steady rollin'

Mostly free anyway. I need to go in tomorrow to get my anatomical sculpture graded and take it home, but am otherwise done with this semester.

( School chatter and shots of my most recent 3d character/environment sculpt )

Now I plan to laze around for a few hours and then crash since I have to go to work early tomorrow and bake muffins for the Bike to Work Day energizer station at the North Berkeley BART. Extra hours /and/ feeding Bike to Work'ers, I count this as totally worth it.

Tomorrow is J's last class. Based on whether or not he needs to pull an all nighter tonight, I think the plan is pick up my sculpture, meet up at the Powell building, and then go next door for end of semester margaritas and nachos.

As the subject line states, my final is due monday. I also work Sat/Sun. Which means essentially today and tomorrow should be my crunch days.

Am I diligently making new assets in Maya or polishing up my main character in Zbrush?

No.

I'm staring at this:

...fervently so. I paused only long enough to make an icon from it so that I could continue to stare in 100x100 form while I typed up this entry.

I should probably just write the porn to get it out of my head in the hopes that then I'll be able to focus on, well, anything else. But two pieces of fanart in a row doesn't give me any hope that will work. I can't even write for IJ's porn_battle because I'm still so sldfkjgl and fear that a drabble will turn into something all-consuming.

On the upside, something that makes me feel productive: Snarry Games.

I donated the art for the banners this time around. The graphics team did such a lovely job with the pics, and I'm so pleased to see people praising them in the comments! I'll post the full-sized images after I've managed to push a few vertices around or at the very least open my project.

There is also a friending meme going on over at marvel_fanworks@DW which I have tossed my name into but still need to sift through.

I can't wait for summer, blahblah busycakes.

We're adding our most regular houseguest to the family and thus we are moving in five days. Given that there are only about 4 weeks left in the semester, this makes for extra busycakes. The house we're moving to is awesome though, and a lot closer to both bart and work for J and I, so any anxiety is being beaten down by the excitement. The place has a huge backyard with fallow plots that we can till and plant veggies in and a huge balcony/deck that offers a gorgeous view of all the trees in the neighbourhood. The downstairs flat is currently being renovated, so no neighbours to worry about for a while, which also means that I won't have to feel weird about claiming half of the backyard for new plants and flowers. The common room is even larger than our living room now and my mom has decided she's sick of having a huge couch, so that means a new hardly used couch for us! I'm hoping to have everything non-essential packed up in the next couple days and head to the post office with the stacks of Things I've Been Needing To Send Forever.

Aside from that, working on my final is claiming almost every scrap of free time I've had recently. Even though I'm a lot faster modeling now, trying to do character design on top of modeling was a poor choice. I really should have recruited someone else's design again so I had a clear goal to work towards. My demo reel is shaping up nicely at least. I'll have several strong pieces ready for it and next semester I'm going to try and get in the advanced texturing and lighting course since I probably know enough to skip the pre-req.

Not having a chance to finish some of the fannish images I have in progress is driving me a little crazy. That'll be my light at the end of the tunnel. I'm very inspired though by J, who has been doing a drawing each day, even if its something quick and sketchy. I remember when I used to draw a bit every day and I think my skills are suffering from not making that a part of my routine anymore. I don't know if I'm ready to commit at this point, even to something small, but it's been on my mind a lot so if I spent the time /doing/ instead of /thinking about doing/ it might balance out just fine.

DW is all over my flist these days, and I've been intending to join since they first were getting the project off the ground. I'll be having an account there. I'm not dropping this space in any sense, so it's permanently temporary status will continue on as usual.

In other news, I have been reading again. Most recently I picked up Night Watch (hence icon). For all the talk I expected the storylines to be radically different from the movies, but maybe if I had read the books first, the visual leap on top of the plot changes would seem more drastic than it does. On the shipping angle, Anton/Kostya seems more angsty to me now. Mmm delicious.

ETA: After much deliberation whether or not to keep the 121... @DW. I'll figure the rest out later. :3

Today I'm doing a lot of cleaning and a lot of drawing, with a liberal dash of work things on the side. As I poke at things I've been mentally plotting out my class project for this semester. I need to pin something down in the next couple days and get started. All in all, I'm rather glad I only have one project-based class as it's going to simplify things a lot for me, especially with all the other things I have in the works.

