2022 - 2023

Blood, Sweat, Tears: Final Push for the Bachelor of Arts

Drawing With Perspective W/ Intro and Retro

Sink or Swim: Animation 1

Character Design: Long Overdue

Illustration? AGAIN???

Intro Studio: Sculpture - Life

Core Studio: Wood - Furniture

Mass Production: Core Studio: Mold-Making

No Earth, Fire, or Wind: Watercolor Painting

Time to finish the job I left behind in Spring 2020. In addition to several art writing courses that won't be covered here (because they're boring as shit, why subject you to that), my stint at CSULB consisted of mostly upper art course requirements necessary in order to graduate with the Bachelor of Arts. I had to shuffle around classes I wanted to take with what worked with my work schedule at the time. By January 2022, I was now working morning shifts and having to clock out at 3 to 3:30pm. This meant that all of my classes going into Spring 2022 were all at night time, except for the Perspective Drawing class I had from 9am to 3:45pm on Fridays. The bitter work continued and by sheer will, I was going get that stupid piece of paper saying that I academically did something with my life. To start off my re-enrollment with a bang, I didn't pick my classes for Spring 2022, my first semester back as a college dropout, until two days before.

A running theme you will be reading is how much mental health, which I hadn't properly dealt with before returning to school, interfered with my academic efforts to a degree.

Drawing With Perspective W/ Intro and Retro

This class was Fridays 9am to 3:45pm. Before I start, shout out to Jerry L who I met in this class. The absolute madman lives in San Diego and commuted the 1.5 - 2 hours to and from CSULB Mondays through Friday. I recall seeing him show up close to 10-11am on a couple occasions. Because it was a Friday class, it was very laidback and chill, and as long as Jerry L did the work, our professor didn't care about the tardiness much, understanding of the commuting hell.

Our professor has a background within the gaming industry. Some of the bigger titles he had worked on was PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale, God of War, Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, and Evolve as a environmental design artist. The mantra he spoke was that whenever we needed to draw any sort of three-dimensional figure in any space: "Put it in a box." For me, it helped somewhat, but I struggled with the technical aspects since line work was not the neatest or cleanest. It was a point he brought up often when critiquing my work, which he didn't disparage; he mentioned that it takes practice and that every artist starts somewhere.

Sink or Swim: Animation 1

Before I start, let me just say what an absolute fucking godsend this professor was. Because this class started at 4pm and I clocked out at work at 3pm, and I genuinely hated arriving late to class, I always showed up in my VONS uniform. I'd leave work, walk the 15 minutes to home, switch backpacks, and then to the bus stop to CSULB, arriving minutes before the 4pm start time. I'd run into classmates I had in that period who'd tell me that they remember me as the "VONS guy who always sat in the corner." Of course, I look, smell, and feel like shit. He is also responsible for referring me to the Counseling And Psychological Services (CAPS) program at CSULB. I was given the chance to enter therapy, even temporarily, after previous attempts outside of school didn't work out due to lack of finances. Whether he knos it or not, he played a part in saving my life.

The first couple assignments were quick animation exercises, beginning with the bouncing ball, and then a heavy ball and falling leaf to practice the illusion of weight. I had done those in pencil I unfortunately don't have those videos anymore, but I retained the digital animations. The video title names should require no explanation as to what they entailed, but of course, what's the point of a digital archive if I didn't over exposit the details?

The first assignment I did digitally was to incorporate two flour sacks interacting with one another. As the same in Intro to Animation, I animated these projects also in Adobe Photoshop. I wasn't the most tech savvy and used what was already supplied to me. The second project was to lip sync audio files that were supplied by my professor. Knowing me, I chose a short audio clip; if I was able to give myself more time, I would have done the clip of Sonya Blade berating Johnny Cage in the 1995 Mortal Kombat movie. As far as I know, I was the only one who knew the clip's origins since a decent amount of my classmates used it, but none of them used the ponytail or sunglasses to reference them. Just a nitpick.

This project was to have a unique walk, picking up/dropping an object, and throwing an object, all to give the illusion of so. It was our prerogative as a class to weave them into a narrative. Given what I was going through, I felt it warranted to talk about it. I had far more in mind and I originally wanted to do more, such as fight sequence and use of music, but over the summer, I gave myself to my job than my creative passions. I had actually called out of work the morning the day this was due in order to get a semblance of something finished. The project itself was maybe 60% done by that morning. I needed to animated the box pick-up and throw and the final climbing and ledge sequence, and that was done from 5am to 1pm.

