Spring Semester

So I've been a bit naughty and have been neglecting my posting duties. But in my defense I've been a VERY busy young lady. It's been super fun though so I can't complain lol even though my last post was basically just me venting about blah blah blah.

So what have I been busy with?! Well, glad you asked...

This semester I have the lovely Animation Pre-Production class, which is the class where I come up with senior thesis that I'll be working on all next year. The pressure is on! We pitched 5 stories the first day of class and the faculty picked one, and we're working on that for the first 6 weeks. Then right before spring break we have a full-faculty critique where we show our character, environment, and prop designs along with our minute and a half animatic. It either passes or fails. After spring break we then work on a different story for another 6 weeks, and then it's the same process where it either fails or passes. One of the two stories needs to pass in order to move on to senior year.

Then in animation class we're currently working on modeling our self-caricatures and rigging them before we work on our lipsync animation. The caricature I did of myself I've previously posted is now in 3D! And it looks awesome if I do say so myself...

Soon, probably during spring break, I'll be able to post A LOT of work. Right now I'm just stressed with all my homework and also trying to put together a portfolio and resume so I can apply for a summer internship this summer at an animation studio.

CrAzY TiMeS

I should probably be working on homework right now, but sometimes you just need to vent and let all your frustrations out. Like right now, I'm so stressed I can barely think straight. It's like the CA department faculty go together and had a meeting on "how can we make our students more stressed?" lol

I have a major assignment due for each class within two days of each other, and it's starting to get real difficult to manage my time between each project. In CA we have the Push/Pull, which I haven't had time to work on my animation because of problems with my Maya file. I finally got that figured out though, so tomorrow I'll spend about 12 hours in the labs working on it, then come back to my room and work on it some more before class starts at 8:30am Monday. For DFA we're doing an environment value painting, and here's a little preview of that:

I'm not too worried about this project as I am the others. My DFA class is the only CA class where I'm actually getting good grades. I think that's probably because I've always been good at drawing, it's sort of my comfort zone and doesn't take much effort. It's more natural.


My One-Minute Story animatic for Concept class is something I'm worried about and have been stressing about for a week now. We could come up with just about any story we wanted to do for this project, so I came up with a love story between a zombie and a human girl. It wasn't the greatest, but it was funny and witty. But..... my teacher didn't like it and suggested that I either make the story more creative or start from scratch. AFTER I had already been working on it for about two weeks. I've been pretty brain dead for awhile now and nothing I came up with was better, so I started from scratch. All that work I put into the story is just trash now, and I have to have a working animatic by Tuesday at 12:30. There's even more pressure because Karen and Billy (the other two Concept teachers), are also coming to our class to critique our work. I'm really nervous because I only finalized my story yesterday. I'm not going to be sleeping very much in the next couple weeks.

All I know, is that I need some motivation right about now. I don't mean to complain, but it's hard when you haven't had free time to just relax in over a month. I actually took a little time to try and have some fun on Halloween, but it just stressed me out more afterward.

Stress

It's midterm time now, and so far this semester has been ABSOLUTELY INSANE. I have been challenged to the extreme, and usually I can adapt and work out my time management, but I seem to be on overload and haven't been able to. I'm surprised that I've been able to actually turn everything in on-time, although I've had to pull quite a few all-nighters. This last week I've tried a different work schedule and it worked out well, so it's starting to get better.

I've never had so many instances where I've felt hopeless in regards to finishing an assignment on-time. In part I think being a perfectionist isn't helping because I tend to spend more time on each assignment improving it, when the first draft would have sufficed. But.... that's why my teachers like me :) lol

I'm positive I'm not the only one having troubles like this, it's hard to distribute yourself evening for the 3 CA major classes this semester. It's a process that you need to work at to really succeed in this major. That, and you HAVE to meet ALL the criteria for assignments and make sure you reach the deadline on-time. There is no LATE in the Computer Animation industry, so it only makes since that there isn't a "late" in our classes. Not to mention that I also have two electives aside from my CA classes.

