• We went to see Oppenheimer last week. After twenty minutes I decided that it was time to go to Specsavers and get my ears checked.

    The character were mumbling and being drowned out by unnecessary music and special effect sounds.

    I had to infer what was going on.

    But no! it turns out that the movie’s director Christopher Nolan says the use of muffled dialogue in his movies is an “artistic choice”.

    It seems that Nolan thinks we don’t need to hear what the actors are saying and that the original take is the “artistic” version so that’s what we get. No enunciation or retakes for clarity.

    That’s like saying, “I know it doesn’t look like Snow White, but it’s what came out of my pen when I started illustrating. It’s okay, I love it and stuff the kids who are reading the book or watching the animation. It’s “Art”.

    So, it seems my ears are okay and that Nolan is a self-righteous mumble mumble!

  • I have been invited by YouTube and Changer Studios to join the ‘Made For Kids’ (MFK) Creator Accelerator program to see if we can’t get my Drawstuffrealeasy channel to be a little bit more successful – ( I say a little bit, but I have my eye on the Gold award for 1 million subscribers – I’m one 10% the way there.)

    I’ve been doing a bit of thinking and researching the last few days and I realised that all my talking might actually put off a lot of the audience and so I’ve re-edited a video (below) with no talking – after all, a huge number of the YouTube audience don’t speak English – a large percentage of my viewers live in India!

    It will be interesting to see what happens to this video compared with the one with audio description – and a colour thumbnail.

    I need to radically alter my mindset. Luckily there are some amazing people lined up to teach us (a cohort of 25 in UK USA & Canada) all about Made for kids channels.

    California brought in a law in 2019 that turned everything upside down for creators who made videos deemed to be made for kids. I sort of lost heart after that. I think I felt I had been cut adrift.

    But now I’m feeling quite upbeat. There are 16 weeks ahead of me. I imagine there will be quite a lot of A/B testing, like the videos above, so if you want to chip in and make suggestions, I’ll be glad to hear what you think.

  • Learn to draw a wedding buttonhole flower arrangement in traditional pen, ink and watercolour style.

    Click here or click the image to download a pdf sheet with an actual size drawing that you can copy or trace so you can follow along with the video.

    Have fun. Let me know if you have any questions or ideas for new videos that will help you on your drawing and watercolour journey.