Ahead
These both look cool. Sinister puppetry & cabaret. What’s not to love? Who wants to go with me to either one? or both? (view them full size for details)
So it looks like I’ll still have a job after October. I asked Mulder about it earlier and he said he’d love to have me stay, but they don’t have a position to offer me right now, but I can keep coming in as an hourly (like I am now) or go on a project fee. Supposedly something else may be in the works for me as well, but he didn’t want to say anything else because he wasn’t sure about it yet. So that would be cool too. Either way it means I don’t have to worry about job hunting when I get back from New York, which is awesome.
Ready to get offf
I am getting really excited for Offf! They FINALLY updated their site to include the schedule, program, and workshops. There are going to be so many awesome people there. I’m particularly interested in seeing Paula Scher, Neville Brody, Rob Chiu, Justin Cone, Stardust, Motion Theory, Troika, and a ton of others. AH! SO EXCITED!
I am also super excited for the few days after the conference when I’ll just be chilling in New York. I’ve never really been there on my own so I’m looking forward to exploring the city my way. Maybe this time I’ll like it better now that I’m older and not bound by any parental itinerary. I am thinking of making a list of places I’d like to eat while I’m there because I know there is a lot of good food in that city. Sad as it may be, White Castle is one of the first things on my list. I need to do some research… I’m taking suggestions as well.
Side Note
I really need to redesign this blog. Not that I don’t love the fresh bananas theme but I think its time for an overhaul.
Stuff I worked on
I just noticed the Nike project I helped out on is up on the DK website! The runner scene (above) was one I worked on mainly. Mostly just compositing and animating. Other things I helped out with was cutting out elements for different scenes so they could be put on different layers, animating some graphic elements (some lines and numbers) and shooting some of the footage of things being lifted and placed onto the light table. Anyways, check it out if you’re interested.
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.
Move it
Last night was my last class at DK, we ate pizza and watched people’s stuff, all around good times. Although It kind of amazes me how many people ended up jumping ship. I think we started with 18 or so people. Last night we ended up with like 10. I think about 5 people had pretty finished pieces. It’s such a great and rare opportuity to be able to get that kind of insider insight, I don’t understand why people wouldn’t want to take advantage of that. Especially if you’re going to pay that much for it. Maybe it’s different for the guys that had their companies pay for it. I dunno. Anyways, I think it ended up going pretty well. I uploaded a quicktime (24mb) of my final piece, check it out if you’d like:
I’m also going to be putting it on youtube, so you will be able to check it out hereif the 24 megs takes too long to load or something.
I think I’m pretty much in love with making things move now. I mean, not only is it creating things, it’s bringing those things to life! It’s like making little babies with out all having to actually deal with baby related things, like changing poopy pants. Although last night there were comments about a piece “diarrhea-ing confetti”…
I have a ton of other ideas I want to animate. Already started on something over the weekend.
End-o-winter
So tomorrow is “finals” and I’m chillin. Despite the fact that I’ve spent the past few weekends living in the art building I have to say our actual finals day is always pretty nice. While most people are stressing over tests and stuff we just have to present our final stuff and eat cereal (if everyone remembers to bring things like they’re suppose to!) I think I’ve discovered the secret to stress free finals week: At least keep up somewhat the first part of the quarter but haul some serious ass durring week 8. Smooth sailing after that. Seems to work fairly well.
Updated Portfolio
Anyways, I’ve updated the portfolio site with stuff from this quarter! Exhibit Design and Interaction Design stuff. check it out if you’d like.
I think our exhibit turned out pretty well. Even though there were quite a few long 12+ hour days in the studio working on it, I had a good time working with Matt & Allyson. And I’m actually pretty happy with the “Warming Seasons” one, despite the fact that we only had like 2 weeks to build it out completely. The piggy one I am still a little unsure about, although everyone else seems to like it so I don’t know.
Still one more week of Motion Design stuff, but rest assured it will be online next week as well.
