I am not just yet dead...

So I've been MIA. So much going on and so much to say.. So I'm just gonna post "little snippets" instead of one big post where I rant and ramble about stupid stuff that I think matter.
Nobody likes stupid people because they make everyone else around them stupid.

Silent Films

I signed up for the History of Narrative Film course this Fall semester.

I love it so far; we watch movies on the weekend, we get to research stuff we want to talk about, and we get to read a fat history textbook. It's pretty much all my favorite things to do, and I get 3 credit hours for it. Awesomeness.

My favorite director of the silent film era is Buster Keaton.

His 'Great Stone Face'

He never smiled on film - he did in one actually, but the preview audience hated it so much that he had to cut the scene with his smile out.

He did amazing stunts, and he started his career in stunts at the age of 3 during his vaudeville years when he performed with his parents. The audience always enjoyed it more the more unhappy he looked as his father threw him around the stage and into the orchestra pit. Those sadists.

Well I love him because his movies are awesome; they're full of impressive stunts, they're original story lines, they're complex and interesting, they're funny without being lame, and the music is just great.

And look:

He had amazing abs. I'm gonna have to watch the Cameraman just to see this scene.

And yea, I haven't seen too many of his films so far, but I think I'll love all of them the same. He's one of those people that I sincerely wish was still alive, because I'd so love to meet him.

Definitely on my list of people who inspire me.

Go check out some of his movies - like The Cameraman or Sherlock Jr. or The General.

If you dislike them, then I pretty much guarantee that you have no soul. Or that we just have a big difference in taste.

Yea, you have no soul.

-Deena

Sheikha Manal's Young Artist Award

Next Wednesday will be the deadline for the Young Artist Award http://www.youngartistaward.ae/main/. There are three categories I would like to submit to: Photography, Fine Arts and Multimedia.

I've left my execution 'till last minute; I'm not sure if this was entirely intentional, but there was a lot of trial and error that I had to go through.

A narrative about insecurity

I had to scrap my short film project that I had worked on with my sister. It was planned out and everything, but it just couldn't come together. We reshot but that also fell through, so now I'm using all the leftover bits to see if I can construct anything with it and submit to the Multimedia category.

Just a sketch of what a small portion would look like

For the Fine Arts category, I have revived an old project of mine and I'm now attempting to hang it from the ceiling so you can lay down and look at fish floating over you. I really like looking at art when I'm laying down, so I guess this is more of a personal preference than anything really.

And yea. I have the weekend to sort through all three categories as well as study for two midterms and do work for a final submission and finish a vector drawing.

Wish me luck,

-Deenaaa

Grades and Self-handicapping

I'm gonna admit that I'm pretty much going through this right now:

"Self-handicapping - the process by which people avoid effort in the

hopes of keeping potential failure from hurting self-esteem." -Wikipedia

I'm not doing as well as I'd hoped with my schoolwork; I put in a lot more time and effort into my work and receive disappointed feedback and lower grades. They (the professors and graduates) always tell us that grades aren't important; the important thing is that you learned something from the whole ordeal. As much as I agree with that statement when I'm on holiday, I can't help but focus and obsess about the grades when I'm in school.

If the grades don't actually matter, then why do we receive grades at all?

Well, it's a great way to tell you where you are and how much more you need to improve. It's a guideline that can show you where you need focus and point out the things you're really good at. The grades are there to retain order and standards.

Apparently, the key is the ability to separate the professor's likes and the grade you actually receive. A professor can rave about your work and how much they love it and how it resonates with their souls and so on, but it can fail to meet part of the criteria of the project and you can get a lower grade than you expected.

So that's pretty confusing to grasp. But basically, according to one of my professors and others have agreed with him: "grades are not meant to be subjective, and are based on how original and perfect your execution is."

Which leads me back to why I'm beginning to self-handicap; I've been working really hard, racking my brains to be 'original', sometimes not even thinking and jumping to the execution, using all kinds of methods to take as many risks and experiment as much as possible, all the while trying to control the outcomes, and in the end, I'm told that I'm being conventional and not putting as much effort in as my fellow classmates.
Now I'm beginning to self-handicap. I feel like, what's the point? I'm just going to get bad feedback anyways, because I'm not receiving any constructive criticism. I'm just going to get bad grades anyways, so why bother?
And with that attitude, I probably will continue to get bad grades.
And you know what? The professor probably won't even care that I don't care, 'cause in the end, they're not the one with the bad grades, 'cause it's really nothing to them to hand them out.
Beyond school, they don't really matter. Outside of school, your CV is looked at, your portfolio is looked at, how well you present yourself is looked at. Focus on doing well in school, but don't let grades get you so down that you wanna drop out or feel like crap, just do well enough to get by if that's the best you can do - just get through it.

