm not going to go into my whole copyright spiel because you've heard it enough times. I could never hear it enough times, Kim. Go for it. But I just want to make something very clear that there are laws about attribution about crediting artists. And under the international copyright laws, they are the so-called moral rights. And unlike copyright, they are eternal. So it is, you can't, for instance, say that you wrote the Bible. No matter how much Nietzsche killed God, you can't say you wrote the Bible because someone else did that. And that right is eternal. And it's also separate from the exclusive use rights under what's called copyright. So there is a legal framework for this outside of copyright. And it's actually a very powerful legal framework because there are two moral rights put together. One is the right of attribution that you have to be attributed for the work you do. And you can't sign that away except under weird work for higher laws, like in America. And the other is the right to protect your good name and reputation, which is if you put these two rights together, they're actually really powerful because that means with my creative comments attribution works, people can use it. But for instance, if, let's say, the United Capital Nazi Capitalist Association's trade magazine wanted to put me my art on their cover, I could still say that, yeah, you can technically put the art there, but you can't put my name in association with your magazine because that would harm my good name and reputation. And these laws exist today and unfortunately are not used all that much because people use copyright instead. But they are still enforceable. They are still enforceable. The United States joined the rest of the world with regards to the moral rights not that long ago. I think it was in this millennium. And for instance, with the creative comments attribution licenses, that's what they are legal in a court because they follow those laws. And I do have some problems with creative comments, public domain or all rights license. I don't remember what it's called because as far as I understand it, that can't be legal. You can't actually legally find a way your right to be attributed for an artwork. So that other people can take credit for it. Okay, okay. Except if you're a ghost writer. Yeah, so it still comes back to some sort of copyright is a law, you know. But I will not say copyright in this specific instance because it's not about the copies. Okay, okay. It's not about controlling the distribution. It's about controlling how it is presented. Okay. So it has to have the right to have your name on your art and that's an eternal right. And it's an accreditation, accreditation, accredited. Attribution, it's called but accreditation, yes. Yeah, attribution sounds easier to pronounce. I'll say that. All right. I like that. I like that. Thank you. That makes a lot of sense. I'm gonna do this little Manta kind of character over here. So to let you draw a little bit for a while I find another piece of paper and make an ink blot and maybe start making an ink monster myself. I think I'll answer one of the questions for me. Let me see the live chat. There was a question when there's some questions about AI but that is complicated. There was a question for me about mental health and there's a question for you. Can you draw David Bowie as Invader Sim for the next OctoBear drawing? Oh yeah, well actually we just named because our OctoBear, I decided early on that they were just gender fluid so they can go as dressed as anybody. And so everybody wanted a name for, so I thought, well, who better to name them than Bowie? And so I thought we would name the little bear Bowie. So it wasn't David Bowie but the Bowie the bear. Oh, that is, I added the David there. Yes, yeah, Bowie the gender fluid bear but I love Invader Sim. At least I did when I was younger. I haven't watched it in a decade or two but yeah. I really love John and Vazquez's work before Invader Sim which was the comic Johnny the homicidal maniac. I love that. That was a huge influence on me growing up. And I can still see Johnny-isms in my art. Really? I have, is it, does he go by Johan or Johan? Jonan, J-O-N-E-N. The J-H-O-N-E-N. Jonan, I've never seen your name before ever since. Okay, okay. So a friend of mine when we were at, I think San Diego Comic Con, got Jonan to do a sketch for me and it was Ger, the robot jumping out of his pig skin, you know, like he dressed up as a dog or a pig or something like that. And screaming, I make it, you know. And I still have that and I love it. I gotta get it framed one day but I'm sitting in my pile of comic art that I love that I need to one day frame. A question for me, have I watched anime or yeah, Japanese animation? Japanimation as it was called in the early 90s. Yeah, I've heard of the animation. I remember when Akira came on VHS and it was like, oh no, but that's the American version. You have to get the Japanese version, that's good. That's the real Japanimation. And yeah, ever since I was like 13, 14 years old and so Akira, I