Discovered that I still hadn't posted a ton of old fics up on my site, so I've been spending a few minutes each evening to get them up one or two at a time. Next I'll need to actually design my layout so I can get the categories looking all nice and neat like Blue's site. Oof. Between editing the old stuff since I can't help myself, and working on tidying up the things I wrote for the blindfold meme, I've gotten quite a bit of writing done lately.

Work is a bit better, and my schedule this coming weekend is altered to save me from going crazy. Despite a completely omgwtf moment last week from the person with whom I dread working, I properly explained my feelings to my boss and had a good conversation with him. I also talked a lot with J which helped put a few things in perspective.

And in fannish news, I still haven't watched any of the new BSG season in order to keep current with SPN, but also we finally had a chance to sit down with Jason and marathon some Dexter. We're almost current with that, and despite a few things that are making me be all frowny face, I'm liking the season in general.

I'm also glad I picked up an emusic.com subscription again. I have so many new things to listen to it's really boosting my creativity, and I've finally filled in a few albums that I had trouble digging up back when I used to, you know, care about owning CDs. Wee.

I have three more days in this semester and the evil twin distracts me with 8000 words of J3 fisting porn. 8000 words of ridiculously hot fisting porn. You know, once upon a time I didn't see the appeal. I am a convert. She is also probably stupidly pleased that I have slid that much closer down the slippery slope towards J2. We'll see if I can ever get there without the JDM crutch. I've missed having an rps fandom though. And with Susan watching all the LotR movies lately, it's been making me super nostalgic over lotrips. Which reminds me, I've been looking around for ages for this fic that had one of the hobbits (I think it was Billy) and SeanB and football and drinking and hotness. I think it had Viggo/Sean mentions in it too. Eurgh. I wish I could be less vague....

Anyway, tomorrow, I have a full day of hard surface modeling in front of me. With how behind I was in that class since the format and the materials just did not click with me, I'm not sure how close to finished I'll be with my project. Enough to get a passing grade, I'm sure, but not nearly where I want. Thankfully I got an additional training vid that did a really good job at illustrating all the concepts I was having difficult with. I'm dedicated enough to the subject (Metallicar!) that it's a project I'll keep going on.

My character model is also not going to be finished to level I'd like, but it's more than good enough to turn in. I have all the main parts done, and done well, and it's only all the extra (and optional) accessories that I'm lagging behind on. That one too I'm dedicated enough to continue working on, and I'm really excited to see it done. I'm dying to texture and pose the character, since I think he turned out looking pretty darn cool. It was nice too to collaborate on an original character that wasn't my own as well as something non-fannish as it gave me a lot of wiggle room and I didn't have to spend weeks trying to do character design when that's not my forte.

I gave away my Sunday shift since I definitely need the time with a midnight due date. I'll still be going in with J during the bake shift at stupid o'clock tomorrow though. I had pretty much told my boss I thought we should decorate and he said, go for it, so I bought/made some things on my own that I could just take down and keep after the holidays, and then used petty cash to pad that out with garlands and cute little mini-ornaments. I got about 50% of it up this morning before my shift actually started, and so I want to finish that tomorrow. The head baker came in early and asked if I was going to put up anything in the back. I hadn't really planned to since I went into it thinking more about customers than employees, but after he asked, I made sure to ration out my supplies so I could make production pretty and festive too. For such a meagre budget, I think I did fairly well, and my favourite regulars were appreciative. That totally made coming in early worth it. :D

Anyway, back to the grind!

p.s. Oh wait, I forgot, J and I put up our xmas lights today on the balcony and they're so very pretty. We're probably going to get another strand for the window in our room, but even now we have the cutest lights on the block! :D

p.p.s. The guy working on his cars in the garage underneath us is playing AC/DC. If only he didn't look like the comic book guy from the Simpsons. Sure I'm pretending otherwise, but still.

