listening to japanese metal-screamo.

visiting CalArts the mon-wed after easter. trying to set up a tour, information session (with the head of the film/video school, for animation), and a class sit-in in the same couple of days.

gotta love tommy, but he exasperates me. i like scripts, i like planning things out before doing them, i dont think a movie can be done on improv. but he has a certain idea in his head. he can have all the ideas he wants. he's gotta tell people that no, that wasn't quite right, just do it a bit in this direction. i dont like the idea in his head that im some useless person. yes, i probably could understand that chaos theory book, thank you. yes, i would like to look at that book on design. "but its about economical stuff you dont like." i cant have these arguments out loud because you can't argue with someone who knows that they are right.

sigh the film will be over soon. i can only try my best.

i can hear the rain through the roof of the house

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qsx0uF80n8U

the world is a great, great place. anyways this was done by Craig McCracken, who also was the idea-head of Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends and Dexter's Lab. He went to CalArts. I've been trying to do my research, and im trying to get a set of questions for the people there. i still need to find out when im going over break, and try to film SOuL CANDY before that. after that i have editing to do (i would like to find some downloadable version of PC final cut so that i can edit at home) and ill have to get together with mike about some sorta scoring for the film. i think i can do some of that myself, though, and ask him about things. he's going to be busy with other things. i'll only have to learn music theory and how to score movies ^_^.

overall, a productive if not painful day.

handburns and music

i burnt my hand today. it hurts. i sorta feel like its karma for fighting with my sister. i wont be able to practice bassoon today. or until i can take my hand out of the water without it burning. note-taking tomorrow for school is gonna be interesting. what can i do, if i cant use the palm of my right hand? i guess i can practice bass.

thats the other thing. i took an inventory ofthe musical instruments in my room:

bassoon

guitar

bass

alto recorder

5 soprano recorders, 3 school-grade, 2 colored plastic

2 $2 wooden made-in-india recorders

acoustic guitar that was my moms, but she never played much. at the very least i try to make sure that it gets tuned. the bass is a spring/summer venture.

god i just feel like i cant do anything. i cant take another day off from school. and the photo is gonna be taken today.

i cant sit at home and watch tv. and i cant make excuses. out of everything, why my hand.

i dont like getting hurt physically.

6 JUMBO CHEESE MANICOTTI

Somehow i have the feeling that fancy flour is something that everyone except me has heard of. Or just my generation hasn't heard or it. And these are some of the worst manicotti, too.

Shiny shiny shiny boots of leather

I started meditating in school today. just trying to calm down, breathe deep and slow, slow the heart rate, concentrate on an object. i was up at 5:40, before the sun, to do schoolwork. I was late to school. I spent two hours doing schoolwork before going to school. What kind of existence is that? just all day has been preparing to explain myself for things that are never asked. for multiple classes. and i was so dulled from thursday, and tired from the work in the morning.

i walked about 1/2 a mile at 10pm with a large wooden chair. 

and no one bothers to ask. My mom was once talking about me and i overheard. she said that i would do things just so that i could say i did them. that might be true, but i don't do drugs or drink. I'll walk home with a chair, or 20-ft bamboo pole, or put cucumbers in a basket and deliver them to my friends house on her birthday, or call the local elemetary school to see if i could plant a tree on the property (they didn't get back to me. I had a tree, though.) Not to one-up people, but to see reactions. How does someone react when they see someone crossing a major intersection with a considerable dining-room chair?

Different kind of self-portraits. lots of selfportraits lately. water color water

y color, changed for darker midtones and tinted a little green. been noticing that most of the music i listen to looks like this- swirly and sorta dark and condensed but also comfortable, enclosed. terrible position/proportions in the drawing part, but it was all about the watercolors.

I found a small piece of blue colored pencil. This was done while i was listening to the World's Fair radio thing. i think the lip looks like a mustache a little. and the hat. oh god the hat. i really like from the neck down, though. i think i finally got Jackie's stance for when she was the Giantess. Fashion design desaster too, really.

