The Grey Giraffe

It’s been a week since I’ve left Providence and all I’ve been doing is bumming around at home. Sweet life. No school to worry about, yet, and no projects due every week – I’m enjoying it while it lasts!

I finally have the time to watch, or re-watch, all of my favorite shows and movies (not that school stopped me from bumming around in my dorm room) with no distractions of college life. The current show I’m re-watching is a childhood favorite, one that I woke up early in the morning to watch before heading out to school: Zoids: Chaotic Century.

I was watching it the other day when my brother came by and said, “Hey! My friend and I were just talking about that show! We forgot what the name was but we remembered it was about those awesome animal robots with Van and Zeke…!” Those sweet memories; Zoids was really cool when I watched it way back when and its still pretty sweet – nothing beats childhood obsessions.

On another note, I finally got around to giving Fifth Flight a new look; the background image of it is a picture of a project I did in my Design class: black foam core with 38 4″x4″ 2ply white museum board cutouts (all hand cut). My art portfolio also went under a revamping with a few new pieces added in. When I get around to it, I’ll add more work. One guilt of mine is the continual avoidance of putting Junk&Trash under heavy maintenance. That will happen soon. The maintenance, I mean.

Now on to more serious news: Diablo III. Okay, maybe not, but sue me for loving games – computer games, video games, hand-held games, etc… I’m excited and I’m unsure of which rumour to believe about its release date; has the beta-version been released yet? And I don’t opt to sift through all those Diablo dedicated sites…

Apparently my mom has been staking out internships for me because a week before I left Providence she called specifically to tell me that this architecture company wants me to intern with them and I’ll be paid! Well, the actual story is, my mom’s friend works for the company and they heard I’m an art student attending RISD and they wanted to hire me as an intern. She told them that my focus wasn’t in architecture but illustration and they said something to this effect: we just need a [concept] artist that can help us draw and paint out ideas (I’m still unclear about that…). But, I’m excited! I have no experience but hey! this is the way to get it! Wish me luck!

Well, it’s down to the last day and then I’ll be headed to Rhode Island. My flight’s at night so when I get to RISD, I’ll be there just in time for them to let us start filing in.

I’m not really nervous, just a bit jittery. But I think that feeling applies to everyone who’s leaving home for college. How the years do fly by. Yesterday, my parents took me out to eat with my brother, sort of like a last awesome family dinner before I head over. And now that I think about it, it’ll be really hard to find authentic Asian food there – orange chicken is not authentic Asian for those who are wondering. Well, if I get homesick of some Asian cuisines, I’ll have to make it myself. Won’t be as tasty as my mom’s or grandma’s but it’ll do.

So I’m spending this last day on the computer making logos for a friend of my mom’s (mind you, I’m not being paid) and completely reconstructing my portfolio – which is fully coded and updated with more work – that you can see right here. Thanks to Sohtanaka‘s nifty tutorials am I able to create the portfolio.

By the by, during my senior year, I took a Ceramics and I created a completely made-out-of-clay Wall-E as my character project. It’s about a full twelve inches high and seven inches wide. I only had it fired in the kiln once. I didn’t want to glaze it since I can’t control what the glaze will do during the second firing. The medium is acrylic on earthenware clay.

I remember that it took about a month and a half to finish. The body itself consumed most of the time. I created the slab box, waited for it to dry a bit, worked on creating the wheels (which took some time too), carved out the details on the wheels, left those to dry a bit, and went back working on the box. After that, the arms and head had to be taken home to finish. School really doesn’t offer enough time do art. An hour is way too short.

The head is removable so you can put things into it. That’s about it. The only complaint I remember having half a year ago (which was when Wall-E was made) was that there were barely any good references to create him! Well, it doesn’t matter anyways, the end result was really good. I’m actually really proud of it. My Ceramics teacher was too!