Archives for posts with tag: creative


Keeping up with appearances even when you don’t feel like it. It happens. It’s the norm to be “fine” when you’re not. It’s expected and almost required. But if you stay there; ungrateful, conflicted and bitter and try to fake a smile or put on a show you will eventually wind up in an extremely dangerous place.

We were not meant to fake it. We were never meant to walk dead. It goes against everything we are about. You even feel the twist internally when you try and do it. Two scriptures come to mind when I think about this topic. One is towards all of us and the other is pointed directly at religious leaders who claim to know Jesus.

“I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned.” http://bible.us/John15.5.NIV

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness. http://bible.us/Matt23.27.NIV

Don’t pretend like you can get away with this kind of living. You were never meant to bear the full weight of this fallen world. So why try it alone?

Artwork available for download (Photoshop PSD):
The Walking Dead

Just a quick exercise on a custom vector icon. Wanted to apply some of the new tools in Adobe Illustrator. Infinite detail is possible but here is a 20-minute sketch for you to download. So this is a first attempt. Need to add more detail and tweak for a bit more realism. Also available via Gumroad if you feel like throwing in $1. Thanks for that.

What’s on your desktop? Post Link.


School Yearbook Cover, Easter Concept, Student Summer Camp

What’s on your desktop? Post a Link

Great meeting today prepping for 2010 Christmas at Grace Fellowship Church. Stan Durham our Pastor of Creative Innovation shared his initial script for Christmas with Myra and me. I am blown away by the creativity and how his mind works. It is rare that I am caught off guard by people and I have to say this time I truly was. I have always known that Stan was a creative person, I have seen his part in creating many services, skits, dramas, songs and messages. I have often referred to him as being “out there” x 10. He really is. For some reason this was different. He locked himself away for several days in a row to create a Christmas piece and wanted to walk-through it with Myra and me today so we could get a feel for art direction, parts, roles, etc. Lots of fun. Even at 2:00pm in the afternoon right when the lunch lull hits.

I am blown away how we are all truly made different, with unique talents, minds, ways of doing things and communication style. Dig it. Looking forward to see this in full detail. Good work Stan. Glad you stay true to who you were made to be.

What do you see when other people let you into their world? Do you really listen? Are you judging or are you patient or open enough to hear their story?

Resurrection by Rob Bell http://vimeo.com/10639312 // thx @johnotjen

nextbook

Are you the next Zuckerberg? Really, how so? Tell us how you are cranking out the next big thing. Or maybe you know someone who is a true inventor – innovator. Are you cranking on stuff that is going to change the way we do life? Even small innovations can be huge in the long-term. Just curious about what’s next and what you are doing right now that will shape the way people interact. Is it You? Or someone near you? Who do you think is the next Zuckerberg?

“Initially Zuckerberg asked a small group of people to sign up to Facebook. At a certain point he told us to start inviting friends, and that is what we did on the first and second day which the site went up on the Web. We could only invite students enrolled at Harvard. In fact, if you did not have a Harvard e-mail address you could not sign into Facebook. At first, dozens of Harvard students registered. The numbers then reached the hundreds, and by the fourth day it had already reached the thousands. People were very enthusiastic about the site. It enabled them to know who took what courses and to meet new people. It conquered Harvard. In less than a week, some 4,000 students signed up for Facebook.”

During Facebook’s initial days, the walls in his room were filled with graphs and charts which showed how many people joined on a daily basis, who used what application, and who has the most friends.”

Beginnings of Facebook
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1084443.html

MIT MBA (E&I) Program
http://entrepreneurship.mit.edu/E_and_I.php

closed_dealership

Auto dealership photo from wired.

Revolutionary Change and Brilliance for $1
What if we all pitched in $1 each and hired Seth Godin and Malcom Gladwell to speak at a live stream “tv, radio, internet” event in Chicago reviewing the next 3-5 year strategy and business plan for The Big Three automakers. I say yes. It is time for GM, Chrysler and Ford to hire the best. Or better yet we can “lease” them for a 2-day summit. Leasing is always better, except when it’s not.

Or we can save our money if they will just empower some of the visionary minds and hearts already in their organizations to help them re-invent.  Your thoughts?

Just in case your in for $1

While we are at it. Let’s apply the same concept to the church.

nlip_headerdoggy

The summer internship that is hotter than your mom’s dog. NO LIMITS INTERNSHIP PROGRAM 2009. If that makes no sense to you at all and you still want to jump in and contribute/learn design, marketing or internet (and ministry), begin shopping here: http://www.woodlandschurch.tv/nlip – Apply early and often, three spots go quick. Cya.

Oh yea, be ready to submit your work online. If you don’t have an online portfolio you can upload some images or art to any one of these: http://www.creativemyk.com or http://www.flickr.com or http://www.tumblr.com/.