This kind of feedback doesn't push me to work harder.

This kind of feedback doesn't make me feel good about my work or myself.

It makes me feel like crap that I: spent money to buy equipment for the project, asked people to spare some of their time to help me, spent hours composing my work, spent even more time selecting and cropping and photoshopping and editing the best ones and then reprinting them several times to get the right amount of levels and detail on good quality paper.

Maybe you googled "dropping out of school" or "bad grades" or something else negative like that, and that's how you found this page. Maybe you didn't, but I have, and reading some stuff has either gotten me even more down, or actually helped me a lot.

You have to think about grades in this way:

Beyond school, they don't really matter. Outside of school, your CV is looked at, your portfolio is looked at, how well you present yourself is looked at. Focus on doing well in school, but don't let grades get you so down that you wanna drop out or feel like crap, just do well enough to get by if that's the best you can do - just get through it.

The Cameraman - Buster Keaton

Remember your other priorities in life: family, friends, pets, plants, I don't know, having fun, getting out, networking, doing things that make you happy.

Grades are only a temporary feeling, a temporary 
thing. Don't let them discourage you.

I feel like I'm repeating all of this to myself over and over again, trying to get myself to believe it. And I think I do now, for the time-being at least, which is probably why I wrote this in the first place to maybe help someone else with their day.

Stay strong and keep working hard,

-Deena

The Rule of Thirds

I started this blog with no real understanding of balance. I had read many books and things online that tried to describe balance, but I could never seem to really comprehend the concept. I tried balancing through math, creating my own measurements and proportions that fit within a grid, and I did improve, but it was a very time consuming method. Unless you had a ruler and calculator in hand, it would be quite difficult to find the underlying grid and measurements.

We had a photography project for our Design studio class, and we basically had to describe 'contrast', 'direction' and 'depth' in each photo. My photos seemed underwhelming for the most part, and two of my professors made the comment that it was "interesting that I can't seemto balance". I felt like it was Foundations all over again, and maybe summer made me lose my handle on what I understood of composition. I moped around for a day, believing I really couldn't do this, I should probably just drop out, a lot of melodramatic thoughts etc, and then I forced myself toactually talk to a professor about it.

He looked through my work and said that out of my 18 photos, there was one photo that told him that I had an 'extraordinary' eye but just didn't know it. I felt like that comment was almost useless because I didn't understand what was so special about the picture, but then I realized, I should probably ask him what he finds so extraordinary about it. He told me it was basically three things that made the photo: tonal range, contrast in angles, and the rule of thirds.

And there was one thing that he had mentioned, but I thought it was a conventional thing that should never be used, because I read about it EVERYWHERE: the rule of thirds.

See the thing is, I'd read all these different materials, and I'd run away from the most common pieces of advice in order to have different work and new ideas. But the rule of thirds is not something you want to run away from, and if you look at most good work, you can actually find an underlying system of the rule of thirds.

I decided to look at my most popular work that people told me they thought was very balanced, and I wanted to see if I could overlay a rule of thirds grid on top of it and see if the rule actually applied to it.

The lower right corner is divided even further with its own rule of thirds

The top horizontal row of the photo is made into its own shade of blue

The middle of the horizontal row is cut in half with a cloud

The left vertical column is occupied by the pagoda

The right vertical column is occupied by the model's body,

with the column divided in half

The middle horizontal row is divided in half by the horizon

The lower horizontal is made by the wave

The twig is making the first vertical column

The dragonfly's body is making the middle horizontal row

The discovery of the rule of thirds in my own work really blew me away. I hadn't even realized I had applied it to a few of my photos. I decided to look through Naima's photos because everyone has always said she's got a great eye and amazing sense of composition. And guess what? She really does. Almost ALL her photographs contains the rule of thirds and complex systems where the rule of thirds gets divided up like crazy with even more rule of thirds within each third. What's crazy is that she's never even tried to apply the rule, and she was unaware that she had even been doing it.

So if you're having trouble with composition, I suggest you try applying a grid with the rule of thirds in it. It'll really help with basic composition and help improve the balance in your work.

