Sunday, May 5, 2019

Weekly Comments! 5/5/19

Heya, everyone!

So basically, this week was a little bit of weird, some splashes of disappointing, but most of all mentally exhausting. Stay tuned to hear it out--


What happened last Saturday, two days ago, was the SAT. Yay! I was frustrated over studying for it since I flopped hard due to how I had no solid math classes this year. I was able to complete all the multiple choice (at least if you consider bubbling something in to be completed) and missed 4 or 5 of the grid-ins due to the timing. I did only 20 practice questions beforehand, so I guess I did well for what I expected of myself. The ELA portions were quite fun, in all honesty. I enjoyed the variety and found them to be somewhat easy, but everyone's SAT experiences differ. If you took it on the 4th, what did you think?

I have been drawing a lot more recently, or at least trying to fill up the remains of my year-old sketchbook (expires in June, I get a new one every year) and I'm happy with where I am. I still find confusion in conducting my thoughts onto the screen or sheet, but that happens to everyone. I plan on doing more motion studies and general proportion/anatomy studies along with character emotions, etc, since I have simply no grasp on mouth shapes aside from what I call the "tooth wall" (example included down below) and every time I try something new it always looks weird. Practice will get me somewhere, though, so I have to keep trying.

This week we worked more on our final projects, and I feel good about where I am in mine. I've got my primary backgrounds figured out, I have half of the staging done, a lil bit of animation here and there, I'd say I'm on a good path. Wednesday last week, I went on a college tour with a bus full of friends to Daemen college along with UB. The first stop was UB, and needless to say, I was impressed just by the size of it. Three whole campuses and each one is muy grande! Although they didn't have what I wanted (they didn't even list any art majors, although there's an entire building dedicated for the arts. It's mostly sciences, however), I still thoroughly enjoyed the experiences presented to me along the walk. The gyms have 3 floors, the auditoriums are huge, they have an Olympic size swimming pool cleaned with LED lights or something, it's a very impressive campus. After we concluded the tour there, we took a ride on over to Daemen, where we were introduced to the programs and scholarships, the whole shebang, right at the beginning in this really fancy building. I found out that two of the Animation professors have connections with CN and Disney, so there are already plus sides to going there. They offer a 5k scholarship to 2 people annually based solely on artistic skills, and I have some competition if I want to get on that level. Speaking of entry and whatnot, I'm on the fence on whether or not I actually want to take a gap year to improve or not. I know it's risky, but I'd be able to finally catch a break and work on my art and that alone. It would be a good experience, but I have yet to thoughtfully engage the pros and cons of it all since I'm a bit far from that line of action. When we entered the art building, they told us they use the same programs as us (TBH/Maya) and they have a Cintiq lab along with what they call "The Dungeon" which is basically their workspace. The seniors work on a ~2 min long thesis film, but the ones they presented seemed a tad lackluster. I want to go to a college that thoroughly challenges not only me but presses my artistic limits to promote breakthroughs. I believe I can find that at SVA. On that same topic, I plan on taking a college tour down to NYC for a day with my dad to see what it's like. I'd have all my questions lined up and ready to shoot, not missing a moment to speak up about my dream college. I want to triple/double major in either Animation, Cartooning or Illustration, all three if possible. I know that since they majorly overlap in terms of content, you'll only need to take the overlapping classes once, so it's a challenge that I'm willing to take.

I hope to learn more about expressions through art, since as previously mentioned I suffer from same-mouth-syndrome, AKA the "Tooth-Wall Curse". I notice when I look over past work that my characters either gave off blank or neutral expressions and I think I felt scared to try being uncomfortable, scared to explore new artistic territory. That's okay, but I want to stress my bits of knowledge in art to go further, to inspire not only myself but others with what I put out, to make not only myself proud, but also others around me. I know that nobody will do that for me but myself. I now know I have to get a hard, firm grip on the concept and swing a hearty home run into the stratosphere. Only I can do that for myself.

Okay, so here's what I was talking about; ft. old art from 2016-2018.
The dumb Tooth Wall.
Here it goes.








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