By Design
In other news, we saw the 8-bit movie at By Design on Saturday, which was pretty interesting. Opened up a whole new level of geekiness that I didn’t even know about. The other two things that night (panel & shorts) were also good, although I think they have been better in the past. It was kinda weird having 3/4 of the panelists be from DK, not that I don’t totally love all those guys. I just wish there was a little more representation from other places, though there aren’t a whole bunch around this area.
This is one of my favorites from the shorts. So simple & low tech, but nice:
Grandaddy: Jed’s Other Poem
Geeking out
AH! The motion class is so exciting! Colin & Cody from DK came in to talk about the industry piece they recently did for the Sundance Film Festival. They broke it down starting with from their inspiration, story boards, and went through how it was put together with animatics, 3d stuff, building things out in photoshop, and going into After Effects. It was great being able to see the whole process sort of laid out there, it made it a lot clearer how things are put together. It’s sort of like watching that “Movie Magic” show or something, except right there in the room with you.
It’s always kinda weird meeting the people who make the things you like. I don’t know, I feel like a weird groupie or something. Cause all the people I think are amazing are really pretty normal folks, which obviously makes sense, but still sort of an odd feeling.
Also what I’ve realized, especially after tonight, is that my Photoshop skills are WEAK. Or at least I somehow managed to never learn some apparently basic and useful things. Like the ability to use masks and alpha layeres and adjustment layers. I also never understood what curves did.
Anyways, those three hours totally made up for the fact that the rest of my day just felt like one long drawn out chunk after the next, with no real resting point. So cool!
It’s hard to really convey how excited I’m getting about this stuff in just a typed out post… maybe you’ll get a picture later. It’s just weird cause I feel like it’s something that really keeps me interested and excited. And when I think about all the different things I could get into when I graduate I just keep coming back to thinking about how cool it would be to work in motion design and how much I want it.
brain tap
I am at the point in the quarter where I sort of feel like I’m trying to just constantly juice my brain for ideas… It’s slightly overwhelming I think. It’s weird cause even when I’m not “working” I just constantly try to come up with ideas for my projects.. I think this part of the quarter is kind of the hardest, cause what goes down now determines so much of the rest, and without good ideas everything falls through.
I’m struggling with really solidifying any ideas for my interactive design class.. It’s like some things connect.. but not quite everything… sigh.
Motion
My intro to motion design and intro to after effects classes started this week. I think they should be good, although I’m a little worried about the time commitment.
So on Tuesday was the Intro to Motion Design. I am definately the youngest person there. Everyone else is in the real world already. Senior designers and others. One person from Methodologie and a few from Hornall Anderson. And others from other places I don’t remember. Either way, I feel pretty damn intimidated being surrounded by people who are way more experienced than me. It is also 3/4 guys. It’s such a different experience to be surrounded by designers who aren’t the VCD kids. I sort of feel like I’ll have to work harder prove myself more at this thing.
Anyways, He showed us a bunch of their work, and sort of went through how they were made, from basic to most complex. I think the most interesting pieces for me were the ones which were apparently just stills and stopmotion, but looked like much more than that. Near the end we were given our assignment for the class. I get to make a 30 second opener for a show called Masters of Horror, so apparently I get to try out the dark and moody thing afterall. I’m pretty excited for it, although I’m having a really hard time coming up with a good concept that isn’t typical horror crap. I’m finding myself more interested in this class than my Interactive Design class. I also think it’s a lot more organized than that one.
Thrusday was the After Effects class. A lot of the interface is fairly familiar to me since I’ve played with it a little, but it’s good to have a refresher cause I’ve forgotten a lot. We got to animate a little logo. Apparently our project will be to animate a little logo for ourself to use as like an opener thing for our reel. Should be good.
Next Quarter: Digital Kitchen
So after all the back and forth between whether or not to drop one of my extra classes next quarter, I just dropped both. They both seem like they’d be great fun, and I’m sad to see them go, but there are too many good things going on….
