Dear Winterites,
You’ve read me write this before and I’ll write it again, Monday’s classes are basically the most useless. This week’s Monday was even worse than normal. We played Pictionary. Let me start off by stating that I’m one of those weird people who actually hates games. In a classroom setting, I like them even less. So, the fact that we just played a game made me roll my eyes. I know our profs are doing their best to give us an education and all, but I don’t think this particular class has been all that thought through. Like, what even is its purpose? I’d love to know.
At least we got let out early. I went straight to getting work done so the morning wouldn’t feel like a complete waste of time. Skyped with my best friend so we could keep each other accountable in the various tasks we both hoped to accomplish throughout our day.
There is something odd that I discovered while working on homework. I had been saving my assignments as new versions so I could make changes without the older versions being affected, just in case I made a horrible mistake and needed to start over. Well, as it turns out, all the changes I made were carrying over into the previous versions. Um. Not good. Right now, it isn’t a huge deal, but I’m glad I found this out now rather than when I was working on some major assignment and discovered all my previous efforts had been corrupted. Now I know to use a different saving method instead of the new version method.
(Honestly how I feel half the time.)
During Tuesday’s class, I focused on tweaking my feather. It requires a lot of concentration, but it’s not entirely unenjoyable. I joined my bird companion in one of the empty classrooms after, just for a different atmosphere than my dorm room. I ended up getting a full page written in one of my stories, which felt amazing as I haven’t been able to jot down more than a paragraph or two at a time lately. Amazing what a simple change in scenery can do.
Back in my room, I drew a random sketch just because. Our profs are always telling us to draw every day, even if it doesn’t turn out. Well, I’m not doing that, but I’m still trying to draw more often than I used to.
(Considering I didn't use a reference for this, I'm quite pleased with the result. I can't say that it's exactly what I had in mind as I don't know that I had a specific thought I was trying to get across, so I can't really be too disappointed either way.)
On Wednesday, I had to remap out the lower portion of my feather’s path of action (videos posted further down). It’s not really a huge problem, but it definitely is time consuming since it meant having to readjust the feather itself. But, since the weather outside was gross anyway, what else was I going to do with my time?
A random side story of something I noticed that has nothing to do with school. We have stickers on our dorm doors where we put our names and social media if we want. Well, I happened to notice that mine is now missing.
I don’t know who, when, or why, but my sticker is no longer there. Now, I’ve been told there are some students who go around collecting as many stickers as possible to place on their own doors. Whatever. Each to their own. But my theory is much more fascination and a much better story. In my version, I’ve somehow either gained a stalker, or an enemy. Dun-dun-duuuuuunnnnn!
If it’s the former, I guess I need to be careful. If it’s the latter, they have no idea whom they’re dealing with [insert villainous laughter here].
Thursday! Everyone’s favourite day of the week!
Our third assignment for life drawing was due, which was gestures. Though I’ve been enjoying gesture drawing, mine still aren’t the greatest ever, though my life quality is improving.
Improvement is the key ingredient. Never grow stagnant.
(Overall line work and exaggeration is getting better compared to when I started in September. Thank goodness for evidence of growth!)
(Started using cylinders for the limbs. I'm still not great with that RoboBean. Not sure how to make that make sense.)
In our second class we went over what’s expected for our final assignment. This essentially means we looked at examples of what’s good and what’s . . . less so. Now I need to make a thumbnail for what I want to create.
And Friday. What a day it’s been.
Basically, nothing went right. My tech insisted on having issues and I do not have the skill or know-how to fix such. I was beyond frustrated trying to deal with this Mac computer’s nonsense. Honestly, if anyone tells you that Mac is better than Windows, give them a smack upside the head because they’re delusional. I find Windows to be much more user friendly, and the more I use this Mac, the more I’m growing to hate having to put up with it.
I was trying to complete the two final assignments that are due on the weekend. Now, I like to get things done in advance so I can have the weekend as free time. Well. Essentially, we need to loop our animation thrice, but the program wasn’t allowing me to copy and paste. I was exiting out, restarting my computer, waiting for it to think. To no avail.
I was ready to launch my computer out my third-storey window. Sweet, satisfactory defenestration.
What worked? Joining my prof in a zoom call and sharing my screen. Worked seamlessly on the first try. Stupid thing. “Oh, there’s a teacher present. Guess I’d better behave now.” Smart-ass laptop. Rude. At least I got both assignments completed and submitted. They aren’t perfected by any means, but they’re finished. Honestly, I’m not entirely pleased with how either turned out, especially since I basically had to redo my feather today (which takes hours). But they’ve been sent in, and I can wash my hands of them.
(In this video you can see my POA (path of action) for my feather. The red lines depict the redrawn POA.)
(And here is the imperfect final version. If I hadn't needed to rework the feather on the last day, I would have spent more time on making it glide more lightly. As it is, at least it kind of floats. I like the loop. That's the best part.)
(And the box fold. I've seen some of my classmates' boxes, and some of them are absolutely beautiful. I'm content with what I came up with, but not fully satisfied. Never satisfied. There's always room for improvement. Not a bad thing in the slightest.)
I’m just so done with this day.
One spotlight of good news though. Financing has at long last been released! Took bloody long enough!