Sunday, December 7, 2014

Thursday, September 18, 2014

Friday, September 12, 2014

Space Concept



I swear, the colors did not look this washed out. Dammit. Oh well.

Friday, September 5, 2014

Nathan Fowkes "Designing With Color and Light" Weeks 3 and 4 dump

Just an update on the class. Every Wednesday at midnight PST we get a lecture (about an hour ish long), an assignment that is due the following Thursday by midnight PST, and by Sunday (depending on if you turned in your assignment on time) we get a ~15 minute long video critique; the entire course is 9 weeks long. So far, every critique I've gotten Mr Fowkes has been tearing me a new asshole. Which is awesome, since I end up learning a lot more from said tearing than I do in the lectures. When we turn in our assignments, we rate ourselves out of 5 stars and have a section where we have any comments and additional questions for him. We also get access to previous and current students critiques to see what we are up against and let me say I am completely humbled and am reminded that I am just borderline average, maybe even below that. He has said that he is not an easy grader because this is how the industry is and I am sure all of his students appreciate that.

I'm a little hesitant as to showing my assignments since they suck but its all about progress right?? Here we go..

Week 3, my worst week ever.


The assignment was to create five different color keys using interesting color combinations and lighting. I was supposed to play with different values and lighting also, not only the blasted colors. Bahhhh  And also I don't know how to perspective. Time to brush up on some fundamentals.. 

Week 4, hopefully he sees that I'm learning and stuff. D: 


The assignment is similar to week 3, but this time we are to target certain emotions through light and color.

Wednesday, August 20, 2014

Nathan Fowkes' "Designing with Color and Light" Week 2


Week two is about believability. He gave us three black and white rough renderings of scenes and we are to paint over it using two sources of warm and cool lighting. I chose this scene from "How to Train Your Dragon."

He ripped me a new hole with the crits from the first week and took all of his advice and worked hard on this one and although I am not completely happy with it, I learned a lot. Meh, knowledge is power?

Here is the original to see what I had to work with:


Friday, August 15, 2014

Sketch Dump

I am back from backpacking and am ashamed at myself for not blogging throughout it. Was too busy experiencing life away from the screen and such. But here is a sketch dump, enjoy.



And I am enrolled in Schoolism's "Designing with Light and Color" class with the epic Nathan Fowkes. The first assignment was to do color study thumbnails of concept work I admire. Screenshots from: The Grand Budapest Hotel, AI, Ponyo, Frozen, Toy Story 3, Only Lovers Left Alive (hnnggg Tom HIddleston), Her, and various works from awesome concept artists. 





Saturday, April 26, 2014

Travellen Chronicles: Pai, Thailand



My time in Pai wasn't nearly long enough as it is a common place where people find difficult leaving. Away from the loud tuk tuks and thick pollution Chiang Mai had, this place immediately grabbed me with its laid back vibe and peaceful atmosphere.

The bus ride from Chiang Mai from Pai has been notorious to induce a lot of chundering because of the windy roads up the mountain and crazy Thai bus drivers. So I equipped myself with some anti-nausea pills and was passed out the entire ride whereas the other girls on my bus had to throw up at a rest stop. Ben, my friend from Berlin I met in Chiang Mai and trekked with came with me because he has never heard of Pai and wanted to check it out. AREN'T YOU GLAD YOU DID, BEN? We checked into Darling's Viewpoint, the best place to stay in Pai with a great view of the sunset as well with a great social environment.

View from Darling. Sorry for the shit quality.






The next few days we met up with Cesar from the Chiang Mai trek and explored the nightlife. Seems like everyone who bums around Pai is doing some fire poi or hula hooping, or doing tricks with some shiny ball. They practice during the day and we see them performing at night.



Cesar and I wanted to check out Lod Cave that is about 50km north of Pai, close to the Myanmar border so we left early in the morning on a scooter but ran into a problem when the police stopped us because Cesar wasn't wearing a helmet. No international license? Fine. No helmet? 600 bht fine and you are on your way. The ride was incredible, I got to see the beautiful scenery as we were winding up and down the mountain road. After about an hour we got to the cave. It was around 500 bht to hire a tour guide that would take us to the three caves via kerosene lamp. We entered the cave by bamboo raft where I bought a bag of fish food to feed to the fish that swam along with us. All our tour guide did was point to certain things and say, "look like crocodile/bear/buddha/corn/flower" so we would look and go "ah, yes." And so on but the cave was massive and I was just drooling over all of the different rock formations. After the cave we stopped by a little town on the way back to Pai to have lunch, there was absolutely no tourists so it was nice.



Cesar

Our guide




As much as I wanted to stay in Pai, it was time to move on to a new country, Laos! So I booked a 2 day slow boat ticket into Laos. Even as I was leaving Darling Viewpoint, I was so tempted to just turn back and stay. It is always hard leaving a place, especially Pai.

