This week's Flash Fiction Challenge over at Chuck Wendig's blog involves creating a character, then offering it up to be the lead of someone else's story in next week's challenge. I've been meaning to get involved in Chuck's challenges for a while now, and there's no time like the present to grab a piece of that action. So here's my character, Carmen.

( Carmen Maria Alvarado character profile )

This is the first work of fiction I've made public in more than a decade, so it's rather a landmark for me. It's also a completely unplanned first draft, created from a three-item prompt (the words in the title) from the Brainstormer app. So while comments are definitely welcome, keep in mind that I warned you.

3,625 words, approx. 2 1/2 hours


( Read on... )

I managed to pass first term! Hooray!

Not a stellar pass, at least as far as Drawing goes, but I'll take what I can get. Here's how it breaks down:

Animation Design: A+
Practices & Principles: A
Enviro: A-
Life Drawing: B+
Animation Drawing: C+

That gives me a 3.4 GPA, which is .2 short of honours, but that's not a big deal. The C+ is disappointing though, given I was headed for a B up to the final project. I lost a lot of points there, and it really bothers me. I'm gonna have to work even harder next term if I want to get anywhere.

Still, a pass is a pass, and I would guess I'm still near the top of the class. This is the point where we weed out a lot of the lower performers and those who aren't really committed, though, so we'll see just how many we're left with on the 11th.

Got out of an abusive relationship, had a number of other flings, got in and out of BDSM, had an increasing and then declining interest in Paganism, moved to a different province for the first time ever and had a relationship with a sociopath that ended dramatically, started a new career, ended same career, started another new career (still pending education), became a photographer, became an artist, gave up being a writer, got involved with the local queer community and eventually drifted away from it, volunteered with various festivals, got tattooed (twice), was publicly naked, seen people on the verge of death, lost contact with friends, regained contact with friends, made new friends, lost others, and found RationalWiki before it officially existed. All told, nothing out of the ordinary.

So, how's your decade been?

Nothing so groundbreaking this time, although we did only have a little over a week to work on it. If you saw my previous video it'll look familiar, since almost everything in this is a revision and refinement of the previous one. The only truly new material is the cape, which had me in a terrible state a week ago. I feel more confident now, so that's a Good Thing.

My Antic Box animation netted me a 75%, which for my notoriously hard-marking teacher, isn't a bad result at all.

Well, after Friday's class I feel a bit better about my ability to do this assignment. Apparently I was overthinking the whole mess, and assuming there'd be a LOT more fabric folds and such than actually are gonna be there. Plus, I was given a great shortcut to figuring out how the whole motion was gonna work, so that's a big plus right there. Which is really good, since the damn thing is due on Monday, therefore I gotta get the actual .mov file on the server by Sunday.

Which, of course, was another issue for me. Since the school is literally across town and bus service on Sunday sucks, I'd basically be blowing three hours of my Sunday in transit alone, to say nothing of what I'd spend at the school itself. So what to do.

Found a solution, in part with improving my practice using MonkeyJam. I've got a peg bar taped to my scanner right now to keep everything in register, and I finally found out about the VPN service the college has got, so that means once I get everything "filmed", I can remotely submit it from home. Yay for technology!

Just got home from school a little while ago, to find the house (and, in fact, the whole street) smelling strongly of epoxy. Turns out while I was gone the city had sent trucks around to re-line the sewer mains, and of course the smell of whatever they pumped through the pipes managed to come in through anything hooked up to them. So yeah, a pleasant homecoming, indeed.

It strikes me that while DW is a great place for writers what with the free speech policies and such, the lack of image hosting ability makes it a little trickier for us visual artist types. I wonder if there'll ever be some form of image hosting features put in place?

So my best friend at school is really pushing people to switch to the 3D stream next year, rather than traditional. She's pretty insistent about it, pushing employment, how fun her brother says it is, etc. But honestly, I'm not sold and I probably won't be switching. Not that I think there's a problem with the program, but I have two main reasons for staying with Traditional.

1. I need the drawing experience. I'll be honest, at this point I'm really not that good. And I need to get a lot better. The best, in fact the only way to do that is by doing a lot of drawing. As they say, "if you're having trouble drawing feet, draw a lot more feet". In Traditional, I'll get that, but in 3D I wouldn't. My friend's brother, who's in the program already, admits that the program doesn't have a lot of drawing in it other than life drawing. So it doesn't fit my needs.
   
2. This one's just personal opinion, but I don't find 3D animation nearly as appealing as traditional/2D. Paper or Flash/Harmony, I find I like animation way better if it looks like someone actually drew it, and I won't get that in 3D. To me, stuff like Wakfu or Ponyo feel a lot...warmer than stuff like Toy Story and Horton Hears a Who, as well made as those two movies are.
   

I'm guessing a good deal of my friend's point is, like her brother, to get away from the guy who runs the second year program. And that's fair, since she really hates the guy. But me, I haven't had those problems, so I don't have much reason to complain. I've worked for WAY worse than this guy, and I'm sure I will again once I'm in the industry. So why should I worry about it?

Speaking of developing my drawing, a couple new pages of Bridgeman studies up at my sketch blog, check 'em out.

Day two, and I got a bit ambitious today and did two half-hour sessions instead of one. This is the sort of thing I should be doing a lot more of, just sitting and drawing like mad in my idle time. Not that it's supposed to be idle time, I actually should be busting my ass on this animation assignment I've got due on the 16th, but I ran into distraction after distraction today and got very little done. Which means during the three hours between getting ready tomorrow and leaving for school, I'm gonna have to bust mine buns to get enough done so Cory won't shoot me.

In any case, here's some studies done from the Bridgeman books: