Happy Yule!

My parents laid off the booze long enough to compromise with school. So, I am taking classes in the Spring but not as many as i had hoped but that is isn't because of financial issues but because it is a gradual incline of cases I have to take with one class before the next or qualify for the next level. So far, i am taking Video Art, Experimental 3D, and Postmodernism in the Visual Arts.

I am making the most of my career towards animation. I am practicing with GIFs and working at improving more digital media and trying to make the most of what I can do as an Animation student to add to my portfolio. Here is an image I did for yule. it can also correspond with X-mas and Winter, obviously.

I named the girl Xtal, which is an abbreviation for Crystal i use in text-messaging. She is a Witch of the Storm. The Ice Princess of the Winter Skies. To name a few titles. In my mind, I had intended on creating her to harness the power of the snowflake sand coming from her hand. However, in the midst of creating the animation GIF, I was more focused on getting it to work. The process, if you will. I was working on how to put two different GIFs together as one.

Little did i know, that it isn't a matter of layering two different files on top of one another, because Photoshop doesn't allow you to upload a GIF only to create them. So, what I did was: As I was working on the glow from the lantern glows and added them them to my GIF of the snowflakes falling and every four layers of the snowflakes, I added a glow. And the snowflakes came from a video I brought into Photoshop and made the frames into layers and limited them by 10 and within a certain selection.

Here is an example: 

So, Merry Yule and X-mas to everyone! I support them both and celebrate X-mas more as a tradition than a religious holiday. And I celebrate Yule because I believe in Pagan traditions and beliefs. I love everything about Yule. It's history, it's traditions that most Christians use today in Christmas, it's colors, it's elements, its objects, and its symbolic metaphors of objects and traditions. It's a beautiful holiday that starts around the Winter Solstice (Dec 21st) and 21 happens to be my favorite and lucky number. It seems to follow me every where like a curse. 

Good-bye Education...

Well, I guess I can kiss my entire education career good-bye. My parents obviously don't give a fuck about the last 6 six classes I have left before I graduate because the fees I have to pay for the school is outrageous. There are fees on there I can't control because of what my ID card is used for and they are throwing a big fit about it costing so much. Well, college is not like what is was like when they were little. Gas did not cost 19 cents a gallon. And I can't afford to pay for a tank of gas every week just to make up and down the highway, a dangerous highway with a car that has been falling apart and been needing maintenance for months now for who knows what, and apparently I might have to do that because they are going to kick me out of the dorm and force me to commute for good. Well, why not just not go to school at all and be college drop outs like they were. People who didn't really go to college and neither did my fucking brother. Do they really want me to head down that road where I could possibly be a fuck disappoint like he is?

The payment for classes is due tomorrow and forget I even mention it after they have fucking drank their asses off of whiskey. I don't know why they drink every fucking night. I don't find it healthy especially for their mood swings and mindsets. They are so far up their own asses it isn't even funny. They think that their days are the good ol' days and that life should be just like it was during their time. Well, things change and the future isn't cheap. 20 dollars may have been a crapload of money in their time but now it is worth nothing compared to what things cost nowadays. Things are not as cheap as they were and they need to fucking accept that.

So, who knows if I am going to come back next Spring at all for college. Who fucking knows. Apparently my dad will handle it but why is my mom in such a bitchy mood lately? She acts as if the whole world is against her and that no one cares. Well, she needs to stop drinking at night and lay off the smokes, she is just a bitch. A short, little bitch who thinks the government is controlling this nation, they are outlawing everything now or putting restrictions on them, that no one gives a damn in this house, and that everyone else is at fault. She is such a drama queen. The victim in everything around her and never willing to accept and open-minded view, let alone agree on things other people consider. She is more close-minded than I gave her credit for. I thought she was cool with some libertarian ideals and okay with accepting others of different race and orientations, but things like gender equality with there being more than just male and female is confusing and new and something she doesn't understand. Well, she needs to accept that things are never going to be up to her expectations and it isn't always a bad thing. That things are going to change and we need to accept them. She can't be stubborn all the time. Horoscopes said that she and I need to watch out for each other. We are so far opposite it isn't even funny.

Program

I MADE IT INTO MY MAJOR'S PROGRAM!

I passed the portfolio review and now an official New Media Art Student. I am looking towards actual classes toward my major and requesting permission numbers to take them for the Spring. I have roughly 6 classes left before I graduate and I have already been looking for where to apply towards Animation and within apartments nearby the studios of my choice. I'm happy about starting my major but now considering it is the break, I am looking towards relaxing, drawing, family time, the holidays, and much more. I still wish I could find my cat but so far, things haven't been too bad. Just wish for the best.

