end of 2011

at an uneven number. I've left the 'party' and my cat is in my lap. But there are some things that should happen in 2012, especially before summer.

I should start a series. Comic, blog, tumblr, whatever, I should serialize something. College cooking, perhaps. Political cartoons. Anything.

I should be able to drive on highways.

That is all. I'll say that it's an okay 2012 attempt.

video games

I have found Railroad Tycoon II, and I have installed it on the ancient XP in the basement. THe good news is that the basement is where the exercise equipment is. The bad news is that television is horrible and I shouldn't watch it. Even history channel feels like a horrible joke, exploiting mental illnesses and having ghost shows.

I've also been playing Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass on a borrowed DS, until I find out what's wrong with mine and try to fix it.

I also must clean the Christmas-present mess from my room. I received a lot of things that secured my place in the kitchen, and I'm not ungrateful.

Some crazy part of me really likes going to bed at 12:34am. It just feels correct in an odd way. I've been sleeping something like 9 or 10 hours every night, amazing. I am remembering my strange dreams more and more.

15 more would just be pointless

I have finished my Christmas-shopping. Gift-giving is pretty exciting, but I always don't know if what I get is okay. I think, this year, I did well.

The more I am out of the house, the less I eat. I also don't snack nearly as much as I remember I did. The other day I even got to use the stationary bike for a while, which was nice. It feels great to get moving.

After two nights of air-mattress sleeping, I've decided to go back to my bed.

I'm not quite sure where I am right now, but I don't yearn to be home. There are people I like to see, but I'd rather be at school, even though I don't know people there as well as I know my friends back home.

sleep in

I got to sleep in!
If by sleeping in you mean that I got to wake up at 630am, wake my roommate up, and wake up every hour after that from a nightmare made of anxieties from normal life. I'll try again after.

Today is an easy, cleaning type of day. The floor has been vacuumed, mopped, and swifter-swept. The dishes are done (more or less). And the pudding is in the freezer ^__^.

I'd like to eat animal cracker sandwiches with frozen pudding middles to celebrate the end of the semester. (Such a dry floor resident.)

I think I've done it.

One of the biggest things for next semester is tackling this procrastination.
I believe this will start with a better dish-washing routine.

Right now, my turntable for 3D modeling is rendering. It's rendering very quickly, actually. I may have done something wrong. I learned how to render animations 3 hours ago. I'll post the turntable when I'm done. Tomorrow, maybe. And I want to post my animation, even though I'm not proud of it. I should be, but I'm not.

Just keep playing that calm music and breathe and it'll be over soon.

a long, abusive day

This is a post that shall serve me later in life.
Today was my first set of real finals. Or, more aptly, almost-finals. Today I showed work, almost complete, not complete enough.
Today I saw what I should have done two or three weekends ago.

I almost choked up with the pressure and the futility, but then I just became... It's a fight. You fight until the very end not to choke, not to twitch or fidget or jitter, and you laugh at whatever small joke you can, but you know that the judgement in the room is a blanket over the community that we try to create as people of the same major.

and then my half-finished animation was shown.
It's like reading aloud a rough draft of an essay in front of a class, not just handing it in.


and in the end I just mentally moved on to the next impossible challenge, an art history exam.

and in two days I have everything due.

and could I ever be friends with these people? I see them. I see their biting remarks and weaknesses, they all have different ticks and problems and unresolved issues. We all come out in the art (even though we hide it). It feels as if all of the niches have been filled in these social groups/cliques around me.

It isn't futile. It's just difficult. And I always feel that I can work harder, but lately I've been reaching the 'Screw it' point. It's at night, when you just have no will to move on. My most recent one was at 530am, after some sleep, when I thought to myself, I will not be able to finish this animation even if I worked very hard right now for four hours. And I went back to sleep for an hour.

What have I learned this semester? I've learned beginnings, and they are always the hardest part.
Later, I'm sure, I'll have my lists of things to do next semester.

Still going for more posts

Light-box working in my room. I planned to take a nap last night, and didn't get out of bed till 630 this morning. Ugh.

Less than 100 sheets of blank paper, and I have something like 20 seconds of animation to do in a weekend. At least the hole-puncher is free on monday.

In the meantime, I have work in every other class. So I'll get that done.

(no subject)

That project received a less-than-10-minute critique.

: (

Chrysanthemum

My fingers are permanently dirty. My feet are probably worse. My nails have grown long enough that I've noticed them. I'm pretty sure that my hair is clean and I remember that I've showered about once a day for the last 3 or 4 days. I feel very lucky that someone bought me dinner yesterday, it was my first real piece of meat in a week.

I have one more flower after this. I will do it tonight, probably out of a cone because I'm decently lazy at this point.

I think, if I am able to arrange my piece successfully, it will look nice.

Chrysanthemums. Personally a favorite. Some of the petals actually do fall into each other, and it looks very computerized, but I'm quite fond of these. I specifically changed my pink light to light orange. Chrysanthemums that look pink are a little sickening.

Snowdrops and Workflows

Snowdrop flowers. The inside texture includes a failure from photoshop- I forgot to turn off the Layer containing my UV texture editor snapshot lines. My light is slightly less pink.

Helped a senior color his final project, using Flash and a lot of Eye-Dropper -> Paint Bucket commands. I really like this coloring- there are pretty finite rules with wiggle room in inconsequential areas.

I've also been watching a lot of TED Talks.

I decided that I would follow my own world-flow path. I do not particularly like staying awake into the late night. I still partially fear that the sun will not rise if I stay up later than 2am (though that may be exhaustion). And my productivity decreases if I have less than 7 hours of sleep.
"Normal" is different for everyone, and I know right now that some part of me primally rejects staying up all night. Someday I might.
I tried yesterday to wake up earlier. I was sitting in front of a computer at 6, feeling awake, and watched the sunrise. I can't imagine it any other way. If I sleep from 11pm to 5am, I think I can make it through finals.

Aster

This is a rather poor aster, but the idea is fine. And from a distance, it isn't that bad >_<.
I ma try to add a second bump to the middle so that it's not so.. glow-y.

Next is a snowdrop. Then, sleep.

Morning Bird gets things done

This is what I did this morning, before noon.

A rose, still in production, but looking decent. And a checkerboard next to it.

A poppy and poppy-bud, with simple color. I put it in the vase. The vase is supposed to have water in it, but I don't quite understand how to do that with the refractions/reflections. So I just duplicated the vase, cut off the top, colored it black, upped the transparency, made it smaller, and put it inside. And I don't know what's up with the wood texture, but it's trolling me. 2 lights +reflection in the table.

Second go, changed the second light to a nice pink (and its shadow to green). The black background is unsettling.

I need to make more flowers. *bane of my life.*

3D Modeling progress

Surprise! This is due Tuesday! next tuesday, not a week from tuesday.

I made a directional light for the scene, painted the orange-yellow texture, smoothed the middle part, and made texture/translucency things for the petals. I still need to make the leaves, and their bump-mapping. Their color will be interesting. Yay.

Reach 80 by the end of the year.

Well, shit. 2011 is almost gone. Since I've made it this far on the blog, I'd like to get an even number of posts. Goal? 80. I should also look to find out if I made and forgot any resolutions.