Although it's been a slow process, I'm quite content I'm making a bit of progress,

-Deena

Abu Dhabi Film Festival, TEDxDubai and Kcymaerxthaere

So this month of October has been wonderfully busy, filled with events that I made sure I made time for. It's very hard as a full-time student to get away from work and classes, but it's really important that you do. I tried to socialize more, network a little, and just get more into the scene here.

I went to Abu Dhabi Film Festival with Naima. This was actually the first time that we've EVER been out together for something that wasn't class related. Pretty lame considering we've been close friends for maybe two years now, but with classes and all, it was hard to co-ordinate anything. Plus, we don't drive and we're usually broke, so there you go.

We crawled into the back of a van that had no seats. Quite dodgey.

At the restaurant after all the film-watching

We watched a lot of student films in the festival. We're very proud of them because a large number of them got into the festival, and they won awards so that's great. We saw 'The Source' in the evening. It's such a great drama/comedy film about these women in a village in Morocco, directed by a Romanian. Naima should be able to elaborate for us, giving a proper film review since she's part Moroccan.

Then the next weekend, on the 22nd of October was TEDxDubai. I had applied way too late, about 20 minutes before the deadline for registration, and I didn't get in. And then I applied for the free photography position, but I didn't get it either. Naima told me that Jumeirah Hotel was hosting this competition about making up a fake future hotel in 140 characters on Twitter, so I made something up and tweeted it. I sincerely lost all hope that I would get intoTEDxDubai this year. I mean, I wrote about how passionate I was, I sent my photos in, and if my passion and photography couldn't get me in, then how could my writing? And my writing is one of my biggest insecurities.

Well, somehow, I was selected as one of the winners and I got to go to TEDxDubai.

And because I was one of the sponsors, I got to sit in the front row with the speakers

Unfortunately, Naima couldn't make it, so I ended up going alone. I was excited to be independent and all, but I think the experience would've been boosted if she could have come too.

Christian Boer, typeface designer of 'Dyslexie'

I got to meet Christian Boer, who's a Dutch typeface designer that designed Dyslexie, which is a typeface that dyslexics can read. It's really interesting stuff, and if you know about typeface design, it's even more interesting because he manipulated his typeface and broke the rules of type design to make this typeface that actually works for dyslexics . It's really impressive stuff.

Check it out, and if you have any dyslexic friends, then spread the word:

http://www.studiostudio.nl/

And I got to meet Chris Colwell,

(http://www.google.ae/search?gcx=w&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=chris+colwell).

Please google him, it'll help him get more hits and increase his chances of being found and inspiring more people. He's such an admirable soul, so positive and really truly inspiring.

I had to get his signature to put on my wall

It was a very busy week trying to juggle organizing my time and submissions and allow myself to do things in the outside world. I collected a lot of business cards at TEDx, and I think it's so important to put yourself out there and be assertive enough to get noticed. I found that leaving my group of friends at TEDx was actually beneficial, because I got to walk around and talk to strangers and meet new people. I'm thinking of making my own business card so that I can hand it out randomly and get a bit of attention.

And then on Tuesday night, I got to go out with Naima again. This time we were headed for the XVA Art Hotel in Bastakiya, Dubai. We were on our way to meet Eames Demetrios and unveil a plaque he had installed there.

Eames Demetrios giving a talk about Kcymaerxthaere

Plaque unveiled in linear Dubai!

Bilingual plaque (click on it for closer view)

"Kcymaerxthaere is a parallel universe that intersects with much of our linear Earth. The name comes from the cognate words kcymaara (meaning "the true physicality of the planet") and xthaere (which is a shape with almost an infinity of edges or dimensions--infinity minus 29 to be precise). We explore and tell stories of these other realms through many media, but most famously by installing bronze plaques and historic sites that honor events from the parallel world in our linear world. "

http://www.kcymaerxthaere.com/ (Taken from the website, which will be updated soon).

The stories are really quite lovely and dynamic, and I encourage you to read them and get involved. It meant a lot to me that Naima and I could make time for this and go to the special event because it was really worth it. Plus, we got his business card, so that was another highlight of the evening.

Being awesome in purple

And yea, that's been October for me. It was also two of my bestfriends' birthdays; Lex and Megan. So HAPPY BIRTHDAY to them and I wish them the best this year!

I'm tired 'cause this post took forever to make, but I had to immortalize this month.

