2-d

Although one can clearly see I'm hard at work over here, its not much work compaired to my 2-d Foundations class. Today i have been sleeping off the late nights spent on painting color charts, sketch book folio assignments, and starting up my second 2-d project.

The project is supposed to be a pattern based design, based on behavioral patterns. My selection was of my habbit of checking my pockets to make sure I didn't lose my phone, keys, or wallet (I do this constantly). I'm going to block print images of myself checking my pockets over a series of locations drawn in a sort of comic book format. I'm required to take a picture of my final product installed somewhere over spring break and I'm not quite sure how that's going to go.

olympics

This week was the week of the 3-d Olympics, a strange event held every year by the 3-D foundations professors. My class/team called ourselves the 13 Dimentions because there was thirteen of us (why else would we have come up with the 13 Dimentions), and our uniforms consisted of our custom made 13D shirts (provided by Sean) encompassed in a flannel shirt of our individual taste.

Upon arrival to the event (held in some sort of Ice-box-watchamawhatsit), our team was to introduce ourselves with a skit. Ours was very half-assed and poorly executed (an introduction was read, a banner with our team name written on it was held up, and we ran through it) because none of us cared much or put in much effort. In my opinion only a jackass would take an opening skit to the 3-D Olympics seriously.

Next our team was split into three demi-teams and sent our separate ways to work on one of three challenges.
My squad's challenge was to build some sort of puppet in 1 hour using the following materials:

Naturally, we started to build a giant monster complete with opening mouth and pinching claws.

Here it is in progress, the snout is based off the design of the stern of one of those canoes that is designed to be suitible for a small outboard or trolling motor (this notion never came up during the construction but I assume its what we were all thinking).

The completed monster was used in yet another skit in which the working claws grabbed teammate Kelly and dragged her into the working mouth (operated by yours truly). The performance was so realistic that I got a little spooked myself, I could only imagine how the audience felt.

 
Naturally, we won that round, killed it in fact. Our class won two out of three competitions yet did not win the whole competition, probably because of our opening skit. Fuck that, real heads know who the true champs are.

landscape

An assignment to be based upon our 2 previous assignments (a drawing of snow and a drawing of the sky); my drawing teacher gave the class the task of going out into the world, sketching something, and then doing anything and everything we wanted to it--getting buck wild, buck nasty, fucking it up, going bananas on the drawing. Aside from the size requirement of at least 4 ft in one direction, it was a very open ended assignment.

I first went out and sketched a local neighborhood at night. Then as directed by the preliminary assignment, I got buck nasty on it.

I wish I had gotten pictures of the sketches I did b4 I changed them because they were pretty good.

Then after a critique, I was onto the 4 ft drawing.

Phase 1: vine charcoal, compressed charcoal, and chalk pastel.

Phase 2: more chalk pastel, more and more.

Phase 3: completion with more chalk pastel, oil pastel in the foreground (to add texture, make it pop, give it some texture, give it the ol' salt n' peppa, give it some zazz, etc..), and the cropping of a few inches off the bottom (for composition's sake).

3-d

A few weeks ago, my classmate Sean and I teamed up for an intense assignment in our 3-d class. The challenge was to involve some sort of collision (or something that got the idea of a collision across)  into a giant inflatable sculpture. We ended up going off of Sean's idea of "Rock-Em Sock-Em Robots" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_%27Em_Sock_%27Em_Robots)and crated two giant robots that were to be set up in fighting stance and lit up by colored spotlights.

For those that don't know this^ is what the classic Rock-Em Sock-Em Robots looked like.

After an intense and lengthy measuring process we cut the basic shapes of the body parts out of a sheet of plastic.

We then began to connect the seams together with duct tape  which took many, many hours.

The final products ended up being roughly 8 feet tall. Although they were a bit top heavy I think they came out pretty good.

New Illustrater

I'm starting to get the hang of Illustrator; for class I made this floor plan of my current sleeping quarters:

Then, after a brief class lesson I felt spunky enough to make this quick logo using n outline of a Google Images eagle. I feel as though anything that comes up on the first 10 pages of a Google Image search should automatically not be copyrighted- just because they are bound to end up being copied and pasted and misappropriated.

