Tenlegs’ goal from the start has been to foster a diverse and vibrant online community of artists & creative people. We continue to improve the online tools and workspace to help you connect, collaborate and interact meaningfully with each other by exploring new pieces, forms and ideas and exchanging tangible creative works and services.  To make the site more user friendly and a place where you, the artist, can better highlight yourself, we have given our site a complete overhaul.

The cornerstone of Tenlegs is you —your artistic sensibilities, work habits, aesthetic, philosophy, goals, ambitions—the things that make you do what you do. That’s why Tenlegs new User Profile is markedly different, both more robust and nuanced, with an array of entertaining and provocative questions and statements that get to the heart of what moves you.

Over the next few weeks we will be updating the Tenlegs blog with information about new features that you can take advantage of as an artist.

In the meantime, make sure to check out the changes today!

We hope your 2012 is off to a great start. We can’t believe its February already.

For better or worse, it seems that everyone at some point in his life needs the help of a lawyer to get through a sticky situation. “What are some of the issues that creative people may run into,” you ask? Well here are a few:

• Authorship Disputes
• Contracts with Producers or Benefactors
• Copyright of Work
• Leasing Studio Space
• Licensing & Distribution Agreements
• Setting Up Your Own Company to Protect You from Liabilities
• Taxation Issues

However there is hope! Did you know there are a lot of inexpensive or free legal options specifically for artists. You can check some of them out at the Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts.

See even professionals in other friends are happy to collaborate with us artists!

We came across this cool creative performance of five musicians playing on the same guitar…and thought we’d share these fellow artists’ ten limb performance!

Since this particular Sh*t So-and-So Says meme won’t go away, we thought we’d at least give our readers some that are relevant to them. As with all these memes there is some harsh language.

Born and raised in the Upper East Side of Manhattan, Jay Kila is an entrepreneurial emcee that is half-Indian and Jewish (a Hinjew). His rapid fire delivery and witty lyrics have found him legions of YouTube viewers and Twitter followers. He also is a co-founder of the GiftRapped website, a service that creates personalized rap songs for celebratory occasions.

His newest project is to make music videos of songs off his new mixtape called Upper East Beast. In fact you can help support his video making on Kickstarter!

“I’m hoping to create some really awesome content that will take my videos up about 20 notches.  Making this mixtape has been a very, very long process and it means a lot to me.  These music videos will be at the head of the marketing and promotional campaign that I’m going to be doing over the next 3-6 months so they will really help get the word and my music out there.

You can check out the streaming sneak peek version of the tape here:http://www.uppereastbeast.com.  The videos I’m looking to make are “Year of the Rat”, “In the Jungle” and “You Ain’t a Kila”.’

Before you read our interview with him, make sure to support Jay’s music videos on Kickstarter -and if you have some ideas for his videos reach out to him on Tenlegs!

TENLEGS:  Tell us about how you came up with the idea for the mixtape?

JAY KILA:  The mixtape is called “Upper East Beast”.  I’m from the Upper East Side in NYC and the original idea was to paint a portrait of what growing up in this part of the city is like.  The UES is one of the most affluent areas in New York, and as a teenager in school I was surrounded by kids from families who were extremely wealthy.  In high school this made for interesting sights / stories – you would hear of 14 or 15 year olds buying bottles at clubs with fake IDs, going on yachts in the South of France, etc.  These kids were living the lifestyles that adult hip hop artists like to brag about.  So the tape is sort of an inside look at this life from the perspective of someone who was able to view it up close but still from a distance.

What has been the biggest challenge of producing your music?

The biggest challenge in producing the tape, which I think is a challenge to a lot of artists is that you have to be your own boss.  I’m not signed to any record label or anything, I don’t have someone telling me “Jay, we need to have these songs finished by such and such date.”  It was all on me to make my own deadlines and finish the tracks, and at times it became hard to stay focused and motivated.

As you move into producing videos to promote your music what are you most excited about trying?  What challenges do you think you’ll face?