Friday, April 11, 2014

Travellen Chronicles: Chiang Mai, Thailand




My brother and I parted ways in Bangkok. He got off the bus at a Sky Train Station and I got off the last stop around noon, Mochit Bus Station, which has buses going up North. This is when my first travel mistake was made: I hastily booked a 2:30 pm bus to Chiang Mai, that takes 10 hours and I have no accodimation booked. Mid-bus ride only did I realize that I wouldn't get into the city until midnight because the thing with South East Asian transportation, nothing is on time and you can get somewhere hours after the posted arrival time. My whole bus was filled with locals and lucky me got stuck with the only window seat without a curtain so I was getting raped by the aggressive sun for hours.

I arrive in Chiang Mai at 1:30am, overpayed a Tuk Tuk to take me to a closed and dark hostel only to see that it is locked with no one at the front desk. After realizing that most hostels probably wouldn't take me this late and not knowing any other hostels, I agreed to the Tuk Tuk driver's recommendation of a "hotel." Over payed for one night in a shoddy room but checked out early and made my way to Bunchun Hostel. 

I loved the place instantly since the walls were covered with canvases of art as well as having a friendly atmosphere to meet people. Vee, the owner of the hostel is from San Francisco and is helpful, friendly, and crazy awesome. He has a dog named JuJu which means small penis haha and is a lady boy chihuahua. That same day I met Jason, a dude from San Francisco (woo California represent haha), and went to the Tiger Kingdom TO PET TIGERS. We got a chance to spend time with some medium sized tigers and a big tiger. There were some rules with approaching and petting the animals since I'm sure they've had many accidents before and are cautious. We are only supposed to approach them from  behind,  pet but not scratch, and do not touch face or paws. I definitely felt like the animals were drugged, so that kind of killed the experience for me but now I get to say I got to lie on a tiger, with guilt. That night a bunch of us from the hostel went to the Ladyboy Burlesque near the night market that was just a few minutes walk from the hostel, now THAT was educational and awesome. There was a segment where the ladyboy started out all in ladyboy gear then slowly as the song went on she began to take off her eyelashes, makeup, and change into male clothes then lastly her/his wig. Awesome. Afterwards we went to THC Rooftop bar, a really cool rooftop reggae bar, to have some drinks and after to Zoe's to do the dancy dance since it was Sophie and Karl's (cute Swedish couple) last day in Chiang Mai.



Haha Jason do not want. 


Chiang Mai night market

Sophie from Sweden!
The next day three guys (Jason, Max, and Ben or San Francisco, New York, and Berlin)  from my room decided to rent motorbikes for the day to explore the city. I didn't feel confident enough to drive one so I rode on the back of Max's. After going around the city, which is not that big, we decided to check out the mountains. The road started getting becoming really slippery and windy although it didn't really lead to anywhere so we began to head back. Jason was in front of us and we weren't even going that fast but all of the sudden we saw him slide out on the turn. We hurried to him and I just wanted to clean him off because his wounds were just all covered in dirt so I poured water on himm but that didn't really do anything. Max rode up the hill to find someone to call a taxi for us. During that time a Thai guy rode down and stopped next to us, stared, and we tried to ask him to call a taxi but he just stared, looked at Jason in pain and rode off. The hell?? All of the sudden we see a monk in training walking up the path, the rushes up to us and takes a look at Jason, whips out his phone to call an ambulance, and waits with us. After about fifteen minutes, we hear sirens from the distance and lo and behold a guy on a motorbike and an ambulance pulls up. They clean Jason off as another hospital guy was taking pictures with his phone. I'm not sure if he was doing it for work purposes or doing it to post on his "Stupid Shit Tourists do" Tumblr. I've got to say I am very very impressed by the hospital in Chiang Mai, no one even told us to stop wheelchair racing.






The next few days Max, Ben and I went on a three day two night trek through the jungle. First day was some trekking, riding elephants, bathing them, dinner, bonfire with guitar, and getting zero sleep. I should have researched my trekking company a bit more because the elephants didn't really look like they were being treated too well. They have been chained up their whole lives and don't know any better than one route to carry tourists around and the happiest they look were when they were being bathed for 30 mintues, unchained, otherwise they were chained to a 4 ft chain. Sigh, I felt extremely guilty about supporting the problem. Onwards to the next day where we slid down the crack of this rock into some water, looked sketchy and dangerous but I went "FUCK IT" and was the first one to slide down and was so amazing. Half our group left since they only signed up for 2 days but we were joined by a French guy, Cesar. The next 3 hours was trekking to the other side of the mountain which got intense at times but that's the point of trekking, make the pain of uphills into something therapeutic etc. That night we stayed up in the jungles in bungalows and hung out with our crazy Thai tour guide. The last day we went to a waterfall and dipped into the cold ass water and went white water rafting afterwards a short trek. If you want to test teamwork, go white water rafting. We said our goodbyes to our trekking group at the end of rafting and went back to our hostel to take real showers. Ben, Cesar and I went out for drinks to wrap up the end of trekking and our last day in Chiang Mai. The next day Ben and I boarded a mini bus to lovely Pai!