So the Cintiq arrived earlier this week but today is the first day that I have it set up and ready to use. I think I'm a little overwhelmed at the possibilities since I'm staring at my In Progress folder and having no clue what to work on first. I've also started keeping a physical sketchbook again, so there are some things in there which I like and need to scan in. I may just drop all those onto my site and create a feed here rather than bothering to crosspost all my scribbly stuff.

I have only about two weeks of school left. My hard surface final is progressing at a crawl, mostly because I just don't have fun working on it. I'm pleased with my progress on my Zbrush final though, and shockingly might end up with enough time to model a secondary creature since I'm doing decent on all the accessories.

Went in to a workshop today to spend more time on my model. I officially turned it in yesterday, but of course there are lots of things that could use refining and fixing and I got some solid feedback from my teacher. I have a little list of things to do on top of the remainder of the props that I'd like to build. I managed to tweak a lot of things today, fixing the majority of the problems that I had around the nose and mouth. I'm really looking forward to the ecorche class next semester since I know that's really going to hammer in a lot of muscular anatomy and their related volumes. 2d only gets me so far on that front.

I got a head start on my final today as well since like my class last semester, it's essentially up to you to work on it all on your own time. I'm pleased with the subject/concept art I chose to work off of, since it's not a style that I'd do on my own so much. Speaking of projects I'd do on my own time, I ended up in the lab afterwards to do more modeling. I started a model of Jensen for the hell of it since I had all the refs with me, and well, if I'm doing the Impala for my hard surface final, than being able to pose Dean in the front seat would be /awesome/. Briefly met a fellow SPN fan who spotted my model and came over to encourage me. Win! Fangirls are everywhere. :3

Am now all caught up on the current episodes of SPN too, which makes me infinitely happy. So nice not to have to worry about spoilers anymore! My write has been broken of late, but I think I'll attempt to actually sit down and work on some fic while I've got all this time off.

Also, I should make it a habit to get to the Wednesday workshop 10 minutes early every week, as there is a flirtworthy boy in the previous class.

My hard surface midterm is due tomorrow at midnight. I'm neither concerned nor really care about this. My Z-brush midterm though is due on Tuesday and I am Freaking The Shit Out. D: I'm like...80% done or something maybe? Although really I wish this had been my final so I could have had more skills and more time to polish it. It doesn't help that I'm dying to texture this sucker, but I really need to finish all the modeling first! Augh.

Thanks to this project my JDM crush has gotten significantly worse. Curse you, stormcloude, curse you! My only consolation this evening is that the evil twin wrote me a John/Dean drabble.

What's worst about midterms is that I'm still AGES behind on the new spn eps.

Tuesday is my guaranteed day off for class and I almost always also get Wednesday, but this week I also have tomorrow off so it's like a three-day weekend for me! I spent my day productively, so tomorrow I can just do laundry and otherwise relax. A new workshop started up for maya/zbrush today. It's run by my teacher, so I went in at the same time as J and had a nice chunk of time to work on my model with guidance. It's looking very nice, although I probably picked the hardest person to do omg. I'm hoping once I get all the main things modeled and detailed and can put an expression on him he'll be more recognizable. In any case, I'm getting so much more comfortable in the program that I love it. The other day, I also had a chance to talk to my perspective teacher from last semester and he's going to be drawing a turnaround of one of his original character designs I like so I can model it for my final. Yay, collaboration.

Anyway, after the workshop, I grabbed some food with J and then headed over to the campus fitness center. I'd never been there before, and it's low on machines, but more than enough for what I need. I'm planning to make it a habit to go every tues/weds. I was intending to swim today, but an hour of cardio turned me into jelly so I'm putting that off until next time. Jelly, I say.

