MAKE SURE TO LAUGH

This is my 7 second animation that I made in mayaaa. The audio was the collaborative effort of everyone sitting in my living room with me: dad, jakub, danny, and I. I was way more into modeling in this class than the animating soooo hopefully someone appreciates the chairs!

It's funny to me, hopefully it is to you too.

Re-Done Portfolio Page, Steelcase, End of Finals

Finally changed the lay-out in my portfolio page. This is the one that is kind of a storage page for pieces from my porfolio. it has work in various unrelated mediums but hopefully I can change the other one too so that I have one fully graphic design portfolio and one illustration.

Went to Steelcase today. Really fun experience, the girl showing me around took me to their many show rooms where they display their furniture in their respective settings. It was pretty informal which was nice and what I hoped for. I got to talk to the girl, Jessie, one-on-one about how she got her job there as an Industrial Designer and the types of things she does on a project to project basis. Jessie gave me a big talk on life after graduation and she said not to stress so much. Somethings take time and the best thing to do is just to keep yourself busy and continue to do work even if you're not in your dream job yet. She said to keep your skills relevant and make sure to show it in your work.

I still have some time, actually a whole year more than the other kids my age which I'm actually more thankful about than I was earlier this semester. I wouldn't have been able to go to go Italy next semester like I can now.

This is the last evening of finals hell week so finished work will be posted soon after it's all graded. In these last 7 hours I can REALLY FEEEL that any bit of motivation or care I had for my work has gone out the window. Which is fine because everything is done now EXCEPT this animation... and yes this is me taking a break from the project. If I decide to post my animation y'all should keep that in mind ha.

The thrill and horror of FINALLSSSSS

Just keeping everyone up to date on the project progresssss...

Reduction wood block (theme was water...?)

This is one of the only prints that I like of the several I've made so far. The other ones just aren't my usual style. BUT my teacher likes them and thats all that matters ha! (at least for now).

My teapots are all bisque fired! The big one is shown with the handles laying next to it. Those are going to be attached with wood just above where they are laying, onto the sides of the pot. The really small pot with the very thin-slit opening is a pot I made with a little bit of extra time to hopefully add a few points to my grade. I like it but it's a little simple (also going to have a wooden handle). And then the last one is the one I showed pictures of before in it's greenwear stage, but it's now bisqued. One of the little lids broke in the kiln :/ and the handle got lost in the kiln somehow??? That will probably ALSO be made of wood now.

All the pots are ready to be glazed once I do that and attach handles they'll be ready for my crit. on wednesday.

Finals are horrible, I've lost all motivation to do any creative work and sleep as well. While trying to do work for all my classes I'm also trying to get all my stuff together for study abroad. Mainly the student VISA which I spend so much time on it's as if I have a 5th final. UGH! The thing thats keeping me going though is the thought of christmas and Italyyyy! Bonjourno! thats all I know in italian right now.

Tablet Sketches..

TRYING some automobile sketching on tablet in photoshop. Still extremely rough, not great at clean confident lines yet on the tablet but getting there...

I've actually been using my tablet for all of the graphic design I've been doing recently. It makes navigating and tracing a lot easier (because illustrator's Trace tool is crap) but it's also great for real sketching. I've been trying to improve car and motorcycle drawing within the past semester and now I'm moving it to my new digital medium. It obviously is a lot better for doing the metallic gradients in shading and many other things but I'm also out of sketchbooks at the moment so it's quite nice to now use the never-ending pages of photoshop and illustrator. Hopefully someday I'll look more like these guys...

Progress...

I wanted to finish and post up my animatic but I don't think I should spend anymore time on it because I should just start working on animating the real thing.

Just put the teapots and new thermuses in to be bisque fired. Then I'll just need to glaze them and attach wooden handles.

I had a print session with my printmaking teacher last night and it was... a bit strange and uncomfortable. I think he was in a bad mood, but I'm glad we did it. Got 3 more prints done.

Hand-Out Posters for Solar Car

Just finished making some hand-out posters for the Auto Show. They're simply for visual pleasure, so that people can put it on their walls and say "yeah, I'm totally into the U of M Solar Car Team" without actually saying it. Does it say that? I think so.

A herd of Thermuses

One of our assignments in my clay multiples class is to make a plaster mold of a cup and then to pour 10 cups and give them to 9 of our friends. It's to keep them from using paper cups because they are a WASTE! Obviously everyone already knows that they are but this way we are hopefully forcing them to stop use the ceramic cups out of friend-guilt.

It's like:

Me: Hey Tim... what's this cup? Where's that thermus I made you? Don't you like it?!

Friend: Oh yeah, iiiit's dirty... so I took it home. I totally use it all the time! I love it I swear!

