Koolaid

Dear Winterites,

It was another week of working on the same assignments, which means no new information needed to be gone over for Monday’s class. The class ended up basically being a waste of time without any actual lesson delivered. Still, it had its enjoyable moments. We watched some demo videos from previous years displaying their art and animations. Those were fun, even if it was just to kill some time. It would have been nice for it to have been a study or work period instead. I mean, everyone is already stressing over their final assignments, so having more time to work on them wouldn’t be a bad thing. Right?

I used my afternoon to work on homework, because that’s what I do. I figure, may as well get work done during “regular” work hours. That way I can still have my evenings and weekends for myself. Though, honestly, this week I just felt bored. It’s not like I don’t have things to do, I’m just going through a bit of a slump, I guess. Those happen.

Trying to peel myself out of it.

Drew some doors and windows for my Enviro assignment. So. Many. Lines. In. This. Window. Seriously, why are these residence windows made with so many parts?

(That windowsill (left). Why do these windows have to have so many moving parts? At least the handle thing-a-ma-jig (right) was more simplistic. And I know you're thinking that you've already seen these drawings, but those were only the roughs, these are now the cleaned-up versions. So there.)

(Such a beautiful window, no? I honestly don't think I drew every single part as there was just . . . too much.)

(Again, if you've been following along, then you've already seen these drawings of the door (left), jamb (above), hinge (bottom left), and doorknob (bottom right). And again, these are now the cleaned-up versions that actually got submitted to my prof.)

Rounded the day off with a quick hand sketch. I’d like to take a closer look at some point and put more effort into these hands, but that wasn’t the point of today. Today was just to get myself to draw something unrelated to school. Well, we have to know how to draw hands, so this is actually a good study to do, but it wasn’t for any assignment, is what I mean.

(Yeah, these were fun. Definitely going to take more time on them someday. I'd say I have a love/hate relationship with hands. Drawing them is the worst, but it's also kind of enjoyable at the same time.)

Tuesday we continued working on our final animation assignment for this semester. Bowling ball vs feather. Well, not exactly versus. But we get to animate both dropping at the same time and how they follow different paths at different speeds. It’s fun, but those stupid finger holes are giving me trouble. I’m more excited to play around with the feather because I get to use the deformer again and do a more twisting animation. Good challenge.

Once again, used my afternoon for homework. It’s a good routine.

I decided to take a short break to run over to Dollarama. With winter starting to show itself, that means we need a few things to make sure our room stays clean. Winter brings snow, snow melts, and melting snow means wet feet. So, we now have a small rug by our door and a place to put wet shoes. Plus, I grabbed a few Christmas decorations while I was there so we can have a smidgen of festivity in our kitchen space.

(The gnome was too cute. And since we can't have real candles - super lame - at least we can have fake, battery operated ones.)

(My roommate added her touch by including these adorable snowmen made by her mother. It's perfect.)

Wednesday was fighting with those blasted finger holes. They really don’t like me. I’m trying to follow a certain path and manipulate them accordingly, but so far, they just look like they’re sliding. As far as I know, the holes in bowling balls don’t go sliding around the ball all willy-nilly. And since that was frustrating, I took a break to focus on the feather. I’ll get back to the bowling ball eventually.

Finished my doors, windows, and walls assignment. Got that submitted. Go me! Then promptly wasted the remainder of the day doing absolutely nothing productive. Oops.

(This is what I submitted for our Koolaid assignment. If you remember those commercials where the Koolaid guy breaks through the wall going, "Oh, yeah!" Hence this assignment name. As you can see, we had to include a door and a window, and our character or shape had to go through the wall, smashing one or the other in the process. I think I did not too shabby. Kept is mostly simple.)

We had the most fantastic model for life drawing this Thursday! Her poses were just so elegant, but though my line work is absolutely improving, I still can’t seem to complete any gestures in the 1-2 minute time slots. Now, I don’t think our prof expects fully completed and perfect gestures in 1 or 2 minutes; however, I would still like to be able to have gestures that actually look like what they’re supposed to be.

Not just . . . cave drawings.

(Okay, so they're not exactly terrible. I can absolutely see that I'm getting better. But yeah, a few of these don't look like much of anything. I'm sure I'll get the hang of this eventually?)

(And this was the long study. I'm still not sure I quite understand how that RoboBean is supposed to help, but I do think this drawing turned out better some of my previous ones.)

Life drawing always goes by so fast. Four hours? Gone already? Yup. Every time.

Enviro was also fun, and everyone was loud as usual. We were given all the info we need regarding our final assignment, which will be to draw a barn, and then ended class early. Not excited to be working on that while doing design classes at the same time, but perhaps it will prove to be a nice distraction when the design assignment gets too stressful, which, I’m assuming it will.

In Friday’s class, I focused on getting the feather completely mapped. It now floats down to land on the bowling ball, as it’s supposed to. Obviously, it will require much tweaking, but I’m content with what I have to work with. I think it floats nicely, though perhaps not fantastically.

(It's a work in progress, that's for sure. It's fun though.)

After class, and for the afternoon, I did some work on my box fold assignment. Not quite sure what is expected to be different folding down as compared to when it’s folding up as I thought I had already done something different. Apparently, not enough different, as my prof told me they need to be . . . well . . . different. I guess I’ll try playing around with it some more. Not sure exactly how I want to go about fixing it as I don’t hate the way this current fold moves.

(It's something at least. I'll keep playing around with this until I figure something else out.)

And we get another update on the financial situation. I received a new assessment regarding how much I can expect to receive. Seriously, I wish they’d stop reassessing and just release the funds at this point. I mean, first semester is already almost over, and I haven’t received anything from them at all yet.

To be honest, I’m not even mad. I’m just disappointed and exasperated.