Lessons learned: make time for yourself, go out with your closest friends, meet new people, network a little, and balance it all. It takes a while to get a handle on, I'm still working on it, but I know it's worth it. I actually asked if Eames Demetrios if he ever sleeps, because he gets so much done, and he said that it's really all about balance. Which made me laugh inside, considering I started this blog and I design the way I do because I can't balance in the design world and my professors tell me I have a serious issue with this whole 'balance' thing. I'll try my best to balance my schedule though.

And that's it,

-Deena

So Far

Alright, I apologize for not having posted for a while.

Naima and I are finally in Second year, getting closer and closer to what it feels like to really study design.

We're both incredibly busy, and spend most of our free time either eating or crying.

I decided to come by to drop off some photosketches I made for our Photography Basics class.

I really wanted to work with lighting for our first project, but I soon deviated from that into almost underwater photos. My models are basically submerged while I stay above water and desperately hand-signal to them in order to try and direct their movements. It's been quite the challenge.

My first issue was with shutterspeed, and I brought in two huge lights to eliminate my speed issues. So now I can shoot relatively fast and get really clear images without all the water dust particles showing. I'm aiming for a crystalline look while trying to simultaneously distort my model's face. It's hard to find a meeting ground. On average, we take a minimum of 500 photos just to have 3 photos come out nearly close to what I'm looking for.

It's been five weeks in the process and I feel closer to the outcome.

Just a bit more to go...

-Deena

I did not die! But there's tons that's happened/happening.




n.aw

Back in UAE

So we left Malaysia last night and arrived safely in Dubai. It was a pretty awesome summer overall, spent a lot of time with the family and one of my bestfriends, Megan, came to visit for three weeks. We fasted during Ramadhan, and then she left to Thailand, and I celebrated Eid with my family. Had a couple of shoots with my sister.

Did quite a bit of writing, have loads of essay drafts about art and other related topics saved in my notebook and laptop. I'll probably brush them up and post them to the blog one day. I realized that one of the most important things I should work on this summer was actually my writing and increasing my vocab, so I worked on that. Finished reading a book with no pictures, 'The Windup Girl' by Paolo Bacigalupi, which is a sci-fi book set in 23rd century Thailand. It was a great read, highly recommended if you're into that kinda stuff. The author's insights into South East Asia are also really accurate and eye-opening, I appreciated the honesty although some parts were completely made up and the author admits that, so please don't take too much offense if you do read it.
I'm now reading 'The Help' by Kathryn Stockett, which is awesomely fantastic so far. I'm on a complete roll with that one, can't stop thinking about the characters either, as if they're people I know personally in real life.

Hope everyone had a good summer.
-Deena

Summer Shoelapse

I needed a new pair of heels for summer to match my new brown handbag. I couldn't find any brown heels in the stores that were the right color or design, so I whipped out my supplies and made and cut these new shoes in under two hours. Total production cost about $3. Money well spent I think.

These shoes were a pair of black pumps that I had for my first high school prom. Later though, I had cut them and redesigned the peep-toe and accents and detailing on the sides of the shoe. A second prom came up, and so I made them into a pair of white heels with pink flowers to match my second prom dress.
And now, they are my brown summer shoes.

I'm wearing my pajamas in the video, as I've said, I suffer from summersonia,
-Deena

In the meantime....

What is a singularity?

If the matter in the universe were spread uniformly, then it must have been infinitely compressed at the first moment. In other words, the entire cosmos would have been squeezed into a single point. At this point the gravitational force, and the density of material, were infinite. A point of infinite compression is known to mathematical physicists as a “singularity”.

Although one is led on quite elementary grounds to expect a singularity at the origin of the universe, it required a mathematical investigation of some delicacy to establish the result rigorously. This investigation was mainly the work of British mathematical physicists Roger Penrose and Stephen Hawking. In a series of powerful theorems, they proved that a big-bang singularity is inevitable as long as gravity remains an attractive force under the extreme conditions of the primeval universe. The most significant aspect of their results is that a singularity isn’t avoided even if the cosmic material is distributed unevenly. It is a general feature of a universe described by Einstein’s theory of gravitation – or, for that matter, any similar theory.