Character Design: Long Overdue

Monster Mash

Taken in Fall 2022, I saw that one of the professors teaching this class was the same as Animation 1. I knew that even if I struggled, I at least had a sincerely supportive professor. This class was a huge eye-opener in terms of understanding body shape and how necessary it was when conveying character. If I was to fully realize the multitude of characters I got noodling in my head, I required the foundation and rules before I could even begin to break them. I used the class's projects to help work on the hundreds of OC's I had.

To start off, our first project was called "Monster Mash", where we drew three numbers with corresponding animals. I got hippopotamus, zebra, and alligator. I wasn't particularly happy, but ya know, I gotta make do. For the first part, we were expected to come up with at least 15 sketches and already that felt daunting because some of them felt too same-y. I was told that I may also go beyond the realism and do more than the four legs and one head, but I chose to confine myself for what would be later named Wardlowe. The UPA and Cartoon style were then next to work on. The UPA style was a dumb stroke of genius because it was purely a minimalist doodle of the creature and my professor fell in love. The Cartoon style was one I struggled to properly wrap my head around. Thankfully, my professor gave a couple visual examples by sketching what physical attribute I may accentuate like Wardlowe's hair, rotund body, and snout. What came was a pretty fun first foray into proper character design and something that I ought to adopt going forward. I hate realism, all my homies hate realism!!!!!

Though the name Wardlowe will not be sticking around, I will be reworking this design into another named Scale of the War Island concept.

The Monster Family

The second project was called "The Monster Family". The guidelines specified by our professor was this class that the chosen animal were "cats" and the theme was a choice between Western, feudal Japan, or futuristic. During this time, I had been rewatching The Hateful Eight, Once Upon a Time in the West, and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, which helped with inspiration. I chose to use the names and dynamic of characters I had created, reusing their names in Maeve, Roderick, and Delgado, a guild of three. The difference being the Western and sabretooth cat influences.

While the original idea of Red Triangle will remain as such, I grew to love Delgado's design and reworked his and the other two's design into what would later be referred to as "The Mob" later.

The X-Files

The third project was called "The X-Files" in reference to the series whose two main characters were of clashing personalities, which was this project's guideline. We were expected to create two characters who are like day/night, salt/sugar, etc. (I couldn't think of more, shut). I had been rewatching Rush Hour trilogy and The Other Guys, so I had a buddy cop dynamic in mind of having the straight-laced partnered with the bumbling/comic relief. Here, Elfried is that straight-laced, somewhat modeled after Columbo, and Franko, who was originally supposed to wear a Hawaiian shirt, but I didn't want to go through the trouble of drawing the design multiple times. I decided on both being oni because hell yeah.

Initially, again I took a realistic approach when drawing the characters and, again by sheer stroke of luck, I had drawn Franko with the face he has here, and my professor saw and enjoyed that design a lot more than realistic versions I had as it allowed more expressive faces for the expressions section. What came next was creating four poses of the two interacting with one another to showcase their individual and clashing personalities. I chose to tell a subtle story about the two coming to a boiling point and, while obviously not explicitly stated, Elfried was to be outed as a corrupt cop, forcing Franko to fire the fatal shot, as you'll see in the character expressions.

Final Project

For the final project, we were given creative freedom to do whatever we'd like as did the following: two characters, each with six expressions/poses, four point turn-arounds, and one where the two interacted with one another. Other than that, from what I recall, the two characters could be anything we like.

I used this project to refine the designs of two of characters of Saturday Morning Oatmeal, The Beacon and The Husk. I initially played with using Hanson instead, but preferred someone more aesthetically dynamic and to better represent the super heroic good vs animalistic evil motif I was going for. I got a ton of help ironing out how to further exaggerate body poses to show character. Unfortunately, I did not finish the last scene of the two, as I became too ambitious for my own britches. I had planned to turn it into a title card of sorts for Saturday Morning Oatmeal. Maybe down the line I'll finish it traditionally and do so for the rest of the cast as well.

Illustration? AGAIN???

Taken Tuesdays and Thursdays 9am to 11:45am,

Intro Studio: Sculpture - Life

This class was the first of the 3D art classes necessary in order to graduate with a Bachelor of Arts, taken Spring 2023, my last year at CSULB. Three-dimensional art has never been my strong suit. Nevertheless, I resolved to earn a passing grade and put forth the effort to learn to some degree despite my technical shortcomings. My professor for this class has been described as "unrivaled" in terms of his sculpting/mold-making capabilities within CSULB, having done exhibitions around the world. He has been very understanding and, as with the class subject, very hands-on teacher. Unfortunately, there's only one and close to 20 students, so any time you needed help, his time was limited despite him being more than welcome to show you the ropes. Regardless of my drawbacks as a 3D artists, the professor gave ample amounts of praise and showed where potential lied.

