Week 48 My Graduation Ceremony and Plein Air BBQ Doodles

Leonie’s small blog island says hullo! (:

In this post: Art camping, my surprisingly wonderful Graduation ceremony and a BBQ.

Let’s go! Journal Time.

Scribbles

11th Wed

• NAC week 1: Colour and Compositional studies
• NAC week 4: Facial recognition attempt.

12th Thur: Graduation Ceremony recap

• first time I wore a formal dress; walked so much today as well in uncomfortable shoes as I was avoiding the tram, wanted exercise and to pass some time
• came in early to collect the gowns and hats and stayed around with classmates; I definitely do not want to wear that painful hat again! I took it off whenever I could during the ceremony itself as it was giving me an unbearable headache
• explored around the NGV Gallery, had lunch then looked at Shaun Tan’s The Lost Thing ACMI exhibition with a friend before the ceremony
• felt like a mob of official wizards due to the gowns and forest of plastic Christmas trees outside ACMI, surrounded family and friends of classmates. We just needed wands and british accents to fit as part of the cast of the Harry Potter movies. Felt really poofy and shorter than I ever was.
• ceremony plus graduate screenings at first was as expected with some great speeches from the keynote speakers and teachers, photos and handing out certificates one by one…until I realised there was actual awards being given afterwards. There were…awards?!
• was engaged because some of the nominations were close and I didn’t know what to expect!
• …I kept having to put my hat back on and stumbling over people at my aisle to reach the stage as I incredulously received a nomination for the Head of School Award for Exceptional Achievement and won the Outstanding Screen Artist Award. Mixture of disbelief, strangeness and feeling elated. Being teased for it didn’t help!
• no “throwing graduation hats in the air” photo unfortunately…especially how I dislike the hat so much
• got to chat with great people, friends and teachers later and at the afterparty with food and drinks thereafter
• as people mingled, I probably looked awkward and quiet on the outside thanks to my deadpan face but I was really zoning out and resting on the inside (:
• played Mario Kart Arcade GP against Russell and Victor; got 2nd place as Luigi. Figures. It was so tricky to control and I was turning the wheel like crazy.
• thanks to Will (and Brendan), I got to play an intense game of Laser Tag for the first time! I had nowhere to hide as the best spots were taken! It definitely was a workout! Don’t mind to do more of this kind of thing despite my lack of fitness.
• found out that I am known as the injured arm girl among everyone there…but, I’m not the only one there who’s suffered RSI!
• Thanks kindly for Victor and Laurie for treating me soft drinks! (:

I can say with confidence that it was the best graduation I’ve ever had because of the wonderfully supportive handful of friends I’ve made. (: I wasn’t expecting to have fun today based on my past three experiences of graduating.
Not that they read this but huge thanks to my classmates and teachers again and though things won’t be the same, I hope to stay in touch!

Ah, train adventures I did beforehand from my instagram:

13th Fri: Back to reality

• Recovering my brain from yesterday. I didn’t even need to drink to feel this brain dead.
• NAC week 1: Colour and Compositional studies
• NAC week 4: Facial recognition attempt.
• Updated my About page (now that I’ve graduated…!) Bittersweet somewhat!

14th Sat: Plein Air Doodling & BBQ

• NAC week 5 plein air and train adventuuures: well more like doodling what I see. I went to the destination real early so I could just draw what was in the gardens and its surroundings.

Train adventuures first up

Second half of the page of Train adventuuures

Passed Melbourne Central Station scribbles

House, poles and a tree nearby the venue

Assorted things found at the park

Plein air doodling pt 2 with a businessman and a loving couple somewhere

Plein air sketch part 3 sans the joggers, dogs and prams going by

• The IDGA BBQ: recap time! In dot points! First time at an idga event so…
  • Met a few wonderfully friendly and kind people, briefly stumbled upon and waved at a few familiar faces and sometimes hovered around with a few game artist classmates
  • The food there was all of my three meals in one
  • stole three and a half bottles of water…dun dun
  • cute dogs
  • so much greasy meat…whoa
  • glad I have my big floppy sunhat on; it was overcast but the sun was still there!
  • loads of drinks
  • just embraced any awkward moments
  • in the end, felt a really friendly, relaxed community vibe (:

15th Sun to 17th Tues: art camping continues

• NAC week 1: Colour and Compositional studies with a page done

Page 15

• NAC week 4: Facial recognition attempt continues. Increasingly, I look more like an alien. Noses and mouths are especially tricky. Likeness not there yet. Shall do more another time.

