How I Spent Spring Break . . . .

While my friends went to Italy or Disneyland for spring break, mine consisted of doing homework. It wasn't completely wasted though, because I did get some good portfolio material out of it.

A long time ago I had an idea for a novel, the main character of this novel was an Elf named Zanderia. For my most recent 3D project we were supposed to create a character in Maya using the mesh technique. I thought this was a perfect opportunity to make Zanderia. While she doesn't look quite like I wanted her to, I don't think that this project was a disaster and considering that this was my first attempt at not only a mesh character but also a human, I think I did alright.

While she is missing some details like eyebrows, eyelashes, finger and toenails, and  teeth, I did get the majority of her done. It was the best I could do with the tight time frame that I was under.

Her armor was an experiment that I threw together at the last minute. It could be improved, but it didn't turn out horrible.

Her face. I spent a ton of time on her face but have really struggled to get it right. Her hair was also a  big challenge.

I'm very proud of her stomach. I spent a ton of time looking at muscles diagrams so I could get her abs right.

The shoes were an accident that kinda worked. They remind me strongly of Faith's shoes from Mirror's Edge.

I also spent quite a bit of time getting her back right, including shoulder blades. I really like the way her back turned out.

Her hands were challenging but worth it I think. It's an important part of the character to get right.

I am happy with her legs. Well worth the time I put in for them.

 That is how I spent my spring break. Do you think it was worth it? I know Zanderia thinks it was worth it!
^_^

More pictures here.

{Peace}

The Audio Odyssey . . . .

So, since I have an hour to waste, I will update my blog. Midterms are this week, and thankfully one of my midterms was cancelled and another was turned into a take home. This still leaves my other classes though, and I'm really not looking forward to my e-commerce midterm. That class should not be listed as an IT class, it should be a Business class. I hate corporation, stock percentage, and tax exemption crap (which is all we end up talking about). I would much rather work for someone else then try to make my own company. The less things I have to worry about, the happier I am.

Other than my business class woes, school is going fairly well. The upcoming assignment in 3D is designed a poligonal mesh character. This is the assignment that I have been excited for. The only problem is that I want to spend 200+ hours modeling my character, but I just can't afford the time. We will see how much time I can really afford on this project.

Yesterday I went to DI just to poke around and see what I could find. I ended up finding a Sony AV receiver from 1980ish for only $15! Needless to say, I was very excited when I found it, and it still sounds like a champ! The screen has some burnt out backlight so you can't tell what sound mode you are using, but for $15 it's hard complain.

On a similar note, I was looking around on KSL.com for AV receivers and I found one in St. George that comes with 3 speakers, a sub, and an Onkyo receiver for $50. If he hasn't sold it yet I might just go check it out tonight. Depending on brand of the speakers, that could be worth the $50 alone, not counting the receiver. In addition, Onkyo is a pretty good brand, not quite up there with Pioneer and Yamaha, but still probably the next best. I'm not going to relinquish my $50 though if any part of the receiver isn't working, because that's what I really want, the speakers are gravy. It's quite possible, however, that it will already be sold since the listing has been up for 20 some-odd days. There is another listing for a receiver and speakers in St. George but the receiver is a JVC (not as good as of brand as Onkyo) and the speakers are RCA and it's listed for $10 more than the other one. If the first one is sold though, I will check this other one out for sure.

On a sadder note, my new Beyerdynamic headphones that I mentioned in my last post were having problems so I had to send them to get repaired and the only repair center is in New York. The waiting is killing me. I want to get them fixed and back on my ears as soon as possible because they sound so great (when they aren't having problems). Hopefully the repairs will be covered under the warrantee. If they aren't, that's going to cut into my great savings that I got on them. They should be since it's a bad left driver that's the problem, but they might say since I got them from a online auction site that it isn't covered. Also, since they are a model that has since been replaced with a newer version (more than 7 years ago) even though I bought them new they might be mean and not give me the warrantee. I sure hope they do.

Well, my class will be starting soon, so I better go.

{Peace}

Because Life Needs Updating Too . . . .

I know I haven't posted in a long time, life has simply been crazy. With the new semester in full swing, I have found time is precious and what little there is divided in between homework, sleeping, and eating. I am enjoying  my 3D animation class, I can't wait until we get to the organic modeling section. I have a very cool idea for a character that I want to revive from a novel that I was planning on writing never got around to. Whether or not I actually take the daunting task on of modeling the character is yet to be determined.

My other four classes just blur into a swirl of "Do I have to?"s. My two GE classes (Music 1010 and Understanding Film) are mostly boring and the assignments and homework are unfulfilling. My PHP scripting class is going to be hard and not in the direction of where I want my career to go, so I do my best to just face its daily drudgery. My eCommerce class is vague and really a business class, not an IT class. Most of the time I don't feel like I really understand what's going on.

