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! :)

End of the Quarter and All That Jazz

Hey again all.

So....this quarter has not been very conducive to the blogging, that's for sure. Six classes is a crazy lot and leaves no time for any kind of life; especially not when College Algebra is part of the schedule. So....sorry I've been so lax here as of late. First and foremost, let me say that I am extremely glad this quarter is over. It was long and hard and fast and crazy, all at the same time. It definitely felt different than my previous two quarters. I did not have nearly enough time to fully concentrate on everything I wanted to, and I had a great deal of frustration this quarter. I also was very sick twice this quarter, plus had a great deal of family and personal life drama going on so....yeah....it's been a wild and weird 11 weeks. But, it is over! Huzzah!! I have determined that I am going back to a regular four class schedule and told all of my nearest and dearest that if they ever hear me mention increasing my courseload again, they have my permission to slap me completely senseless. So....there's that.

Final grades are still coming in, but I have three I can share with you and some projects from all of them. As more come online, I'll be back to update you.

First, let's go ahead and discuss algebra. This class was the bane of my existence this quarter. I am not a math person - at all. I can spell anything you want me to, and I'm a pretty good writer, but math is not my thing. Oddly enough, I can program mathematical calculations in programs like Excel and make wonderful things result, but your basic mathematics is not for me. It took about two weeks of me trying to get through all that nonsense on my own to realize that I couldn't and needed some serious help. Luckily, the tutor center at school had someone on staff who was awesome and got me through the quarter. It was also a very, very difficult class to take online. In a classroom setting, if you have questions you can ask the instructor right then and get the concepts explained to you. Online, you're at the liberty of your instructor's life schedule and ours admitted that we were her third job, and she had a family so....guess where we came in? She did the best she could and was very helpful and understanding, but it was a really difficult class to take online.

Almost as difficult as actually working out the problems was entering them in the Word document using Equation Editor and Graph Editor for submissions. The graphing part was an absolute nightmare and I kept getting things lost in the translation. Another really difficult part for me was all of the online quizzes. It's really hard to work off of the computer screen like that for me. I also had serious problems with the quizzes timing out on me and eating all of my work while I was taking the time to work the problems out on paper. So....about halfway through the quarter I started writing out the quizzes, then going back and entering the answers after I'd worked the problems out. It improved my grade immensely and kept the system from booting me so much. I had similar booting problems with other quizzes in my other classes, no matter which browser I tried to use. Since I've yet to have a quiz that is not open book, I really wish the quizzes came with a print option so you could print them out and work them on paper and then submit the answers. None of them are timed either so....I don't see why that can't be added it. But, whatever. Either way, thanks to writing those out, getting tutoring help from tutor girl and the SmarThinking online tutoring, I managed to get a solid C in that class. I passed and never have to take that again! And there was much rejoicing!!! :)

Second class to discuss - Fundamentals of Web Authoring and Design. This class was the class that put the nail in the coffin of me ever taking design classes online ever again. I thought no instructor could be worse than my Typography instructor from my first quarter - I was so wrong. This guy was just....where to begin? Unprofessional does not seem a strong enough word. His version of feedback on something was "ok, looks good". WTH is that??!! He would say "great job!" on a discussion grade, but only give 95% with no explanation of why there were percentage points taken off. When he did post in the forums, which was rare, it was usually some snotty comment. There was a big issue with an assignment that in his mind was a big research paper but read as a regular written assignment and he couldn't understand why us stupid students couldn't figure it out. He asked me for clarification, which I gave (and very politely too tyvm - I want a cookie and a gold star for that) and he still wanted to argue the point and then just said "I don't get it but, whatever." He gave no lecture notes and only linked Adobe tutorials which you can find on your own. Our book was Teach Yourself Dreamweaver in 24 Hours, and that's what we did. We taught ourselves and he dialed it in and did the least amount possible to pull down the paycheck. For less than I paid for this class, I could have bought the damn book myself and gotten the same experience, but without the snotty commentary from the instructor. And when we had a problem with linking our final projects and were told to contact our instructor, what did he say? Pay $4 on our own for some web space cuz he didn't know either. And who was his favorite student? The guy who used sexist female imagery on his final project of course! Is there something I'm missing here about graphic design? Is every guy in graphic design a sexist asshat or am I just getting lucky here with these instructors?

Either way, I have made it very clear I will not pay for anymore classes with this instructor and I will not take anymore design classes online. They are completely ineffectual and the instructors do not do the job when it comes to helping students to understand the concepts; it was just utterly useless. However, I do have a final project to link and for never having done anything in web design and teaching myself, I'm pretty proud of it. Naturally, the instructor hated it. According to him:

"Not bad, Amy. Your navigation works. Your external link works. I'll count your order form as a feedback form, though they aren't the same thing. Your layout and design is weaker than I'd like though. The overall look of your site isn't quite professional yet. Your buttons are HUGE and your layout is just blog style which is all dead giveaways for amateur web design. Work on that and you'll go far."

