Friday, April 18

• Sit & Stand Animation
• Lip Synce animation
• Second animal motion cycle animation
• Set character facial morph targets
• Light Set
• Start animation (minimum 150 frames)

Saturday, April 19

• Put 2D animations to tape
• Personal Project Animation
• Draw portrait preliminary's when in need of a break.

Sunday, April 20

• Personal Project animation
• Late hours: Storyboard

Monday, April 21

• Personal Project Animation. Start Rendering
• Portraits Preliminary's. LOTS of them.

Tuesday, April 22

• Animation Tape due @ 6:00 PM
• 1 Line portrait, 1 tone protrait

Wednesday, April 23

• Personal Project due @ 5:00 (though Jay is leniant...)
• 1 Line, 1 tone protrait

Thursday, April 24

• Book Report, Research Report and Adaption Project due @ 1:00 PM
• Sound Exam @ 6:00 PM
• 1 line, 1 tone portrait
• Mount portraits

Yesterday, Abbott pulled each of us asside during class, as evaluated our work and efforts, strengths and weaknesses. My name being near the bottom of the list, I had to stay an hour after class before he could meet with me. He started looking through my stuff, and said "I have seen a TREMENDOUS improvement in your skills, and your focus. Your drawings are started to capture the emotional quality, and your proportions are very nice. However, you're still 17." He then proceeded to talk about how art is making a comment about how you see the world. Being 17, I don't really have much to say yet. And then as he was lookign through the book, that also brought back back an old memory of an experience he'd had with one of HIS teachers. But before he went into that, he mentioned an old TV show called "kung foo" with an old blind monk, and his student, and the student once asking "How is it you can hear the grasshopper at my feet?" and the monk replied "How is it you cannot?" Well, late ron, there was a made-for-TV-movie sort of sequel to that, where the student was the master, and the same thing happened all over again. The point is, History repeats it self. Then he told me one of his old teachers once told him "You're going to be REALLY GOOD once you have something to say." I think in a round about way, he was saying that to me. Another thing he said was that he wanted to just tell me to BE 17. But on the other hand, this is an accelerated program, and I have to learn fast. I'm definately a unique case at this school, and he knows it. I'm juggling not only the school stuff that everyone else is, but also struggling to find my place in the social circles. I think I'm doing pretty good myself... but the more I think about it, the more I don't know if I'm ready to go out and get a job after next april...

I shouldn't have been doing this, but I was also planning a new layout. A filler, until the CCS Marathon, when Meiling takes over. However, seeing as furuba is in June, that means CCS won't be until July or August. That's at least 2 more months. Besides, I wanna practice my layout-designing skillz before I tackle the Kureno layout for my fic blog.

I need to go get back to work. I have class in one hour, and I want to finish this damned SOHO (small office home office) project. I'm so close...SO close...

juri-chan's puppet talked at 04:57 p.m. --

Tuesday, April 15, 2003



Uuuungh... I had the worst night of sleep ever last night. First, I stayed up until almost 2:30 working on school stuff. When I decided to crash, I found it rather impossible! the tail end of this damn cold still has me firmly in it's grasp, and I was tossing and turning, and coughing like crazy. -.- ::sigh:: I only found a somewhat-cough-free position when I had a mere 2, count 'em 2, hours left to sleep. Oh yes.

So, I didn't get as much done last night as I wish I could have. I just wasn't in the work frame of mind. I did get a little bit further on my character rig...only to find out I have some...weird...extra layer of geometry under the legs of my character O.o so, I hafta get RID of that geometry, or set the vertices of them to FOLLOW the others and remain UNDER the character Mesh I want to be seen. @.@ Hoeee....

Yesterday I DID however, finish the Link and Aghanim character drawings for my cinematography adaption project. Now, all I have to do for that project is a setting sketch, and a storyboard. Nate also showed me a really neat website that is going to make doing my hardware project a WHOLE lot easier. I REALLY need to sit down and do my 2D animations and get those out of the way. Then, all I'll have to worry about is my Self Portraits, and my Personal Project. ::sigh:: I think I'm gonna make it, and it won't be QUITE as horrible as last semester.

I've noticed a lot of people have been talking about separating their internet life and their real life. I've never been that way. My spheres have always been crossed, for the most part. I mean, I got involved with the internet when I was 9, and the neighbor kids wouldn't let me play with them. Provided, my RL friends don't know all the DETAILS of everything I do on the internet...but my real life friends are into the same stuff I am. We talk on the computer just as much as we call each other, if not more! And my internet friends... well, I've practically grown up with my friends in SMI, and after meeting Hibari face-to-face last summer and new talk of trying to plan the big SMI vacation, That sphere of internet life has certainly crossed into my real life. I don't....quite understand why some people want to keep their two spheres completley separate. I mean... I'm sure people have their reasons. I just can't really think of any, personally.

I finally got to talk to Sophie the other day. ^_^ She's really nice. I hope I get to talk to her some more. she said she's not online very often. That's okay. I understand people ahve their ;ives outside of the internet. I'm really enjoying getting to know all these people in this little internet circle. I mean, It was REALLY funny when I first started talking to Eve-chama when she read my fanfics...then I talked to Killiko, who had ALSO read my fics, and then I find out they know a few OTHER people I've talked to. Ironically, I didn't meet Keryn through them, I met Keryn through a girl who went by the pen-name of Kitten. Haven't seen her in a long time...

But I'm just amazed. I love being accepted into these little circles. ^_^

Speaking of blogs, Furuba Marathon coming up in June. I think I have an idea for my Kureno layout. I'm gonna be using it on my fic blog though, not this one. Though I am starting to feel the need for a new layout... and I don't think I can wait for my Meiling layout for the CCS Marathon (which is still...undecided when it will actually happen.)

And aslo speaking of Social circles... Ya know, I got to thinking. I WUB Liz. I WUB hanging out with Nate... and Joe seemed like a REALLY nice guy (especially after tlakign to him on IM's for a while). And he said he'd like to hang out with Nate and I some more...soooooo... I've decided that Liz, Nate, Joe and I all need to hang out this summer. I have a feeling this is going to be a very, very interesting summer. Interesting in the Good way though. ^ ^

Only 10 days of school left. YEEP! I'm partially stressed out, and partially not worried at ALL. Hm. Wow...okay, I'm back at where I started. Moving on to a different topic, because I'm sure everyone gets tired of me talking about school all the time. Blaaaaaaah.

Oh. My. God. I found the absolute PERFECT Pattern for making the Rubymoon costume *_____* Oh! and I was talking to Joe, and he said if I ever did Rubymoon, He'd do Yue with me. Sweeeeeeet! Ooh, and I have another costume to add to my list of Dream Costume. See, I got to thinking, some day I REALLY wanna do one of the Sailor Senshi. so I started thinking, which one should I do? the first one that came to mind was Sailor Cosmos...but really, I don't like her costume that much. so then I though Sailor Jupiter, becaus eI'm a brunette, and green is my favorite color... and htne I thoguht maybe Sailor Star Jupiter, because the eternal look is SO pretty... But Jupiter is...she's not really much of a stand-alone charcater. And that's when it hit me. I could do Akari. For those of you who DON'T know, Akari is my Otaku senshi, Sailor Sun. she's been with me since I was 9 years old, and evolved over the years. She needs a slight redisng of her fuku, but I can just SEE it in my head, and, her hair is shoudler-length orange, worn down, and curled under at the bottoms. that's an INCREDIBLY easy wig to find. I was telling Liz about it, and describing it to her, and she was like "OOo, that'd be so PRETTY!" so yeah... I need to draw a picture of her. Once school's out, I will. Off to...do what work I can while I'm here at school. Which isn't much, considering my files are getting too big to send back and forth to and from school...

juri-chan's puppet talked at 02:06 p.m. --

Saturday, April 12, 2003



I've reached the conclusion that when I'm sick, I must look like walking death. For one thing, I walked into sound class Yesterday, fairly exhausted, and sat down. Sterling took ONE looka t me and was like "Krystal...?" I looked at him like "huh?" and what did he say? "You look like you're gonna die!" -.- Then, this morning, Brent comes into class, takes one look at me blowing my nose and says "You look like Hell. Why didn't you stay home?"

Well, I'm glad I didn't stay home. I was SO ready to fail yet another Anatomy quiz. But, I Was going to take my failure like a man! Erm...Woman. Anyway, I was all set to fail, and was like "let's get this over with" and what happenes? I ace it. Oh Yes. 100%, PLUS 3 of the 4 bonus questions! AND, followed by the news that this was our LAST ANATOMY QUIZ! The class rejoiced! No more Anatomy homework! No more vocab! No more latin medical terms for bones muscles and ligaments! ::does a victory dance:: oh yes! that means I aced 4 quizes, and failed 3. That would equal out to about a C I bet. YAY! and I still hafta factor in sketchbook, The Midterm project, and the Final Project. ^_^

So, I plan for this weekend to be MAD WORK WEEKEND. I have already figured out that, as far as projects prioritization, I can push my final project for Cinematography out until finals week, and the weekend before that, and the same goes with my CG 150 SOHO (small office home office) project. Also, in theory, if I animate 300 frames (that's 10 seconds) a day, I can animate my whole project in 1 weekend. Not that I'm going to try that. That would be dumb. I can do 3 of my portraits this coming week, and three the week of finals. I need to read my notes for Sound class for the final exam. So, basically, priorities are Personal Project, and art project. And the other stuff I can probably work on at the wee hours of the morning when my brain is too dead to do anything else. ::nodnod::