Had to beg an extension off the mods over at the snarry_games. I'd been So Close to finishing on time, but I'm glad I got an extra day so I didn't cram. I'm so pleased with my image, and I'm so excited about what my team has produced. I can't wait to see what the Pheonix artists are going to turn out! I think snarry_games is one of my favourite things to participate in, since it really pushes me. :D

Working the desk on the weekends means I can bring in my laptop and write porn do homework. I feel terribly antsy so even though I /can/ fuck around, I instead find myself getting up every twenty minutes to run a load of dishes or something. Today though the newer crew really needs to start problem solving on their own, so I'm forcing myself to sit in the boring office and not be helpful. Gee, I'm forced to waste time on the interwebs. Woe is me. :p

I got all spazzy when my online module said that my midterm was due today, since uh, it's only been a month wtf, but apparently it's the first part of my midterm. Doing inorganic modeling is so very unintuitive to me. I really wish I could get the blueprint references I need to model the Impala, but I just can't find anything for the appropriate year. My JDM bust for my zbrush class is coming along well, though I might ultimately make it a bust of the Comedian just so I can include some iconic pieces in terms of wardrobe and such. Am pleased when I got feedback from my instructor that all my topology was fine, so I've got all that down and now I just need to work a lot on building the likeness and figuring out what I want to do in terms of putting hair on my model.

I started laying out a 2d animation project for myself last night also, since I'm feeling ambitious or something, and also J's 2d class has been fun to watch and learn second-hand (I helped him make a falling leaf animation, so I can see all the ways in which I find that sort of thing fairly intuitive). Anyway, am trying to aim for about a two minute fan animation. We'll see how it goes. :3

Grades were posted finally so I got to find out how I did in organic modelling. I knew what I was getting in the other classes, and had a lot of graded assignments along the way to better gauge things, but in organic we only had two main assignments, one for the midterm for which there were never posted grades, and then the final. I got an A for my horse though, so yay! Happiness! :D

I've been working on this model since and fixing a lot of little things, but these are shots from what I turned in. Right now, I'm working on sculpting a proper set of teeth and also getting the hooves fixed and a few things on the legs cleaned up. I may start over entirely since I really could have used more geometry around the mouth, nose, and eyes, and a lot of the cleanup I had done was on this version of my model which leans towards a draft/shire horse. Originally I had built a more generic riding horse and I'd like to fix up that version so I can have a solid mid-range model to tweak into different breeds.

Redlining or feedback from horse-peoples highly, highly appreciated. Issues I'm aware of currently are the hooves, the leg interiors, and the mouth. Anything else that looks off, please let me know!

( 3d horse model, five views )

For my perspective final, I have to convert something written into storyboards or 3-4 comic pages. Guess which I'm going to do? Comic pages, wee!

The problem arises that I have no idea what to do. The only restriction is that it not be something already made into a film (i.e. a scene from say, OotP...one presumes DH would be fine), but otherwise, fan or original, or even a scene from a favourite book, it's all cool.

So, do any of you have suggestions or a short story that you'd like to see drawn sequentially by me?

Talk to me, people.

eta: Should someone like to suggest a bookverse instead of their own stuff, a few things I'm familiar with to which I have a slight inclination to drawing for would include the Coldfire Trilogy, Good Omens, uh... err.. man, I haven't read much in a while... umm... Herald-mage? Even though she hates the fanworks... I can draw horses now! Or something Dragaera even.

Coloured this all tonight, which shows in a few places. And may I never ever stay up this late working on homework the night before class again. x_x



( [G] - Batman - The Joker - Bang, Baby )

We only have do to thumbnails this week for perspective, and the piece that had been due today my teacher is going to wait and grade with those, which means that I can take a breather and finish up all the things I didn't manage to get to in my piece. Huzzah! Having worked through last weekend, I feel like my days are all mushed together. I'll probably be in the lab again tomorrow, but I'm definitely taking Sunday off to recoup, particularly since I've been a little short on sleep and I don't want in any way to risk getting sick.

I've written for a few porn_battle prompts so far (Ocean's 11, Danny/Rusty, "Long Odds" and a Batman Begins, Batman/Gordon, "Human After All") but man, neither are really about the porn. I fear I've misplaced my smut! At least the Bebop one I wrote on the train needed more than one instance of a euphemism.

Pizza for dinner again. Last night's disappeared in about five minutes. Oven has beeped. Cue eating.

