Something exciting came in my mail!

I've been saving up money, and I finally had enough!  I ordered the box set for the Fullmetal Alchemist manga, and it's here!!!  It's so beautiful!

Front of the box.

Back of the box.

That's my cat Waltz behind the box.  Look at all those books!

All the pretty covers!  There's 27 volumes, one extra novel (written all in words), and a double-sided poster inside.

And you know what else is awesome?  There's a slot in my funny-shelfed Ikea bookcase that the box fits in perfectly.

I can't wait to read the whole series again.  I love Fullmetal Alchemist oh so much.  It has fantastic characters, good depth, strong story, and it ends right.  The main bad guy ends up a little too powerful in the end in my personal opinion, but the author compensated for that enough and it wasn't so over the top that I'm willing to let it slide.  It's not a kid story, I wouldn't advise reading it until you're at least 16, but it's worth waiting for.  VERY worth it.  I will treasure this series forever and look forward to owning all the anime that goes with it whenever that happens.

If you haven't noticed...

If you haven't noticed, I've been going through and posting old class work.  Part of this is because of the way I'm rearranging my blogs, but another part is because I want to keep a record of how I've improved over the years.  I decided to post works from each class all in one post in order to keep things organized and to reduce the number of posts I have to transfer.  I also decided most of my sketch posts aren't worth transferring over, so we're just mostly going to move on from here.  I want to post some concept development for my webcomic to show how that developed, a character I recently developed, then the development of the characters I draw for the campaign I'm playing in right now.  After that we'll be all caught up!

Oh yeah, and I need to repost the process post I did about how I approach my journal comic.

Let's see... other news...  I moved.  My parents built a new house and are letting my husband and me live in the basement rent free.  Now we have to commute to school, but it's saving us a bunch of money.  I graduate in April and need to start looking for a job.  Earning money would be nice.  I've been playing some video games, and I'd like to review them for you sometime soonish.  I started writing another novel for my writing class and have been improving by steps in my drawing for animation class with Jake Parker.  (He's the best teacher I've ever had.  Seriously.)

And I got behind again on homework.  I should really go work on it now.

*skeedadles*

Smash Brawl!

So this weekend I had a party with a couple of friends.  Both of these friends have served missions for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints so were out of the loop on what was going on for 18 months, so we've been watching movies together that they've missed (well, one of them missed, the other was quicker at seeing some of them).  So far we've watched Megamind, Ironman 2, and on Friday we watched Avatar (not the airbender).  We watched the extra-extended one, so that it would have some new stuff for the friend who had already seen it four times.  It was so much fun!  My one friend was already freaking out about how awesome it was when we were only ten minutes in, and during the big battle she said, "Animation is so addicting!   Who needs ecstasy when you have CG!"  We all laughed and decided that was going up on our quote wall.  We put up a large piece of paper in my life drawing class to write our silliness on.  So far it's mostly covered with quotes from me... we need to change that!

We also played Super Smash Brothers Brawl on my Wii.  My one friend hadn't touched it since her mission and thought we would totally beat her... she beat us every brawl.  I decided to practice so I would know what I was doing the next time we play, which will probably be this weekend.  I've gotten to the point now where my husband and I are almost evenly matched.  My favored character is Pitt, although I really want to play Link.  Maybe when I get a bit better I'll try Link out again.  Although, my one friend despises Link and Peach because of how other people used them in the past.  However, for some reason she feels like helping Pitt, which could be to my advantage.  I really stink at flying back up onto the stage if I fall off.

Anyway, just thought I should update this a bit more often.

Odd out

And so Spring Term has Begun

And it is busier than I expected.  I am taking Advanced Life Drawing, Doctrine and Covenants 2, and Character Design!  The Character Design class is lots of fun, I really enjoy it, but it's a little more work than I was thinking for some reason.  Life drawing is also being more work than expected.  The terms are so short!  Everything is crammed into such a limited time frame!  I don't have much else to say right now other than that.

A week of painting and writing

Well, finals week has begun!  I've already taken two of my tests and I take another one today at 2:30.  I still need to study for it, I'm nervous about it!