Instead, I added two non-credit classes that are going to be freakin AWESOME. Hopefully. I was checking out the class schedule at the School of Visual Concepts, looking for their letterpress class, when I noticed they had motion design classes, being taught at Digital Kitchen. The Intro to motion design is being taught by the creative director of DK, whose last name is MULDER! and The Intro to After Effects is taught by other staff at DK. AH! I’m so excited! You should have seen me freaking out and bouncing around earlier. It was crazy.
I’m also possibly rebranding the Honors Program and redesigning their website next quarter, if all goes as planned. I’m sure I’ll be ridiculously crazy busy, but it doesn’t matter. I’m totally excited to hang out at Digital Kitchen for 10 weeks and supplement my education. I mean, it would be fun to build sets and costumes and play with lego robots, but I think this will be better and more useful. And I mean, it can’t be bad to get to know people who work there, right? I’d also like to possibly incorporate some of this learning into my senior project sping quarter if possible.
Also, Riley and her Mom came by on the way to Alaska! We ate what was probably the least bad IHOP meal I’ve ever had. I think the key is to eat it outside of the U-district.
totally not stressed
It’s really weird. Tomorrow is my last day of classes, and then finals week of course but that’s just turning in a paper and projects, but no actual tests or anything. I am totally not stressed out. It’s bizzare feeling so in control of things when so many people around me seem to be stressing out so much. Especially when I spent all of this past weekend at Sasquatch.
Sasquatch was pretty good. I’ve never camped out for any big music festivals before so it was kinda nice feeling like a hippie for a bit. The weather was ridiculous. Super bright & sunny, pouring rain, and a friggin HAIL STORM that cut Neko Case’s set short. It was crazy, I haven’t really seen a whole lot of hail since I was in St. Louis, but even then I was watching from the inside. Being outside in a hail storm with nothing but a blanket kinda sucks. So a lot of saturday was spent being wet and cold.
But by the end when The Flaming Lips were on it was all good. The Flaming Lips Experience was definately the highlight of the day. It was incredibly fun and insane. superheroes, aliens, santas, streamer launchers, giant balls, nun puppets and all around fun times. Wayne is officially my hero. Sufjan Stevens earlier in the day was also rather fun. Kitchy excessive patriotism, inflatable santas, and inflatable supermen all make for a good show.
But yeah, I’ve been feeling really good about myself the past few days. Earlier today I was all like, “wow, I feel so awesome and smart” but then when I got home I found that I had managed to mail my bill payments to myself. Go me.
Inspiration
I heard or read something a few days ago, from somewhere (good sources obviously) that not having enough time to complete things on our “real” to-do list isn’t nearly as stressful as the feeling of not having enough time to do all those other things you really want to be doing with your time. For some reason I don’t think it ever really occured to me that way. I always sort of just assumed being stressed out was due to having too many school related things to do at the same time. So I’d usually spend a lot of time “working” on those things sort of half assedly and sort of skimp on playtime, and not feel a whole lot better about anything.
So I’ve been playing around with stuff lately (hence the random stop motion the other day) and trying to learn some new stuff, specifically Flash and After Effects, cause I have all these ideas that want to be created but have very limited ways of existing. But yeah, it’s fun! Sometimes I forget how much I like making random things for my own amusement, cause I do so much other stuff for some other person or projecet or whatever.
We also went to The Student Film Festival today (ours was one of them) and got even more inspired to play with stuff.
Anyways, I’d really like to get a “real” copy of After Effects 7. As of now I’m using a trial version that shuts down in like 26 days or something. I have been trying to get one for quite some time but it’s been difficult. So if you have hook ups let me know. Or I suppose I could ask for it for my b-day. Or actually shell out the $350 for it… I suppose I really should.
And I feel like getting back into posting cool videos/animation/stuff now you should watch this little thing by Three Legged Legs: Humans