was hooked on anime and I grew up on, you know, things like Ninjastrel and Ranma and Pat Labor was a favorite. Wings of the Honamis was a favorite. And then later got into Ghibli and yeah, I love anime. I don't watch enough anymore, unfortunately. You know what, like I loved Dragon Ball, I loved Dragon Ball. I used to, I just filled up sketchbooks. I would pause the VHS and just fill up sketchbooks with just like figure drawing, just the poses that they would do and their fights and stuff. I loved it. You know what killed me? Because it was something of the fireflies or something like that. It was like this completely depressing everybody dies, these two kids living in like a war or something like that. Someone had me watch it and I was like, this is the most depressing thing I've ever seen. I'm never watching anime again. All graveyard of fireflies. That is a fantastic movie. That is a Ghibli movie and it is, it's not a Hayom Yasaki movie, but it's to do Ghibli and it is just one of the worst experiences you can have cinematically. And it's a beautiful movie. It's a fantastic movie, but it is soul crushing. It left scars that lasted for 30 years. Like I'm just like, no, I don't trust anime ever again. I don't care if it's Pokemon. I'm going to watch it and someone's going to die and I'm going to be crying. No, you're not doing that to me twice. But there's only one graveyard of fireflies. It's a, yeah, and it's not, it's not for kids. It's not for kids. I just called you a kid. You have a kid, but... All right, so I've made a blue blob here and I want some audience participation and perhaps some Scott participation if you can read the comments and find a good comment that will make it challenging for me as to what this blue blob will be. I will read the comments. All right, so let's see. I use blue or new watercolors. Yeah, just find one and make it tough and I'll close my eyes to the rest. I'm gonna, do you want me to give you all of the suggestions so you can pick? No, no, you pick one. Oh, I'm gonna pick one. Okay, I'll... Pick the worst one. The responsibility is on your shoulders. There are some of these that I know you would absolutely hate. Yes, that's the sort of thing I'm looking for. Ellen said laundry. The one I think you would hate the most is Cookie Monster, because you'd have to remember what Cookie Monster looked like. Cookie Monster, but he is blue as he goes. Exactly. Then I don't have to draw anything, because this is the perfect Cookie Monster already. It does look, yeah, I think that's why we're saying it. But no copyrighted stuff, because I had to release this for free use, and that would be... Your engine says a ballerina Zeus fighting a satyr. Ballerina Zeus fighting a satyr. That's like a fawn, right? Yes, a fawn. Yes, but I thought you were going to make... That's sounding pretty good right now, ain't it? No, I thought you weren't going to make it difficult. So here is the tutu already. You just need to do like this, and then we'll slap on some colors today. See what I'm going to have to do. I'm getting asked to draw a frog. Let me get a background on this first, and then I will consider a frog. So I'm going to mix... Oh, look at that. That's a ballerina Zeus. It's already there. I mean, these make it difficult. I don't know how you do it. With greater effort than I let on. Egg yolk color. So I took a nice, I don't know what to say, nice, it was completely horrific, but I took my mental break, my mental break. I just really burnt out, and I finally got into therapy from the first time in my life, which I really like. And it's funny. I've been married for 30 years this year, and I only just discovered I was autistic last year. My whole life I've been autistic and didn't know. And when it comes to conversations, like we're having today, I have to remind myself, like if we were talking face to face, I have to remind myself to make eye contact. I have to remind myself to allow the other person a chance to speak. It's a whole checklist of don't fidget, don't do this. Stuff that I had to kind of teach myself to do. I found that I really liked therapy because I didn't have to ask the other person, okay, how are you doing? I got to just, I didn't have to keep eye contact. I didn't have to do all of the social stuff that you normally have to do, and even in a marriage. It's like you can't just info dump to your wife and expect her to not have feelings and comments and whatever. So I just found it so fascinating to do that. And then there was the exploration of talking about young Scott, six-year-old Scott and what they went through, undiagnosed. So now that you've found that you're autistic, you go and you look back on your life with the knowledge that you're autistic. And it's really like, wow, had we known why he was struggling with this and why this was so hard for him and why he was so scared of this and why he couldn't connect with other kids this way. And then you start feeling bad for this kid of yours. And so it was just such a weird and interesting journey that I couldn't make content for three