Monday, February 28, 2011

New Beast


As much as love the good ol' Beast from Disney, he's not really my character so I finally got around to designing something original for my banner. Tada! My own beast. Probably one of the nicest looking things I've ever made on the computer. I don't know why it looks so crappy in the banner though, I'll have to figure that out and fix it.

Anyways, it's reading week and I'm bored out of my mind and I am turning in my animation portfolio to sheridan tomorrow and I am so nervous. Eeep.

Thursday, February 24, 2011

Portfolio pieces ^ and v I will post the whole thing once the ordeal is over and done with.
Also, I found this among my old drawings from october. I must have missed it entirely because I never even took a picture of it. I want to shoot myself because I think it would have been great with for calarts. If I don't get in, I'm blaming it on my oversight of this drawing >_>... just kidding.

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Things that are happening

I had a very intensely vivid dream this morning where I was accepted to calarts and I was super happy and was beginning to cry when I asked myself the ever-so cliche question of if it was really happening, of course then, my mind clicked and I knew something wasn't right and I woke up and was super disappointed. Uh, so, lets just hope this is one of those awesome future telling dreams, right? (I had one of those once, it was really trippy) Because then I was imagining myself getting a rejection letter and trying to face that future just seems...bleak. Sometimes I think about it and I can't imagine myself anywhere other than Calarts. I know that's crazy. I know that a school is just a school and it is what you put into it that counts, and I could be perfectly successful at many places where I have been accepted in the past or may be accepted in the future. But it just feels...right. Like one of those things you just know you have to do.

Anyways, I finally got to go to class and have some real social interaction today and then I talked to a wonderful 4th year animation student Jamie Metzger again who helped me immensely with my sheridan portfolio, and now I'm ready to sit back down again and readdress some issues with it. Only one week to go. I'm dying to get this over with. I also can't wait to have more free time to work on my film again, as I feel guilty putting time into it when I know I have improvements to make with my portfolio.

The highlight of the day was that Chris asked to go to the movies to see I Am Number Four. Sometimes having a car when no one else does has its perks because people actually invite you to shit knowing that they can't go without you. Anyways, the movie was so-so, not very exciting as far as story goes, but entertaining nonetheless. I was just happy to get off campus for a few brief hours and be a part of like, the real world. I also haven't done anything social or fun in a really long time. Also, tuesday nights are the discount nights at movie theaters in Ontario, so it only cost $5. That is just my price :)

Anyways, that's my life that I felt like sharing for no reason at all today. Yep.

Monday, February 21, 2011

Iconographic image of the Quaking Aspen for 2D design, with a corresponding typeface.
Two self portraits for Color Theory. The top is along the theme of roleplay, I was trying to make myself elegant and whatnot. The second is for the uniqueness and history of my face (and hair)
I like the second better.
Studies of Aspens for 2D (scientific, shape, line)

I've also been recently playing around with TVPaint, which has been a fun and informative experience.
I think next semester I will going back and polishing and reanimating most of my IB art film, because it's been sitting around in desperate need of some work, and I really do like the premise for it, but the animation is just so shitty and everything. Plus, with a portfolio out of the way, what else am I gonna do? My social life has gone to shit. I haven't spoken to anyone in days over this holiday weekend...once portfolios are done I'm going to be smack dab in the middle of reading week wondering what the hell to do. I'd like to go to Ottawa or Montreal but I've got no one to come with me and I'm not brave enough to go to a new city alone. So yea, animation seems like a good choice instead.
I've got very little to distract me from the anxiety of hearing back from calarts. I pretty much have a running background noise in my head going "ohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohplease" 24/7, and it keeps me from sleeping a whole lot. Fortunately I am very optimistic about this summer as I have gotten an awesome position at a girl scout camp as an arts and crafts specialist and I haven't been this excited for something in a really long time. It's going to be an amazing summer!