I can't beleive it's so close to the end of the first year. Wow... amazing. It's going by so fast. O.O It's craziness, I tell you! After this semester is over, It's summer time. Time to Draw what I want to Draw, to design my websites, to work on FICS, to... to have FUN! Yeah, I'll have one class...but no big deal. I'm not worried. It'll be CAKE compared to during the school year. ::sighs and sinks down in her chair::

It's weird to think that last year around this time, I was only just barely starting to think about highschool graduation. Now, I'm almost half-way finished with my associates degree. Holy Shazbot. Sometimes I wonder if I moved through life too fast. Mom sometimes asks me if I think she rushed me through my childhood. Most of the time, I realize, I'm glad of it. I was never caught up in the petty weirdness that is the life of your average minor. I never played those school popularity games, even when I DID go to school for some classes. I also think I'm fairly mature for my age, because I've been more exposed to the real world than most people my age. My people my age, their worlds revolve arond their school life, and their social standing amoung friends. Maybe it revolves around a boyfriend of a girlfriend...it varies. My life never revolved that way. I talked to Liz today, and she was fuming over Amanda and Beckah, these two freshmen that we roomed with at the con, and how they were posting horrible things about Joe on the forums and crap. -.- Why, I'll never know. Sure, he has a rep for being the Convention Mawhore. But ya know what? That doens't make him a bad person. I haven't seen him much, but he's been nothing but nice and friendly to me. And he's never done anything to either of them personally (why would he BOTHER with two freshmen when he's 22? 23?). I told Liz the same sort of thing I Rammbled about above. The mentality of your typical highschooler. They have no sense of Tact, the real world, or how to keep from shoving their noses where they don't belong. ... I'm 17, almost 18 years old. My friends have almost ALWAYS been atleast 2 years older than me. almost ALWAYS. I can't seem to identify as well with people who are EXACTLY my age, because they seem so much YOUNGER to me. A year or more younger...well, you can forget it. I don't get it, especially since I'm such a big advocate of Age-Doesn't-Matter... but for some reason, with me, it DOES matter. I don't feel 17, nearly 18. I feel 19, maybe almost 20. I've always FELT almost two years older than I'm supposed to be, even though some parts of me feel exactly the age I am. I went into my Tap class after I'd graduated from highschool, before College work got to be too much to handle...and I was not Much older than anyone else in the room. There was one girl who was a senior in highschool, and a year OLDER than me... the rest of the kids were 15-ish. At the time, I was almost 17. but I tell you, those girls that I'd felt perfectly fine around just months before...I suddenly felt OLD around. My instructor's daughter, who's about 25 or 26, and was doing most of the teaching for the class then...I'd grown up around her! She didn't seem all that much OLDER than me anymore. She didn't seem like a TEACHER to me.

I don't know why I'm rammbling about this...call it my rant-of-the-week I guess. But age is a weird thing.

I was also going to rammble about my recent discovery of my many-faces...but I'll save that for another day. I'm tired, and my bed calls me. . . . right after I got take some Sudafed.

juri-chan's puppet talked at 12:06 a.m. --

Wednesday, April 9, 2003



Wow... Okay, I'm procratinating, technically, but I have SO MUCH to say, and I just can't keep it bottled up anymore.

So! This past weekend, I went to SakuraCon. ^____^ I have to say, that is one of the best weekends I have ever had. I took Nate with me, and he had a pretty good time as well. People were CONSTANTLY stopping him to take his picture. He made the most PERFECT Gabe from Penny Arcade, and eveyrone knew it. Even the Penny Arcade guys said it was the best one they had seen. ^_^

On Friday, I wore my Nakuru costume, which sadly, I got no pictures of. I would like to say though, I made a DAMN GOOD Nakuru. I need to put on that costume, just to take pictures. Friday was spent mostly waiitng in a line for Karaoke, and then wtaching the Karaoke contest. These two girls did the theme to Excell Saga, and eveyrone got up, started running around the room, and doing somethign resembling a conga line! XD Totally crazy! Then came open Mic. Wee! I got up and sang the ending song from the first CardCaptor Sakura movie. I ended up staying there with Liz and Nate until around 1:30 in the morning. XD. Oh, and guess what? Court was there. Yup, yup, he was there. When I heard, I bought him a birthday card. He seemed to be acting sort of like an asshole to me at first...then I finally jsut went "Are you mad at me?" and he immediately softened up and was like "No! I thought YOU were mad at ME!" He continued to be somewhat pushy and assholish with Liz though. Grrr. I also think he was a bit surprised that Liz and I had become such good friends.