There was a lot of resistance to the idea of a big-bang singularity among physicists and cosmologists when it was first mooted. One reason for this concerns the above-mentioned fact that matter, space, and time are linked in the general theory of relativity. This linkage carries important implications for the nature of the expanding universe. Naively, one might suppose that the galaxies are rushing apart through space. A more accurate picture, however, is to envisage space itself as swelling or stretching. That is, the galaxies move apart because the space between them expands. (Readers who are unhappy about the idea that space can stretch are referred to my book The Edge of Infinity for further discussion.) Conversely, in the past, space was shrunken. If we consider the moment of infinite shrunk, it must literally disappear, like a balloon that shrivels to nothing. And the all-important linkage of space, time, and matter further implies that time must disappear too. There can be no time without space. Thus the material singularity is also a space-time singularity. Because all our laws of physics are formulated in terms of space and time, these laws cannot apply beyond the point at which space and time cease to exist. Hence the laws of physics must break down at the singularity.

The picture that we then obtain for the origin of the universe is a remarkable one. At some finite instant in the past the universe of space, time, and matter is bounded by a space-time singularity. The coming-into-being of the universe is therefore represented not only by the abrupt appearance of matter, but of space and time as well.

The significance of this result cannot be overstressed. People often ask: Where did the big bang occur? The bang did not occur at a point in space at all. Space itself came into existence with the big bang. There is similar difficulty over the question: What happened before the big bang? The answer is, there was no “before”. Time itself began at the big bang. As we have seen, Saint Augustine long ago proclaimed that the world was made with time and not in time, and that is precisely the modern scientific position.

No space, no time, no matter

No matter how hard you try you will never be able to grasp just how tiny, how spatially unassuming, is a proton. It is just way too small.

A proton is an infinitesimal part of an atom, which is itself of course an insubstantial thing. Protons are so small that a little dib of ink like the dot on this ‘i’ can hold something in the region of 500,000,000,000 of them, or rather more than the number of seconds it takes to make half a million years. So protons are exceedingly microscopic, to say the very least.

Now imagine if you can (and of course you can’t) shrinking one of those protons down to a billionth of its normal size into a space so small that it would make a proton look enormous. Now pack into that tiny, tiny space about an ounce of matter. Excellent. You are ready to start a universe.

I’m assuming of course that you wish to build an inflationary universe. If you’d prefer instead to build a more old-fashioned, standard Big Bang universe, you’ll need additional materials. In fact, you will need to gather up everything there is – every last mote and particle of matter between here and the edge of creation – and squeeze it into a spot so infinitesimally compact that it has no dimensions at all. It is known as a singularity.

In either case, get ready for a really big bang. Naturally, you will wish to retire to a safe place to observe the spectacle. Unfortunately, there is nowhere to retire to because outside the singularity there is no where. When the universe begins to expand, it won’t be spreading out to fill a larger emptiness. The only space that exists is the space it creates as it goes.

It is natural but wrong to visualize the singularity as a kind of pregnant dot hanging in a dark, boundless void. But there is no space, no darkness. The singularity has no around around it. There is no space for it to occupy, no place for it to be. We can’t even ask how long it has been there – whether it has just lately popped into being, like a good idea, or whether it has been there for ever, quietly awaiting the right moment. Time doesn’t exist. There is no past for it to emerge from.

And so, from nothing, our universe begins.

Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything, pg 27-28

It can not and will not end like this.
Because I've only just begun.

Favorite Failings

About four years ago, I began sticking sketches/artsy things of mine to my bedroom wall. I started doing this because I felt like they were so incorrect but I was really determined to fix them because I really liked something about them. I just felt that technically, I was failing them. This wall became known as my 'Fail Wall' and only a select number of people were allowed to see it. I've decided to make it public.

The Fail Wall

I've also decided to sit myself down and finally fix them. I think this will be my project for about a week because I'm going to fly to Malaysia and I know I'll get distracted by another project. Hopefully I'll be able to make it through a few of them before I'm off.

First up, the mysterious red lady with red oozing out of her eyes:

This is maybe 4 years old. I did it with a red crayon on beige paper. It took like maybe 20 minutes then, or less (let's hope, hah). I actually drew faces more anatomically correct back then, but that was with pencil so I got to fix my mistakes. I did this when I was depressed, I think that's kinda obvious. I absolutely hated drawing noses back then. I forced myself to get over that though, however, most of my sketches still turn up with lined noses like this one.

And so one day, when Naima was sitting next to me, I decided to fix the drawing. I whipped out my tablet and began to work on Photoshop CS4:


I haven't finished it yet but I've decided that I've spent way too long on it. Without a deadline, I keep changing it over and over again and I have no idea when to stop. I have several versions of this now, but I've decided this is the one that I'll just settle on. I'm not too happy with the result, but to be honest, I never am so that's fine by me.