weeks of going through that and then coming back and just getting back into it. And I just decided that I don't want my channel. I don't want to just talk about art. I want to talk about being a human being. I want to talk about struggles and mental health and things. I could do it through art, but I don't want to be one-dimensional like that. You know, I'm a human being and I want to talk about it. And I know you've done that. And so in your posts, when you talk about your being bipolar and whatnot, it encouraged me to earlier this year to make a post about that I'm autistic. So I just wanted to thank you for that because you led by example and it really, really helped me kind of do the same thing. So the reason I do it is because I lack those barriers that other people have about talking about these things. So just like with you, I have to find myself to look people in the eyes, don't look them too much in the eyes and also ask how are you doing and not just infodump. But I also like to infodump about the inner workings of my depressions and my life and all of that. So basically this is the reason I started doing it or really have always done it because long before I got on TikTok, 10 years, no more than that, 15 years before I got on TikTok, more than that, 100 years before I got on TikTok, I made autobiographical comics and they were about, you know, anxiety and depression and all that stuff. And no one read them, but I created them so that the world should read them. And I tried to make the world read them but they didn't care. And so this is sort of my ability to talk about my depressions and my life is sort of a deficiency in my brain. And so I'm telling you, stop talking about your mental health right now. I'm saying that it's a very privileged position for me to be in where I can talk about that stuff that interests me a lot, which is my brain and how it works. And people are grateful for it. And that is very strange. I sort of, when I, in the late 90s and early 2000s did the autobiographical comics, I was thinking that, yeah, this is really interesting for everyone in the world because my ego is that way. But I was never thinking that people would be affected and be thankful and take inspiration from it before that started happening. Yeah, yeah. So it wasn't, I understand. You did it, you did it for you, you know, and you know, but it's really, I think with you, do you know Sound of the Forest? You know, she's autistic and she does, she likes to paint bugs. And seeing her and you have people like Katie Osaurus and you have other people who talk about ADHD. And I just think that there was, for me, an awakening when I joined TikTok. And I saw people openly talking about their struggles and their mental health and their neurodivergence. And I think it, I think, not to sound melodramatic, but I think there's a whole generation of people whose lives were affected by that, you know, by your stories, by, you know, Sound of the Forest, by Katie Osaurus, by other people who were brave enough, whether it felt like bravery or not, but who publicly talked about the things that they're struggling with. I love it. And I think I've talked about this before, about Marv Wolfman, how he gets flown all over the world to different conventions. And people line up, so for those of you who don't know, my friend Marv Wolfman, he created Blade, the Teen Titans, he did Crisis on Infinite Earth. You know, like he created Nightwing. Ghost Rider. Ghost Rider. He's done so many things. And so he gets invited and people, I've, because I've sat with him at conventions and just the lines for three, four days of people coming up with comics in their hands saying, your, your stories were my childhood, your stories got me through depression, your stories got me through my parents' divorce, your stories got, and, and, and I, and I really think that the, the, as insignificant as it feels to us now, because we're just like, hey, we're not really making any money doing this, we're just kind of doing it until the next thing comes along. And, but I think that through the pandemic, through all the stuff that's going on in the world, I feel like, you know, 20, 30 years from now, we're going to be hearing that same thing. And we're going to be seeing how much of an impact that people have had on other people through social media. Yeah, because as much as I hate social media, as much as I hate algorithms and, and big corporations and, and, and all of that, there's been such a sense of community that I feel like we've been able to build and connect with people all over the world that we could have never done before. And then I, I really think there's something bigger than what we can see right now that we'll see later, if that makes any sense. I can only speak for myself, but I had very much a similar experience when I got on TikTok, and I saw people talking about that. And I also got an audience that liked to hear me talk about that. And even though I had talked about my problems openly, it had been to like a few hundred people online, maybe a few thousand. And