Saturday, February 12, 2011

Some Figure Drah-uhns





After showing some potential figure drawings to a few animation students and whatnot they told me I had good gesture but needed to show more underlying structure...Unfortunately I've always tried to draw decisively and not clutter the figure with all that construction nonsense. So now all my drawings look messy and I lose a lot of the gesture of the pose because I get so distracted. Gah, I don't know what to do about it. I also sent most of my favorite work off to calarts, so yea, that kind of sucks. I've got pictures of most of it though.

About 2 weeks to go...I'm kind of wishing it were sooner just because I'm so sick of redrawing things over and over again after showing them to people for critique. I've drawn my hand in a specific pose 6 times now.

I look at past accepted portfolios and feel fairly confident, and then I see other peoples work around me and feel like there's no way I'm gonna get in. So confusing.

I really, really want March to get here so I can hear back from Calarts. I'm absolutely DYING.

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Not so pleased with the shading job. I should have done something with the value of the sky. Maybe I should have stippled instead of using lines? Or a smaller pen? I don't know, but I would like to color this at some point.
This is for drawing class, and turned out rather well in my opinion. It was about a 5 hour pose. It'll probably go in my portfolio, even though they don't want to see rendered drawings. I think the structure works very well here, and I've been told a lot of my drawings are "too caricatured." I guess that's what you get for doing drawings all meant for Calarts for two years

Yesterday I went to talk to my drawing systems teacher about some of my portfolio work. She was very helpful. I also think she rather likes me and wants me to get in because she asked what I felt the weakest in, and I told her character design. She promptly found a 3rd year animation student during our class right after that and let me go out and show him my work so he could help me. And helpful he was. He had a lot of useful critique on my character, and after class I sat down to go about redesigning him. It looks a lot stronger now in my opinion, although I will have to redo all that work I've already done.
I'm also going to talk to another 4th year student today as well. I'm loving all this help, it's been incredibly useful.

Saturday, February 5, 2011

Here's that thing I mentioned before that we did the first day of drawing systems this semester.
And here's a stamp design from 2D, with donuts....mmm...makes me hungry. Everyone thinks it's a reference to Tim Hortons, but they forget I'm American, and in America we buy our donuts from grocery stores like normal people.


I've found it really hard to get stuff done because I've been really depressed lately. :/
Today I woke up and could not get out of bed. I kept berating myself in my head, and also encouraging myself at the same time to do it. It seemed to cancel each other out. I had managed to keep asleep until 11:30, but I finally had to wake up and eat something. But then it was right back into bed, just sitting there for hours, willing myself to fall back asleep and to skip the whole day. Every time I took a breath my heart rose and dropped like a stone into water. Plunk.
I finally managed to get myself up after a good cup of chai, but I'll be damned if it isn't tempting to crawl back into bed and pull the covers over my head and make the whole world go away. I really need to get this sheridan stuff done though. Everything I do I end up redoing like 3 or 4 times. It sucks.
I don't know what to blame this on. The time of year, the stress of this portfolio, the change of my class, my diet, my lack of going outside....it's probably a combination really.
I'll get through this, I always do. Until then, everything is sort of at a stand still. Personal art, social life. It's all frozen, just like everything outside right now.

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Some Work I've been Working on

Besides portfolio work of course. I won't post any of that til it's all done and sent in.

Went to extra life painting....sigh...I love painting.


This below down here is from last semester drawing systems. Never got around to posting it I don't think. 'Sok I s'pose
Here is my latest from drawing systems...still need to shade it and add some detail. I just realized my obsession with dragons. Also trees. You can't see it here, but I've been drawing a heckuva lot of trees these days.
Drawing class we did that annoying charcoal thing you do with erasers. I hate it, it's so messy. Bleh.

3D has been pop-up books...I could have put more effort but it's portfolio crunch time and I need to make priorities. Mine is based off Mary Oliver's poem "Rage" ....my 12th grade english teacher would have loved me if I had done this in her class....bet it would have gotten me an A too, she was a huge fan of the fine arts.




A yep.

It's a snow day and I have a lot to catch up on...so I'm gonna go do that now