Archive for the ‘RISD’ Category
Monster: Transformation
One great thing about RISD is Winter Session. After fall semester ends we get six weeks to explore something outside of our major. We’re encouraged to take studios outside of what we would normally tackle in our curriculum. One of the benefits of being an incoming transfer student is that I get higher pick priority than other sophomores in the school, which means I have access to some of the more popular classes.
After a lot of deliberation I decided I wanted to take “Monster.” What’s great about this class is that we just watch monster movies and make monsters. Each week we’re given a prompt to explore and watch monster movies that relate to that prompt. This project, the third so far, is an exploration of transformation, and things that change instantaneously (instead of metamorphosis, a slower change which we will explore next week).
Late, into the Night
I love the feeling of going to far with something, where I get entirely distracted by something productive and instead of budgeting my time wisely, I throw everything away in the name of progress. Today I stayed up until 7am working on my new blog layout. What started as a simple layout project turned into hours of light reading about CSS3 and HTML 5. The new blog layout should have a couple of the CSS3 tricks in it, which will probably be useless since most of you are probably reading this in Google Reader anyway. Regardless, it feels good to put everything into progressing. I feel like I got better tonight.
With the semester over I have a lot of work to post, which should be happening soon. I’ve decided I should update this much more regularly. Daily would be ideal, but I’ll take some baby steps first before committing to something so serious. It’s light out, I’m not making any sense. I guess the point is, learning is great. I like it.
Observation
It goes without saying that my skills in observation have increased as a result of being in school. Lately I’ve been seeing little faces here and there, but I think this is the best example of me looking harder at things without necessarily trying to. Thanks RISD.
The 500
I was given 7 days to do 500 thumbnails based on two objects. An S hook and a woodworkers biscuit. I had 5 sheets full of 100 1″ x 1″ squares. Each page had a theme to explore. Anomaly, balance, contrast, rhythm and texture were my cues. I got it done, carpal tunnel be damned. It was a great exercise in pushing my observational skills and the ability to pick out interesting forms from mundane objects. A great step in making more interesting logo marks and iconography.
Repetition
Digesting letterforms through making them by hand. Lots of patience and lots of starting over. It’s really good for me.
Time
In Form and Communication we were given a prompt. We were told that we needed to make a project that made a statement about time. This was the only direction we were given and we were only given 2 weeks to complete it. Through the process of brainstorming I got to thinking about how my relationship with time is contextual. I could spend 20 minutes waiting in line for something and be frustrated and bored and it feels like an eternity, or I could be spending those same 20 minutes drawing or playing a video game and it feels like only a few seconds passed.
My goal for the project was to find instances in which the same amount of time was spent in situations similar to each other and to illustrate that our expectations play a huge role in how we catalog and describe these experiences. I decided to break them into mini narratives to help explain what possibilities could be going on within these experiences, and to maybe get the viewer to think more about their own expectations and relationships with time.
O Hai
I’m seeing faces all over the place.
It’s been so long.
I just finished writing my first academic paper after 6 years of doing…not…that. Hopefully it doesn’t suck too bad?