the interactions had been very few and far between. And seeing, especially young kids like Sound of the Forest and like, like so many other brilliant, intelligent young kids talk so elegantly about their issues, about their worldview, about their politics, about their, about neurodiversity, about their experience. It sort of changed a lot for me. Yeah. Because I've always had a little edgored in me. I've always had this little like, I can make stuff just to, to, to offend. And because, because I'm right and everyone else is wrong. Yeah. An anarchist in you. Yeah. But this has helped me become a better anarchist because that's not what anarchy is about. It's about actually being open to other, having different experiences. Yeah. And yeah. So that has helped me so much more than I can see. And right now I'm, I'm getting all these, and this is also a very thankful position to be in, because someday I will say something awful or wrong and everyone will hate me and I, because I can't keep my mouth shut. Another deficiency. But, but, but I'm getting all these comments saying that, oh, you are, your views are so based and you never miss and stuff like that, which I can't really take all that seriously. But if to any extent that is true, it is because I got on TikTok and saw that there were like people half my age and twice my intelligence talking about these topics where a detail I can't even come close to. So, so it made, it humbled me a lot. Yeah. It definitely, but it also humbled me. You know, just from, I've learned, I think the best thing I've learned is to listen. I didn't ask the, you know, like I, because for me it's always been mimicry is probably the best way to say it when it comes to being in social situations, is I'm mimicking what I'm some think I'm supposed to be like. And, and so I wasn't always the best person to be around and work with because I thought that I had to be someone who's always cracking jokes and making fun of people and pointing out, you know, I still think that Yeah. Well, I've, I've learned to listen more and I think a lot of that came from learning about marginalized people and watching people who think that they should say something about what other people are going through and then seeing the responses. So kind of just sitting back and watching the conversation. And so when, if I'm in a room and someone starts talking about women's right to choose or gay rights or, you know, indigenous people's rights or, or anything like that. While I have an opinion on it, I've learned to teach myself to be silent and let the people who experience it and who live it, let them speak, you know, and then if I'm asked to join in to make sure that it is with the caveat of I'm, I'm not the affected party here. And I would have never thought of that for the first 50 something years of my life. It just never occurred to me. But in doing so, I've learned so much by listening and not just giving my opinion because of, because I thought that that was what I was supposed to do. And, and so I, I, like I said, there's so many things I can't even list all of the ways that I've grown as a human being just by, you know, and it seems so silly to give TikTok the credit. So they don't want to give TikTok the credit, but the people who tip the time to post for whatever reason and like yourself to share their experiences made me a better person, I think. And, and, and I'm just thankful for every day that I get to be a part of that in some way. Yeah. I, I, again, I am very, very similar experience there. And I had also been in very privileged positions before where I've, you know, that I didn't learn from, that I should have learned from, but that I didn't learn from, for instance, like being in a meeting and taking up, like, half the talking time from, you know, a bunch of people. And everyone afterwards were really happy. Oh, great. You said so many interesting stuff. And then at dinner with those people afterwards, I figured out that, oh, wait, there, there were award-winning professors who, who actually knew the stuff that I tried to talk about. There were there, there were people with actual knowledge, not just talking about out their ass. And, but, but I never quite learned that lesson until I don't know if I learned it perfectly still. Yeah, probably. We're always learning. We're always learning. But, but, but I learned so much from, yeah, from, from TikTok and from being exposed to so many different people. And it was a perfect little window into different types of human experiences. And I think just talking, thank you for turning off the microphone while you're dry blowing your drawing, by the way. Thank you. I was listening to you. I was like, oh, he's talking. I can blow dry, you know. Yeah, I have no recollection of what I was saying now. I will remember. I will remember. You were talking about how you had decided to talk more about you and your life and, and, you know, be more open about those parts on your channel. And there were some questions about AI earlier that I didn't answer. But, but I think that in