Bookmark and Share

wtwta_cover_v3

Series art for “Where The Wild Things Are” Capturing the Wonder of an Untamed God. We had a ton of fun shooting for this one. The original story was written by Maurice Sendak. You can check out the new movie trailer here http://wherethewildthingsare.warnerbros.com/. Woodlands Church is kicking off the new series right after Easter! The video team is working on the promo video now and we should have a link soon to preview. By the way, the kids in the shot are Blakers and Savannah, they did an amazing job. Also, we had a seriously talented team involved in this project: Justin Keller, Roy Ford, Toby Canning and Charles Booth. Very very fun. Here are some shots.

img_1641

One more. Kinda blurry but still cool.

img_1613-copy

Geoff McFetridge did all of the hand-drawn title sequencing for the upcoming release of Spike Jonze’s, “Where The Wild Things Are” full length feature film.

wtwta


Bookmark and Share

duplicity_mensbackpack

Kind of cool to bump into similar design work every now and then but this one is way to close to call. Here is our theory on how this happened. Several months ago our Creative Director Justin designed some concepts that were influenced by the movie “Duplicity” but his concepts look nothing like the art style above.

Several months later, I threw together a quick design based on some influence by Hillsong.com and Justin’s new direction and came up with the design above (right) for Men’s Backpacking 2009. 360′d back to the original art, almost.

Funny stuff. What’s your take on the whole deal? Stealing or subconscious flow of creativity?

Finishing up the book Tribes by Seth Godin (excellent), purchasing this book by Rands. Anyone else read this one?

http://managinghumans.com

Great summer project actually.

Some of my favorite games; Risk, Scrabble, Monopoly, Chess, Apples to Apples and others. Wow, how excellent would it be to have a lawn Risk or Scrabble game. Thinking this will have to be a summer project.

img_0133_aprilguitar_v2

Lots of fun today shooting photos for April. She is playing live on air in San Antonio this weekend and needed some fresh photos for her press kit. Also snagged some great photos of Myra and the kids. April is an amazing songwriter, guitar player and singer. Her grandfather played with Willy Nelson back in the day. She learned most of what she knows from her Dad or “Glenn Boogie”.

Link to her site and music online coming soon. Check back for details. For now, check out some of the other photos:

Link to: http://www.creativemyk.com/lundstudio

CreativeMYK.com is an excellent online resource for designers looking to network, organizations looking for designers to tackle freelance design projects or even a little head hunting if your game. There are some seriously talented designers on this site. Check out some of the portfolios and resources.

Link here:  http://www.creativemyk.com/

I honestly love the instantaneous feed of life recorded through the Internet and social media. I almost cracked a rib watching this bad boy. Here is a clip of “The John Otjen” rockin out to The Beastie Boys, singing “Sabotage”. It is amazing. Trust me. Or better yet, check it out for yourself:

http://vimeo.com/1058256

I believe the crew in Oklahoma City were throwing a going away party for Aaron Havens who is now living and ministering in Mexico. Props to Aaron who is just following a call; he moved his family into one of the poorest areas of the world to just be Jesus to people. Check out his blog and journey at http://openapologies.org/. Some really cool thoughts and more importantly actions from these guys.

“For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men.”

Titus 2:11

grace…

Do you stand proud of the kingdom you’ve built?

or

Does this merit an apology?”

My response: I probably have not discovered the level of boldness that Christ had for His Church while he was here on this earth. This life is definitely a struggle. I wonder everyday why it seems so hard to do it well. I too have many apologies to give; but better to live them out than just offer words. I thank God everyday for His favor and grace.

http://openapologies.org/

Check out the request for proposals for creatives. Interesting projects and grants for organizations investing in expanding the creative arts; film, photography, design and more. The site also covers projects for technology, research and development, government, professional; all kinds of cool stuff. I bet Woodlands Church could apply for the $15,000 short film grant for creating educational programs promoting film. Anyway, good stuff, good site.

Check it out here: http://www.rfpdb.com/view/home/category/Creative

Great job, once again to Apple. The ad featured on the New York Times site, NYTimes.com kicks some serious butt. Very very cool, very effective. Talk about creating brand awareness, reinforcement, loyalty and buzz. Hopefully this stays up for a while. Good stuff. The Internet is evolving, seriously, just turn off your computer for a few weeks then turn it back on and take note of the change. It is that fast.

http://www.nytimes.com/

Myra and I got our tickets to this Friday’s Hillsong United Conference. Pumped about checking out these guys. Watched their television program for the first time a few weeks back. Talk about serious quality. Video, worship, message, style, all of the above; excellent. Justin Keller gave me the heads up a month or so back. Even better, planning on heading out to Australia next year to catch them in their home town. How nice would that be? Ok, maybe I’m just praying to go at this point.

It’s still early, grab your tickets and join us Friday night and all day Saturday. Now we got to get Dave, Stan, Chris and Duncan to head down with us. Ready to check out Carl Lentz from the Wave Church, Virginia Beach, VA, Joel Houston the Creative Director at Hillsong Church, Phil Dooley, Chrishan Jeyaratnam Youth Pastor at Hillsong. The past few years has been an amazing time of learning, new experiences and impact. I thank God that He kicks us in the butt sometimes and let’s us know that we are missing it. We always need  to continue learn, we always must be equally comitted to making an impact in our community and where ever God leads.

Link here: http://www.hillsongunitedconference.com/

Sunday Service Times promotion at Watermark Community Church. Excellent video really. Good for a chuckle.

5:30 service video link here: http://www.watermark.org/services/services.asp
Other videos link here: http://www.vimeo.com/videos/search:watermark%20community%20church