By Monday I need to come up with a character design to model a head for my scupture class. J's class got the assignment earlier, so this week he already had to start on his. Since we've been mainly working on the figure in general and just blocking in a rough (and small, about 3") head to go with it, I thought I'd attend the sculpture workshop to get some practise in before actually needing to work on my own homework.

On Wednesday I went to the evening workshop and built myself a zombie head. I know it says four hours, but I think it was probably more like three since we had a dinner break. When we went in today to work, I almost didn't want to tear it down since it was turning out so nicely. I decided to strip my armature and work on a new head today though, just so I get more practise going from start to finish and making sure I understand the structure better. Of course, this time I decided to try and do a more anime-style head structure, which was difficult as all fuck. Still, not bad for a few hours of work. I'm encouraged. ^__^



( Sculpture - Zombie head and an almost Duo anime head )

Perspective due tomorrow. And then it is Spring Break.

Although I expect it to turn out very well, I feel like this image is going to drive me crazy. Too many tombstones to plot the shadows for. @_@

So in case I go crazy, some warmup art. Side by side reference. Fifteen minutes, give or take a few.



( [G] - Supernatural - Sam - Fifteen minute study )

Also a link to my week 5 sculpture in figure modeling. Level up!

In anatomy today my favourite model to draw (in part because he is super nice, and also since he has a very nice build), was seated with his arms behind the chair. Once I get to bring that piece home and don't needed for the midterm portfolio review though...that pose will be transformed into fanart. Mwehe. Naturally I'm tempted to tie Dean up, yet again, but maybe I'll surprise myself and give a different fandom some much needed attention.

Particularly since in perspective we're supposed to do atmospheric perspective and I'm drawing Sam and Dean in a graveyard. It looks pretty nifty so far. :D

My journal is exploding with anon comments again, so please take note that if you are logged in at LJ and visiting here, you can click OpenID and type in yourusername.livejournal.com and leave a signed comment that links back to your journal automatically!

1. My descent back into the world of coffee drinkers is complete. The coffee I am drinking as I type this...is black. It lacks even a speck of milk. I've always been at least a sugar girl, but no~o, J and the silky smooth power of Peet's soy lattes have slowly weaned me away and into this perversion. Sure, this times well with an attempt to start giving up more sugar overall, but I never actually expected much in the way of success. I warn you now, when I get to the point of not caring about sugar enough to eat oatmeal without it, that very moment is the one which will herald the coming apocalypse.

2. J hums and sings little songs to himself all the time. Yesterday, and now as I've just discovered today as well, his song of choice has been the theme for the A-team. Unfortunately for me, that's one of those songs any reasonable person can't not join in on. Daa da da daaa da da daaaah...

3. I borrowed a book of essays from the library. Reading good biographical/personal essays ends up being such a different tone of writing than the usual fare I consume. It makes me all restless and itching to write something thoughtful.

4. Perspective is hard. [/obscure reference] ...but seriously. Albeit, mostly because I get ambitious and set myself up for a 40 hour project when I only have about 8 hours I can scrounge up. Yesterday after having spent a good chunk of time getting about oh, five percent of my image done, I decided I'd just finish it digitally and do something simpler for class. If I haven't mentioned though, I like my instructor a lot. His art is inspiring, and with themes/genres that are right up my alley.

5. It is raining. >:(

6. The blankets are piled up in such a way on the bed that it looks like J and I are still asleep. I wish that were true!

J and I went into school today to work in the labs on our 3d assignments. I've re-built my model several times over now and I only have a few more steps to get it prepped for my Wednesday class. My model is looking nicer and my workflow is improving so each time I end up being able to model it better and faster. Neat. This coming week we're working on the head/face so that should be fun.

Am acclimated enough to the weather here now that temps in the 60s meant wearing a skirt and no coat. It was awesome.

Anyway, the point of me typing this up is really to say, those of you who have het ships? You should totally sign up for het_challenge which is running reversathon for this round. HP or rare fandom peoples? I highly encourage you to join, since you never know who out there might be interested in prompting you for things you want to write!

And now we are all going to watch Ghost in the Shell. :D

Today's Dinosaur Comics is full of win and hilarity for slashers.

( Yesterday was the first day of playing with clay in figure modeling. )