the age of social media, in the age of AI, and in, in this weird future we're stepping into, this weird sci-fi realm we're stepping into, this is what artists have to do. We have to find ways to show our personality because art is communication and while AI can become really good at mimicry, it will always lack something in terms of communication. And for it to be able to communicate, it has to be used by artists who have something to say. Yeah. I, I think it's a Pandora's box. I don't think we'll ever be able to close it. I think it's too late. I think no matter what AI art is always going to be here. Yeah. I think that, that we just need to find a way technologically to label it. So people, you know, we can say, hey, look, this is AI art. This isn't this, you know, like that's the only thing I want to be able to do. And I kind of felt the same way when digital art came out. It just was like, I was looking at it and I was like, oh, look, here's a photorealistic painting of Morgan Freeman done digitally. And it's like, well, how do I know it was done digitally? How do I know it's just not a photo? You know, how do I know someone just didn't take a photo and put a couple of brush strokes on it to make it look like that? And I think people will always be impressed with photorealism. It's just, it's like a parlor trick, you know? Oh, look, it looks real, you know? And I think the way artists have to differentiate themselves from AI art is to have their own style. The problem is how quickly AI art is going to steal that style and apply it, you know? But I am, I've dabbled with AI art. I've made a couple of videos about AI art and I really like the things that it can do in helping me kind of visualize the stuff that I just can visualize. I mean, I'm not like you. I can't draw Zeus as a ballerina out of my head like that. But, you know, if I ever wanted to, AI would be a really good thing to kind of point me in the right way. Someone in the chat, someone in the chat, please, please do make an AI art of Zeus as a ballerina, fighting a setter or phone. Please, please do it before the live ends. And I, I don't know, send it to Donna and maybe she can print it and you can show it. I don't know if that's, that's just mine. I want it all. I want it all and I want it now. Yeah. You know, it's, I think the, the thing that, that people who are pro AI art, I think what they don't understand is the joy of making the art is, is what they're missing. You know, we don't do this because I definitely don't do it because I like the outcome. No. The outcome is awful. Yeah. Yeah. I do it because I, there's a need in my soul to make art for better or for worse. And I think that'll always be the artist's plight. But I really don't begrudge people who don't make art the ability to make art through an AI program. I don't really have a problem with it. I just, I guess I kind of, I find it, I wish the AI art had a style. You know what I'm saying? I wish it was like, okay, this is photorea, like AI art is a style. I don't like when AI art mimics other artist's styles when it steals that. But I think if there was, hey, it's photorealistic, show me. You know, like, have you seen, I call them commercials, but they're, you know, like they're TikToks or whatever. We're Photoshop now has AI, AI still in it. You can just take a photo, circle an area and say, add a lake. And that's in Photoshop now. And it's perfectly photorealistic. You know, have a tiger drinking water from a lake, you know, and make it moon night. And that I think is perfectly realistic, perfectly reasonable to say that's AI art. It's not AI art. It's AI creation, photography or whatever it might be. But it's not art. And that I don't mind. I think that's fantastic. I wouldn't mind doing, give me Valerie Azuz, you know, fighting a satir and have it be photorealistic. And then from there, I could use it as reference to paint it in my style, to do it in watercolor and to do it in ink, to do it in gouache, whatever I want to do. But to know that that was AI art was just that one thing. And so I don't know, maybe that's something that the AI art people can do is get rid of the stylizations, get rid of it being in the style of, you know, it doesn't bother me if it does it in the style of Monet or Picasso. That doesn't bother me. But it does bother me if it's in the style of somebody who's currently still alive and making art. Yeah. I actually had someone inquire if they could make train an algorithm on my art. Really? And I would absolutely love that. But I forgot to answer him. And now he's gone in the bunch of inquire. I can't find. I don't even, I think it was on Facebook. It's somewhere down in the well of the messages. And I would absolutely love to see that. And I, I dare people to try. And if they manage to make my art, that means I have to improve. Yeah. Yeah. For me, it's kind of like a personal challenge. If you can do it, then I, then I haven't made it tough enough for you. Yeah. Yeah. That's exactly how I'm thinking about it. And I'm, I'm not real AI skeptical. I'm capitalism skeptical. I