I Have a Future in Hands!!!

Hey all.

So....welcome to Week 6 - mid-term week. For the most part, it's been pretty quiet. We're getting our final project assignments so I'm working on trying to figure out exactly what I'm going to do for all of those. They should make for interesting posting here when they are all done, however. :)

Intro to Literature is poetry still. I'm enjoying it. Of course, as a writer and poet anything to do with literature is right up my alley.

Visual Communication is learning about Typography and Graphic Design. Learned a lot I didn't know about Gutenberg and his invention of the printing press. Our final project for that class has me scratching my head a bit. Still haven't decided about a topic yet - and it's due Sunday. Eek!

Last night's Digital Media Production class was good. Learning more and more about Flash and now getting into ActionScript. Our final projects in that class should be really cool. I'm going to have to hook up the old external drive though and pull some old assignments to feature in it.

Figure Drawing is...not sucking too bad this quarter. Who'd have thunk? And apparently I have a future in drawing hands! Yes people, we found something I CAN draw! See for yourself.

Our class was supposed to have a free model, but they didn't show so the instructor decided we all needed some work on drawing hands since they were giving everyone trouble. First assignment was just drawing four hand gestures. We were drawing our own hands. So....first set:



It was pretty much agreed upon that I do well with fists, which are supposed to be harder to do. The general consensus is that this was my best drawing of all:



Our next set of drawings were the dreaded contour line drawings where you can't pick up your pencil. The first one really sucks, but once I relaxed into it, I think the others came out okay. The little one in the corner was just something I was trying to draw from a picture.



Our final assignment on hands for the evening was to try to draw the best one we could. We can finish it or redo it and it will be graded next week. I may try to do a better one, but this is what I came up with by the end of the class time:



So....there you have it. Apparently I don't do too bad at the hands. :) We're supposed to get a real model in for next week's class so we'll see how that goes. In the meantime, in addition to our final hand we need to draw a full standing-up figure so...gotta work on that. But this class is not the nightmare my last drawing class was. Maybe cuz it's smaller and I'm not in there with all the freaky talented people. I dunno. But it's going pretty well this quarter.

And that being said, time to get back to work! Until later. Cheers!

Welcome to 4th Quarter and Sophomore Year!

Hi all.

Yes, I've been very bad and neglectful of the blog here lately, but I hope today will make up for it. :) Honestly, we've just gotten to the point this quarter where there are things for me to share with y'all so....that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it. :)

To begin, I'll revisit the topic of my last post, student aid. The drama still continues. I've been in touch with all of my congresspeople, state and federal, and even posted on the President's site. I heard back from one state senator and one state congressman, but have not heard anything from them since their original contact. :( I have been given a couple of other options for help with student aid, so I am working those angles. And as always, I am looking for a job. The economy, it sucks. I wish my school worked more actively in helping to attract scholarship funding, especially for women in technology programs, but it seems to be pretty much a "you're on your own there" type deal. Now that I am starting to get some kind of work together for a portfolio to enter for those kinds of awards and scholarships, I am going to start focusing on that. This quarter is taken care of. Now that I have my taxes filed I can submit my new FAFSA and hopefully will be eligible for more aid. Oh how I wish I could win the lottery or be left a lot of dough by some unknown newly dead relative. Ah well...in the meantime, it just requires some work to find assistance. Sallie Mae can pucker up and kiss my lily white ass.

Okay - moving on! :) This quarter has been good so far. I am enjoying my classes for the most part, even my drawing class. Who'd have thought that?! :) So far the grades are all As and things are good. Maybe, just maybe, I might acquire that elusive 4.0 this quarter. Maybe. :)

First up - Introduction to Literature. This is a great class and I really enjoy it. I never had the opportunity to take a real literature class before and it is very different than what I had anticipated - but in a good way. I've always loved literature, but never really read it too critically and certainly never wrote about it critically so this class is very challenging. The instructor is really awesome and involved in the class. She turns around grades really quickly, participates in the discussions, and gives awesome feedback. I'm really enjoying learning from her. There's not really anything to post from this class cuz it's all kinda dry stuff for a reader. I may post my final essay at the end of the quarter. But it is an awesome class and I am getting an A.

Next, Visual Communication in the Media. This class has interesting materials, but the class itself leaves a bit to be desired. The instructor is really slow on turning grades around and doesn't really encourage the kind of discussions and analysis I would expect in a mass media type class. Also, my classmates are not exactly helping matters. There seems to be a lot of mental disconnect going on where the discussions are concerned and no one seems to be reading the book and actually analyzing the content as instructed. The posts are poorly written and no one is giving me much to reply to - - makes the discussions difficult. I'm actually really surprised that so many people are in college but cannot think or write at the college level - - what's up with that? I'll give you an example to show you what I'm dealing with here. Last week we had a discussion on shock advertising. The instructions for the discussion post were to relay a time you'd been shocked by advertising and to discuss whether you think advertisers can go too far in shock advertising. Naturally, my classmates completely ignored the second part of the instructions and focused only on the first. Apparently, it doesn't take much to shock these people. Once classmate in particular posted this little gem from the UK:

http://www.utdallas.edu/~jep044000/vidal/sportka.mpeg

Basically her post and the responses of those who replied to her were "ZOMG! Poor kitty!" ::rolls eyes:: Yeah...this is what I'm dealing with folks. So....very nicely, I posted pointing out that UK consumers are a little more savvy with advertising and can take the ad for the joke that it is, understanding that the cat was not actually harmed in the making of the ad. I pointed out that the target demographic for that ad would be young males who would actually find the ad funny. Well...can you guess the reaction from my classmates to my post? "Funny? That's not funny! Animal cruelty is never funny! I'm a cat lover! How dare you!" Then another classmate posted about how the UK is Sodom and Gomorrah and don't they have laws over there and it's just so shocking and immoral and... *facepalm* *headdesk*. After that, I didn't bother responding. That kind of stupid just really doesn't need any encouragement. If you can't parse an ad that obvious for its point and subtext and meaning after reading the chapters in the textbook and studying the concepts in a college class, I can't help you. *heavy sigh* Most of the things people posted that they found "shocking" were things they went looking on the internet for from the UK and wanted to post to make the point that the UK is just so completely immoral in comparison to the US and shouldn't we have stricter laws in the US to protect us all from things like the UK and ZOMG! UK has NUDITY and... Yeah....I just...wonder about some people, I really do. If you're asked to discuss something in a college course, you need to actually provide more of a critical analysis of what it is you're seeing and what about it is shocking, not just knee-jerk ZOMG! responses. And at least attempt an intelligent discourse. Please?

This week's discussion is about stereotyping. And it's abominable. No one in the class seems to understand the definition of the word. One little gem from a classmate: "TV news is showing stories about high profile people and infidelity - don't they know how immoral and wrong that is?" WTF does that have to do with stereotyping? Apparently she doesn't know either. But my classmates are all chiming in on the bandwagon of "ZOMG! I know! What kind of world are we living in?!" And I.....lose a little faith in the ability of people to think at a college level y'all, I really do. So...that class is a bit of a challenge for me on an intellectual level. I took a mass media class in freaking high school where high school kids had a better grasp on critical analysis of images in the media than these people do. It makes my head hurt y'all, it really does. So that would be my least favorite class this quarter. I'm getting an A in it though. As I say, I like critical analysis classes so I enjoy the book and materials we study, I just wish the instructor was helping to facilitate better discussions rather than joining in with the mob mentality "I know! How awful!" choruses. Ugh.

Onward we travel. Next up - Figure Drawing. Y'all know how I feel about drawing. I have not been subtle in previous quarters about how it is the bane of my existence. This class is my weekly humiliation basically. It is, actually, a very small class - only 5 people - and I am actually not the worst artist in there so....it's not as bad as the last drawing class. I'm still having serious troubles drawing from people IRL, but we did exercises this week drawing from masters in our book and I think they turned out okay. Judge for yourself:

Master drawing: Woman Bending Forward by Suzanna Valadon:



And here's my take on it:



Next master drawing, Reclining Nude by Aristide Maillol:



And my attempt at it:



All in all, I'm pretty proud of those drawings. Unfortunately, that's about the only such exercise we're going to do and the rest of our drawings must be drawn from actual life and not pictures so....that sucks. I'm working at it. This class is the one that I spend the most time outside of class working on. Something in the way I see things just does not translate as well IRL as it does from a picture. I dunno why. But I'm working on it. :)

And lastly, we have Digital Media Production. Again - same instructor as my 3D animation courses and I love having this guy as a teacher. He's pretty awesome. The first weeks were all about learning Flash and we just completed and submitted our first project assignment last night. I'd never touched Flash before this class so....I'm learning. :) Our project was a short cut-out animation project. I had lots of ideas, but couldn't quite figure out how to execute them so....I ended up going with this:



He suggested trying to do something humorous for this assignment so that is what I came up with. It's not the best thing ever produced, but at least I am learning the basics of Flash, which was the point to the exercise. I have high hopes for my next project and final project in that class. Just takes a lot of study, playing with the software, and watching tutorials. I'm excited to get into the ActionScript part of that class as well. I like playing with code. I'm a geeky dork - I admit it happily.

So....there we are. That is the status of things right now. I'm amazed that we're already in Week 5, almost Week 6 of this quarter. It seems to be zooming right past me. Things are going well, aside from my personal frustrations, and the educational process continues. We're moving into studying poetry this week in Intro to Literature and I love poetry so that should be fun. We're starting to come up with ideas for our next and final projects in Digital Media Production. In Figure Drawing I have to do 4 (!) drawings from life this week. Eek! And again, Visual Communication in the Media is focusing on stereotypes.

So there you have it. Hope you enjoy. Any feedback on the projects is appreciated. Be kind on the Flash though - I'm still a newbie at that. Cheers until later! :)