I managed to go 3 weeks without a trip to Starbucks. Alas, week 3 of my 6th quarter has gotten me reacquainted with the friendly baristas at my local ‘bucks…
Anyway, thought this ad epitomized PC philosophy at its best.
That’s right, Turkmenbashi, the crazy president of Turkmenistan had his moment in the limelight making and breaking the grid.
The president-for-life who passed away not too long ago, was known for his crazy personality cult and absurd rules. My research found endless amounts of sculptures, products, and buildings bearing his name, in addition to the infamous giant gold sculpture of himself that constantly rotates so he is always facing the sun. Liqueur, money and pieces of art bear his face. He has renamed days of the week and months of the year to his liking. Lip syncing, music in cars, and ballet are a few of the oddities banned. Obviously, this guys provided plenty of interesting material for my Type & Image assignment, which involved using characteristics of a person formated with conventional and deconstructed grids, on 5 postcards.
Though I am not an orderly person, I greatly enjoyed this assignment, and hopefully this will be the start to adding some structure to my work.
Oh, here’s Hank’s take on the wall. Much more positive than mine. Guess that’s why I didn’t make the smiling faces montage…
Here’s a little clip of “the wall” I made last quarter…
I hate hanging the wall. Of all the things at Portfolio Center, this is the most dreadful, horrible activity. I’d rather complete another cut paper poster in 21 shades of gray while having teeth pulled. I’m not sure why I hate it so much, but I dread that first weekend of each quarter. Is it the chaos? Uncertainty of escape? Team activities gone bad? Disorganized mess everywhere?
To those outside of PC, “hanging the wall” refers to putting up all the selected student work from the previous quarter. It’s a big exhibition of what the PC elite think are the best pieces and it changes every quarter. Students are broken down into teams for certain areas and put up everything and build boxes, shelves and everything else required. The madness beings with a tear down crew at 7, and continues into infinity. Once your group finished, you are encouraged to help out others…though it is very tempting to sneak away and enjoy the afternoon. Otherwise, you might not see daylight for a long time. Sadly, there isn’t yet a digital wall (website gallery), so animation/web projects never see an outside audience (like mine). Boo, hiss.
It’s also a good time to get a true critique on your work. Your work may be chosen, and people around you might not see your name tag on it (which has likely fallen off anyway by now), and thus give their true verbal feelings on it. It’s a skin toughener, well, for me anyway. My five quarters seems to produce “mediocre” results, but better to hear it now from students then next year from potential employers.
I have so much I need to learn and accomplish this year to get anywhere, it’s exhausting.
A long day at work and a loud evening out. All in all, a very nice way to spend my first Friday back in school - without massive amounts of stress weighing me down.
My day at work was filled with little annoyances that I probably would never have noticed a year and a quarter ago. First of all, I had to cut and assemble some packaging for a new product photo shoot. First I’m given a giant pair of clumsy scissors, and then finally get my beloved exacto…which happens to be quite dull and of course is only blade in our design department.
The item itself has been professionally printed with some expensive extras, but the template is off - it is the wrong size and does not build correctly. I’m a little green with packaging, but still…I know they did a million mock-ups, how’d this get through? And am I gonna get blamed for crappy assembling? (words of “improve craft!” from past critiques still echo in my head). I tape the heck out of the thing trying to get it to work, as glue is illegal to transport through the facilities (long story I still don’t understand).
The last six hours were spent photographing product and some other accessories I don’t have any training with studio set ups, but fortunately someone not in China this week helped me get all the wires and plugs and stands ready. Yes, photography was part of my undergrad, but I was taught by natural light enthusiasts. And a tip to people wanting their product photographed - don’t provide accessories that are wrinkled, torn or otherwise not in their best condition. Irkkkk.
Anyway, those were actually very tiring hours, arranging and rearranging, playing with lights and position…I’ve forgot all the work that goes into photography before the shot (and that it is important, Photoshop can’t do everything). Kudos to you photographers. Also, I’m really glad I didn’t get into product photography, as it got to be a little tedious for me, and I was sick of the product pretty fast. I still love photography, but I’ll stick to my architectural fun stuff and weirdy artsy nonsense on the side.
So maybe it’s good I went into design instead? Well, I think design is good for me, but am I good for design? Ahhh, deep thoughts.
So Miami did have some really cool things despite some of my dismal experiences…an unexpected surprise was a pass through the Kidrobot store. Since high fashion doesn’t appeal to me (this might change if I get a decent job later) and I had little interest in crappy souvenir stores or the retail stores we have in Atlanta, I didn’t know if the shopping in South Beach would have any appeal to me. But fear not techie toy loving dorks! Not only did the Mac store on Lincoln Ave have live DJs performing in a club-like atmosphere, but Kidrobot has a store just waiting for you on Miami Beach. Quirky fun toys and giant smoking rabbits! It was a wonderful atmosphere full of fun innovative little toys for adult kids.