Not a self-portrait. I found out that the bit of colored pencil was watercolor pencil, so i started using my finger and a little spit to make softer lines. the upper light part of the mouth used to be a lip, but turned into teeth because it looked more convenient.

learning from experiences

listening to: Holst's the Planets, Jupiter. it was stuck in my head afterschool.

today was exhausting mentally. 7.30-8.15, essays on evolution, then- salsa dancing, WWI, Beowulf epic music, power struggle themes in english, turning swirlies into shapes into a theme in art, and trying to understand what art i need to work on after yevgenia, and how i'm going to take what she says and use it in such a way that i can learn from it.

i have to work on background, putting characters into scenes. a lot of that is spacial awareness, and mapping out where the character is before things go on paper. there is also the use of color and design of the illustration or picture by tone. identification at least somewhat complete. now, i have to figure how to start and learn about this.

my mom's trying to figure out a visit to CalArts during break. i would have to set up for a tour and to meet with the people there. ive been getting a little better at those things- calling for pizza, speaking up to order food. its easy to hide behind people when there are three siblings around.

i need to decide how the music for my nick film SOuL CANDY is going to work. i don't have any experience with music-writing, so i'll have to listen to the soundtracks i have. i have an idea of the style. http://www.cirquedusoleil.com/en/shows/corteo/show/video-music.aspx. excerpts from this show are much more serious than my film requires, but the style of it is amazing. I saw the Corteo show summer 2006, and it completely changed 'circus'. these people don't have elephants or glitter. they are clowns, people with a story to entertain, sad or happy. they have wires to fly and ladders to balance and poles to walk. it just made Ringling bros look so stupidly americanized.

no drawings here on account of the work load of the week. catching up and studying and writing worksheets. not fun.

college interests and différance

There are some moments when i just don't realize how my memory could remember things. sure, i studied for that AP Bio midterm, but hell if i thought i would get an 89. i was hoping for a middle B score. But it was all multiple choice- the answer is right there. i was watching Jeopardy. I don't know i still remembered that Chad was land-locked, or that the skeleton in the picture for double jeopardy was of the Flores man. Or that glass isn't liquid or solid. Or that Oxygen has six excess electrons. These are just stupid facts that just help at the wrong time.

Klingons have two circulatory systems. Sherlock Holmes's arch nemesis was prof. Moriarty. Blueberries need acidic soil. I first met Andrew when i was a stagehand in 6th grade during Grease and he was waiting for his cue and reading a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy backstage, and i started reading one of the prop books that contained a robin hood ballad.

but somehow i know that on the test tomorrow, i won't remember the phrase 'Oscillating Selection' or be able to explain how geographic isolation affects speciation and evolution.

but i'll still remember what my first grade teacher's favorite flower is.

Sunflowers.

Différance. always coming but will never get there. but with ideas. i think. the wikipedia entry is actually confusing:

"The first (relating to deferral) is the notion that words and signs can never fully summon forth what they mean, but can only be defined through appeal to additional words, from which they differ. Thus, meaning is forever "deferred" or postponed through an endless chain of signifiers. The second (relating to difference, sometimes referred to as espacement or "spacing") concerns the force which differentiates elements from one another and, in so doing, engenders binary oppositions and hierarchies which underpin meaning itself."

okay. so diffe'rance is the space not only between things- the opposition that defines- but the space in time between things that define things- the defer part. and how do these parts connect other than through time? you define an idea through words, and those words in sense are defined by their opposition. therefore, your idea is given meaning by the words and the differences between the words are what give them meaning. and the meaning of the idea is constantly defered by adding more words to describe it.

mom, my laundry is différance: it's clothes, pants and shirts, that are dirty, not with dirt but with sweat and pen ink, that dirty. and its on the floor too, so its dirty from floor-things. etc.

wubba wubba wubba wubba woo woo woo

Freakish appeal

Beauty, love, ppppppp

q K  R [swirl] Like monsters

In attics

Looking @ mirrors

Discarded + broken

b/c they are monsters

to themselves, only

you're your own mirror

i hope the groups work out. i just have the feeling that i'll end up doing most of the work. im not scared of making choices for creative things. and i guess if people have problems with ideas or decisions, they can complain- as long as they have a solution that everyone or no one is happy with.

this is an older man with a fur hat. no idea. tried more of a 'realistic' approach. pen, about 3 minutes.

by 'today' i mean 'friday'. days should be broken up by sleep, not by As and Ps.

the nick workshop was mildly uneventful. im glad he's back, but i need to be where i was when he left. i need to know my film backwards and forwards, revise the script if it needs it. it probably will need revision. two films at once is a little overwhelming, but ill get past that.

ok, so 4 events happened afterschool.

i passed the first party i didnt belong at.

i saw Milk

i passed the second party i didnt belong at.

and i passed the third party i didnt belong at.