I should have just used a blue similar to this for the large print, rather than Santa's pallet.

Illustrator

To kick off or first lesson on illustrator, the computer class was assigned drawings that were created out of various types of letter forms. My follow through was mostly about showing my competence with outlines, transforming lines and letters, among other techniques--I wouldn't consider any of it eye candy.

a Phrase

a pattern..... I assumed that the composition would cut off at the end of the page I was working on, yet all of the unwanted extra bits remain un-cropped; I'll have to inquire about a solution next class. For now picture this fitting into an 8"by 10" frame (or some ratio of that depending on the size in which your monitor displays this image) with the sides being cut off in a way that makes it look like a cool patern and not just a row of A's.

  This one was to be done with minimal usage of the computer mouse- Ideally without using the mouse at all.

Same problem here as with the pattern-- the b and g to the right were thought to have been discarded.

Mosaics

Lately I've been spending a lot of time working on an intense group project for my 3d class. Its because of this that I have been slacking on my reading of The Iliad in my English class. This class is setup in a way so that the lectures transcend group discussions based on questions about the reading. One can see where I'm going with this classic high school type scenario--I was called upon to answer a question about Odyssius. Luckily I have seen the movie the Odyssey (when i was 7), so I was able to concoct a convoluted half mumbled half rambled answer based on that.
I was woried after though, because I remembered from Latin Class in high school (this all could have been avoided if I had gotten higher grades in Latin--I would be much more familiar with the story. In fact my Latin class may or may not have translated the entire story--I wouldn't know because I never participated or did homework)...that Ulysses was the captain from the Odyssey. I was convinced that my professor didn't correct me because he wanted me to look foolish.
After a trip to wikipedea though, I was reminded that Ulysses is meerly the Latin name for Odyssius.
So basically what i learned from the Mosaics lecture is that Latin class does in fact help you later in life (or at least it could if you pay attention).

Photoshop

To go along with the theme of our previous routine assignment, our class' introduction to photoshop was followed with the task of grafting our photos with scans of various objects. It was pretty cut and dry for me because I didn't explore many new areas of photoshop and because what was new to me was pretty easy to get the hang of.

Here's the jump drive I purchased from the staples downtown.

A scanned closeup of two of my new brushes, the very same ones hat can be spotted in this photo--interesting stuff....

And finally, my essential tools for getting through the last assignment and future assignments too; my camera and computer.


>.....,,,.<.<>><..<.<>,.<>.<.,>.,,,.<<,><,,.,.<>,.<..><<.,...><...<.,>.><<..,...<>.,>,.,.,.,>,,,.<<.,.<.>,>,><...

Abroad

Being that I've never really thought about studying abroad, today's Foundations lecture could have been a useful tool for making a decision on how to spend  future year here at school.
About a minute or two into the presentation I realized that I never thought about studying abroad for a reason--it doesn't appeal to me at all. Speakers discussed studio type environments in Rome and Japan and I just couldn't get into it. Don't get me wrong, if someone handed me tickets to Japan or Rome I'd hop all over the opportunity, but it would be to get away from doing work ("relaxation"). That's what traveling is more about for me, actually getting a chance to see a new place and not just at bars after work either; that's not shit to me. I'm somewhat "O.C.D." (maybe just overly curious) about learning my surroundings, weather it be by foot or car I'm always going to be looking for something (or nothing) to get into. This is why the slides of students busy at work in the depths of a studio made me think "what a waste of a vacation--traveling so far away to do the same shit I'm doing right now."
By the end of the seminar I was setting a personal record for the most awkward position I've ever fallen asleep in-- an extreme slouch in my chair with the lower 75% of my back lying flat on my chair and my legs straight out in the aisle. The top of my torso was propped upright by the back of my chair while my backpack acted as a blanket. I awoke in a daze when people started to trip over my feet.