Christmas went well. I totally fucked up the timing, but it is me, I do that. Had I been paying attention, I would have gone home earlier and spent more time there. Anyways, I got to see all of the wife's family and all of my family that was in town. My sleep schedule has been messed up ever since, but I am getting used to not having a real schedule. Gift exchanges when off fairly easily. I get to add more DVDs to our growing list, I got a new game to obsess over, some PJs, and a little money. I am not totally sure that the Doyle family is doing a draw again next year, and I think that is fine with everyone involved.
A good weekend. - Games - Misc - School
Posted on: 2006-05-01 01:37:20[ More - 5 comments ]All-in-all, this has been a very good weekend. Damien came down on Friday to stay for the weekend. We ate at Outback and hit Circuit City, then came back here and played video games. Saturday was fairly busy. Erin defended her thesis (me, Damien, the twins, and Jamie were in attendance) then we hit Moggers (I love Moggers) with her committee. The age and background differences lead to a lot of interesting conversation. After that, Damien, the wife and I ran back to the apartment, she took a nap and me and Damien messed around on the computers some more. Around 3:30 we bolted for the art show, more on that in a minute. We were there until a little after 5 when the awards were given out. We then rushed home for Dungeons and Dragons. Damien opted to play, which kinda surprised me. The entire gang was there, all seven of them, so the addition of Damien and everyone actually playing, left us with little space at the table. We played until around 3:30am...3 people had dropped off at various times through the evening. There was Taco Bell in there somewhere, it was good and the world rejoiced. Then sleep. Sunday, Damien finally convinced me to try World of Warcraft, more later...or lower. We had Footers and watched Cool Hand Luke (Lushbaugh let me borrow it). Good food and a great classic. Damien left shortly after it finished, around 5:30-6:00. Me and Erin have been playing EverQuest since. Together we raised 15 levels between 3 characters so it was fairly productive. She is off to bed now, and I you are reading what I did after that. :)
More time!? - Misc - School - Design - Site News
Posted on: 2006-04-28 01:39:00[ More - Add comment ]So, school is almost to a close again. I have to grace Science of Color with my presence once more on Monday and take a 20 minute test in Photoshop on Tuesday and I am done. All in all, I think I learned far more this semester than the last one even though this semester will temporarily drag down my GPA. I, uh, kinda forgot about my online class for about 3 weeks and was dropped/failed/whatever. Sad thing was, I actually enjoyed the material, I just get overly distracted when behind the computer and tend to procrastinate a lot when I have a lot of free time. Oh well, live and learn. I am retaking the class on campus in the fall, and it will overwrite my current grade. Other than that, I am fairly sure I pulled off 2 A's (Illustrator and Science of Color) and a B (Photoshop).
Photoshop Projects - Misc - School
Posted on: 2006-04-23 02:32:33[ More - 2 comments ]It is funny, of the classes I took this semester, I expected to get the most out of this one. I knew the basics going in, knew enough to not be intimidated by Photoshop, and had a great desire to learn it, but I don't think anything I produced reflect that. Now, I did learn quite a bit about how the program works and how to do a lot of new things, but I don't think the projects meshed for me.
Anyways, as with all the projects I am going to show on the page, the resolution has been lowered from their original state (150-300dpi) to 72 dpi (normal screen resolution), all layers have been merged, and they were saved in a format that was as close to the original but not necessarily accurate. All this was done to trim down size (some of these files are upward of 300meg).
The first project, Gradient/Path, was really just to get us used to the pen tool. We were supposed to take a page from a coloring book, separate each little aspect of it into a path, save that path, make a layer for that little aspect, and fill it with a gradient. As it turns out, this project ended up with 113 paths with 113 corresponding layers. Doesn't look that complex, does it?
