Y1W35 Computer filing systems & Scary Head Studies
More SDC and rambling! A really, really long post so get comfy before you continue, if you choose to do so.
Let’s go ! Journal Time.
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| Remember to make marks for fun too! :O |
Year 1, Week 35 (10th to 16th Sep)
- New Client project: Hooray (:
- Arm, back and shoulder strain self reminder
- Gestures, People Drawing, Derp Doodles, Learning: Wello wello! It’s…well and hello mashed together or something. Made up words.
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| Trying to start using my stash of whiteboard (aka dry erase?) markers left over from my previous career. |
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| I don’t try to squeeze heaps into one page anymore I realised. “Imma drawing bigger after all!” Whoaaa :O |
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| Ooh, she says |
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| Dramatic poses! |
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| Fancy dance |
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| Something over there |
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| Relaxing good times |
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| Stretchy |
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| So cold |
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| Gymnastics |
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| Stretchy poses continue |
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| Here my 9 year old violet liquid highlighter died. I liked it very much and I don’t know where to get it anymore. ): Here comes the 5 year old green. |
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| Extra Planes of the Face: uh this wasn’t part of any of the SDC exercises, just more drawing and practice of my own so no templates were involved. Technically…not really part of SDC2014 so I put it here. The nose has crazy geometry! So serious looking too at every angle! :O Don’t have the expensive head model(s) myself so I had to make do with a generously taken Asaro head photo reference zip package here. I know there’s many other facial plane approaches but I won’t go too crazy! |
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| Day 7: a still life remaining from the previous week and notes. Days 8 to 14: Facial planes, step by step and notes, then facial shadows to full value paintings. Trying things out with it and taking my time with it. Added some compulsory silly speech bubbles! |
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| Days 8 to 14: Random heads using templates and without templates continued. Facial planes, adding shadows then value study. |
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| Days 9 to 14: Flying facial robotic planes. More alive and dead heads at different stages. That skull is sooo shiny! |
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| Days 10 to 14: No templates but portraits of my own and choosing this time. Painting portraits with likeness is so tricky! Waugh :O I do like how her hair and sweater/jumper turned out though. |
There’s some more I hope to do but I don’t plan to rush. I haven’t made up my mind with painting approaches as I know different contexts and materials call for different treatments. I enjoy the rough, textured kind somewhat more but we all need to keep experimenting and evolving. I hope to sneak in some more of these during Week 3 too. Hohoho! Uh yes.
Gist of my new Computer Filing system
A handful of weeks ago, I cleaned out hundreds of unneeded gigabytes of memory and organised my computer files. It took 2 to 3 days. It felt real good to gain some memory back and to know where things are again!
After nerding out about it with my study buddy, I figured I might share the gist of it here as well. Perhaps it may help and guide you a bit to sort your files if you haven’t already?
My main categories (most of which have numbers and or years in the folder names for ordering purposes):
- Art vault – where I put my old art according to yearly folders
- Folio & Career – anything to do with career, resumes, marketing and folio
- Freelance – freelance projects and tax records, business related things
- Projects – personal projects as folders
- Learning – tutorials/learning related things lumped into subject folders
- References – visual library with many sub categories
- Audio – music, podcasts, media to listen to
- Software & Resources – brushes, textures and set up files
- Personal vault – personal things like photos and life stuff sorted by year
I’m not going to go any further detail than this as I do not want to be too definitive and specific – we all have our own preferred way to organise things! This is just a window to mine and I’m not trying to prescribe one as if it was the one and only way. (:
Other Adventures:
- Games (watching bits or all of it): hoyyy here we go again; watching as I work. I can’t whistle though.
- Resident Evil 6 – Chris & Piers ending (Whoa! What in the world!!), Ada & Agent campaign
- Mario Galaxy – snippets
- Claire
- Prison Break ending
- Infamous First Light
- Destiny – bg noise
- Dreadhalls
- Sims 4
- Strife
- Dead Rising 3
- Air Control
- Year Walk – Amazing story and art style!
- The Escapists
- MAYAN DEATH ROBOTS – woo crazy!
- Sneak King – creepy and boring gameplay
- Dark Souls II
- Mount your Friends
- Lethal League
- Speed Runners
- Phoenix Wright – oh the nostalgia, memories and corny crazy ride! I was enjoying the first case at least.
- Amnesia custom mod
- McDroid – real cool art style
- Workstation Approach: makeshift standing “desk” report! Week 2 of this and it’s really tiring and sore for the legs and back now…I had to schedule sitting breaks. :O
- Now due to the soreness, I am trying out designated periods of standing and sitting. I can’t do either one to the extreme as I’ll injure myself either way (ie my arm and shoulders or my legs and back).
- This is what happens when I push myself to my limits; I keep injuring myself! But this new approach really helped tone down the soreness, but still lot’s of trial and error. Let’s see how this goes!