VID_247120304_102652_477.mp4

This stupid ass video was actually taken my last semester (Fall 2023) and during workshop clean up. There were a few clay heads still left over that students hadn't claimed or helped to clean, so professors said that we can do with them as we pleased. We did this to a couple heads, but unfortunately only recorded one instance of our tomfoolery.

Towards the last month of Spring 2023, my mental health had deteriorated to a depth I hadn't felt in a long while. In addition to the time of the year (birthday month of April), work, class work load, and among other things, my effort was waning as the end of the semester approached. I had already dropped one of the classes and I had skipped four classes in a row. When I had finally returned, I spoke with my professor for this class and was transparent about what I was dealing with. He understood and also recommended me to the CAPS program at CSULB. We then talked shop about my final project. One of the options was that it could be a performance piece, meaning that I could be part of the exhibit instead of creating something that had showed my understanding of the human anatomy.

Time was ticking and after my initial idea was shot down out of sensitivity (understandable considering it personally dealt with my unfortunate ideation). Then, I sketched out a King Ghidorah-like head sculpture and doing a performance piece, still incorporating a "downfall." The three heads were finished in the course of the two days before the finals were due, and a performance piece I had literally came up with throughout the student critiques.

To be sincerely honest, my "final" was such a pisspoor job and I can't use the excuse of "mental health deteriorating" because I feel like I'm covering behind it too much. Three-dimensional work is not my forte at all, but the least I owed my professor and my peers was more genuine effort with this project in particular.

Core Studio: Wood - Furniture

This class was the other upper 3D art class I was expected to take in order to graduate (along with Intro to Sculpture and Mold-Making). This was much smaller class, close to 9-12 students overall. The bulk of the class dealt with learning the different types of joints such as mortise/tenons and taking care of our tools, which included chisels that needed to be sharpened consistently often. There were workshop hours offered for this class, which I took advantage of as much as I possibly could. This and Mold-Making were the two classes I worried about the most since these two were needed to graduate, considering I'm not the best at three-dimensional artwork.

The kumiko patterns was the toughest assignment for me. However, looking back, all the other assignments, while I still struggled here and there throughout the semester, this class wasn't as difficult compared to previous 3D art classes I've taken. The final project, which was to build a working piece of furniture, was the poop stool. Over the course of two weeks, I hand-chiseled every mortise/tenon and finger joint. I finished with a couple class meetings left before the day of finals, which I spent half sanding down the stool and half fucking around in class. I got a passing grade at the end of the day and I'm pretty stoked about it.

Mass Production: Core Studio: Mold-Making

This was the other upper 3D art class required to graduate. This was with the same professor as the life sculpting class. Thankfully this time around, I was in a much better head space and would not be giving him some bullshit ass work. Any shortcomings with the projects in the class came down to the technical aspects. As with the life sculpting course, our professor was generous with his help and with the group project came immense amounts of help. He essentially did at least 20% of the work in getting started on the mold building process, of which I don't have pictures unfortunately. Like the woodworking class, I was able to finish the final project, using the group bowling pin mold to make my own pins, fairly quickly as I also used the workshop hours. I initially planned to do 10 pins, but there was an apparent plaster shortage, and both the school's art store and Home Depot were low on plaster of Paris, so I could only manage four pins.

VID_219650402_072747_993.mp4

This was part of my final for Mold-Making. I did not get to showcase in front of the whole class as the space here was taken by other projects. I was 100% committed to doing the bit anyways, so here you go.

No Earth, Fire, or Wind: Watercolor Painting

My illustration(s) course professor was the same professor for this watercolor painting course. Like my Animation 1/Character Design professor, this professor was also absolute chad of a guy. Great sense of humor, just as artistically talented, and the most unforgettable laugh. This class was taken Fridays from 9am to 3:45pm. Despite that time, he was very high energy and also began class reading out some announcements such as the weather report for Long Beach and then engaging in the class about the week to get us started.

The two image carousels below showcase the initial couple weeks focusing on getting the fundamentals down. It would be mental of me if I didn't get it down rather quickly.

The next two were of the next watercolor painting project where we painted from observation. I took a small 3-inch bronze owl statue and a wooden ox I had to use as practice before I moved onto what I preferred to do the project on. I got a bunch of masks, so I figured why not make them the subjects of these object studies again?

As I did in my Character Design course, I used class projects to work on my characters. For my final project, which was basically anything I felt like doing in addition to a self-portrait, I worked on the cast of Saturday Morning Oatmeal. During the critique, I gave the class my 30 or so second pitch on what this was and what all the characters are meant to represent. A bit of a rough job considering I was balancing 7 classes at once and I bit off more than I could chew, but I at least had to follow through with this project's goals.