Huh - maybe if I'd had a decent instructor to, oh, I dunno, EXPLAIN some things, I might have been able to do better. Anyhow....I got a B in that class. Here is my final project: http://sotd.us/amyburns/HomePage.html

And here is the project by the class star pupil: http://www.ocalanightlife.com/

Now, personally, living in this town, I know this Ocala Nightlife thing has been around for years. I'm not sure how much of this he actually did himself and how much he took from what already existed, but....whatever. Don't you love the images? (puke, gag, retch) I'll give him that it looks professional, but it's also incredibly offensive and pedestrian. But he's got an A for sure cuz all those male instructors seem to just love to objectify women. }:(

Last of the three classes I have a final grade for is 3D Animation. My grade is an A. I still love this stuff so much. However, this quarter was really difficult. Unlike last quarter when there was no one in the computer lab and there was plenty of time to get in there and work, including on the weekends, this quarter it seemed like every person in every other major decided the computer lab was an extension of the student lounge where they could come in there and play on MySpace and Facebook and blare music out of headphones and talk and horse around and act like idiots. When that wasn't happening, the computers were glitching. It made working on my project really, really difficult. The weekends unfortunately were not any better as there were continually people bringing their kids in and having loud conversations, letting their kids on the computers (which they aren't supposed to do) and being disruptive. For the amount of money I'm paying for these classes y'all, I think the computer lab should be off limits to anyone not in the Design program so we have a place to go and work. I would have loved to have had the 3DS Max software at home this quarter so I could work in peace and quiet and on my hours. But....didn't happen. So....with all that, I still managed. Yay me. I'm actually pretty proud of my final projects. Or I was until I went and saw Avatar and now they just look really amateur and stupid. But, I just remind myself that this is only my second animation-type class and that I'm only in my third quarter of my first year so....give myself a break. So....first project was our Course Assessment. We had to design a solar system, make the light source come from the sun, apply materials to our planets, make them rotate around the sun, and add in a flythrough camera path. So....here it is:



Our final project was an animation of our own creation. I went through a lot of different ideas and storyboards, but finally came up with this. I call it Snow Shock. See what you think:



We also had a final paper to complete, but it's not worth posting. We simply had to choose a kind of animation to discuss and write a paper about it. I chose claymation. It was just your basic research paper, blah, blah, blah.

So....that's all I have so far for grades. Still waiting for final grades from World Geography, Creative Writing, and Astronomy. As they come online I will be back with more to share with you.

Next quarter should be interesting and quieter, I hope. I'm taking two on campus classes and two online classes. Monday nights on campus is Figure Drawing, which will be with the same instructor who I had Drawing Design and Art Theory with, so I will get a chance to ask him wth happened with my final grade there. Wednesday nights is Digital Media Production which should be with my same instructor from my two 3D Animation classes and a lot of those classmates so....that should be good. A lot of my classmates from 3D Animation should be in Figure Drawing too so it'll be nice to know some people. Online I will be taking Introduction to Literature and Visual Communication in the Media. Those should hopefully be easy classes. We shall see.

Aside from that, I'm just enjoying the downtime from this quarter and the break before next. Next quarter starts my sophomore year so I'm making progress and school seems to be going by pretty quickly. I'm hoping that this next quarter kind of renews my warm fuzzy feeling toward my school. I've had a lot of concerns about things here lately, not the least of which is whether or not they are fully accredited, whether or not potential employers will consider it a "real" degree or an online degree, and whether or not I am getting the best educational experience for my dollar. I went online to the Pixar site to check things out and they use a completely different software called Maya that according to all my reading in the course catalog, my school does not even have or teach so....looks like I'm headed to the Internet for info on that one. As I say, we shall see how this quarter works out. I've been researching other schools and if I don't feel like things are moving in the right direction, I'll transfer what I can somewhere else. But then, there's another concern - will any of these credits even transfer somewhere else? Suffice it to say that in my mind, Rasmussen is on probation with me right now. We'll see how next quarter and the future go.

So....that's it for now. More to come in follow-up as more grades come online. Also - on a non-school note - if you haven't seen Avatar yet - GO SEE IT!!! That is the most visually stunning and amazing film I've seen in a long time. It totally reminded me of why I returned to school and what I want to be able to do when I get out. I'm already working on a couple of screenplays and stories and have so much I want to do. I just need to get the skills and knowledge to do it. So....cheers for now all!