the first party had a few friends in it, but people who were enemies of some of my other friends. they were going one way and i was going another. i said hi, and denied their invitation. but i was invited somewhere, even if it could have caused social tension.

i saw Milk with the other friends. i felt like i should have known a lot of the history of that movie. I should watch it again now that i have the history, to get a fuller inpact. i loved being able to see the little directions in the movie- how one character would follow the other out of the shot, the use of mirror-shots in general were amazing.

i was walking home from walking a friend home, and i passed a party that was finishing. it seemed to be a harmless, rowdy preteen party. but people were shouting on a suburban street at past 11, and getting up on bikes to go home in the cold. it was a little scary. preteens shouldnt be out at all hours, even for a party. party here = 10+ people.

the street i live on has four families with teens living on it. my neighbors are the partying type, and there were girls sitting on the porch talking about other people. and boy did i want to be a part of them. not the clothes, but just to join in a conversation. to listen and observe them speak. but i kept my head forward and crossed to my house. i dug out my keys and kept my head down. it sometimes worries me that my mom doesn't call.

theres this interesting thing about walking past an orange streetlamp. first, things just get bright and you realize you're walking through the shadows of the trees in front of you. then your shadow appears beside you, quickly migrates to the front, and gets longer oh so slowly until i disappears into the sidewalk. then its dark. then you see the upcoming light again.

decent attempts

been listening to japanese metal/screamo. no complaints from the neighbors yet.

got the idea that Pete and Dud resemble Jasper and Horace. but 101 Dalmations is form 1961, and technically Cook and More were in the mid-60s? probably not related except by height.

got some running sequence down. just the legs, but i wanted the hip angle in there. and curves and angles above them represent head places (peoples heads move up and down as they walk, only slightly). then i tried skipping in the same fashion, but that didnt quite work out. ive read the books- this is a first attempt. at least, from memory. these were drawn on two separate papers, so the middle "--" lower part of the step (3rd and 4th figures from the left) are doubled. i think the third image is the better one- the bended far knee has more of a sense of weight to it. oh and the leg with an actual thigh is closer.

extra, extra, american comics more offensive

Bedazzled was amazing just because it questioned the paradoxes of religion without insulting it and directly pissing people off. this is something i miss a lot in modern american comics- jeff dumham is often offensive (stereotypes taken to extremes), dane cook just repeats stupid facts from life with more cursing, sarah silverman has her moments, but can be downright mean. there's no smart in it, more, no basis of smart. jokes are said for the drunken laughs. nuns on trampolines, at least, is not mean, and it really isn't shown as a joke- the characters are perfectly serious about leaping. it definately pokes fun at church seriousness (my dad's favorite example is the "Our Lady of Perpetual Woes and Sorrow Nursery School"). Dane cook would have made a comment on the nuns and made either a Sound of Musical reference or a sex joke about it.

Sun and Moon gods. and other person with bird nose and dysfunctional hair. Left (non-dominant) hand. would look nice inked, but there's no time for that this week.

watercolored self portraits about hair

these are entitled "why is that piece always out" and "ode to that curly mess i found at 5:30 this morning."

the Domesticated Silver Fox

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoteny

the idea: toy or unusually small dogs are used to represent children.

The idea came from the growing amount of little dogs being coddled by adult women in public. Look- i can still take care of children. I am young, I am healthy, I am a good mother. but this doesn't take into account young women with small dogs, unless the same idea is there: I am young, I am healthy, I am a good mother.

my street used to be a cat street. now, there are at least 3 dogs less than 20 pounds yapping all day.

museum and facial structure

i need to return to the museum with a sketchbook, pencils, a watercolor set, and an invisibility cloak so no one will question me.

thought about elven facial structure during english SAT prep. there's a good diagram in the Dungeons&Dragons Player's Guide (v3.0 i think) of the different races and their facial/body structure. hair was a problem, though.

back to the drawn animation

the princess and the frog. it comes out Dec 11. this is an interview with John Lassater... while it certainly doesn't get into the creative processes behind him, it has a short Pixar history and more Up footage. <3.

misty day

yay for continuing the yevgenia workshop! we really needed the extra time to figure out illustrating. im not quite sure what she means when she asks if i can use the style that is my own, rather than cartoon. i guess i have a very wide definition of 'cartoon'. i originally wanted to illustrate the story like scenes in a stained-glass window, but i'll have to add the integrity of my usual style. back to character/costume design.

got to work on some shading with watercolors. the contrast between the dark and the warm colors. and i needed practice drawing caps. also a failed Neil Patrick Harris attempt. ooh i forgot to color his ear... and eyes and brows and hair oops.

orange snail

And the teacher knows i draw during AP bio, too. At this point, as long as im copying the notes, she doesn't seem to mind. and we were learning about snail coloration anyway.