Self Portrait Rough Study 005 to 010: Murky Derp Alien Alert

• Position: Vacant – Going Up: ideation of the project and scrapped the old title (This Way Up) since a game company and their game has the same name. Doing this to challenge myself and bring my unfinished Construct3D entry further. Sketching thumbnails and storyboarding.
• NAC week 2: Imagination doodle…? This was originally scribbles and then this happened. Some magical imp guy.

Imagination Sketch: This cannot be explained. Even I can’t explain this.

Reflection for the Week

Other Adventures first: Hermit Life!

• Disaster Day of Crisis (watching): ghostbusters fire extinguisher, tsunamis in subways, running from tsunamis on the street, munching on crocodiles, escapade from waves of erupting lava in a car…what.
• Cabela’s African Adventures (watching): uh….weird game for shooting hostile animals? Under normal circumstances, getting attacked by a herd of charging bison would mean instant death.
• Super Mario 3D World (playing): hard levels at the flower area now; need to backtrack to ensure yellow flags were all covered! Now at tedious part of getting all the yellow flags.
• Pikmin 3 (playing): Slowly did one boss at Day 10 and 11! Fruit hording and pink pikmin farming at day 17! Up to day 22, Louie is such a jerk. JERK. I’ve hated his guts since the second game. And just when you get complacent…nooo all my jars of (pee) juice! I accidentally drowned 20 of my rock pikmin and felt accomplished at the weights puzzle. So much fruit!
• Yakuza 4 (watching): overview of the first to the third Yakuza games get increasingly convoluted in terms of story. Japanese gangsters full of tattoos, suits that can be taken off completely with one pull, bull throwing, revenge after revenge, faking your death and miraculous bullets.
• Fighter Within XBoxOne (watching): rag dolls with bad hilarious Kinect controls
• Silent Hill Downpour (watching): Fog everywhere and odd prison murder, unfortunate lady cop death, loads of valves, mysterious postman, people who ignore the creepy elephant in the room, toilets you can’t really use but just flush and angry red orb like voids.

As a sidenote, I really want to watch the movie Frozen among some others but can’t afford to spend too much especially when I’m living on student savings and I’ve used some up for the BBQ, everyday expenses, a few costly Kickstarters and am saving up for upgrading my overworked laptop. I never purposely go to the cinemas (as I wait to rent the DVD which can take up to a year or two for me to catch up…still haven’t watched Wreck it Ralph!) but surprisingly this year I went twice; one for This is the End a silly movie and the other for the amazing Gravity! I had good company and both times were spontaneous I guess. (:

Art learning: just keep swimming

The sad feelings of graduation is still in passing. There are plans to polish Position: Vacant (PV) in January so I’ll meet up with the team to figure it out; I guess it’s not completely the end. (: This short film won’t be out to the public until late next year unfortunately as there is still work to be done. The scary and exciting world of the real world awaits!

Going to keep juggling the Art Camp, more studies, looking out for jobs, the new PV project and another personal project. Not letting my worries about getting into the industry phase me; they’re always going to be there (as it is with everyone) but you got to keep moving forward and focused on your goal. I’ll get there eventually, just not sure when and how.

A long ride of learning ahead as always so refocusing my goals is in order; optimistically I hope to lurk outside to draw more people, things (and even people I know if they’d let me) too! I shall also relax a bit more as I play Pikmin 3 and Super Mario 3D World in small sessions. I hope you are enjoying the start of your end of year holidays!

Update schedule: I might post again in two weeks instead; I’m going to switch between weekly & biweekly dependent on how much I can show from now on. Not sure yet!

Thanks for reading & feel free to comment below! (:

Until next time, Leonie
(UUUinfinity/TripleUinfinity)