Hopefully I'll actually keep up with this project. It'll probably be an on-off one for as long as I live in this bedroom.

Until next time,
-Deena

P.S. Anyone else get insomnia during summer? Or holidays in general? I wonder if there's a term for it... Holisomnia...

New Macro Lens

So my mom recently gifted me a Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 USM Macro Lens and it's really beautiful. I have not been able to use it yet (been dead from an illness for two weeks now) and the snaps above are from my first car ride with the lens. They're not meant to be conceptual or elusive, I was just very excited to test it out a bit. I've gotta say, I'm a really weak and breakable person, so I felt like the lens is trying to crush my wrists with its weight (21.1 oz - 600g). I'll have to exercise a bit more, but at the moment I don't think I can last without a tripod if I'm gonna be shooting a long time. But yea, I'm really into backgrounds completely blurred to hell and decorated with bokeh, so I'm very much in love with this lens.

Coolness.
-Deena

Books with Pictures

I'm really not that great at reading books. I have to use two rulers to isolate the line that I'm reading, and sometimes when I'm really lacking focus, I have to use a pencil to underline everything that I've read. I've always been the kid that hated being called upon to read aloud in class.

I used to read a lot of comic books during my childhood, mostly Asterix and Obelix and The Adventures of Tintin. I stopped reading them for many years because I got caught up with wanting to write and draw my own. I've always been kinda lousy at plots and writing, but my eldest sister supported me and convinced me that detective cats dressed up in human clothing really wasn't that weird. At all. There are weirder things out there.

Anyways, last summer I fell in love with reading graphic novels all over again, but this time it was a little more mature. I'm really into fantasy and action and sci-fi, so some of my favorites would be:

Watchmen - Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons

The first novel that I read which brought me right back to my comic book reading days was Watchmen. I love tales of superheroes and vigilantism so this was about perfect. I can't say much about it that hasn't been said before. It's just beautiful.

American Vampire - Scott Snyder, Rafael Albuquerque and Stephen King

During summer I was unable to find any graphic novels in bookstores, so I had to go back to old ways to entertain myself (eg. drawing, watching movies). During our winter break though, I managed to find a whole section of graphic novels in Borders, a section that didn't exist a week before that. And they had American Vampire for 40% of the price, so I got it to try it out. I loved everything about it; the plot, the illustrations, the colors. It was also a nice and original twist on a currently popular theme - vampires. Stephen King also wrote parts of it, so come on, it's really vampires.

The Unwritten - Mike Carey and Peter Gross

I was never able to get into the Harry Potter series (reminder: I suck at reading) so The Unwritten is a way for me to read something like it. It kinda asks the question of what if Harry Potter were based on a real person, and if he exists in our world. And then a bunch of random crazy stuff happens to him and it's all just really wild but very cool at the same time. After some parts in the novel, I'd just kinda put it down and wonder how the writers and artists of the book came up with some of the crazy stuff and what it's like to be in their heads.

Y: The Last Man - Brian K. Vaughan, Pia Guerra and Jose Marzan Jr.

My favorite graphic novel series ever though has GOT to be Y: The Last Man. The plot is about how everything with the Y chromosome dies except for a man called Yorick and his pet monkey Ampersand. It's an amazing post-apocalypse series to read and I don't know what to say about it other than bringing in some of its reviews to quote:
"The best graphic novel I've ever read." -Stephen King
"Rivals TV's Lost as a smart, consistently entertaining work of popular art." -Time.com
"This year's best movie is a comic book." -National Public Radio



I'm currently reading Neil Gaiman's Sandman series, which I'll admit, took me a little while to get into mostly because I didn't like the illustration style, but now I really do like it. I am a huge Vertigo fan so I'm making my way through probably the most popular novels before I move onto other publishers.

And yea, I just absolutely love graphic novels.

-Deena

Graphic Design + Greek Mythology= AQUA DIVINE

AQUA DIVINE (A Contemporary Water Mythology) by Albin Holmqvist

This is what happens when you create a modern version of ancient Greek mythology.

Going up!

Deena, who beat me to it again, pretty much summed up a close version of what I wanted to say. But here we go.... I've had to put up with all the "idiots" who called me stupid for not graduating and wasting my time when I could be working, getting married or whatever. All I can say is.... Let me be?
This week has been great but tiring. I graduated from MCM (more like stole sm1 gown and took tons of pictures), had to clean out a locker that held a whole year of my life, witnessed a lunar eclipse and then today I found out that I got into 2nd year of Visual Communications.

