Roy Makes a Caricature

Standard Bank held a three-day conference. I was the caricaturist for the Group Corporate Affairs division. These three pics are from a caricaturing/visual facilitation gig I did for Standard Bank through the WinWin Group. It was a three-day job, and involved a looooooooot of caricaturing. I made about 78 pictures during the convention. Photographer Craig Owen was taking pictures of the various people and stands at the convention. And he took some candid shots of me at work. My subject in these pics takes care…Continue Reading “Roy Makes a Caricature”

A pic from my BMW conference on Mon 25 Jan 2010 — Karen Valle from Mini

A pic from my BMW conference on Mon 25 Jan 2010 — Karen Valle from Mini, originally uploaded by royblumenthal. This is a pic I made live at the BMW conference. All of the BMW and MINI dealers from around the country gathered to put their ducks in a row for 2010. The WinWin Group put the event together. My work was showing on two big plasma screens on either side of the main projection screen. Delegates were able to see me capturing the key…Continue Reading “A pic from my BMW conference on Mon 25 Jan 2010 — Karen Valle from Mini”

Guto Bussab directed this film, opting to shoot on real 16mm film. I co-produced with him and Rudi Pieterse. And I wrote the script. We shot the film over two-and-a-half days, using three locations in Joburg. Norman Coombes was an absolute trooper. At this point in his life, he had almost no sight left. He was as good as blind. And he was old. One of the shoot days had us doing an intense and late afternoon/night shoot in an antique shop. At the end…Continue Reading “ARIA — a short film directed by Guto Bussab, written by Roy Blumenthal”

Bright people know stuff. And they generally interact with other people who know stuff. Our knowledge fields are ‘T-Shaped’. And our interactions are generally pretty narrow, taking place along the narrow shaft of our specialisation, or the low penetration of our general interests. What if we were to embrace a more extended metaphor that allows us to be at home with powerful innovation? What if we could use our bristly personalities to become drivers of innovation? Are you ready to declare yourself a ‘The Brush-Shaped…Continue Reading “Extending A Metaphor — Going From The ‘T-Shaped Person’ To ‘The Brush-Shaped Being’”

HOW TO LIVE DANGEROUSLY by Warwick Cairns — a multimedia animated summary

HOW TO LIVE DANGEROUSLY is Warwick Cairns’s second book. It’s all about how the arbitrary ‘safety’ and ‘health’ laws imposed on us by ‘the people who run things’ are actually really bad for us. The book details strategies for taking back our power, and living better lives as a result. This video is a multimedia summary of the book. THE SCRIPTING PROCESS I contacted Warwick with the idea. And he wrote a first draft script. I edited that, and sent it back to him for…Continue Reading “HOW TO LIVE DANGEROUSLY by Warwick Cairns — a multimedia animated summary”

Rich…! Mulholland is the founder of Missing Link. (http://missinglink.co.za )  He appeared last Saturday on the television show I work on. I’m the inhouse visual facilitator for Kaleidoscope on CNBC AFRICA, making pictures of the ideas liberated by the interview process. Because Rich…! was in an insert, the picture I made of him went unaired. So I figured I’d turn it into an animation. I smsed him a rough script, and asked him to send me voice files via email. He tweaked them, and made them…Continue Reading “Animated Rich…! Mulholland tells us about Missing Link”

How to Go About Getting into Visual Facilitation

An ArtRage forum member sent me a message asking me how she could get into doing visual facilitation for a living. I figure my answer to her might be worth sharing. And maybe we can have some dialogue about my thoughts that might open it up and make it a bigger topic for us all. Here’s the main part of my letter to her (with pleasantries removed)… ————————————— Good to hear that there’s another person interested in doing this! It’s an absolutely awesome rush to…Continue Reading “How to Go About Getting into Visual Facilitation”

Here’s my latest little bit of messing around in CrazyTalk 5.1. This is a pic I made of Jacob ‘Laduma’ Zuma back when controversy hit him really hard. (Please don’t confuse him with Zu-Ma Se Poes. Different politician.) I’m experimenting with some ideas that Conrad Koch and I have been discussing. This is one of those experiments. Roy Blumenthal is a writer, director, artist, and visual facilitator. Hire him to make pictures of your meetings or workshops.

27 Dinners Jozi — How Can Speakers Be More Engaging, Audiences Better Behaved, and Everybody Happier?

This is a slightly edited version of a comment I’ve left on a blogpost on MORALFIBRE: http://www.moralfibre.co.za/?p=262#comment-19 In the post, Vince talks about his experience of the last 27 DINNERS (http://27dinner.com/) evening, at which I did the visual facilitation and live-blogging. Several people have responded in the comments to some of the less-than-desirable elements of the evening. (Luckily, my visual facilitation seems to have been well-received. Phshew!) The stuff I’m talking about below pretty much all comes from my own experience as a speaker, standup…Continue Reading “27 Dinners Jozi — How Can Speakers Be More Engaging, Audiences Better Behaved, and Everybody Happier?”

Live Visual Facilitation Coverage of the 27 Dinners Jozi Chat — Mon 28 July 2008

If you’re one of the people who can’t make it to 27 Dinners tonight, I’ll be doing a live visual facilitation of the event, along with live-blogging of the pics I make. If anyone wants to write commentary, please contact me on http://twitter.com/royblumenthal or royblumenthal@gmail.com, and I’ll add you as a producer on my CoverItLive console. (You need to be running Firefox 2.* or Internet Explorer for the console to work on your machine.) This live blog is my first public run using CoverItLive. So…Continue Reading “Live Visual Facilitation Coverage of the 27 Dinners Jozi Chat — Mon 28 July 2008”