I LOVE YOU ALL

And by that I mean I hate everything.

JUSSSST KIDDINGGGG. This is the "finished" piece for our digital painting class. By finished, I mean I finally reached a point where it just had to end, that point being the rapidly approaching due date. It's not a fantastic piece, but it's my first digital piece where I used an extensive amount of layers. At any given time I had around twenty or thirty. IT'S A STEPPING STONE PIECE. MEANING THAT I'LL NOW BE ABLE TO WORK UP TO MORE THOUGHTFUL DIGITAL WORKS WITH RELEVANT ENVIRONMENTS AND ATMOSPHERIC QUALITY. That, or I'll realize that there's no stone after the first and I'll plunge into a morass of muddy looking mud.

On a less self-mutilating note I MADE ME AN ANIMATION! I'll post that later, SO I DON'T OVERWHELM THE FEW PEOPLE WHO FOLLOW THIS. I think, out of all the work I've generated during camp I am most proud of the stuff I made in our hilariously short animation class. We had a mere two class periods and whatever time in between to do a transitional animation; considering the minuscule amount of time I think I did an admirable job.

In terms of sheer frustration, I finally found Z-Brush's equal in After Effects. However, i have no tears left after Z-Brush, so all I could do was laugh hysterically.

We pinned our "best" works up for Final Critique tomorrow. I feel inadequate, looking at some of the other student's work. My figure drawings are all, not refined, and my posters are all, not very well arranged. Apparently I'm good at gestures, though; Mr. Keller, our figure drawing teacher said my gestures were good, and a heck of a lot stronger than my long drawings. I can get down a gesture, but I seem to cock things up when it comes to making things look finished. I got a little offended, too, when one class mate referred to someone else as the best one in the class; there's definitely some disparity in ability among us, however, the generality of the statement offended me. First, we don't all have the same strengths, and some artists were better at some things and less at others. Also, not gonna lie, I felt kind of threatened. Whoo, insecurity! I has it. Besides, if the girl who was supposed to get into Illustration had gotten in instead of me, she would have been the best one in the class, hands down. It's funny, because I've become good friends with her, but I she doesn't know that I unintentionally usurped her place in the program. She ended up in Graphic design, which is what I would have had to do had she been told a deadline and turned in her acceptance letter then. I think she did better in graphic design than I ever would have, though.

I went back up to the display, after an expedition to the crepe place, because I wanted to tack up some frames from my animation. I think I may be more proud of it than my Z-Brush renderings, even though I suffered a lot more for those. I basically spent hours in a row drawing on my makeshift lightboard, a.k.a the window in my dorm. And the sequence that I thought would have the most bugs (because I didn't have a lightboard) turned out to be the best, or rather, didn't need any further editing when I DID return to the lightboard. But I think that assignment reaffirmed my love of animation. I flirted with it in fifth grade by making these really tight sequential drawings... they were NOT comics, because the actions and timing in each frame were equally spaced apart. Then I just stuck with making comics every once in awhile for the next, what, seven years? Shit, son. Now I really want to learn flash. I would just stick to drawing on windows, but I don't know how I would shoot the frames afterwords.

It bums me out a bit, because we only dedicated two days to solid animation classes, which isn't nearly enough time. Ideally we should have had half illustration and half animation. Still, I think my other classes were worth it.

As for going back home, I can't say that I'm looking forward to it. While I'm not in love with Detroit necessarily, I love the classes here, and a lot of the people as well. It's so refreshing to be surrounded by other artists. I even loved the worst times, when everyone in the class is on the edge of punching someone in the face. Commiseration is a beautiful, beautiful thing. Also, it's great to know that other people have good taste. Seriously, like Wes Anderson films seems to be a prerequisite for going to art school.

I have so many quotations and notes written down in the sketchbook I was given, and I doubt that any of it is going to make sense later on. I felt like my sketch book for camp was really terrible. I decided to take David Chow's advice and not care about what I drew in it, but still.

Going to art camp has made me want to go to art school intensely. I can hardly believe that last year I wasn't really considering art school at all, while all the kids who are becoming seniors this year are adamant about going to art school. If they're so sure about doing it, why the crap aren't I? Probably because I'm insecure as all get out.

Annnyway... I'm being super anti social, and this my longest blog post ever. Also, it's my second to last night here, and I need to be in the common room for it to be worthwhile. Down and up, everyone.