I really don't know what I'm going to do with myself this summer. I don't really want another summer like the last one, all I did was play video games while living at home. I felt kinda like a loser. I thought about applying for an internship in Salt Lake City but I wouldn't have anywhere to live for sure and they don't usually pay enough to pay for rent and food and still make a profit. I thought about staying in St. George for the summer and finding an apartment for the summer and my senior year but I don't have a job for summer and I don't know how many places would only want me for three months. So I guess what happens, happens and will not happen any other way.

Anywho, I will leave you with a photo and a video. The photo is of my new Beyerdynamic)))) DT 880 headphones that I'm listening to right now! They are $300 headphones and I got them, brand new, for just over $150. It's almost criminal!

That's right, these headphones have fuzzy earpads!

That's right, the whole box is made out of aluminum, that beats even Apple's packaging!
And since the box is in German, you know it must be good! 

This video is my 3D animation class assignment where we had to do camera motion. I decided to go the most epic thing I could come up with. Be sure your speakers are on! Without sound it's rather boring and normal.

Fun fact: The city consists of 144 blocks, that's 576 buildings. The project file was almost 1GB.

A Moment . . . .

Work is slow tonight. Since tomorrow is the last day class before Thanksgiving break, it is not surprising in the least. I am very excited for Thanksgiving this year. Mostly for the reason that I will get to eat real pumpkin pie! And seeing the family is also nice. :P

Christmas is just around the corner too. I have been holding off on the Christmas music until after Thanksgiving though. I'm not a very big fan of department stores that start blasting "Jingle Bell Rock" over the intercom on October 1st. Since I worked in a grocery store for two years, I had to suffer with the early "Christmas Spirit". By the time Christmas actually rolled around I was so sick of Christmas music that I couldn't tolerate listening to it and it made me look like a grinch. Since then my philosophy has been wait til Thanksgiving to break out the Christmas tunes so I can enjoy the season when it actually is the season and not weeks beforehand.

I went and saw the hypnotist Friday night. He comes to DSC every year and has for the past seventeen. This was the first time I went and it was absolutely HILARIOUS!!! After it was over, my face hurt from so much laughing! Me and two of my friends went and hit up Denny's afterwards and it turned out to be one of the best nights I have had in a long time.

My photography class has ended up being a tougher class that I originally thought it would be. It makes me glad that I can take 200 pictures of the same thing trying to get the exposure right without wasting rolls and rolls of film.

Well, my shift is now over so I bid you adue!

Bric-a-Brac From My Life . . . .

I feel like my readers have been robbed of my Bloggity goodness lately, so I will update! Life has been crazy busy (hence, perfect excuse for not updating), but rewarding. Been doing really well in my 3D class. We are working on a soda can, complete with original label and fully modeled pop top. It's a handful of an assignment to say the least. The assignment before that we did a 3D globe which we then had to place in a picture.

Here is mine.

I think it turned out alright, but I'm not totally happy with it. It looks kinda boring and I still don't think I got the perspective right even though I played with it for an hour or more.

I have been very busy taking pictures too! The assignment I have been working isn't working out and is making me frustrated but the other ones have been good. 

Here is an everyday object in the abstract! Can you guess what it is a picture of? If you know, comment the answer! No! This isn't a cheap way to get comments! ; )

For the current project I have took some nice pictures (none of the 330 I have taken will work : ( which is why I'm frustrated). Here are a few.

Well those were probably the ones that turned out best. Hope you enjoyed looking at them!

On a side note, I went to my first concert! It was a Yellowcard concert that was hosted by Dixie State! I never thought that I would see Yellowcard in person, but I have! It was an awesome concert even though I had a cheap nosebleed seat, it's not like I was too far away to hear them.... : P SO loud! I was slightly deaf for almost an hour after the concert. After the concert I met up with my friends and we went to Denny's and topped of an already awesome night with more awesomeness! : )

Well, I love you guys, and thanks for reading!
{Peace}

P.S. Don't forget to comment!

A Visual Update To My Life . . . .

Well, I have a minute, so I thought I would keep you all updated.

My photography class is going wonderfully! I bought a new lens for my camera, the Canon 50mm f/1.8 II. Fantastic portrait lens!

I would take a picture of it but . . . You see the problem? Since this is the only lens I have I can't take pictures of it. Here are some pictures I have taken WITH it though.

One of the first shots I took with the lens right out of the box.

One of the fountains on campus.

A really cool cactus I found in a flowerbed just east of the Preforming Arts building.

A bush that was next to the cactus pictured above.

With compression of JPEG and detail loss with uploading, these do lose some of their fantastic sharpness, but this gives you a rough idea that this lens is VERY good with wonderfully rich bokeh.

My 3D class has also been going pretty well. Our most recent assignment was to make two kitchen appliances. I did a retro fridge and stove. For simplicity's sake I converted the stove to a glass electric top because I honestly didn't have the time to make a gas grate. I might add that later. I might also make the oven door see through and put some oven racks inside to sell the look better, but he only gave us a week to do it so I really didn't see the need to kill myself.

