The Grey Giraffe

My freshmen year is almost over and in about eighteen more days, I’ll be heading home to California! I’m very excited; nothing can prompt me to stay any longer in Providence. Although, Providence is a really beautiful place, it cannot beat home – and my wonderful Asian food.

The New England weather is extremely moody; it starts out beautifully bright and ends up grey and bleak the next and thundering and raining after then sunny all over again. Well, at least I get to experience the range of weathers here as opposed to back home. It’s definitely tiring – the last month (and a half) of the semester is usually dedicated towards finals. I am exhausted! Having several final projects going at the same time, due at the same time and (what do you know) at the same time I have research essays to write on top of projects that the teachers assign outside of our final projects. When you live at RISD, life goes by so fast, we might as well plan every second!

We’ve all chosen our majors and I’m sure it’s no surprise that I’m going into Illustration. I had thought for sometime to go into Industrial Design, but creating monsters and fantastical landscapes still overruled.

For my complete absence from the Internet, I have my excuse: the plethora of projects that almost overwhelms me. I created this massive tessellation (6 feet by 4 feet) for my 2D class – that I’ll post of pictures as soon as I get them from my friend, a performance piece along with a partner for my 3D class depicting a three-dimensional clock and also for the same class, a final project requiring me to pick an artist dealing in three-dimensions (architect, sculptor, even movie-makers – time is also a dimension) and recreate his/her work. I chose Steven Spielberg and his movie, The Terminal with Tom Hanks. I chose a couple scenes and shot them at the Providence Airport – I got permission from the president of the airport to shoot it there. All I’ve got to do is edit it and I’m fin!

As for the video below, it’s an animation that I created in my Design class. The process was open for interpretation so I chose to emulate traditional cel animation. This type of animation was how all our beloved cartoons of old was created, using cellulose acetate (transparencies) and drawing out every movement of the characters and whatever else needed moving on the foreground. If you want to learn more about it Wikipedia offers a wonderful, albeit bulky, history and explanation of the process.

I hope these past few months have passed by wonderfully for the rest of you! And by the way, I forgot to say that I’m going to cosplay as Sailor Pluto! I’m almost done with her costume, I just need to make the jewellery and the staff and I’m good to go. I might be going to Anime Expo – hope you guys have awesome plans for the summer!

During Christmas, my parents took us to Las Vegas to vacation for a few days. I had a real blast there! Practically everyday involved going to see a show – we watched The Blue Man Group, David Copperfield, and Cirque du Soleil’s Mystère. My dad was, to our’s and the audience’s amusement, picked to go up stage with David Copperfield. I won’t tell the details…but the questions that Copperfield ask would unnerve anyone, especially an adult.

I am now back in Providence and finished a full week of, what we call, winter session which basically entails picking the classes you want to take about a month and a half before the actual session and the maximum number of classes you can take is two. In other words, while we have a pretty free schedule – yet still at school taking classes – all the other schools are still on break and won’t come back until the end of the month. This is life at RISD!

I’m kidding. I love it! I’m taking Theatre Production and Paleography. Theatre Production is a class on well, theatre production, we pick plays, do cold readings, select actors to characters, and perform the plays (for free) to our peers at the end of the session. It’s an awesome class and acting to fun plays is always a treat. Paleography, on the other hand, is the study of ancient writing and its development through the ages – my class focuses more on the western scripts, from Roman to modern. We’re learning calligraphy also and that’s always a good skill to pack in your bags.

Today was my first real “snow storm,” 17 inches deep of snow! and I live on a hill which makes it a bit difficult to trudge through. But besides that, we had an epic snowball fight. When there’s beautiful snow to be had, who can resist the urge to wage a snowball war! No one really had time to make fortresses so everyone, even the friend that was just taking pictures, where caught. There was no escaping the flying snow!

The school canceled every class today due to the snow-in and everybody was ecstatic. We borrowed trays from the cafeteria and used it as a sleigh and sled down the hills. And there, at the back of my house, was erected a giant snow “penis” in honour of our school’s mascot, Scroty. I’m sorry to offend, but at least I didn’t put up pictures of it. It’s pretty well made considering it’s made of snow.

After and before the snowball fight, we were hard at work slaughtering each other in Super Smash Bros Brawl. Nothing beats party games than Melee and Brawl. I’m a Marth user myself, but I love Kirby and Sonic also. Pokemon Trainer is also pretty awesome to use.

So ends our day of “productiveness.” I think we were pretty productive, my friends and I, Brawl, snowball fights, and cooking fried rice for dinner – ’tis college life.