Conference just ended, at 5:15pm pacific time. I am exhausted. To be frank I felt a little bit out of place here, not necessarily for the usual reasons... but because I have been slowly learning that I'm definitely more interested in 2-D animation, art direction, story telling, etc... as opposed to number crunching with 3D animation.

I have been evolving in the direction of tangible arts. I want to hold my materials in my hand and use them. Not to say that I'm unwilling to make digital art, I certainly love my little Wacom and love making things in Flash... but I don't want to number crunch, I don't want to figure out algorithms, and I don't want to make art that looks too perfect to actually have been created by human hands.

Not to say that I don't appreciate what Pixar and all the other 3-D animation superpowers do... believe me, I love their work, but I don't see myself in the technical side of things. I see myself in the art department side. Painting textures, art directing, painting backgrounds, story boarding or animating in 2D or stop motion. So there. Now to move in that direction.

It takes me attending a graphics and interactive techniques conference for me to figure out that I prefer to have paint, modeling clay and/or graphite under my fingernails.

Taking care of the last few things and I feel like I might get a heart attack. God I hope I've made the right choice.

Moving resolutely into I-don't-care-just-get-me-out-of-here land. Meaning, I'm supah tired of getting ready and am fairly certain that I can live without whatever stays behind. Good god.

Life has been interesting and as usual, I get a bit weirded out by the New Year and all the personal connotations... Bleargh.

So, I graduated last May 2010... Haven't found a "real" job yet... But I have a really enjoyable internship with The Itty-Bitty Studio here in Columbus. As the name would imply, its a very small studio and we're working on a traditionally animated, yet rotoscoped film... the final product will me an eerily animated, hard media film. Hopefully we can meet our goals and attend festivals with it. XO Wish us luck! Other than that, I'm still working at Heartland Herbs, making labels and other things there. Should try to find something more profitable though... Hard to find animation positions in town. D:

For some reason, I'm having reservations about moving out of Columbus. Its sort of a mixture of the known "evil" and not wanting to get to know a new one. Along with that, I have 1/2 of my immediate family here... 2 lovely nephews... it gets hard. It wouldn't be the first time that I leave my family to move somewhere, but the timing just seems bad. Also, I don't feel economically stable enough to make any big moves. I refuse to put myself in an awkward position, I have stupidly put myself there in the past. I've discovered that I prefer to know where and when my money is coming from. It doesn't have to be a lot of money, mind, I'm low maintenance, but I need some security. @_@;;;;;;;;;

I really should concentrate on getting a more stable/profitable job here and the rest can be figured out later. Some things have to happen in a certain order, after all. It is the law of capitalism. At any rate... I'll post something else of interest once I think of it. =P

Well, it would seem that I'm back in whining mode.

I've been severely discouraged about things, and have been having tremendous trouble getting enthused to work on my thesis. Can't seem to concentrate. It's really the oddest thing. I like my story, I like my characters and I like the aesthetic I've chosen to represent them... but I can't seem to get going.

I don't know what it is that I need or what really has been stealing my energy...

Just, yeah.

I haven't posted here in a really long time, I'm sorry. There are many other things I update regularly, some of them required by class. So please bear with me.

Behind the cuts, there are several stories I wrote recently. I consider most of them, if not all, works in progress. Please feel free to crit as needed. I know it seems like a lot, but most of these stories are no more than 2-3 pages long. The titles are simply the names of the authors whose stories initially inspired me.

Hope you enjoy!

( Perkins-Gilman )
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( Castro )
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( Carver )
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( Poe )
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( Bradbury )

My phone is dead, peeps. Email me if you need me at all for anything. I'll leave an announcement whenever I have a working phone again. This is truly inconvenient.

Been detached and preoccupied. So many things to do, so many problems to solve. Just recently my computer died on me and required me to send it back to HP for repair, thankfully I had the extended warranty on it, so it didn't cost me anything. But beside that, in spite of somehow managing to hold down 2 part time jobs on top of going to school full time, I am completely broke. Banks, due to the shoddy economy, are much less reluctant to approve student loans, and I was denied this year. Beside that, for some reason, CCAD didn't have as many scholarships available this year and some that I received in the past were discontinued. I presume we didn't receive as much government money this year or something. So I've been literally scrapping by and begging to be allowed to graduate. I managed to get a scholarship re-instated, but I am still horribly broke, so I'm moving into my mother's basement. This is a prospect that is not great, I mean, here I am getting ready to turn 30 and having to move with my parents. But its frankly the best thing for me at this point. I will make the best of it and I'm sure once I'm there it will turn out to be a great blessing. I will do my best to behave myself!

So I've been very stressed and busy. The semester ends December 11 and it couldn't be soon enough. I'm very tired and stressed. I will leave it at that and continue to purr at my lappy that was just FedExed back to me today!! *puuuuuurrrrrrrr*