Here's hoping! <3

Watercolor Ain't Easy...

I can't handle these paintings. We had to do three of them and they are due tomorrow and I am only about 60% done. I had a lot of complications with the sketches and the skin tone colors. I am just not ready to turn them in yet. I need to do the third one really quick with washes first and then finish the backgrounds on the other two. I just really don't like how poorly organized this class is.

The teacher piles on projects, one on top of the other. Right in the middle of one assignment, she throws another one on us that is due a class after the one we were working on. Not to mention the end-of-class presentations on artists she wants to get through for our quiz in a week now. I really think she should do the presentations first in the beginning of the class and get them out of the way because some of us have a class 15-minutes after that one ends and need to factor in travel time and for me, dressing out time for Yoga. She seems to not understand that we don't have time to make it all the way back to the room to do work and use the materials there and to finish these in such a small time frame. She is putting too much on us at once and I have literally suffered health problems because of it. I have suffered not only a staple in the finger from that class, but also stress and lack of eating issues that could result in me having hypoglycemia. I not only have the paintings to work on for her class but also other projects and assignments or tests to study for in the others. I thought watercolor would be fun but so far it has been more hectic than even Business Communication where we actually have notes, assignments, and tests to worry about. I have been physically injured and unhealthily weak. It has not been a good semester for me.

I am waiting on going to my next class so I can come back, buy more paint, get the paintings from my car and then start painting again. Who knows if I will even have time for dinner. I might just buy a soda and fix a sandwich here or have leftover taco bell, yum....

So, when the teacher reviews come out, I am going to diss the class and its organization but leave some less than positive comments about the teacher saying that although she is passionate about watercolor and a nice person, she has difficulties perceiving the overload and unorganized layout of how she runs the class. She piles on one project after the other right in the middle of another one leaving the due dates too soon to even compile a constructive piece of work, producing lectures at the end of the class rather than at the beginning and sometimes running over time, and providing too many assignments within one semester. She needs to spread the assignments out further, work on giving presentations early, and provide a little more free time in class to work on pieces.

She can't expect creativity to just pop out at any given time we ask. It is a process that takes time to compile and perceive. We aren't robots who can instantaneously provide what she needs of us as painters. She focuses too highly on the technical side of watercolor painting such as the techniques in the beginning of the semester and not enough focus on the producing time of actual projects. Some artists work slower than others and can't be rushed so easily unlike others. Some artists take time and effort in their work rather than simply producing something out of the blue whenever she wants.

I am almost tempted on skipping tomorrow because this is just too much to handle. I really want to turn in completed works of art that I am proud to show in class rather than simply turning in a half-assed done painting that obviously looks like I needed more time to work on. It is just ridiculous her schedule. I don't see how anyone can fit within it's restrictive format.

Tumblr Sucks! So Here it is!

I am working on a Glitch Project for my New Media Art class.

Brief History of Glitch Art: Glitch art, like Pop art, is an amorphous term - a canopy who's tenants slip under and out of. These terms can be expanded to include much more than might immediately come to mind. This is because at their core they're simply a loose link to a key concept: the interest in the "mistake", the interest in "popular culture". Pop's link to culture is an important one here; it critically responds to culture primarily by appropriating it. Glitch art often has similar layers of appropriation at play. The first is the same as Pop art: the content found in many glitch works are commonly borrowed from popular culture. The second layer is the appropriation of the glitch itself. Though an artist can create/instigate glitches (s)he will often intentionally/ideologically not do this. Instead choosing to search for them by exploring the digital landscape and catching them (screen grabbing, recording, etc.) when they occur. In this way glitch art is like Pop art.

Programs used:
Final Cut Pro X
FFMPEG
AVIDEMUX

Concept: A series of memes, videos that have become viral or popular and start incorporating themselves within society or everyday speech, and distorting the popularity through errors to heavily focus or draw the viewer in more to the individuality of each video and of the glitches themselves as the glitches become more and more frequent and unrecognizable as original videos.

Society sometimes forgets that memes are not always a cluster of overpowering thoughts, but individually beautiful in their own way. And by viewing this, hopefully, the viewer will realize that this is basically the brain being overrun by fragments of memories, forgotten and distorted as if unable to remember the video in full because of the individual moments within the video that spoke louder to them than others.

This video is not finished! I still have more to do with it but enjoy what I have so far. :3 I like watching the progress heighten with each add-on.

They See Me Rollin' They Hatin'

So, after a long, stressful week of trying to finish a painting I absolutely hated, I am finally back on track with stuff I am more interested into. Right now, we are working on our Glitch Art projects where we distort videos by using programs like FFMPEG and AVIDEMUX. We data mosh two videos together, put them all together in Final Cut Pro X and then add the original sound or edited sound to it.

