Hello there. It's been a while.
I suppose some of you are eager to find out what's been going on, huh? Well, let's start with the bad news: I failed Works in Progress. Again. This makes two strikes, one more and it's bye-bye BFA. What's troubling is that practically everyone else failed it as well. I only know of maybe two people who passed. TWO. Out of like, twenty or something! I've heard they had to buckle down more because people were graduating through the BFA program that didn't really deserve to, but isn't this a bit of an overkill? I don't know. You can speculate all you want, I'm sick of thinking about it. My plan is just to work my arse off this summer to have a brand new portfolio to show next semester. And if I fail again? I'll hopefully still be able to graduate on time with a BA after getting a couple semesters of Spanish out of the way.
And now on to more pleasant things.
REJOICE! For the editing of Black Hole Ghost is completed! I just need to cut together the final credits, finangle around with it to get the right old-fashioned film look I want, and add music. Then I will throw the thing online and we will all celebrate and you will love me. And I made this for it, or well, for a gallery/temple I'm creating in Second Life:
I love that shot, for some reason.
I've done other, similar pieces for the gallery/temple. I'll be putting them up, along with screenshots of the place itself, in a new gallery once it's all done with.
In Typography, my Flash animation of the lyrics to Dance Commander went over quite well. I MIGHT put it on Youtube, if I can figure out how. No telling whether I'll really bother or not.
I am also working on a pair of poster designs. A Call for Student Entries poster for the Southern Appalachain International Film Festival, which will go on their website, and one for the Knoxville Horror Film Fest, which may not even get used. But at this point, I'm getting pretty bloody used to rejection, y'know?
Isn't this one of the greatest book covers ever? And it's EXACTLY how I pictured Palmer Eldritch when I was reading my own copy, except for the wings, but those are just sweet. I'm posting it because, well, for one it's pretty awesome, and for two, I just came off of another of my Philip K. Dick kicks. See, I read a huge chunk of his work back to back, burn out, read something else, then head back, and this is my third burnout phase. I finished Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, and while I still have FIVE more novels of his to read through, I also picked up a collection of 21 of his short stories, read a few of those, and read a bunch of stuff about him online, as well as worked about halfway through an essay of his entitled How to Build a Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later.
I guess that, as much as I read of his stuff, as fascinated as I am by him, that PKD is one of my favorite authors. He's certainly not the best, and his works are all quite flawed: the main characters are almost always some kind of blue-collar everyman, the women deceptive, his dialogue is weak, there's little sense of urgency, no real climax or third act, things just kind of end. Not to mention they almost all deal with the same themes of the questioning of reality and paranoia. But I keep reading his works because they're so weird, and have this almost David Lynch, Twin Peaks feel to them. I wish I could explain it better, but I'm not sure I can.
But alas, I'm burnt out again, and because I read William Gibson's classic Neuromancer during my last break, I'm borrowing my girlfriend's copy of Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson. She claims it's a parody of Neuromancer, as well as one of the major inspirations for the creators of Second Life. Not too far into it, but it is both hilarious and awesome, and I am loving it.
Also, sloths are adorable. And always smiling. I'm planning on doing a lot of drawings and paintings and stuff of them during the summer, for that portfolio.
And that's all there is tonight.
[Brett]