Saturday was...THE big day. And what did I spend it doing? I went to the Megatokyo panel, sporting my Ping costume, and then AFTER that, waiting in excess of 3 or 4 hours to get Fred Gallagher's autograph. Met this guy dressed up as Largo, and he was pretty nice. Fun to talk to. Nate waited in line with me, once again sporting his Gabe getup. When we got up to Fred, Fred was all like "OH, I'm not signign anythign for you dressed like THAT!" XD was quite funny. Then, I got him to sign the back of my shirt. He also added a happy-little-head-shot of Ping. *_* I am NEVER washing that shirt, for fear that the marker, that's supposed ot be permanent, would wash out. I didn't get to see the cosplay peformances, thoguh Liz is suppoed to be getting me a copy of the tape her mom made. I ended up going back to the room before the dance, brushing out my hair, putting on my Miho t-shirt and jeans, and crashing. My scalp was so SORE from having my hair in those high ponytails all day, and the braid made my hair all uber-wavy, so I was walking around with puffy, tweaked hair, and munching on a sandhwich made of a pita bread and slices of turkey. I watched reruns of The Simpsons, and Just Shoot Me. Then, I heard Nate was looking for me, so I ran back down to the convention center, and as much as I looked around, I couldn't fidn 'im. come to find out he was dancing. ::shrugs:: so, I went back tot he room and crashed. Was awoken at 1:00 AM to Amanda and Becca coming back into the room and changing their clothes. I changed into my pajama's, then went back to sleep. then, I was woken up at 3:00 AM (actually, Daylight savings time, guess it was more like 4:00 AM by the sound of my cellphone buzzing in it's charger. It was Liz, wanting in. She didn't have a key, and someoen had latched the door. So, I let her in, and we talked while she changed into nightshirt, and then we slept some more. Amanda and Becca never came back. they'd been locked out too, and they unfortunately couldn't wake me up like Liz could. Oh well.

Sunday, I wore my Utena costume. Ironic that the costume I spent the LEAST amount of time in, I spent the MOST time making, and also had the most pictures of end up on the internet! O.o weird. I rather like how it turned out. The fabric hung really nicely, and with my eyebrows painted pink, the only thing I was missing was the blue eyes. My wig was SO PERFECT. And the ring turned out nicely. ^_^ Sunday, there wasn't much to do except wander around, and wtach closing ceremonies. I bought strawberry pocky, and a Sailor V figurine. Also got a free Inuyasha poster. Wee!

All in all, was a good weekend. I did, however, catch a cold from somewhere, and was laid up all of Tuesday. -.- Poo. A day of work totally LOST. So, today, while I wait for the remnants of the bug to go away, I skipped art class to work on my other stuff. So far, it's going okay. I can't beleive it's getting so close t the end of the semster. I'm freaking out! AUGH! I hope I make it...

Off to work again. ^_^ Looking forward to next year's con.

juri-chan's puppet talked at 03:02 p.m. --

Tuesday, April 8, 2003



Well, this is what I get for multi-tasking. I lost I think over half of the post I made on april 3rd. Bummer.

UPDATE: April 18, 2003 I found the original text document on my school computer! Here is the original post.

[[Begin Recovered Post]] Thursday, April 3, 2003 05:47 p.m. Ah, and so April arrives. I didn't have the chance to play an April Fools joke on anyone. That's the second year in a row that has happened. Poo. April Fools is such a fun little holiday. I thought about putting an april-fools post on my blog. I really should have. But I didn't. Maybe next year.

Today, as on most Thursdays, I came into school a bit early, to get some drawing done. I onyl drew for an about an hour...it was all the time that was left before the model was "off the clock" so to speak. However, I did chance to come in while Abbott was talking about the 4-year Bachelors of Digital Art program the school is trying to start. He said that the graduates of the associates program could take the new bachelors program, with a lightened load. The graduates would have about 3 classes per semester, as opposed to the normal freshman of the program, who would be taking about 5 or 6 classes per semester. I think that takign this program after I Graduate could be to my benefit. For one, it has a different premise and focus than the program I'm currently taking. I would have a potential 3 summers in which to do internships, giving me some "Work Experience" to put on my resume. Over the 4 years, I would have more time to enhance and perfect my 2D skills, and my knowledge of the 3D programs. According to my calculations, by the time I graduate from the 4-year program, in addition to this 2-year program I would...

1. Be almost 24
2. Have a potential of 3 "jobs" to list for experience on my resume
3. Likely have a MUCH stronger Demo Reel and Portfolio
4. Have 2 degrees:
   • Associates of Applied Arts and 3D Animation
   • Bachelors of Digital Art.
5. Have a more extensive range of skills, and so, I'd also have more avenues I could take.