As we move to producing these music videos I’m most excited about having a crew to work with, as well as interacting with actors.  I used to do some video making in the past, and it usually involved just filming myself on a green screen.  It will be nice to work with others.  In terms of challenges I think there’s always the challenge of sticking to a budget and using your time / money efficiently.  With more people involved in a shoot there’s a lot more stuff to handle and its important to keep everyone on track.

Can you give us a tease on the vibe of the videos?

The vibe of the videos will be somewhat in the nature of old Eminem videos like “My Name Is” as well as some Beastie Boys videos.  My style is more east-coast lyrical but there is also an element of comedy in my music, so this will definitely come out in the videos as well.

We have a crew for a few of the videos.  There is a director I’ve worked with in the past that I’m looking to work with again, but we are definitely open to hearing new ideas / treatments for videos from others.

Rather than an artist profile this week, we thought we might highlight a project that some of Tenlegs’ users are developing -and currently raising production funding for on Kickstarter.

Cagney Cried tells the story of Nick Fazzola, an older working class New Yorker who moves to Los Angeles to pursue a career in acting. There he moves into a cramped apartment with two young actresses who drive him up the walls. On his way to audition for his dream role – the lead in a remake of a James Cagney film, he gets thrown in prison where he rooms with two other inmates. Though at first their personalities clash, eventually they bond over their struggles and failures in life. By the time Nick’s sentence is up, they become friends and decide to redefine success on their own terms.

After you read our interview with the Cagney Cried team, why don’t you stop by Kickstarter to help them reach their funding goal to get this great film made!

TENLEGS:  Tell us how you came about the idea for this film?

CAGNEY CRIED TEAM:  The film was written by Steven Randazzo and he has been working on it on and off for the past 8 years or so. He pulled from a lot of his own life experience growing up in New York City and becoming an actor himself. I can put you in touch with him if you’d like to talk further about the script.

What have been the biggest challenges in pre-production?

Our crew is small but passionate and we are obviously working on a very low budget, so most of us have had to balance our time on Cagney Cried with other film work to pay the bills, but it has been a rewarding process and we aren’t in it for the money.

How do you plan to release the film?

We plan on sending the film to all the big festivals when it’s finished. We’ll see what happens from there.

Any tips to Tenlegs readers who want to get a film off-the-ground?

Too many people feel they have to wait for conditions to be perfect and for some sense of legitimacy that will never come. My advice is to just start, just go for it, you’re never going to have enough free time, good enough equipment, or the perfect script.

What’s the best reason that someone should visit your kickstarter and help out the project?

I think this project is something worth supporting because everyone involved is passionate about making a good, meaningful film based on solid storytelling and acting. There are no gimmicks or shortcuts being taken to try and make it something more than it is. If someone is a fan of decent films that stand on a good script with well thought out characters and want to see films like that continue being made then this is the project to support.

Alexander Chen creates a beautiful video displaying the movement of New York’s various subway lines and conducting a musical out of every intersection of the lines. Pretty neat how creative data visualization can get!

You’ve been asking, so we’re happy to reveal that the individual chosen to create videos for Professor Haidt’s TED Talk is David Lackey!

Here’s a bit about David:

I am an Austin, Texas-based freelance video artist specializing in start-to-finish video production, digital cinematography, motion graphics, special effects, and editing. I work hard to maintain high production values on any project I commit myself to regardless of budget. I’ve created commercials and videos for both large and small businesses, and I regularly work with other upstanding production companies and artists on a per-project basis. You can view my portfolio and demo reels at http://www.davidlackeyfilm.com.

Check back later this week and we’ll show you what David proposed!

We all know Photoshop is one powerful tool. We can see the skilled post processing editors use in editorials and fashion shoots all the time. Here’s a unique satirical “advertisement” developed by a video maker poking fun at the extent the beauty industry will go to set such high standards of beauty. It will definitely provide quite a few good laughs.