Burger365 Follow-Up

I've decided to periodically check back in with some folks who have completed their 365 projects...

Charlton Yu made a year's worth of hamburgers from May 17, 2010 to May 16, 2011 in Burger365...

What are the biggest lessons/skills you learned from doing your project? One of the toughest parts of this project for me was putting in the time and dedication required to complete it. Now I know that I have the perseverance to succeed and can apply this knowledge to my everyday life. Furthermore, I was able to hone such skills such as painting, sculpture and digital illustration.

In what ways did the project change your life? Now that the project is over, I feel like any day that I am not working on a project (besides allowing time off for fun/relaxation), is a day that something is missing. Having established the routine of working on the daily project, I feel like I should be still be creating and exploring new ideas all the time.

Now what? I will occasionally create “Bonus Burger365” pieces, will be going back to re-create past pieces – “Burger365: Redux”, and am still updating the Everything Burger website with great burger related items found around the world.  I also have other art projects as well, such as working with a laser cutter.

See Charlton's original 365 interview HERE.
And see all of Charlton's burgers and other collected burger items HERE.

Have you finished your own 365 project? I'd love to hear from you!

Burger365

Charlton Yu in Los Angeles, California is making a burger a day in his Burger365 project on his blog Everything Burger...

Why did you decide to do this project?  The website and project spawned from a variety of things 1. I had been interested in a project where I could use my artistic and creative skills. 2. My girlfriend had given me the Skull-A-Day book, since I also like skull related images (of course I had seen the website before too), and it got me thinking of doing something similar. 3. We had started trying different burger restaurants because we both love to eat good food and she was interested in creating a LA Burger map. 4. One day, we were talking about damask prints/wallpaper, and I had the idea to create a "burger" themed damask print, which I then designed. All these ideas came together at this point, but I also wanted to do something more than just the art project. Since I was going to create these "burgers", a website full of other burger related items was the obvious choice.

At some point as well, I had brought up the idea of "365" to my friend/co-worker Gary Lockwood. He was very interested in doing a project like Skull-A-Day as well (he had already been creating animal gas mask artwork previously for his clothing line). Together, we decided to just go for it and start these projects (him with Mask365). It would help that we would be able to push each other, in order to keep the projects going, as well as bounce different ideas each other's way. May 17, 2009 was the debut of Burger365 and Mask365.

How has doing a yearlong/daily project affected your life? So it has been a little over six months for the project so far and it definitely has affected my life. I have less free time now, since I am constantly working on the next "burgers". I am learning new techniques and working with different mediums, which is always good for any artist. I am also always thinking about the project/website, to figure out the next ideas or ways of improving everything. Overall, it has been a great experience and the weeks seem to fly by. It's a little hard to believe that I created so many images so far, and I hope I can make the rest even better.

Check out all of Charlton's burgers on his site HERE.