Damn Dots. - Misc - School
Posted on: 2006-04-17 15:25:27[ More - 2 comments ]I finished my last project for Science of Color...well, I started and finished my last project for Science of Color. It was not really due until next week, but I did not want to put it off any longer. The project was a pointillism project. This is supposedly a state requirement of the class, but they say that about a lot of shit that really isn't. Anyways, the idea of the project was originally to produce a self-portrait using only the colors Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black (CMYK color space, like your printer) but while producing natural colors. Sadly, the prof kinda caved and opted to allow us to use any color and as many colors as we wanted. I was more than a little annoyed at that. Even if this is not a State requirement like they say, it is still very much an Ivy Tech thing. I, and apparently only I, opted to stick with the original CMYK color space. There are certain projects that EVERYONE does. It is almost like tradition. This is all so that we can gain an appreciation of mixing colors to produce the tones we need and to get a deeper understanding of how the priting process works since we are supposed to be aspiring graphic artists.
Illustrator: 2 down. 3 to go. - School - Misc
Posted on: 2006-04-15 02:34:39[ 3 comments ]I finally reached a stopping point on two of the three projects that need to be done for my Illustrator class. I still need to run them past the teacher and get her opinion, but I doubt she will give too much input. I will probably end up diving into the 3D Mesh one again for a few more hours to polish some areas of it, but I was afraid that if I looked at it too much more I would be looking for a gun.
I essentially have 5 more projects to do before I am done: 3 Illustrator, 1 Photoshop, and 1 Science of Color. And from that, there are only 2 that I have no idea what I am going to do. I think I might actually get them done, but only if I forgo a lot of sleep and EQ.
I heart Math - School - Misc
Posted on: 2006-02-23 16:24:08[ 4 comments ]I don't know why, but for some reason I just really feel like breaking my Calculus or Linear Circuit and doing some problems. I know it will depress me since I am sure I have forgotten everything. Of course, I could be doing my actual homework, but where is the fun in that?
School can be amusing. - School
Posted on: 2006-02-03 23:08:39[ More - 7 comments ]So, yesterday, or Friday since it will probably take more than 10 minutes to post this, I took my first quiz/test thing for Illustrator. It was over the toolbar and all the shortcuts it has. There were roughly 70-75 questions (or 140-150 if you count the shortcuts) of which I answered about 80%. I feel secure in saying I totally bombed this test/quiz, and I think we are having another Wednesday over ALL THE REST OF THE SHORTCUTS. It is amusing to me that we are being given tests this detailed this soon over a program that nearly none of us have at home and that we have slightly limited access to due to classes being taught there. Also, toss the messed up lab hours into the mix and there could be a lot of bitching going on...oh well. Oh, and immediatly after getting home from taking/failing that test I opened a letter from Ivy Tech...I am on the Dean's List. What kinda message am I supposed to get from that?
The year is almost dead! Yay!!! - Games - Misc - School
Posted on: 2005-12-30 14:39:26[ More - 5 comments ]Well, the year is almost to a close with only about 33 hours left. This year quite a bit changed for me: I quit my job (after almost five years), we both replaced our aging computers (and, of course, now they are not way outdated), I have gone back to school (12 hours getting 2 As and 2 Bs), we moved to a new address (much nicer place, but I still want more counter space), we moved our servers to a hosted environment (and they don't suck), and I spent way too much money on school supplies (being an art major is expensive, but at least a lot of it I can use over and over again). I am planning on getting a part-time job after I settle into the spring semester (hopefully on campus), I am getting Adobe's Design Suite and maybe another gig or ramn for the computer, I am picking up another 15 hours at Ivy Tech, we might actually get all our stuff organized here, I am going to further my work on the page and move to new areas...soon, and will spend more inordinate amounts of money on supplies. Go 2006.
I am getting excited. - School
Posted on: 2005-12-13 17:29:48[ More - 8 comments ]In less than 24 hours I will be done with my first semester back at school. I know I got A's in two of my four classes, and no clue about the other two... probably B and C if I read my teachers right. I have found it interesting that some teachers will base their grade on how many classes of that subject you have had, and if is your first class you probably won't get an A. Of course, I don't think I really deserve an A in either of the classes I am not sure about, but I probably would not get it in one of them even if I did. Oh well. I think we are supposed to get our design projects back tomorrow (read, better get them back), so I might have pictures up of them by the weekend. I am not necessarily proud of a lot of it, but I think a couple came out well, and not to be too arrogant I was above par on most of them.
