Week 15, Semester 1

» Written on December 16, 2010 at 3:26 PM «

So it’s over. This semester, at any rate.

It’s hard to summarize how I feel at this point. It’s been rather hectic, the past few weeks, mainly because I was juggling a cacophony of projects at once, along with the newly-added dangers of the environment.

I am, of course, talking about snow.

Let me illustrate, perhaps, with what words alone cannot describe. After all, I’m training myself to be a better artist, aren’t I? Surely photography counts!

This was the view that greeted me 2 weeks ago outside my apartment’s window, at approximately 0815 hrs local time.

15 minutes later, this greeted me instead:

That’s right. Approximately tw0 inches of snow dropped in the time it took me to wake up, take a shower, and get ready for school. Which was cancelled after half a day, joyfully. And fortunately, the workload seemed to drop after that, and never did pick up again with the same kind of intensity that the inital weeks had provided to my almost-dead brain.

But finally, I’m here, and the semester’s almost over, with one tiny hurdle that I have to cross: a final online exam which won’t let me take it due to technical bullshit and the Moodle CMS that DigiPen uses being a bitch. Hopefully that gets resolved by tomorrow, so that I can actually, you know, take the fucking quiz.

So the burning question that most of my previous acquaintances and, to a certain extent, family, have been asking me is: have I improved? My answer remains the same as it did from the start of the semester. In terms of actual skill, no. In terms of mindless practice, yes.

Well, maybe my frame-by-frame animation has improved, if only a little bit. I can’t understand the mindless adherence to the so-called 12 Principles of Animation, though, and the general disdain towards anime and other types of animation in general.  But that could be a whole story on its own, and, to give credit where it’s due, animation class was about the only class I found worthwhile this entire semester, even though my work for it was probably among my worst.

Of course, I’m not counting the utterly useless English classes (if they could even be called classes per se), film studies, or “Biology” assignments that we were given for those 3 classes respectively. While I did tackle those assignments with as much enthusiasm as I could muster under the circumstances, I cannot understand why people find it odd that I choose to disregard those classes in light of my overall goal, which is to develop my drawing abilities with both traditional and digital media in general. If it doesn’t help me towards that end, fuck it. I’ve had enough of my time and money wasted on complete useless bullshit, and I’d like not to have to go through it again a second time, thank you very much.

I’m currently in the process of working on (yet) another project, one that will (again) hopefully see the light of day this time. While I’d rather not go into details at this point because I know I’ll only be disappointing myself yet again if I fail to see it through, I did want this post, made at the end of a milestone, if rather insignificant one, to have some meaning. Therefore, since I am in the process of scanning my current sketchbooks, I’ll just end off with my final ART101 project for the semester: a self-portrait.

Yeah. It’s nowhere near perfect, and frankly I’m a little disappointed with how it turned out, but at least I’m more comfortable with pen and ink for the time being. Sure as hell  is cleaner than charcoal, at any rate.

And I just realized I haven’t actually uploaded the final result of my Biology thumbnails and such, so why not? Here is the result of really quick, ugly and moronic speedpainting with the good ol’ tablet.

I think you’ll agree with me when I say it’s absolutely grotesque magnificent. Truly, a candidate for the bonfire keeper for the ages.

   

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