Wrote ss hw in quill and ink. and it's probably not going to be collected. she collects HW randomly. HW should always be collected. its a promise made between teacher and student: the student does the hw, the teacher collects it. this has been a problem, especially with history hws, when teachers only collect hws they feel like collecting.

ink, frantonis, 6 disney tapes

Velvet Underground <3.>

howcantreesrecognizeus. wealllookthesame.

One kind of bravery is about doing things even though you're scared of disappointment, and getting over that fear of disappointment to do something that must be done. This bravery is when you have something to do, but public opinion and social discrepancies are in the path of your goal.

Another kind of bravery is exposing yourself to uncertainty. There is the chance of disappoinment, there are a lot of chances, but there is an underlining foreshadow around actions. There is even the chance of a positive outcome, but you are scared because you dont know.

i must rethink this, and consider how time and mortality play in these ideas.

weekend

The. show. went. amazing. like versus the crash and burn that was expected.

the russian story is confusing, and i sorta want to illustrate it like a stained-glass window. simple colors, breaking everything into simple shapes. looks like i left those drawings at school. well. this is the prototype for Marusia.

the Doctor and the monkeys are here, too. The monkeys- Milton's smoking, Swift has too-small glasses, and Kafka is basically an unkept midwest-diner waitress. Their costumes are based on the idea that they were dressed by people who don't really know how to dress them. Swift's glasses are too small, but it doesn't bother him because he doesn't know better.

the Doctor (name i forgot) has questionable motivations. originally, he was some ex-hippie who went into science to get away from things, and now is having too much fun with behavioral science. But i thought back to the instance in the script when Milton shows some 'typical agression' and get a cigarette. the doctor is scared. hes also doing this experiment to get a grant, because his vetenary skills are lacking. thats where this late-thirties guy with thinning hair came from.

Yegenia workshop, pen and ink

Started on final character design sheets for the workshop. Character design and the costume design. I was pretty surprised that Yugenia (Yegenia) complimented- not the word- didn't criticize?- the way she has of accepting that this thing you made is a qualifying vision of the general concept. After my lack of understanding of any structural integrity, this 'compliment' was sort of surprising. Especially after showing the Unique project to a fine artist (Hea's, and soon to be my, boss at A Gathering of Artists). Her reaction was "That's.. cute.". I accepted that as 'i should have showed her i understand the basics of human-drawing first' and 'she might not be able to see what i can see'. which doesnt mean either of us are wrong, just that we see things differently.

i realize that cartoon designs have to have a basis of realism. You can't mess with arm-torso proportions until you know what the proportions are first.

This guy was done in indian ink and a quill-pen (a nib with some metal and paint). The set of his lips is so english. Played with the shadows, midtones, and this tool 'Gamma' (what does this do?). I like how ink looks through a scanner. It's a lot cleaner than pencil, in most ways.

Cold Doctor

This was supposed to be a character design for Yugenia's workshop, but it's too severe. He is., because the design leaves no room for any warmth. No eyes, only one hand (and even that is covered), an extremely phallic syringe. The coat itself covers up a shirt. The lack of defining jaw bone makes the character less 'manly', which leads to the idea that the clothes and syringe are add-ons to make him appear manly. And, yes, this level of design (even though i don't have a definate standard, therefore no 'level' to compare to) is in most of projects. The Unique project (Conversations in Paint II is too long) needs to be finished, and the cold doctor needs to be a character there.

Wow the ears are uneven. Technically, he's 5 1/2 heads high, too.

This is a wonderfully-worded sentence that connects character design to art as a career.

I have an AP bio test tomorrow. AP bio is one of the most demanding classes in the school, and i'm surrounded by the future doctors, lawyers, and businessmen of the generation. but the more i learn in that class, the more i realize how much i want to go to art school. Character animation at CalArts. bringing 4D into drawing, and drawing non-stop. ill still study for my bio tests, and hopefully get a 4 on the ap test, but its not what im going to be doing forever.

from now on, there should be a picture with every post. i have a working scanner now.