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Writer's pictureJ Winter

Rig City

Dear Winterites,


Unfortunately, I took ill over the weekend. Nothing serious, I assure you. Just a stupid cold. You know, the buildup of stress coupled with the extreme fluctuations in Canadian weather will do that. Thus, I decided to stay away from school on Monday so I could rest and get over the worst of it without being around people. I did still manage to get some work done though.

Being sick doesn’t mean out of commission.

Everyone kept telling me to take it easy and rest. I was like . . . but I’m a woman. I can be sick and still function at near to full capacity. I did take things easy, but I wasn’t about to allow myself to be unproductive. So, I worked on a fun drawing assignment for life drawing class. We were asked to use the Loomis Head method that we’ve been learning to draw a favourite celebrity. We’ll be guessing who everyone drew in class later this week. I had tried on the weekend, but it didn’t turn out. Attempt two is much MUCH better. I know I can still do even better, but we haven’t been focusing on all the detailing and shading or anything like that yet.


(First attempt (left) vs second attempt (right). Though still not a bad looking face, it doesn't look like Alexandra Daddario. Not really, I think. The second one is a much closer depiction. I can at least tell that it's her.)


I did go to bed early.


On Tuesday, it was back to classes. Since today is also Valentine’s Day, one of my classmates handed out Valentine’s cards to everyone in class. It was sweet and nostalgic to my elementary school days.


We started a new animation assignment that will be due by week’s end. We’ve been given a character and three poses. The expectation is for us to draw the character in said poses, and then manipulate the character using rigs into the positions we drew. It’s not as confusing as I thought it was going to be when I initially read over the instructions on Monday. I was able to get my positions drawn up, though they’re still roughs at this point. I’ll clean them up later.


In scriptwriting, we answered questions about our characters. Well, our main character, at any rate. This was to help us plot out some thoughts for when we write up our character breakdowns, which is our next assignment. I’m honestly procrastinating it a little bit because I want to get the more demanding homework done first. I’ll probably work on the character breakdowns on the weekend as I don’t see it as work so much as a fun activity.


My best friend sent me some money so I could buy myself a Valentine’s Day treat. I picked out a single painted rose.


(It's so pretty. Kind of gothic, which I love.)


Well, Wednesday has rolled around and it seems no one is enjoying working in Rig City. Though I agree that drawing traditionally is more fun (and perhaps on the easier side), I don’t find the rigs too awful. Lots of my classmates have voiced concerns about difficulties they’re having, but maybe that’s because they always get super anxious right away when they don’t understand something? I think that has become a normal human pattern, unfortunately. I don’t know. I only know that I’ve been catching on fairly quick, so I didn’t have too many issues other than manipulating rigs being somewhat on the tedious side.


Thursday, in life drawing, we have a model again! It makes gesture drawing more organic, though some of the poses were given too short a timer. For me to capture, I mean. I’m still really not getting the hang of drawing gestures in completion within the time limit.

(Just a page full of gestures. Not my best work, but there it is. I kind of like the look of the overlapping poses.)


We shared our celebrity sketches and no one knew who I had drawn. By that I don’t mean that my drawing was skewed so that they couldn’t recognize her (as I'm sure you would agree from the image poster earlier), they simply didn’t know who she is. Which has me absolutely flabbergasted! I guess I should have gone for someone more mainstream like Dwayne ‘ The Rock’ Johnson. No one could not recognize that smoulder.


For the rest of the class, we focused on our continued head studies.



(One model, two drawings. The first one didn't turn out as good. I think it's because I do better when working smaller. We're told to draw as big as possible, but then I find my drawings don't turn out great. Perhaps it's because I'm used to drawing on smaller pages, so I'm familiar with how proportions are meant to look at a smaller scale. Still figuring out how to use a larger page.)


At lunch I received a cookie from one of my classmates. I came back from getting food and there it was, waiting for me. Such a nice surprise.


In character design, we dove back into character rotation. I got all five of the body positions drawn up, so next week I’ll be able to finish them off. Hooray!

(Other adjustments have been made, so this won't be the final cleaned up version that I'll post in a later week. This was merely my initial draw up that I rushed through a little bit. After discussing with the prof, I was able to find solutions to some of the aspects I wasn't sure how to fix. The next version you see of her will look different, I assure you.)


Oh! We finally got our marks back for our inclined planes assignment. Remember the stairs? You know, the assignment I feared would be the reason I wouldn’t be returning to school next semester? Well, I somehow got a 74 on it. To be honest, I expected those numbers to be in reverse order. So, I guess I’m not out of the running yet.

Not sure how we’re surviving, but we’ll just keep plugging on because apparently, we’re doing something right.

On Friday I finished working in Rig City. For the week, anyway. With that assignment submitted, I spent my afternoon putting together the time-consuming design thinking assignment. Super annoying that something irrelevant takes up so much time and energy. I hate it. Can’t wait to be done with this useless class.


And on that happy note, it’s time for another weekend!

(The initial image, my drawing of the pose, and the character manipulated using rigs. Ta-da!)

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