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!

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!