It’s safe to say Felicia Day, who’s often referred to as “queen of the geeks,” knows her way around the Internet.
The 36-year-old actress and online celebrity not only starred in “The Guild,” an award-winning Web series about a group of online gamers, she also co-founded Burbank digital media company Geek & Sundry, which Legendary Entertainment acquired last year.
Day’s forthcoming memoir, “You’re Never Weird on the Internet (Almost),” is about how the Web helped her discover friends outside her hometown of Huntsville, Ala., who shared her interests in video games, science fiction and fantasy.
But when Day actually sat down to write the book, she took a decidedly analog approach.
“I tend to do creative work with pen and paper,” said Day in a recent interview at Anaheim’s VidCon, an online video convention.
“You have access to different parts of your brain that are more creative when you’re using pen and paper versus typing,” she added.
After putting everything on the physical page, she would input the material into a piece of software called Scrivener.
“It’s a really great program that will help you kind of break big monumental tasks into smaller tasks,” explained Day. “That’s really the only way I was able to accomplish a whole book.”
Framing Retirement
While some plan for retirement, architect Dan Janotta, a principal at Chinatown architecture firm Johnson Fain, is painting for it.
Janotta, 60, just bought a home in Florida where he plans to retire, and for 10 years, he has been turning his painting hobby into a retirement career.
After taking classes to enhance his drawing and composition skills, Janotta began showing his paintings at coffee shops and art fairs. He sold some paintings but realized he would have to show at prominent galleries to become professional.
To do that, Janotta began painting recognizable scenes – well-known streets, buildings, highways and beaches around Los Angeles and Santa Monica. And he began painting in an impressionist-modernist style so scenes would be easy to identify.
So far, it’s working. Janotta has been in shows at Schomburg Gallery and the TAG Gallery, both in Bergamot Station in Santa Monica, and has sold more than 40 paintings. His pieces now sell for about $2,500 each.
“When I’m painting, I’m thinking about what will sell and appeal to people, and that will lead me to the next level,” Janotta said. “It’s calculated; and that’s my business brain.”
Staff reporters Omar Shamout and Carol Lawrence contributed to this column. Page 3 is compiled by Editor Charles Crumpley. He can be reached at [email protected].
