A Blink Changes Everything

I blinked and that break down I had was over a month ago. The Disney trip with my sister Katie was also over a month ago. Unreal. 

I blinked and suddenly I’m 23. I don’t know how I feel about it. Years keep passing, but I’m still in school so age doesn’t really effect things. My birthday was quite. Dinner made by my friends, a few presents, a night to do what I wanted. Later in the week my roommates and I really celebrated by going out to dinner and a movie. Actually ordered my first drink after being legal for 2 years now. Strawberry Lime Margareta. Very good.

I blinked and somehow I registered classes for the last time at Ringling. Now that was a trial. The whole senior class registers at the same moment. Typically everyone is done with in 2 minutes so it is already very stressful. This year everything crashed seconds before registration opened. Didn’t matter if you where in the labs, on a laptop, cell phone, mac or pc - everything froze. Some people started going through after 5 minutes, others after 20. Thankfully I got everything I wanted. My line up includes: 2 Thesis classes, Native American Cultures, 3D Modeling in ZBrush, and Glass Casting.

I blinked and my Japanese Art and Culture project was due. Originally I was going to make a wood block print, but that didn’t happen. Instead I went to Michael’s and got some clay that when backed turns into erasers. My plan was to make small things based off of the popular Japanese Erases. Some came out really well, like my bonsai tree and origami crane, others not so much.

I blinked and somehow Thanksgiving past. I ended up staying in Florida because of school work. However, my Aunt and Uncle where staying in Orlando so I got to visit them for 2 days before going back to school.

I blinked and now thesis is due tomorrow. Thankfully I finished with enough time to breath and have everyone else hate me for being done. It looks cool. I’ll post a link to it sometime after I get it online. Now I have to start working on the ‘Making Of’ video. I’m actually looking forward to it - though I would have liked more than 3 days.

I blinked and suddenly my second to last semester of undergraduate is over in 3 days. Suddenly Katie is published in a book you can actually by on amazon and graduates in just over a week. Suddenly graduate school applications are being submitted. Suddenly teachers keep asking what we want to do, where we want to work. 

Suddenly everything is starting to get real.

And all I did was blink.

Not a Good Week

Yes, I have been really bad about these updates. It is hard getting back into a habit and trying to juggle my new activities.

Anime club is going strong as we finally got new people. 6 new people. So its nice to know that the club won’t completely die next year - as of now.

I still tutor local kids twice a week. They are very manipulative. A few that I have known for a while know keep trying to keep me longer. It often works which is good for them, not so great for me. Not that I leave to go to class, but making dinner and getting my own homework done is kind of important too.

I don’t have as many classes this term - only 4. Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday I have class 8:30 - 11:30 and the other days I have class from 12:30-6. This give me time to do work as it now takes a lot more hours to get the projects done.

My classes are Japanese Art and Culture (with the same teacher from Architecture and Chinese Art and Culture). An easy class. I have Costume Design where you might as well call it character design class. Well, concentrating on the costume. The idea is to create outfits that tell the story of the character in a glance. A bit of work, but everyone is a senior working on thesis so we get a lot of slack.

Then there are my CORE classes. This term it is Thesis 1 and Adv. Animation - this is more or less a support class for thesis with a few mini projects.

Everything was going fine. I had a schedule I was keeping. I was either ahead or good. Then it fell apart this week.

My thesis is a ‘story’ with fish as the characters. That means that they have to move like fish. I have 2 types - a goldfish and a betta fish - both modeled using hyperNerbs (basically makes the model smooth.) Today I was learning how to character rig with one of the teachers, Morgan. Everything was going fine. Then he says, “You should attach rigs without hyperNerbs.”

Okay. Fine. We take it off.

(For those of you that don’t know - they look totally different and WRONG without the herbs if you modeled it that way.)

“Why is it like this?”

“It’s how all the tutorials said to do it.”

“…”

Now I have to re-make the fish. It won’t take too long, but I now am going back doing something I did over a month a go.

Now for rigging.

Basically, rigging is not easy. You can learn or years and still learn more. I was asking to be given a 16 week course in 2-4 days. So what does he say?

“We should have started this process at the beginning of the year.”

Really? REALLY! I asked for that. I went to all the teachers and said that I needed to learn how to rig this stupid fish, but no, they just found other ways for it to swim. Sure it works, but that isn’t all it has to do.

Oh, but that’s not all.

- I have 10 essays for Grad school to write and finish…NOW. 

- A 5 page paper due in a week. 

- The second pass of thesis is 1.5 weeks. (And it has been in a stand-still for 2 weeks as I can’t do anything else until the rigging situation is felt with.)

My emotions aren’t helping either.

- I’ve been questioning myself if I am even good enough to apply to grad school.

