The End of All Things- I mean 2010! Pt.2

And now for the second half of classes!

Okay, so Thursday is a very long day! We have Life Drawing with Steve Brown, who has been teaching at CalArts for 10 years now! The class lasts from 9 AM until 4 PM!



Steve is kind of funny... When you first see this guy, you're like, "Wait... what?!" He looks like just a very friendly neighbor type older guy, only... he has earrings, he wears all black, basically all the time, and he likes rap and stuff! XD It's just very funny at first, but he is SO COOL! His approach to life drawing is very "conceptual", I guess, but the Administration or something determined that CalArts students needed more structure in their life drawing, so the first half of every class was dedicated to a part of the human anatomy. I LOVED IT! But the second half was very... "capture the essence" kind of stuff- which I utterly FAIL AT! So I struggled in his class... HEAVILY! So badly, in fact, that I was not getting anything good the very first class, so a classmate of mine (T- who is the most bad-ass guy you may ever meet in your LIFE!) and I DREW WITH OUR TOES!



That's right baby... We're in ART SCHOOL NOW! XD

None of my stuff was posted in the hallway, but seriously, after seeing some of the awesomeness that came out of that room, I was NOT surprised. It was the reminder to me in my first week at CalArts that I really WAS surrounded by some of the best artists in the world... A very humbling experience!

Immediately after Life drawing, I had Acting for Animators with Robert Duncan. For those of you who wanna know- Robert was the live-action reference model for Captain John Smith in Disney's Pocahontas! Talk about GEEK OUT! Wait... wait- WHUT?! OMFG!!!!!! I just found THIS! DUDE!!!! MY PROFESSOR WAS SETH IN STARGATE!!!!!! OMFG!!!!! *MAJOR GEEKOUT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!*

*is still trying to recover from the epic geek-out* So, in Acting class we just learned how to REACT, NOT act! It put a lot of clarity into how characters in our films should be, and gave us an idea on how to react differently to the same situation. Honestly, the class turned fairly epic when we were the first class to get actual "scenes" to memorize and perform. It was SO HARD! But more on that later.

I had a quick one hour for dinner on Thursdays, then my last class of the week- CG Character Animation! ZOMG! My professor is Robert Domingo- ALSO an animator from Dreamworks. ALSO worked on How To Train Your Dragon... AND Shrek, Enchanted, Madagascar, Treasure Planet, Mulan, Tarzan, Hercules, Lion King, Pocahontas, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame! Holy COW! Yeah! Oh, and he was the animator for Yzma! I WISH I were kidding at how awesome this guy is! (Oh, and my mentor, Dan Hansen was the Artistic Coordinator for the same film... seeing the level of amazingness of awesome yet?) Anyway, this was our HEAVY CG (aka- Maya) class. HAAAAAARD!!!! But SO MUCH FREAKING FUN! And again, Robert is not ONLY one of the guys who SERIOUSLY knows what he is talking about, but he REALLY knows how to explain it to a point that you truly understand! It's a great way to finish off one HECK of a week!

So, that's my actual classes. Section 1 has Fridays off, but Section 2 has classes. So Fridays are usually spent by me doing homework until noon when I report back to the Registrar's office for my second day or work. I spent my second day at work helping people sort out Add/Drop of classes. I resolved to not drop a single class I was registered for- a resolution I KEPT despite some very hard times. A full 15.5 units!

After work, I'd go back to my cube and continue working on homework.



UNpainted.


PAINTED! Okay, okay, so I only needed to paint my desk, the cube was a pretty calm blue and it had stars... I added more stars.

I typically spent the next 2 and a half days there. That first Friday, though I was invited to a party for the MFA's of Graphic Design. My awesome roomie, Kaoru invited me.


I didn't stay long as I felt kind of out-of-place, but they seemed like a great group. I went back to my cube, and later my room and wrote screenplays (a first for me!) Wow... wait, I just realized the lame-ness of that sentence... I left a party to go do homework... wow...
There was, however, one more party that weekend: Trevor Knapp-Jones's 21st Birthday!

If you will notice, it is made on animator's pegged paper... XD




And yes... to quell the rumors- we DID sing!

The first Sunday at school was spent in my cube, working. Boring, I know! But I animated a bouncing ball, so FEH! I enjoyed it!

The second week of school was pretty much, wash, rinse, repeat. But OMG! STILL AWESOME!!!! On Tuesday, the 21st, I was invited to Korean BBQ with s BUNCH of second years! Though, Melanie from my class went... I skipped out of Story class early to meet them. We went to BCD Tofu House- a 24 hour Korean place in LA.


I had never had one of these fish before. It was tasty, but very salty, and I had lots of bones in my teeth after... then my camera promptly DIED!

That Friday, I got a special personal one hour Maya tutorial with a GREAT student from Germany named Theresa who knows Maya REALLY WELL! We played around, but I learned a lot too. Then I had to run to work at the office. Add/Drops are INSANE! But one of my co-workers bought the whole office Golden Spoon yogurt, which was a really nice treat!

That night, we had our first (actually, I think it was second, but the first canceled on us) Visiting Artist in the Palace!
Let me explain- CalArts has animators, story artists, and other all-around AWESOME people in the industry VISIT US and talk to us about stuff! What could possibly be cooler than that?!
Well my first guy I got to see was John Kahrs- Not kidding, you guys- an animator at Pixar! (Incredibles, Bolt, Tangled, Ratatouille, A Bug's Life, Toy Story 2, etc.) What he talked about, I am not at liberty to say, sadly... MWA-HAHAHA!!!! Gotta get accepted and come to CalArts for that info! hehe The rest of the weekend, I did nothing but homework! End of Week 2- HAHAHAH! *breaks down and cries* Another entry...