mask: origins

Once upon a time, in a department far far away, there was a sheet of paper. Now this piece of paper was not like any of the others. This sheet had something extra special (or something missing, depending on who you talk to). He did look like all the other papers from the ream, clean, super bright, 20lb, but from his tippy top there had been cut a triangle, and this is what made him special.

Most people say a dark gic wizard cursed him to be this way. Others claim is was a band of the ill natives who cut out his heart but left his soul that sad day in february. Whatever truly happened to him will probably never be known, and it matters little to the events that happened next.

It was the dead of night, where owls only whisper and not even the stars dare to shine, and lab rats from across the land overrun the luminous western macintosh forests of the great kingdom of CJ. There in the northern most forrest, where the macintoshes begin to yield to the towering hewlett packards, lay our hero. Triangulated and abandoned by the printers, left for dead by whoever indeed left him, this poor piece of paper lay hopeless and alone. Shivering on the table, he'd look over often at the other misfits and misprints, wondering what their fate may be. What his fate may be. The trash can quietly sat across the room and watched him, knowing patience would bring its reward, and dinner too. Our piece of paper knew his life would be short.

What he didn't know was that evening one maiden from the third level of the icy northern caves was traveling through these very forests. Walking by him, she stopped. She noticed something peculiar about this piece of paper. From his heart had been cut a perfect equilateral triangle. A stranger thing the maiden had never seen. She picked him up to examine him further when an idea fell from the fluorescent heavens and struck her all at once. She knew what was fated to be done.

Without a moment of hesitation she pulled her magic micron from its sheath and waved it about, making mark upon mark along the surface of the noble sheet. The fluorescent tubes flickered, screens dimmed, and some say even glitter flitted through the air just then. The maiden donned the paper. It was then he realized his great destiny - to become, the mask. He toured the forests with the maiden, making friends of Sir Brett, Chandler of the Round, and many others. With ceremonial push pin, he was appointed to the board of the fifth circle of CJ, where he lived happily ever after.

The End.

thugz

Made stuff for the Character Design Bi-Weekly today (topic: Thugs with ugly mugs)!

My mom's a first grade teacher and I go in at the beginning of every year to help her set up her classroom. Helping usually means playing with all the awesome toys :). I had tons of manipulatives at my disposal including pattern blocks, links, milk caps, stacking rings, buttons, and snap cubes (not to mention all the office supplies).





Drawing based on the first dude; he was my favorite.


Here's a thug for life. Cut him and he'll make you cry.
This guy was tons of fun to make. Ears and nose are made out of thin (bust strong) blue plastic from the cover of an old planner from high school. The rest is gold acrylic gouache (for his teeth!), black acrylic gouache, holbein ink, and of course 1 onion. Balancing on onion on your wrist, even with tape, is not as easy as it would seem.

thar be bars arounds these parts

This summer I did some fiddling with collage and the like. That's how this ended up happening. The speech bubble has a cut out transparency glued to it functions as a dry erase board. I also taped some rare earth magnets to the back of it and they do a fabulous job of holding it up, despite the weight. All the materials except for the glue, paint, and magnets I got for free too, they were just going to be thrown out unless claimed.

Toy & Company

So, I've kind of been too busy to update lately...  Mostly thanks to my toy project for 3D design, which sucked up so much of my time.  With this project I had to design a toy and it's packaging.  At first I was clueless as to what I wanted to do other than the fact that I wanted to use magnets; they're just plain cool after all.  So I figured magnets would work well with detachable parts, and what would have detachable parts?  Why, a zombie of course!  So this guy below is Greg, a pencil pusher zombie from a theoretical interchangeable set.  He's made out of initially half baked sculpy and carved with small flathead screwdrivers, 1/4" diameter rare earth magnet discs in each side of his points of attachment and feet, spray primer, and acrylics.

He's rather fun to play with and mess up.  And he'll probably end up being my fridge magnets.  He took a lot of time to make and get put together properly, but what really took a long time was making silicon molds of all six parts.  At first I wanted to turn in plastic casts of the sculpy prototype, but due to time that goal flew out the window not long after I dragged it in.  I still wanted to follow through and learn the mold making/casting process, it's just plain cool after all.  So below are some photos of the mold making.  I used a brush on silicon rubber from smooth-on and applied four coats along with two for building up the individual cut seams.  The last two pictures are for when I made the plastic support shell for the molds so that they keep their shape during casting, and hold them to make things a bit easier.  I haven't made any actual casts yet, I've still got to work out a kink with the molds, not to mention catch my breath after all this.  It may be a while before I actually see how the molds perform... like December, maybe.  It took so long to make these molds though, you have to wait for each coat to dry, mix each batch for each coat separately and everything, and working out side in 90 degree isn't nice either, especially since it cuts your pot life from fifteen minutes to eight.  A lot of work, but so cool.  If the casts turn out well I may even make some other toys in my free time (ha!), simpler toys.

This here is an earlier project where the assignment was to to make sequential wire gestures showing an action.  I chose to show a handspring.  I'm pretty glad with how they came out (not to mention they all balance on their own!)

The next project in 3D is to make a perching vulture out of metal with emphasis on plane and edge, so these are some of my sketches of the american black vulture down at jungle gardens.  I'm so excited to weld, it looks like so much fun!

The last project in film language dealt with the juxtaposition of images, the principle that two (or any other number) of neutral images, when juxtaposed against each other, form more complex ideas.  For example, a picture of a man's face next to a picture of empty bowl leads to the idea of hunger and even raises the question of wether not he will be able to eat, etc.  This works especially well when the viewer is in a situation where they are expecting a story (like at the movies!) and those eager beavers will just fill in all the obvious gaps for you.  The following sequence was my favorite from the project.

We wrapped up perspective in drawing class with an invented space project.  Pretty straightforward stuff.

Figure's kind of straightforward too.  Gestures and some long poses at the end.  I've got to watch my line quality more...

And here's a few drawings from fews.  I need to stop being so literal all the time... it's hard though.

Believe it or not, at art school I don't actually draw that much (figure drawing and classwork doesn't count).  Honestly, this is pretty much the only stuff I've actually drawn in the past month (and I did it while I was supposed to be doing homework, oops).  We had a caricature night in our hall and our RA had a bunch of irresistible 11x17 paper and this is the fun nonsense that ensued over the course of that evening.  It's mostly garbage but it sure was fun and totally worth doing despite my consequent mild midterm panic.