Oddly enough, an entorage of very confident guys came in yelling and announcing something while I was browsing about. I asked a worker if I could have my picture taken with one of the giant smoking rabbits and the answer was no…not sure if it’s a store policy or because it turned out to be Lil Wayne shopping in the store. I hadn’t been paying attention to anyone else, as I was deep in my own paradise drooling over crazy little figurines. I didn’t realize who it was until I stepped out of the store and was met with fat lensed cameras and girls screaming “oh my god, it’s lil Wayne! If only I had gone into the store 5 minutes earlier! OMG!” I guess I was lucky to get in when I did? Oh well, that was my brush with the glitterati in South Beach.
I still would have rather had my picture taken with the giant smoking bunny.
I’m back….after a stressful trip to take care of some visa stuff for Pig…and I am incredibly tired. Needless to say, I’ve never been so cold in Florida - I’ve been on Habitat for Humanity trips in January to Ft. Myers, and for goodness sake I was born in Boca Raton….so I never expected to see people walking around in winter coats during the end 0f March in Miami.
I do love cold weather, but when I travel to Florida with a bag of snorkeling gear, I have some expectations. I lasted about 10 minutes on Key Biscayne and then hid on the shore under a long sleeve shirt, sweater, and towel shielding my head from the fierce wind that was pummeling me with painful bits of sand. There were all of two people swimming in the choppy but tempting azure waters of South beach, so we just settled for walks there.
Maimi did indeed have many surprises for us beyond the crazy weather. Its Italian consulate annoyed us with random closing times, and downtown’s homeless issues were rather scary. I’m used to Atlanta and its homeless crowd, but I guess I just know where to go and how to handle them? Or our bums have southern hospitality? These bums were mean! It seemed downtown Miami was filled with half-constructed luxuriy high-rises and vacant lots filled with the homeless. We relied cometplely on public transporation - no car and saved money by not using taxis - so we got a pretty good feel for the urban atmosphere. On a brighter note, it is possible to get around Miami by public transport any time of day - something not so feasible with MARTA. They have the free Metro Mover (this weird bus/monorail thing), which we called the bum express after being harassed countless times. They have a pretty good bus system with some night routes, if you don’t mind the homeless brushing their hair on you, and it connects to their simple above ground subway, which connects to longer distance trains.
So Miami Beach is a lovely place, and thankfully there were average looking people in addition to the toned and large breasted. Downtown, however, has an eerie emptiness. We stayed at the Hilton, thanks to a $56/nite deal from Hotwire, and though the room was great, the outside was not. Each morning, fresh bum juice awaited us on the sidewalks, and the walk to the buses had a lovely aroma.
Anyway, we aren’t calling this a vacation, because we had business to take care of, and the weather sucked terribly. A real vacation would involve a hotel on Miami Beach district and a few taxi rides here and there. We had to spend a bunch of time inland in Coral Gables, so downtown was an ideal spot for this reason only. Passing through Little Havana for cafecitos was the highlite of that part.
I have more adventures to post about, hopefully I’ll get to that before the quarter starts again on Monday. I took plent of pictures on my little dinky camera, as I was too worried to take the big Nikon out until the last day. Anyway, a MARTA train never seemed so glamourous as it did after my flight in…
While most students like to post their actual work from the quarter, I always end up showing showing the resulting disaster that is left behind. So, to keep up with tradition, here’s what what it all looked like after 4 critiques and a quarter of hell.
At first, in the living room, not so bad…just some light trimming to get things mounted.
Then we move to my studio…ah,where the real action took place. Still not as bad as 4th quarter, but then again I didn’t tackle any huge paper mache projects this time around…
So, 5th quarter is over at last, and I can now partake in activities I couldn’t before. Like sleep. In a bed. Neither of those things really happened much lately. I was rendering things out on my laptop in the car on the way to my 4th crit, so things were that crazy. I now have to prepare for an internship competition as well, but that’s tranquil waters compared to the recent tsunami.
Anyway, more pics to come, but for now a bit of what I’ve been seeing…
Yesssiree, after much time spent toiling my life away trying to master ActionScript3 and suck all the fun out of Flash, I’ve have completely mastered it. It aged me a bit, as you can see in the photo, but in all that code I think I’ve found a formula for the meaning of life.
I asked this cat what he thought of my accomplishments, and this was his reaction. Sigh.
Perhaps he’s as enthused (jaded) as I am about learning code.
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