I am doing a concept on Popularity Beauty within Error, where I take all these videos on memes or popular videos that have gone viral and have become the mainstream overflow of the internet and data moshing them to make them seem like a clutter of information and and overload within the human mind. That with all of these popular memes out there controlling the web today, it has become this memory of distorted images and clutter within the mind and glitches within the internet. My teacher says I have a lot of great concepts but sometimes I need to push it to where people understand them better than I can explain it. Here is a sample of what I have so far. I am going to add white noise and more errors to it and kind of taking on an approach Nick Briz has done with his "A New Ecology for the Citizen in a Digital Age." I think it's a beautiful vid and a great example of Glitch Art. Youtube it!

And in Watercolor I am working on a series of three different paintings where the overall concept relates to all three of them. My concept for that one is taking the deaths of pets and relating them within the human condition. We always say that our pets are like family, that they are our babies, our loved ones we can't live without but then we go and do stuff like flush them down the toilet, euthanize them, and sacrifice them or kill them for rituals and cruel pranks. So I have used a lot of perspective and foreshortening in my three thumbnails and having a goldfish guy coming out of the toilet, an old dog man holding a syringe and a black cat slashing his hand in a Satanic ritual. I am going to work on it in Gouache because I really love it. You can get the vibrant full colors as well as transparent in it and it is a lot easier to do both than with transparent. I am working on the thumbnails right now in watercolor. 

Also in my Watercolor Midterm Critique, the teacher told me I am a natural watercolor painter and one of her bests this semester. I was even a little shocked by that. She said I had great use of color, composition, and values. The only thing I need work on in that class are the concepts. And sometimes feels like I am a little restricted in my use of topics and ideas in that class with all of the assignments she puts on us, sometimes two at a time which is just an overload for me. I really need to do one thing at a time and one right after the other. Kind of like how I eat my food, one item at a time. xD LOL

I have been pretty busy and swamped with everything going on and was actually sick from the stress last week and wasn't able to sleep well for two nights in a row. Now I am well rested and have a lot of energy. I have been watching Pewds and Cry play Lucius and I really want to play it now. Pewds is playing Shadow of the Collosus and it is just like the game Ico I use to play with my friend Katie when we were younger. We loved doing the pelvic thrust jump and fooling around. xD Lol but I think SOTC has much better graphics and a beautiful ST. So I am looking forward to watching Pewds play it. :3

PS: To view the vid, pause the music down below. There's no need to have both. :3 

New Media Art Development

So I have been really into my major lately, more so than normal. It is probably because I am almost done with my undergraduate degree towards New Media Art aiming for Animation, specifically character design in animation. I am in the Intro to New Media Art right now and it has been really invigorating and informative towards the subject and its sub branches and sub categories, animation included.

I have also added two classes in Advanced New Media Art and Expiramental 3D to my class list for Spring, but I need to submit to the portfolio review by mid November and get a written permission from my teacher to allow me into the advanced classes in the degree.

I am still not sure if I want to graduate school. I feel that my parents might disapprove considering it would mean more time, money, and college and they have been wanting me out of Brookhaven and UNT for almost a year now. I get really annoyed when they start complaining or tell me that I was only suppose to be in college for four years, believing entirely that meant four physical years since 2007 when really it means by the credit hours of four grade levels and 30 credits per grade level. I am a Senior now and hopefully almost done. Hopefully by the end of next Spring or Summer, I will graduate and be able to move on towards my career.

Since my career implies my advance intelligence, practice, and experiment in animation, I have been looking up Animation Studios across the country. A few I have my heart set on are: Pixar, Funimation, Bandai Entertainment, and Dreamworks. I really don't want to work for a Disney Corporation. I really don't approve of their legal processes when it comes to copyright restrictions. I do want to work on a team and focus towards animation itself and character designing with drawing the character in a particular style asked and developing the characters and drawing them through out the animation process. I am really working towards that and have been improving and practicing with my anatomy, proportions and personal style. I feel it has helped greatly. Not to mention I am also going to take an Advanced Figure Drawing class to help better that as well. I would love to take a character design class in cartooning and comic styles. If it isn't provided professionally, I would try self-teaching myself the best I can. It's difficult considering it isn't a style I have practiced much in or studied throughly. Hopefully, when I have the time and effort, I will consider practicing in my own cartoon style rather than taking one from another artist or animation series. There's no room for using another style as a crutch.

I love his baby face more...How come he changed in only 5 years?