think that in an environment where profits are more important than, you know, life and liberty and, and joy and, and, you know, meaning, then that, I think AI is a huge problem because it will result in people losing their jobs. It will result in people losing their jobs. Isn't really that is purely a capitalism problem. Because if you had a factory and you installed new machines that were 50% more effective, that could mean you could give your workers half the day off. But instead in capitalism, it means that you fire half your work. Happy workers. Yeah. Yeah. So this is going to be a huge problem with AI art. And it's going to be, you know, I'm not very fond of Stanley. I think that Stanley took the credit for a lot of creative people's work. I think he took the credit for, you know, Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko and all the other greats, John Romita and so much he took credit for. And he is in my mind sort of an idea man. Yeah. And in all creative fields, there are these idea men that, that really, if they could, they would just sit on the couch all day and smoke bombs and say, oh, I have this great idea, man. And they think that's creative work. And what we will soon see with AI is what will happen when there are no geniuses like Jack Kirby to curb the idea men's stupidity. Yeah. Because AI will make it for them and the world will suffer. Yeah. And then hopefully and probably people will figure that out soon enough. And at least art directors will be a lot more important than ever. But a lot of underpaid people in, you know, special effects and in animation and in all those fields will lose their jobs. Yeah. I could start losing character designers. If you like, you know, the good the good news is let's hear the good news. Well, in currently making films is a creative process in the fact that a director is at least I would say for the next 10 years would never I'm talking a good director. You know, you is never going to say, oh, yeah, let's use AI art to design this blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, whatever. But I think what would happen is studio execs are going to start saying, hey, we can cut costs by doing X, Y and Z. And I think the lower end films, the TV shows and whatnot, where the the directors don't have creative say, they're just hired help. I think then it'll start getting designed in whatever by committee. But I think I met Stan Lee once, it was just a very brief thing. We took a photo together blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. When I was doing Spider Man, so I do not know him personally. I've talked to Marv about him. Marv was kind of of the same vein as what you You were saying, you know, like, you know, he was a huckster is what he called them, you know, and he said he was, you know, a great guy, he was he was an extrovert, you know, he was just that that that guy who could control the room and talk about this and an idea man or whatever but Marv being a writer, you know, didn't feel like creatively they were on the same level and I'll say that, but if you gave someone like a Stanley person AI art that could just pop that stuff out the way that, you know, you would be just cranking out stupid idea after stupid idea, whatever it would be. And I think that's what studio executives are going to start doing. Once they realize that they have the ability to just make their own animated shows or whatever and then say, because they can't write, they'll go and they'll have the AI write it for them. And I think if I have experienced one thing, it is, I have done so many, so many meetings in Hollywood, because I lived in Hollywood for 15 years. I have had so many meetings with so many executives and executives in Hollywood, the gatekeepers who decide whether you get a film or not green list have the worst taste in entertainment at all. And they just don't get it. And speaking to every person I know in the industry feels the same way. But these are the people who like a Stanley could get you to love them and could sell like this, you know, and I don't know if this is a bad thing to say nowadays that they could sell ice, you know, the saying is you could sell ice to an Eskimo thing. It's like they could sell anything to anybody. That's what an executive is. They're not creative people. They're salesmen. And, and so I really think when you give these salesmen the ability to say, we don't need creative people anymore. That's going to be the downfall of that. And it's not going to last long, unless we wind up having a, what was the idiocracy, that movie? The world turns into something like that, then that's going to be the type of entertainment that people love. That's just AI generated by a bunch of idiots. And, and I hope it doesn't happen. I hope people revolt and go, This is crap. I don't know. But I honestly don't know. I don't have that much faith in humanity. I think we will. I think people will smell the bad stories after a while. And, and you know, I'm not trying to shit too much on Stanley, because he was, he was a personality. I