4 Jaynes are better than 2
DC comics is looking to tap into the teen girl market with a line of graphic novels called Minx. What took them so long?
“The Plain Janes” is about four high school girls named Jane - or, to be precise, two Janes, a Jayne and a Polly Jane - who form a secret art gang named P.L.A.I.N., or People Loving Art in Neighborhoods.
I am a bit past the target audience for this considering I’ll be getting out of college pretty soon here, but I’d be interested in seeing how this turns out. If only because I’d like to know what it is you do in an “art gang”.
I probably would have considered my AP Art class in highschool sort of like an art gang. We traveled in large packs sometimes. And sometimes we loitered in the hall…and drew drinking fountains… with Prismacolor markers and colored pencils! Yeah, we were bad ass.
Cats
So I woke up with this song in my head. I’ve watched this several times and it still amuses me…thought I should share. I hope that someday my motion graphics skills will enable me to make music videos this awesome. I’m especially fond of the “slap” effect.
Air is good
We went down to Tacoma on Monday night to see AIR, which was melt-my-heart beautiful. We were in the second row. Air is quite possibly my favorite band ever. At least according to myLast.fm profile. But I have been in love with them for a while. I think it’s because they were sort of my “gateway drug” in high school. Like, amidst the crap I was listening to at the time it caught my attention. I was in the juniors section at Famous Barr and “Kelly watch the stars” was on the tvs. I think I just stood there and watched the entire thing. And then had to get it. Air saved me.
The opener, Kate Havnevik, was also really good. I think EVERYONE sitting around me went and picked up her CD during the break. Sort of Frou Frou + Bjork. Although I have to say listening to the CD afterwards I think she was much more impressive live. But still good.
I need more hours in my day. It’s amazing how much faster time goes when you get home at 6 rather than 3. I sort of miss those 3 hours of my life already. But the new job is going well I think. It’s nice that even though I work more hours there than I did at my last one it doesn’t feel like it when I’m there since I’ve always got stuff to do.
Scrapblog
I had a lenghty well thought out post, and I accidently pushed a button and it disappeared! Grr. It’s been a while since that last happened to me. SIGH. oh well.
Gist: Scrapblog is neat. It fulfills a lot of the things I’ve been looking for in a drag and drop non-text blogging application. It can create pretty cheesy typical looking scrapbook things, but has potential to be so much more. But I still want a way to create and post quick sketches/web comics and post them directly. This is the one I made, using one of their templates (which is still totally drag and drop customizable) to try it out. Look at it full size to see the videos in there too.
I am sad about my post disappearing.
Give me CS3
Okay, second post in a day, but dude! CS3 is shipping (at least the design & web package) and the little intro/product demo thing is pretty sweet! Or at least it did a really good job simplifying the programs and showing how they work together really well. They made it fun! And now I want it. And now I think the icons are growing on me. When I first saw the photoshop icon a while back I thought it was kind of a lame cop out. But now I think it makes sense with all their programs. Okay, time to get back to work in my Illustrator CS2….. LAME.
Life is good! I am cavorting!
I got the spring interactive design internship at Hornall Anderson! I start this Wednesday! I am so excited! Also a little nervous because I don’t have a whole lot of interactive experience. But I’m mostly excited!
I am fairly certain I’m going to stay in Seattle now cause hopefully one of my internships will lead to a real job.
Feels weird to have planned my summer before my spring, but whatever, it all worked out. LIFE IS GOOD.
FOCUS
I am having a really hard time focusing and getting anything done, quite possibly because I have too much time right now, which seems weird. I think maybe I organize my time better when I have lots of things to organize, but when I don’t have that much going on I sort of just dilly dally or maybe this is what it’s like to have time to do other things? I dunno, but I feel like I’m supposed to be working on things a lot more than I think I am.
running in circles
I’ve been doing a lot of reasearch, and I sort of feel like im going around in circles with that. I just can’t seem to get my point across well. The whole idea behind my project makes sense to me but I can’t seem to explain it to anyone well enough. I am starting to get stressed out about the fact that we’ve already had 2 weeks of the quarter and I feel like it’s not solid. I am sort of hating myself right now for doing a whole new project instead of building off an old one, like they suggested. Why didn’t I listen?