Needless to say I am more proud of my stove than I am of my fridge but I they both work, especially together. Just a FYI, Big Chill is a real brand that still makes retro appliances. So if you are in the market, check them out. Be warned, however, they will cost you dearly.

Well, I must bid you farewell. I need to eat and then help my friend with her homework.

{Peace}

A Very Long String of Pointless Letters . . . .

So, unusually, work is very slow today. At least so far. I had to help one person with their program (all they needed was a plus sign in a particular place) and one other person came in to take a quiz. It's been kinda nice to just sit here and chill listening to my book on tape. I should really be working on my TIME magazine cover, but I really don't want to at the moment.

I finished my next assignment in my 3D class, which I had lots of fun doing. It is the Invicta Watch logo, found here.

I like the way it turned out. I also did another version.

I used a metal texture for the letters instead of the glass one. I'm happy with how both turned out. Also, since this logo was pretty simple, I wanted more practice so I decided to do another one. One of my favorite video game franchises is the American McGee's Alice games. One of the great things about the game is the logo, which I made in Maya. The real one can be found here.

It's not a perfect representation of the original logo but I think it turned out fairly well. Since it wasn't really for the assignment, I tried to keep it more simple, at least as far as the background and textures go. This class is honestly unhealthy for me. My other homework tends to suffer because I want to just do my 3D homework all of the time. When I'm working in Maya, although it has it's quirks that are hard to catch, it feels really natural, like an extension of my arm. Mind you, I can't always make it do what I want, unlike my arm most of the time, but it feels natural in a way.

I have also been having fun in my photography class. I bought a camera from a friend of mine, my first non point and shoot camera. It is a Canon 300d, the first digital Rebel that Canon made. The up side to that was that I was able to get a nice camera for a really good price, the downside was that it is only 6 mp and kinda worn out.

Not my actual camera. Mine is a lot more worn out.

The only bad part about the camera is that it didn't come with any lenses. This is a problem since these kinds of cameras cannot take pictures without a lens. The good news is that my dad had a fixed Canon 50mm f/1.4 lens. The bad news is that the lens is an FD mount and my camera only takes EF mount. More good news is that there is an adapter they sell that changes a FD lens to a EF lens and it's only $35. More bad news is that there is no way to tell the kind of quality that you will get from the lens since the adapter has the light go through another piece of glass which, depending on the camera, can severely affect the quality of the image. My parents are coming to see me today and bringing with them my dad's old lens, so I will know how good it will work by the end of the day! If it does not, I will have to fork out another $190 to get the camera working.

Because I didn't have a lens for it, I rented one of the school's lenses, so I could do my first photography assignment, which was a demonstration of our knowledge of shutter speed. I took pictures of my friend playing tennis.

I think this one is my favorite. The requirements of the assignment were that we take 3 pictures (or should I say take a ton of pictures and pick 3 that turned out the best [I ended up taking 74]), one super sharp, one blurred (like this one), and one that is so blurred it's hard to tell what the subject is or doing at all. I think my teacher liked my slightly original subject choice (I doubt anyone else will use a tennis player) and he said that I understood the assignment well. So I feel good about that.

One thing that's been on my mind lately is wondering if I should become a True Rebel this year (yes, I know that it's just a knock off of USU's True Aggie night). The process to become a True Rebel is pretty simple. First it must be homecoming night, second you must stand in the fountain in the middle of campus, and third you must kiss someone at the stroke of midnight.

Standing in the fountain at midnight on homecoming night isn't hard. What's hard about it (at least for me) is convincing someone of the opposite sex to kiss me at said time and place. I have gone to homecoming both years that I have been here but neither time I went afforded the opportunity to become a True Rebel. I won't lie, however. I didn't have the courage to bring up the subject either time. So it is really my fault for not taking action. I chickened out.

Yet again, this presents a problem. If I want to become a True Rebel, I will have to get the courage to ask, but asking is putting myself up for denial, and I will be the first to admit that I'm scared silly to ask. This fear comes from past experiences with relationships, and only one experience was the pain worth it. I wouldn't say that it has ruined me, but it has definitely made me wary of girls in general.

Our society has stupid way of looking at relationships. Either you are in a relationship to get married or you are not. It also seems like the man decides this too often. Why can't things like this be more universal? For instance, why can't interest be expressed mutually before dating? The very idea of a pity date is just plain stupid. Why can't men and women express their feelings more openly? It would remove the idea of hints and mixed messages.

Flirting might be fun but it almost always ends up with people's feelings being hurt because someone reads into what someone else did too much and so makes assumptions. It is just a big MESS! Why can't we all just get along?

That about sums up my life at the moment work, school, and no love life. If you actually read all of this pointless dribble, then congratulations!!! Way to be dedicated!
Fare-thee-well!

{Peace}