never met him. And he was a great salesman. And comics at that time needed a great salesman. So he, his sales ability helped make Marvel what it is, and gave us so many great stories and characters, but those stories and characters were created by other people largely. And I think, I mean, when he, after his Marvel years, when he went on and created Striparella for Barbara Anderson, that's basically where you see his creativity. That's the level of, as far as I, he never did anything outside of Marvel. And, but yeah, I think that people will notice the difference between art that communicates something human, whether it be through AI or not, and art that has nothing to say, or, you know, we mean, it can have something to say. But if it has a snake oil salesman's thing to say, I think we will notice it in a while. I don't know. I hope, I hope so. You know, it's funny because, you know, our, our twin boys are 20. They're off of college and, and, you know, living their lives and whatnot. And sometimes we find ourselves, you know, telling them like, well, you don't know what it was like when, you know, before the internet, you know, and you don't know what it was like before. You know, cell phones and, you know, because they're, they're just, they never get lost because they have GPS, you know, in their cars. And it's like, you've never been lost or just, you know, didn't have directions or, or whatever. And it's like, you know, they have GPS on their cars. So even though they're 2000 miles away, you know, we know where they are. And it's like, so like, we don't need to worry that they're stuck in a ditch somewhere or whatever. It's like, we can see where their car is at any moment in time. And I find that we wind up looking at all of the advances that we've seen over the last 40, 50 years. It's insane. I mean, the world is so completely different than it was. I mean, we have computers, we have cell phones, we have GPS, we have, you know, electric cars, you know, it's, it's so much has changed. And, and so I, I don't think we could have, you know, we always talk about flying cars and stuff like that as the future. But I don't think AI and, and, and whatnot is really something we had kind of on our bingo cards. And so I look at the AI revolution, if you want to call it that. And, and I just, I think I'm just at this point where I just go, God knows what's going to happen. You know, but I'm looking forward to seeing what happens. We should have had AI art on the bingo card, because that's what the holodeck and data is also data is also obsessed with art again and again. So we should have had it on our bingo card, but we weren't smart enough. Well, okay, correct me if my memory is is wrong, but didn't data always strive to capture the humanness, the humanity and art. And so it whereas it feels like AI art is doing other than hands, it's doing a really good job of just crapping that stuff out. And yeah, but it took a while for data to start really strive for the humanness. The more the series progressed, the more human he became. Yeah, yeah. And yeah, that's my religion. The future is told by Star Trek. It's not a very original religion, but you know. Yeah, I'm there. I'm a convert. I absolutely I see the world is either going Mad Max or Star Trek, and it always seems to look like it's going towards Mad Max. And I want it to go towards Star Trek. I want us to be past the need for money, past, you know, no more diseases. And basically we have everything we want to. And so now we're exploring. And I like that. I yearn for that. But I just I see us go into Mad Max routes so much. At least we'll have better hairdos than Star Trek. Yeah. There's an upside to everything. There's a silver lining to everything. Thanks to the mower. Now I'm done. You're done with the other one? I'm done with the other one. I mean, really? I mean, if artists are as slow as that, then no wonder AI is winning. It's your world, Scott. I'm the reason why. I love it. I love that pointing finger too, like he is. The anatomy here is so out of whack. I tried to channel my inner life. Don Simpson. You remember him? Don Simpson? Don Simpson. Are you thinking of Don Martin from Mad Magazine? No, no. Don Martin, I always channel. Don Martin is part of my DNA. That was one of the first thing I just fell in love with. Each four, five, it was just, it was so good. So who's Don Simpson? Where would I know their work from? He did a superhero parody called, what did he? Oh, chat, please help me. He made a lot of superhero parodies. And then when Image started, he got his own superhero parody line, or comic there. Oh, chat, help me. Don Simpson, comic book artist. But yes, my anatomy isn't as good as his was. His was just magnificent. But yeah, I always try to, I mean, I always try to do a little bit of Sadi Jo Aragonis and a little bit of Don Martin, and a little bit of all that stuff when I go cartoony. Megaton Man. Megaton Man was. Yeah, I love that. Okay, shall I read a few more questions? I'm done. You're done. Well, technically not because I was going to add some