bye bye jay

Thursday

Got to school in perfect time. Whoo! In animation we discussed the reading. We broke into groups and then each group presented their consensus on the reading. As always I volunteered to go first because it is easiest to just get it out of the way like that. After that we talked about film scene composites and studied The Birds and the 8 different components of something something. For lunch Kristen and I went to Hot Lips and got pizza and breadsticks. Yum. Tabitha joined us. We chatted about stuff and some lady shook her head at us. We were not being vulgar, just opinionated. Ha!

Anyway, back in class we studied Hedgehog in the Fog and watched a bit of a documentary on Yuriy Norshteyn, who made the animation. Totally brilliant. Really intense drawing cut out stuff that is just flawless. Then we split into groups. One half studied cut out shape animation, and the other (mine) learned about the stop motion program Dragon. Pretty insane motion capture. It is what Laika uses. Laika did Coraline. Apparently after every stop motion frame, it took a minute and a half to process the image through the servers before it even came back to the computer. A minute and a half. Per frame. There are a ton of frames in a movie. Insaaane.

Cotey, TJ, and I animated some dinosaurs. Tippi helped. We got our stuff done which ended up being our homework so that is done. Whoo! Well it was some figures that move in on another one. I'll upload it eventually. The program and set up limitations are pretty intense, I don't know how much stop motion I'll be doing. I like drawing. But yeah. It took over an hour to do a simple animation moving five figures about for 8 seconds.

I returned home for break. Ate some mac and cheese. Picked up some art books. Got back to class right on time. We discussed our ideas for missing portfolio pieces and then talked about how we might construct our portfolios. I have a pretty good idea for mine. It will be a mailable fold out poster, instead of a book.

After break we finished up class with a documentary on the awesome Milton Glaser. The scope of his work is spectacular. And he got no money for the I ♥ NY design. NONE. But he didn't seem bitter about it. With that done, Karen and I drove over to the Florida Room to bid Jay farewell.

Jay is leaving for Oakland, with the intention to move to San Francisco. I know it won't be the last time that I see her and I'm so proud of her and she will go spectacular things. Still, she has left. Bought some drinks and some food and then a couple more drinks....haa. It didn't get crazy, I just wasn't paying enough attention. Thank god for designated drivers. Tabitha, Mel, Kristen, Heather, Danny, BT, Brandis, Dominic, Jax, Travis, and others came. It was a good little party. I cried. About three times. Not sobbing, just crying and hugging. Karen got me home and I just sort of shuffled into bed with my water bottle. Delicious delicious water.

Now I need to go to move to Monterey, which is close to San Fran.

Friday

Woke up to some text messages early on and couldn't fall back asleep. Spent two dreary hours watching Top Gear. Showered. Ate some stuff. Went to school at 1:30 to help Cotey and TJ slate our video animation project. Took a lot of effort to get that sucker into iMovie and add some names and stuff. Also our project exported with deleted frames, so we had to solve that problem with Bodven's help. That took about 45 minutes. Went back home. Did mostly nothing for the rest of the day. Watched Community. It was much funnier than last weeks episode.

Err yeah. Waste of a day. Totally. Well I did some homework.

It's hard to keep enthusiasm for a project when you have to step back and think "what does it MEAN". It is counter intuitive thinking to the major. I mean, not totally opposite but it isn't demanded of us from our program.

Talked to Madeline.

I'm not itching anymore!