I did not get into the BFA this time around, but they encouraged me to apply again in August.  I hope that means I'm pretty much guaranteed a spot, but I know if I make effort to improve I'm sure to get in, right?  I'm meeting with one of the teachers about it today, the other two I'll try to meet with when spring term starts, maybe next week.

I spent all day yesterday and part of today writing in my novel.  It still needs an  official title.  Right now the working title is The Story of Chookery-chun, the Cursed Wizard.  Although, I'm not sure if Chookery is a wizard or a sorcerer.  I need to figure out the difference and then figure out which he is.  It's fun to write again!  I feel like I've been starved for a long time and have finally been granted access to an all-you-can-eat buffet!  I've written 63 pages so far in manuscript format (in about a month's worth of time, it's been very spread out), which is more than half the length of the story I worked on in high school for roughly two years but never finished.  I am so excited!  I want to get it all written and try to get it published by the time I graduate.  That would be fantastic!  Maybe I can get it written by the end of the summer?  I don't know.  Written, maybe, but probably not finished.  It will need editing, a lot of it.

And the rest of the time this week I will spend painting!  All of my illustration projects are due by nine in the morning on Thursday.  Then my family and I are going to have lots of fun doing stuff in the local area. It's going to be great.

Anyways, I should go study!

-Odd out

Yay for little sleep!

I don't have too much to say right now, but I felt like I should update.  I painted my shoes, they look great! I've designed the box they go in, it just needs a few more tweaks and it should be good to go.  I just need to get some advice from the teacher for it before making the final product.  I'll have to upload pictures on my art blog after the semester's over.  I have my Illustration 2 project redo designed and traced on the board, project 5 is designed and traced and partially painted.  I got up around 2:50 this morning to work on it, so at the moment I've spent three hours and forty minutes painting.  I'm not going to bed tonight until it's done.  I still have to lay out the composition for Project 4, which is "due" Wednesday for critique.  I have two large drawings and 30 sketches to do tonight for my figure drawing class tomorrow.  I should probably build my box tonight if possible.  The sooner I can get other homework out the way, the more time I have to work on my illustration assignments.
The BFA portfolio review is Thursday.  I don't think I'll get in this time around, since my paintings are behind, but I think I have good chances in August.  I'll be able to get my paintings all fixed and paint more things to make my portfolio even better!  If I do somehow get in this spring, I'll be ecstatic and you'll be certain to hear about it here and on deviantArt.
Then finals week starts Saturday and all my finals will be done by Tuesday afternoon.  Then my family is going on a short vacation before Spring term starts on Tuesday April 26.  I'll be taking University Spanish 2, Advanced Life Drawing, and Doctrine and Covenants 2.  I'm also planning on taking two classes during summer term, Character Design and Sequential Art.  Hopefully they will be available for registration soon!

But yeah, this week is going to be crazy and will be the hardest homework week of my life.  I hope yours is much more relaxed!

Odd out

I have a lot of work ahead of me...

So last night I went to order my custom shoes for my school project and realized that it would take about four weeks for the shoes to get to me... and I have only two more weeks of classes left.  That wouldn't work... so I have to make the shoes myself.  I purchased the plain "white" shoes today to do it with... the shoes are a blue-ish off-white color.  I need to decide whether I'm going to paint the shoes entirely blue and then put my logo on them in white, or just paint the logo on in blue... I think all-blue shoes would look cooler.  So this is going to take a whole lot more time than I was expecting... and I just finished cutting out my illustration boards for my next three illustration projects, and they're huge.  Like, the two pages for my project 4 sequential art piece are larger than my torso... yikes.  I need to really simplify things for that project so the painting won't have to take as long!  It's a little intimidating... and I need to do all of this in roughly two and a half weeks!  Plus finish prepping my BFA portfolio, do my figure drawing final project, and catch up and do my figure drawing daily sketches.  I'm going to die!  This is going to be really tough.  No sleep for me! Blah.