highlights to this, but you can read a couple more questions if you're feeling so inclined. I am feeling so inclined. This is my channel we're on. Don't boss me around. You're not the boss of me. Oh, why do I open my mouth? It's a hard life having to be this funny all the time. I love Sadi Jo Aragonis, says Lord Enjin. I absolutely adore. And I always say this when we're talking about him, but I went to a talk he did where he talked about his process and how he basically, in order to, because Gru was his love, Gru the Barbarian. The Mad Magazine stuff was fun, but Gru really put his heart and soul into that. And in order to make things accurate, he would, you know, whenever traveling around the world, he would try to go to museums and take classes like in medieval basket weaving or boat building or all of these things so that when he drew a basket weaver in the background of incredibly cartoony style, it still felt real because they were doing the real thing. The boat looked all weird, but the ropes were fastened at the right point, so it felt real. And that is, yeah, that's an amazing inspiration. Yeah. What's sad is that no one, unless you knew this, would know that he had done all of that work towards it, which makes me think, was it worth it? But it was because when you look at his art, it feels real. It is super cartoony, yes. But it tells the story and it feels authentic. You never question what people are doing in his comics. You question what Seuss is doing here and who broke his foot. But that's because I'm not as great as Sergio Aragonis. Very few people are. Very few people are, definitely. Any more questions here? Not his little butt crack. I just noticed that again. That was the best I could do for acceptance. That is, honestly, that is completely awful and I love it and it's so cute. And only you would notice that that's a butt crack. Because that might be the chin, that might be a nose, that might be his backpack. Nobody knows except you, but it's lovely and it's so cute and the little hearts, I love it. I accept your drawing. Thank you. Despite all this obvious flaws. Thank you, thank you. I always make my best work when I'm with you. You really kick ass when you're done. I really take it to another level. I think that next time we have to do one of those watercolour, gouache, portrait things that you do so magnificently. I had fun. I will say this. I think we should, what the lead singer for accept? Udo Dirk Schneider. Can't you remember the name? Udo Dirk Schneider. I can't even pronounce it. The first thing we're doing when we get off of our lives is I'm going to go listen to Accept. It's been about 40 years since I listened to them. They have some great albums. It was fun to even think of that. That is funny. It's funny how that just comes up just from a single word. Acceptance. Gosh, I know we see this all the time. I had that long mental break, time off and what not. But if we could schedule a once a month thing, I think it would be just so fun to just hang out. That would be great. I'll have my people talk to your people. I'm only half joking. But if you have time after this slide, maybe talk for five minutes afterwards. Yeah, absolutely. But before we go, I have forgotten that I'm supposed to promote my shit on my lives. Go for it. Today I drew this Inktober is Pinktober piece based on Stuart Samples' Pinktober 23. If you go to my web store at den ungehadholm.com and use the promo code Inktober 23, you get 20% off on everything. There are a bunch of new prints up there now. And if you don't want to buy my art but still want to support, you can support on patreon.com. And if you want to support but don't want to use money, all my art is released for free use. This beautiful little piece of Seuss versus a Satter will be scanned and released for free use. So you can download it and you can print it. You can change it. You can make a story about Seuss versus the Satter. You can sell prints and t-shirts and build a life-size sculpture. As long as you attribute me, remember that word's got attribution. As long as you attribute me as artist, you're legally allowed to use it personally or commercially. Now, do you have anything you want to plug, Mr. Osala? No, I'm just looking forward to just chatting with you afterwards. But you have the lovely 80s print. Yeah, you know what? Is that sold out? Almost, almost. And I just got the posters in yesterday. But yeah, we did a presale and we're almost sold out already. And again, that's something I want to talk to you afterwards. Yeah, but thank you everybody for hanging out with us. As you can see, when Kim and I get together, we just like to chat and doodle. So it's probably not as interactive as it is, because with everything. But I just love this. And so I want to do this once a month and hopefully you guys enjoy it. Don't make excuses, Scott. Just be who you are. Thank you for your acceptance, Kim. Thank you. Thank you. And call me or Google. I'll send you a Google Meet link in two minutes. Have a great weekend, everybody. Have a great weekend, everyone. Bye-bye.