huge travel diary update!!

Hello and goodbye!

Hi guys! I am so sorry I abandoned this blog for a while--I've been a little busy for the past two months arranging my trip to Japan and creating miniature felt desserts.

Unfortunately I either misplaced my travel diary or some master thief was able to take it out from under my nose in .01 seconds. *sigh* but I have started a new one and hopefully will get a chance to scan in a few pages from that before I leave.

I'm lifting off American soil next wednesday! D: Japan will be the farthest I have ever been from home. ;_; i feel like Sam from LOTR taking his first step outside of The Shire. I'm excited, anxious, and am gorging myself on as many american/mexican/ thai foods as I can. Oh taco bell, how can i live without you? (well actually i can...)

Although my family can't see me off to my flight, they wanted to do a going away party. Since they were kind enough to have the party, I thought I would make little fake postcards. I feel like I'm working on an assignment from school haha but without the pressure of 'who's best?' and 'will it sell?'
here's just some progress pics!

for some reason, I really thought it was more difficult to create the clean, crisp, exact shapes I wanted in photoshop--as opposed to illustrator. But I'm kind of really liking and getting more used to photoshop when I do these graphic kind of illustrations. Although the shapes are a little imprecise on PS, it gives the image more character. I still wanna add a little more texture and need to finish painting the statues.

btw! the statues that I'm seated next to are called jizo (jizo bosatsu) statues. They appear to be child-monk forms of Jizo Bodhisattva which I think is some kind of deity that exists in India, China, Korea, and Japan. He is the protector of women, children, and travelers. Statues of Jizo are placed near intersections so that the traveler could choose the correct path. 
--03/07/13 11:49 pm
done woot!

travel diary

hey guys! It's been a while!
I've actually been quite busy since the beginning of break :) really proud that I'm keeping up my work ethic
During that business, I've been able to arrange a 3 month trip to Japan! I'll be studying Japanese language and culture there. Soo I hope to God that I keep up with this diary--thought I'd warm up by getting started on it~just having a couple pages down. I don't know if it's just me but I never knew how much an empty sketchbook could bother/scare me. There are just way too many possibilities...so many things I want to do with it but I'm so afraid of messing up and having to rip out a page and then making something out of the lines of ACCD's design aesthetic =_= then I realize that this is just for fun~ugh brain..stop being such a worry wort.

I wish I thought about the colors more carefully and I didn't properly design anything~just trying to get used to having fun and taking my time on this @_@  please stay tuned for more! I want to try and get at least two or three pages done in this diary for the next 8 weeks with little factoids about Japan, where I'd like to visit, certain mannerisms I need to respect and adhere to, etc. etc.

I was really inspired to start this from Enrico Casarosa's "The Venice Chronicles". I really love his quick and simple little pencil and watercolor drawings of him and his family's adventure around Italy. A trip to Japan isn't something that everyone gets a chance to experience. So I thought keeping a diary would be the best way to help me cherish and appreciate and actually remember every bit of this experience. 

trip

Hello again!

I finished one of my finals last night--
maya has been a little difficult to master over the past few weeks but now I have a whole new respect for animators now @_@ I do think I want to experiment more with the program though--
I had a lot of fun doing all the voices coming from the television--I was partly inspired by an episode of Adventure Time to just talk that way. I really had little to no idea how to use after effects and garage band before last night--but now that I've had a bit of experience, I can't stop thinking about all the possibilities!! :) I'm thinking of animating some of my own work now! We'll see what happens over break!

Trip - link to the video

Silica 9000 paper toy and packaging detail shots

    

So I finally have this thing out of my head (except not really)
but here are just some detailed shots of my project
there are little crooks and crannies that don't quite match up and glue fuzzies here and there and that little loop in the spine of the manual is bothering me-- I will have to re-do some things but I'm really looking forward to putting together her fellow butler, Salix 9000
I still need to make a little stand for her to stand on and maybe a little suitcase?

Honolulu Zoo

little update~~

---
11/24/12 3 AM
tweaked my comp considerably~~the bamboo type is kind of getting busy and then the 'zoo' part looks a little awkward-probably gonna revise that

---
11/24/12 4:29 p.m

some value and color studies!!
--
12/05/12
4:32 am

Robot butler and maid paper toys: Salix and Silica 9000

Working on one of my finals because the class got pushed to week 14 ;_; soo hoping to finish it really soon so I have more time to work on other things....

--

11/25/12 2:33pm

Hello again! I've gotten quite far with this project. It's something I absolutely cannot get out of my head--I can't stop thinking about it because I'm just so excited to finish it haha. I don't know if I've ever felt this way about a project before but I am seriously having the time of my life on this one haha, I've been up till 6-7 am almost every morning this week just working on this thing. Sadly I think I can only do one for the final but I am expecting it to be kick ass!! 

Meet Silica 9000, the all-in-one robot. (And yes, like the small silica packages in shoe boxes that tell you to not eat them)

I was finally able to find a box for it--you know when you get a piece of junk that you think you might use in the future so you keep saving it and think about whether or not to throw it away? Well this is one of those cases where being a pack rat has come in handy for me! I actually have a cardboard box that was used to contain wine aaand I was so overjoyed when everything fit perfectly!! :) I'm so glad I also interned at Miso Music too because I really wouldn't have a clue how to approach this packaging thing without having had a little experience designing apps, working on a point of purchase display, and such!!