Yeah.  I'm growing fungus in a petri dish for my botany lab class.  It's cool, and disgusting... especially since the spot I touched with my finger has grown a pink slimy fungus blob... so gross!  XD

Anyways, I should get back to work!

-Odd out

This Weekend Wasn't Too Bad.

Not as productive as I would have liked, but good.  I made more progress than I would have on a typical weekend.  Like I said before, I'm done with all my plant reading for the semester (yes!).  I got some fun stuff.  The weather hasn't been terrible, but very cloudy and wet.  We finally got more boneless skinless chicken breasts so that we could have a yummy dinner on Sunday.  (My husband likes white meat and won't really eat the dark meat, so we have to get breasts for him.  That's okay, it means more dark meat for me! :D )  Yesterday evening we went to a family friend's little family birthday party, he and his wife are expecting their first child so quite a few of the presents were baby-oriented.  He and some friends are working on a video game and he offered to maybe let my husband and I help out with designing concept art and stuff over the summer or something.  I think it's a good opportunity.  They're not making any money on it yet, so we probably won't really get paid, but it would be a fun experience and a good portfolio builder!  So that's exciting.

I also went through my computer and cleaned it up.  I was down to about 60 GB of open space on my 250 GB hard drive, when a computer gets down to about 30 GB it starts wigging out, so I deleted a bunch of stuff and transferred my iPhoto library (over 50 GB of pictures!) onto my hard drive.  I think it would be good to back it up on a second hard drive, now that it's off my laptop it makes me nervous, but oh well.  I was jealous that my husband has about 170 GB free space on his brand new laptop, he doesn't have a lot of junk stored on it like I do mine.  So yeah, I transferred and deleted stuff, then downloaded all the digital movie copies that came with our Blu-ray DVDs we got for Christmas, and I now have about 115 GB of free space!  I need to purge some more, but I think that's pretty good for now!  I have a few more movies I want to get on my computer that I got for Christmas, but they didn't have digital copies, so I'll have to convert them.  They should only take up a few more gigabytes though, so it'll be no big deal.

Well, I have a TON of stuff still to do, all in the next two weeks!  I should get on that.  Today I am going to do ALL of my sketching so that Wednesday I can hopefully start painting!

-Odd out

I am excited!!!

Today my husband and I went to the apple store on campus to get an iPad 2 for him to replace his dying computer with.  Instead we walked out with a 13" Macbook Pro that was on clearance, a free printer, and a Wacom Bamboo Craft for me to play with (complete with pen and touch capabilities)!  I can't wait to play with it!!!  I am so excited!!! But I must do homework first... bleh....

I now have all my plant reading done for the entire semester and don't need to worry about that.  That's a good thing to have off my to-do list.  I learned a lot about fungi, it was very interesting.

Also!  This week my copy of Color and Light by James Gurney arrived, complete with his signature and an original rainbow sketch!  I am busily reading away, hopefully I will finish before the end of the semester so it can be some help for my last few projects in Illustration 1.  This week has been a good week.  Not as productive as I would have liked, but good things have happened.  Now I need to go be productive again somehow, I just wanted to share my excitement with you!

-Odd out

This past weekend was a disaster.

A disaster of homework lack of completion and frustratingly huge proportions.  It's time to crack down.  I am getting this done!  My goal is to get everything done within the next two weeks, which I know won't happen, but if I cram to get it done in that time I should be able to finish everything before it's due, or so I would hope.  I finally got my plant writing assignment done, but tomorrow I need to study hard in order to take the test on Thursday.  I have work Thursday and Friday night as well as work in the afternoon on Saturday.  Blah.  Blah blah blah.

So I spent a large part of today feeing angry and frustrated and decided to doodle in my sketchbook instead of do homework.  I need to doodle in it anyway, for the BFA review, there's 31 pages in it left to fill.  If I sketch 1-2 sketches in it every day from now until then I should probably be able to fill it.  The problem is getting ideas.  My muse doesn't like to work on demand.  Oh well.

Yeah, not much to say, just thought I should post here to start getting in the habit.  You should watch this video:

-Odd out