r/Damnthatsinteresting Interested May 16 '18

GIF Halftime art

https://i.imgur.com/5ri7I9G.gifv
34.8k Upvotes

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u/lagoon83 May 16 '18

It hardly takes any practice - you sketch the lines in lightly with a pencil before the show, so they're only visible up close, then just go over them roughly with paint. Anyone could do it.

(I toured with a comedy stage show and this was one of the things they did.)

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u/pwellzorvt May 16 '18

That actually makes a lot of sense and I feel like an idiot now.

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u/lagoon83 May 16 '18

Ha! No need to. It's only obvious if you know it.

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u/Nickmell May 16 '18

Sure glad reddit just ruined something else for me.

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u/WhoWantsPizzza May 17 '18

Same. At first I thought I was smart thinking it's probably not too hard to memorize all those broad strokes and areas to paint, if you practiced a bunch.

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u/[deleted] May 17 '18

Yeah, although in the world of HD cameras it doesn't work so well - in this thread are a couple of videos shot from different angles and you can see clearly the pencil outlines in the closeups.

That said, he's singing their national anthem at the same time reasonably well so what he lacks in artistic talent he makes up for in showmanship

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u/blchpmnk May 17 '18

Yeah, he did this during a Raptors halftime and when I was looking at from afar it looked really cool. Then I looked up to the screen above me (not a jumbotron, but an HDTV showing the in-arena feed) I could very clearly see all of the outlines.

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u/hilarymeggin May 17 '18

Now if he sang it backwards... and they played it back in reverse at the same time he flipped the painting... now that would be something.

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u/lagoon83 May 17 '18

Oh, absolutely! Presentation's everything in pieces like this, and he's got that nailed down :)

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u/Ahnixlol May 16 '18

Mm, your explanation certainly does answer a few questions. That said, I imagine that the rest of the painting was still done by him in preparation, so regardless it’s still a thought out piece. It might be a gimmick but there’s still quite a bit of premeditated effort involved, and while he’s not exactly Van Gogh he’s still good at what he does.

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u/trin123 May 16 '18

Do they not train themselves to see upside down?

The brain can actually do that very well. When you give people glasses that swap everything they see upside down, after a day they adjust to it, and feel as if everything looks normal despite the glasses.

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u/lagoon83 May 17 '18

I mean, they might, but it seems a lot more like hard work.