Summer at DK
Oh! I have a summer internship lined up with Digital Kitchen! I was sort of waiting to blog about it until I heard from the HA people, but I still haven’t heard from them and I don’t know why that would matter anyways. But yeah, I will be hanging out with the guys at DK full time this summer. Hopefully soaking everything up like a sponge. It’s kind of surreal and weird. They have been at the top of my list pretty much since I realized people did motion design, but I didn’t really expect to get my foot in the door there right away.
Privileged
I have been increasingly aware of how incredibly lucky and privileged I am and it actually makes me feel kind of uncomfortable and guilty, even though I had no real control over it. In a lot of ways the fact that I’ve always had access and funding to a wide range of things has made my life seem a little too easy. Growing up I was always afriaid the good times were limited and I would eventually pay for them later on, which may still be true, but for the most part I think the luck is starting to build upon itself and I realize it’s kind of unfair, but I’m very thankful.
Sicky Sam
My gerbil, Sam, has what looks like a bloody ear. I have no idea why. It showed up a few weeks ago for a day, but then was fine the next day. And now it’s bloody again. Otherwise he is acting fine so I don’t know… Supposedly the gerbil life is about 2-3 years and they are like 2.25 years old so they’re getting old.. but they’re still spunky.. So frustrating and sad…. His little ear is so small and he’s so squirmy I can’t get a very good look at it. = (
A note about cuteness
Also, If you’ve only been getting updates through a feed reader for a while you should visit my actual blog now just to look at the awesome animated bunny gif. Even though animated gifs are apparently a big faux-pas in the world of web design, It makes me very happy.
I don’t think I use to always like cute girlyish things. I think I started wearing cute animal type things cause I was trying to be ironic or unexpected or something. Cause you know, I was trying to be a badass or something. But at some point these things just worked their way into my life until it sort of stopped being ironic an just became part of me. Kind of like a virus. I think college has made a little soft around the edges, but I think it’s been good for me.
The Senior Project
So for my senior project I’ve decided to do a 1-3 minute long motion piece about Women & Technology, specifically addressing why women are still avoiding the industry for the most part, why this is a problem, and what we can do about it. I’m pretty excited about it since it combines a lot of my interests: sociology, gender issues, technology, and of course motion.
Research
I’ve been doing a lot of research, talking to people, reading research studies, blogs, forums, and comments. I think reading the comments and forum posts are pretty revealing and enlightening. It’s suprising how many people STILL think it doesn’t matter, or the whole “this topic has been talked about to death, I’m so sick of it. So what if women are underrepresented. Survival of the fittest you know” mentality, which comes up fairly frequently across the board. It just seems so weird to me, but maybe it’s cause I think it’s interesting. But I’ve found TONS of research that’s been done about it, so it seems that lots of other people find it interesting as well.
Reduce
I’ve basicly put together my own course reader sized pile of printouts to sift through by the end of the week. I’m actually looking forward to going through all of it, but a littile daunted by the fact that I’m trying to simplify hundreds of pages into a few paragraphs ( just enough content for the 1-3 minute voice over). It’s also a little daunting since I need to make the content awesome from the start since the words and voicover are going to be a BIG part of the project, unlike most projects where people hardly look at the copy. And once I get into animating things I don’t think content can change a whole lot.
Introspective
Doing all the reading has also made me think about my own socialization as well. If I’m actually trying to promote women in technology, why am I in art instead of science/math/tech? I think a large part of it is the fact that people told me I was good at drawing. When I was little, I don’t think I knew my drawings were particularly good, I thought everyone drew the same way. Sometimes I wonder what I would have gone into if people didn’t give me that positive reinforcement when growing up. Or rather, if I didn’t have siblings and cousins to counter act my father’s greatest dreams, of me going into medicine, by telling me to just do what makes me happy. There was a brief period in time when I thought I might actually do it. I’m glad I didn’t, but sometimes I wonder.
The research has also actually made me a lot more interested in the industry as well. While the motion stuff is sexy and my current love, I do find all the things being done in the human computer interaction side of things to be very intriguing. I think the main reason I’m not actively trying to get mad programming skills or anything is the fact that I really think collaborating with other people who are better at different things is a lot more interesting & productive than trying to do everything yourself as a one-person-shop, although it is useful to have some overlap in knowledge base.
Red Universe
Also, this little site is pretty sweet. They are an interactive agency and I think they did a pretty good job sucking me in to spend WAY to long on their site and in this lovely side scrolling environment. I wish there was an entire game in this style.