- My dog, Diehl, looks like he will graduate from the Seeing Eye to become a Guild dog. Its great and all, but I’m getting tired of loving something for a year then never seeing them again…

- Our pet dog, Nick, is getting old - really old. I’m terrified that he’s going to leave while I’m at college too.

And the cherry on top?

I just want to go home.

This happens every year. I get to a point where talking to my parents every night just isn’t enough anymore. I want to go home, but I can’t until December.

I hate Florida.

My ray of sunshine?

I get to see my sister Katie this weekend when we go to Disney. Sure that means I have less time to get everything done, but right now I’m so stressed and frankly depressed that time at Disney with my sister sounds like a dream.

It has not been a good week. Here’s to tomorrow. 

A 'Year' in Review

Sorry. Really I am. Yeah that doesn’t make up for leaving this alone for nearly a year, but would you believe me if I said things were crazy?

Well they were. And that’s my story. I’m sticking with it.

So lets try catching you up quickly, shall we?

Last log was about the 5 week project. Simply put, things only got worse with Lon. On the day of pitch he showed up almost 4 hours late, so I had to pitch alone. His storyboards made little scene but I did my best and the teachers were okay with it. My concept was chosen, (and actually picked as one of the top 3 presented.) Eventually though we changed it slightly to be all about how a made up TV show can influence the real world.

Case in point: Star Trek and the creation of cell phones

https://www.behance.net/gallery/14853579/Star-Trek-PSA

By the end of the 5 weeks I was so frustrated with Lon that I was bearly stopping myself from screaming at him. (I did snap my words a few times though.) The teachers were fine with it. They saw that I was trying, that he wasn’t showing up to our meetings, that he would disappear, and that he would try to blame me for his late arrivals.

But it is over now. And I haven’t had a class with him since - something I would love to keep up.

Christmas came and with it New Years. We aren’t a family big on the New Year parties so we went on a cruise to Jamaica. Much more fun.

Spring semester started up shortly after that. I had animation, concept, design but also Chinese Art and Culture, and my final sculpture studio class for my minor.

Now that was a fun class.

There were only 4 other people in the class - all of them seniors in sculpture majors working on their thesis shows. I came in the first day (had to take this class instead of a normal minor elective due to the department head) and the teacher said, “Yeah, so you aren’t a major in sculputure. Do what ever you want.”

Cool.

So I worked on making small figures. Originally they were all part of the same story, but time ran out so my last one was just a test for myself.

https://www.behance.net/gallery/18344149/Fairy-

....Nothing else really happened.

Now summer time.

Originally the idea was to get an internship. I applied to 25 places and did get past 3 interviews with the Disney Theatrical Group, but no. At least I tried.

First thing that happened was all my girlies from Moore were graduating. So I went to see their senior show (I missed the fashion show though because we went to see Aladdin.) I then attended the graduation with my old roommate’s family. There were 14 of them which was a lot considering that most of them came from Hong Kong. I spent the day with them and it was very fun.

My parents celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary. They went down to the Florida Keys which is where they had gotten engaged and went for their honeymoon. While they were away we got our latest Seeing Eye Puppy named Pax. (Diehl went back for training the end of April). 

Pax being held my Michael

My Grandparents, my Mom’s parents, celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary so we had a big party. For me it was big because it was the first time I got to ware heels since my surgeries. And for the first time ever I didn’t feel like someone was stabbing my feet after 5 minutes! I wore my heels for over 4 hours, even danced in them!

Kline 50 year Wedding Anniversary 

Oh yes, the party was good too.

Michael and Katie worked all summer on their play. Originally they were going to do a extremely low budget performance of it at the end of summer but changed plans. Instead they got kids together every-other-day for at least 5 hours to rehears. At the end of summer they went to a recording studio to record...everything. The idea is that they can send it to the proper people to get permission to perform it.

The rest of the summer was spent doing other things. Mini golfing, going to the beach, swimming in the pool, babysitting.

Then it was all over.

Now we get to this year.

Since it is senior year we are working hard on thesis. They changed the rules though and set it up so instead of doing one project for 2 semesters we are doing 2 projects, one each semester.

That is a LOT of work to get done in very little time.

So I have 2 classes where I work on thesis - with teachers Ron and David (he’s new to teaching). I am also taking Japanese Art and Culture (needed an extra history class to complete the minor) and I finally got into Costume Design. It is basically a class there you design a character’s outfit to tell their story.

So far we have done out Thesis Pitches, had my Japanese Mid-term (why they held it week 5 is beyond me), completed 1 project for Costume Design, as well as a project for TEDx Sarasota.

So there you go. A year-ish in review. I’ll try to get regular again with these posts and with that, make them shorter.