Me: yeah? good, thats what i thought.

(Friend subsequently uses the mug all the time just so Me doesn't get upset.)

Printmaking... my struggles

Here are some prints I finally brought myself to take pictures of! So there are 2 types of prints here. There are my wood block prints (mickey and Marty2010) which I have much more trouble with than the monotypes (portrait of me and of Jakub). I'm a fairly good painter and thus the monotypes come out pretty nice because its pretty much the same thing. You take a sheet of mylar that you then paint on with relief ink and then print on a paper, so you literally get 1 impression and possibly a ghost print (a very faint version of the original).

NEW Solar Car Posters

Ok so the meeting is over and the designs were approved! except the colors needed to be more consistent with the rest of our look. so I've made a few changes. Here they are after most of the big changes have been made. I still need to touch some things up and add a paragraph in the Infinium Poster, but thats about it!

Solar Car Poster

I literally just started and finished this poster tonight... it's 3am... and am actually quite happy with it. I've joined the Business sector of the University of Michigan's Solar Car Team. I'm doing as much graphic design for them as I can muster up out of my busy schedule. They are going to be showing at the Auto Show in January and need many posters done about the car and the races and the team. My poster is on the 2 most important races the team is a part of each year: The American Solar Challenge and the World Solar Challenge. They've won first in the American 6 times! and 3rd in the World 4 times... thats awesome. I'm excited to be a part of it.

So, I've literally just sent it in to be evaluated and I'll hear back from everyone in the meeting tomorrow. I'll let you know if it gets the final print out ASAP. The only reason it wouldn't is because the aesthetic maybe too inconsistent with the rest of the posters. I never got to see what anyone else was doing and I don't even know if anyone WAS doing anything else...

Teapot Designs

So I'm making some teapots in my ceramics class, as a final project. These first 3 photos are of the smaller pot of the 2 that I'm making. They both have the same general shape but will have different handle placements (handles not shown in picture). Also, the small teapot can actually hold 2 different kinds of tea, because it has 2 compartments and 2 spouts. That idea was brought up by a friend who was thinking of ideas for his own pot but I really liked the idea and used it for mine!

I'm pretty excited about them. Right now they're still drying and I have to come with ideas for glazing them, I'm pretty sure I want to keep it pretty simple, maybe even just white. Here are some teapots by other artists, that I really enjoy and what made me want to do a pot:

Poster Designs For Los Ren

So my close guy friends have recently started a band called Los Renaissance Men. It's hard to explain the genre but I wanna saaay electronic/jazz/experimental? I like it. Anyways they've had a few smalls shows and I've done the posters for all of them so far. They kind of let me go where ever I want with it, so you'll notice the graphics actually dont have much to do with the name but more with the idea of the band and its music.

Here's a link to their myspace if anyone's curious.

The poster in the middle wasn't actually ever used because one of my friends (not in the band) said it looked a little too much like male genitalia. reallyyy??? I didn't think so... but I don't know what everyone else thinks. Oh well!

New Member to my Gadgets Family

Recently did a drawing for a friend at Ohio State. Say what you will, but he's not half bad.

I made this drawing using my new Wacom Bamboo tablet! WOOO. My brother just bought this tablet for me and I must say it is EXTREMELY worth it's fairly cheap price of $99. Actually I really would say it's a steal. I have the Pen and Touch edition and it's quickly becoming my favorite tool.

I owe a HUGE THANK YOU to my brother :)

NEW BLOG PURPOSE

Soooo, Slow Jams will now feature any type of work I'm currently working on. Contrary to what this blog was used for before, which was to post new time-based work I was producing in my Tools Materials and Processes III class sophomore year, I will now be showing work in any medium and any class or, more generally, any project that I happen to be working on and would like to share.

I will show works in progress that I am excited about or even perhaps am struggling with so as to put it out in the open and to become more socially aware of my work and myself. This way I hope to feel more comfortable with the idea of people seeing my work and hopefully become more aware of its impact on a more social setting. ALSOOO this will get me in the habit of documenting my work in progress which is an extremely important part of showing an artists work and part of an artists portfolio! and something I've been too lazy to do in the past.

So to clarify, this isn't my portfolio in ANY shape or form, it's more of a tool in my art making process that is open for outsiders to get involved only if they wish.

So, my main purpose for blog now is not to have people read and comment on my work, but develope new habits for myself and experiment with a new tool in the process of making new work. But in case anyone does feel inclined to then I definitely want them to be able to speak their mind.

So, PLEASE FEEL FREE TO COMMENT ON OR ASK QUESTIONS ABOUT ANY OF MY WORK.

thanks,

mart