Grad-School

So, there that being really about posting on here, I do have some things to say so lets move on.

Grad-School is not what I thought it would be. Though to be honest I’m not quite sure what I expected. 

I guess part of me thought it would be something like 4 years of schooling and teaching packed into 2 years. So far its more like, “Here. The assignment is due in 3 weeks. In the mean time read this packet that is 60 pages, watch these short films, now get me a 15 minute presentation about all that. What isn’t your animation do yet?”

So yeah. Not hand holding here.

Midterms is officially over. With it has past 3 Narrative assignments, 2 Practicum animations, countless Languages files, 5 written out thesis ideas for Seminar, and a board-o-matic + concept art in Animation.

Lets break that down.

Narrative (the class “Animation Narrative”) is a bit up in the air. The teacher still isn’t sure what his plan is and each day of class it a very different topic than the week before. So far we have had to write 1 narrative piece, 2  scripts (one was film noir), and do 2 story boards. Nothing is graded yet so I have no idea how I’m doing in that class.

Practicum is a bit of a joke at times. We had 1 project to make some idents. Then we had a partner project to make an animation about a political or social issue. I HATE partner projects. Thankfully though the person I was with understood after effects at least and though we had several things we disagreed on, it was always resolved quickly and with little fuss.

Two shots from my ident project. Theme was pastel goth.

Seminar is, I’ve found out, thesis prep part 1. While we watch different shorts and talk about film devices and story rules, homework is always to write a short story you could see as an animation. Nothing is set in stone yet, but we do have to make a final decision by 4 weeks into next semester.

Languages is a pain. I don’t like coding but I get some of the concepts easily because they are all very logical to me. Unfortunately this means that most of the class thinks that I know everything so they always ask me for help. I don’t mind helping, but I am no where near confident to proof read your code.

Color wheel created using nothing but coding.

Finally Animation. If you’ve been following my other blog then you know everything that is going on there. Basically we are working on an animation that will last till the end of spring semester. Mine is about a girl that travels to different worlds by a portal/ puzzle piece. It was based off of the Shel Silverstein poem Picture Puzzle Piece.

Expression example sheet for the main character - Pepper

That’s most of the assignments so far, well not mentioning the 40-60 pages of reading for each class every week…..

For now though I’m going to bed. I’ll try and be more regular in posts, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.