- Movies: Haha at least my attempt to. Assume that I rate most movies as one-off watches unless something comes along and impresses me enough for me to say otherwise…
- Turbo – visuals, animation, voices and designs are sweet. A good one-off, feel good watch about doing something seemingly impossible even if those you care about consistently shut you down. A message many of us can relate to, or at least I can. I can’t say the narrative was without plot holes or it’s meaningfully complex. You don’t really care about the other characters in comparision despite the parallel struggles…I just feel that they don’t feel fleshed out enough as characters as everything seems to highly depend on and revolve around Turbo’s story while everything else doesn’t matter. Just my feeling though and it might be something else entirely that’s lacking.
- Project Arbiter (short film) – I watched the trailer when it came out and finally I got around to seeing this out of curiosity. As much as it was incredibly close to mainstream film and vfx quality I preferred the sharp, short and sweet impact of the trailer instead. Storytelling felt lacking and pacing felt draggy in some areas.
- Games (played): Super Smash Bros. for the Nintendo 3DS demo thanks to being a Club Nintendo member…and because my bro said he wanted to do local multiplayer as soon as the codes were out. Not used to the controls and I’ve never been good at Smash Bros. but it seems alright. So much potential for mind games and moves. And I’m not good at that. Still this is a game where you need friends to play with.
- Position: Vacant: I got notified that our graduate film got into the GloveBox Short Film and Animation Festival 2014 and so I did some admin, updated the laurels while the screening details aren’t set yet. Whoa…another one? :O
Reflection for the week: Uh what is Marketing?
A Personal Introspective Ramble.
*Note in the following I am not referring to collaborative situations as I’m fine with those.I don’t actively seek and want it but I won’t deny popularity/being well known is clearly an advantageous bonus to me in terms of my profession (likewise for any business for that matter). However, I do have some sort of discomfort with marketing and networking as a whole (in terms of the public eye) and that’s not something that goes away the next day. Yes I do blog weekly to break out of my reserved nature a bit if that counts but that’s essentially my comfort zone and it’s probably considered an internet deserted island (if I were to be blunt about it).This means that for me to grow, I need to push this comfort zone of course!
I’m not alone feeling this either, I’m sure! Not claiming I’m a special snowflake!
Despite understanding this, I’m hesitant. If you know me well enough, I am not a “notice me!” and “making and keeping good friends left and right” person yet marketing and networking down to their meaningful core are these two things. Personally, I feel conflicted and forced if I do it only because it’s expected of me and/or because many other people are doing it. To be fair, I guess it’s also because I’m not coming from a place of desperation or high stakes and I have the luxury of taking a bit more time to build my skills and career (at least for now). Extremely grateful for that.
In terms of getting oneself known though, as for anyone, it’s always a hit and miss when finding and establishing actual connection and so I strive to reach out/help out when I genuinely and unconditionally want to out of pure respect/admiration/friendship/support and this is not often at all, to my detriment in the ‘numbers game’ and my hermit life. So I am amazed at people who have learned how to make friends at ease with most people in their path through seemingly boundless energy, experience and/or confidence.
I probably won’t have boundless energy to give (as my social quota has its limits before I get overwhelmed) but I aim to get to that stage of considerable social confidence someday! My gut keeps telling me it’s all down to my awkward ‘friend making and maintaining’ skills, the fact that I usually avoid bringing attention to myself and how I prefer to keep my friends circle small (aka my social energy meter is relatively low and probably needs progressive, tiny expansions). I enjoy collaborating on projects in teams as we achieve incredible heights more than we could alone and it is outside of that where my quota applies.
Does this mean I’m not meant to be ‘popular/known as a reputable, positive professional of the community’ (aka having heaps of good friends)? Time will tell.
Common experience of course: I’ve never really been popular as I don’t actively seek it nor want to so the marketing altogether is probably not impossible, but terribly difficult for me. On the other hand, I don’t want to seek something I don’t really want (or not yet). Either way, Derp needs to keep working on this. People aren’t that scary!
Despite feeling conflicted and forced sometimes, as always, I shall keep trying to figure this thing out, push boundaries bit by bit and keep learning at my own pace! I can say I have been improving a little thus far! :O
Wait, why does many things I reflect about come down to “I’m too much of a quiet hermit” and “I need to keep meeting more people”?
Haha oh dear. I have much more to learn, the more I try to. And that’s good. (:
And you actually took the time to read the ramblings of a socially quiet individual.
Wow.
Thank you.
If you can relate somewhat, I say…we got this. Let’s keep working on being a better version ourselves. (:
The world is full of germs
I’m better from my heavy cold and I am at least sleeping once a day most of the time now. Yes! But a little voice is telling me that ‘You should be afraid of the outside world as it’ll get you sick again once you step outside. That’s how you got heavily sick before and that took you out for a week-ish!‘, it insists.
Probably my little lazy hermit inside speaking. I know there’s no such thing as complete protection from getting a cold/fever and yes I will have to get outside eventually but I can’t help but feel cautious.
Hey, I’m a hibernating, quiet, short bear working in my hermit cave, what can I say! Rauw rauw rauw rauw. (:
What’s up ahead?
Now that I’m not bed ridden due to crazy granny naps everywhere I’m going to be busy juggling with projects and SDC2014! And probably more rambling. 😀
This whole Reflection section is rambleland anyway.
Yeah. How I want it really. (:
Like always, go forth and keep adventuuuring you! (:
Life isn’t easy. So take care and be kind to yourself.