On another note, we've started our Primitive Theater assignment in CA, and I'll be working on that until around the end of October. I'm keeping the story extremely simple because I just want to work on improving my animation. My ball bounce wasn't all that great, and I'm hoping to maybe fix it up over winter break so that it can be a portfolio piece. Maybe.

Sophomore Year

Sophomore year is officially underway!

I've been busy with learning my new schedule, homework, and all that jazz so I haven't had time to really do anything else. Here's a list of the classes I'm taking:

Beginning Painting
Contemporary Literature
Traditional Animation II
Computer Animation I
Concept Development I

The load doesn't seem to be too bad right now, but it's a bit tough trying to work on CA and TA at the same time. Right now time management is key.

I'm living in the Ulla Searing Student Center, which is a whole lot nicer than Harmon Hall, where I lived last year. I'm rooming with my friend Kayla, which I think I mentioned before, and it's going good.

I probably won't be able to post my work up for awhile since I don't really have any right now. So stay tuned!

End of Freshman Year

So... tomorrow is my last day of my first year of college. It's kind of a sad thought, yet exciting at the same time. As of right now I'm sitting in my room, which feels like a jail cell since all I have is two suitcases worth of stuff to bring home. Everything else is already shipped home or in storage for the summer. Technically I should be working on my last self-portrait for my art history class, but first I need to finsih watching The Hobbit (the one from 1977!)

I leave Wednesday and will not return until late-August. I'll be heading back home to Minnesota!! I miss it there; the people, the seasons, friends and family, and just... everything. I'll still be working at Ebenezer Ridges, the old folkes home where I work in the kitchen, and I'll also be taking two summer courses at Dakota County Technical College. So I'll be pretty busy this summer between family, friends, work, school, and working on my art.

I DEFINITELY plan to work on my art. This whole year I've hardly had any time to work on any personal projects so I've kept images and a log of things that I've wanted to draw, and I plan to do them ALL this summer. There's also a chance I might be doing some children's book illustrations, so I have my fingers crossed. I also need to be working a bit in Autodesk Maya over the summer; at least to get familiar with the program for next semester. They call Maya the "monster" here lol

I also can't wait for next year to come because I'll actually be starting to work in COMPUTER animation. Hense the need to learn the Maya interface. Plus I'll be living in the student center with my bud Kayla. So I'll have my own bathroom and a common room with a TV! This year was really hard without a common area; I simply need to get out of my room sometimes but I don't have anywhere to go do work unless I call someone.

Sweetness

hahahahaha

Summer Approaching

So it looks like this summer I'm going to be taking two liberal arts classes at Dakota County Technical College (DCTC) back home in Minnesota. It's awesome because the credits transfer to Ringling so I'll get some classes out of the way to clear up space to work on my senior thesis in the future. Not to mention the price difference!!

DCTC= $140/credit
Ringling=$1,200/credit

DAMN!! lol Needless to say this seems like an excellent way to spend part of my summer.

SONY Storyboarding

So today from 8:30am to 3:15pm (with a lunch break of an hour in the middle) a couple of Story Artists from SONY came to Ringling today and delivered a presentation to Computer Animation majors. It was frickin awesome! Although some of the information and terms they used was all new to me because the presentation was actually aimed more toward the juniors. At least I'll know some terms before we actually learn them in class :)

Anyway, they showed some of their storyboards for their animated films, along with live-action movies like Spider-Man 2, and had us watch some movie clips. The clips from movies included American Beauty, Jaws, Spider-Man 2, and a few others that I can't remember. The two guys basically analyzed the compositions of the shots in those films and described how they were done.

What I enjoyed most was when we watched two shorts from Ringling juniors in the audience, and the two SONY guys gave them advice on how to create a successful set-up for the character(s), any changes they should make to make the piece more... dynamic, for lack of a better word.