This has been a crazy year! I had to deal with my Advertising Campaign class and first semester foundations year. I learnt so much about myself and others. When you're put in a tight situation and have to react to it, you have no idea what you'll do till you do it. I sorta lost a friend somewhere along the way, yelled at people, put up with a shitty ass professor who "hated" me, pulled multiple all nighters, had to gather the courage to tell my dad I wasn't graduating, going through my sister's possible divorce like its my own, and god knows what else... But in the end, I think it could have been worse and will not complain...
So... Bye bye basement!

Deena- This is it.

Also my internet is back up.. after my mom "accidentally" cut the wire...
P.S. I hate you. You've brought it to yourself... you know who you are :)

Going Up

Naima was accepted into the Second of year Visual Communication and I was accepted into Second year of Multimedia Design.

I feel really sorry for those who didn't make it into Vis Com, Multimedia, Interior design and Architecture. I know a lot of the students worked really hard, put up with the program for the whole year and still didn't get into Second year. I hope that they find their way into something else that they enjoy, or maybe that they would repeat the courses for their desired majors if they really wanted to. Good luck to them.

And for those that were accepted, congratulations and I wish you the best of luck too.
And to you cheaters out there who got accepted - you guys don't deserve it. It's really sick that your games were even tolerated.

Naima - we can finally write our names all over the desks we chose for Second year studio.

-Deena

P.S. Also, can I mention that us getting into Second year proves that we're getting better at the whole 'potential' and 'balance' thing?! At least I hope that that's what it means.

Thoughts of and Advice on Design Foundations

(For TL;DR, scroll halfway for useful advice)
I had to clean out my locker because (hopefully) I won't need it next semester. It was a little emotional to be honest, and I guess it's because of how symbolic it felt or something. I was cleaning up the hardest and messiest year of my life.
I turned nineteen years old as I closed the locker shut last year, and I wasn't upset that I was spending my birthday in the basement. I felt like it was where I needed to be.

That's it, completely naked and alone...

It started to sink in that the academic year was finally over and that I might not come back. And then all the good memories flooded my mind.

In order for us to begin Design school, we had to enroll in the Foundations program. We had the highest number of students ever accepted into the program, which was around 196 students initially. They told us an estimated 50% of us will go on to being accepted into Second year (thanks prof for the nice intro to the orientation speech). The most competitive kids would be the Architects and Interior Designers, so us graphic designers were kinda lucky on that part. However, no matter what major you're hoping to enroll in, there will always be competition.
The Fall semester started off quite great for me. It was my birthday, I finally felt like my age caught up to my brain, I was in a field I wanted to be in, and I felt like I was surrounded by the people I wanted to be surrounded by. Our first discussion/critique was so pretentious and designy that it almost felt like a joke, and I absolutely loved that. Classes were really fun and it felt like improv most of the time. I made a lot of friends, and it was so different to what Advertising was like. I thought that I really finally belonged somewhere and I was always so excited to show off the building to my visiting friends from outside of school.

As I walked away from my locker with all my equipment in my hands, I turned around one last time to look at the Foundations basement again.

Where Freshmen live

I stared at different parts of the basement for a while, remembering all the times I stayed past midnight bargaining for extra minutes from the security guards, sharing the light tables with entertaining classmates and music, drawing my peers, drawing on the white and black boards, dancing with other freshmen, laughing at ambitious student projects and enjoying lively group discussions. Pulling away from my thoughts for a second, I felt my T-square slipping in my arms, but I reacted too late and lost my grip on it. It slid to the floor and cut my wrist on the way down.

I took this picture when it stopped bleeding

And then just like that, I remembered why I'd hated the basement so much. I didn't enjoy a lot of the projects we got, I didn't get along with a ton of people, real friends were hard to make, not getting a crit from the prof for weeks sucked majorly, it was always stressful, it was hard to cope, there was no such thing as a social life if I wanted good grades, sleep started sucking because it became a waste of time just like eating did, there were always assholes out to get me during either critique or after the prof left the class, seeing professors in their office hours was impossible, so many kids cheat and people have the WORST taste in music.

The thing that I hated the most was the fact that it was a basement. I'd go in when it's bright at 8 in the morning. All the windows are closed for controlled lighting and I never keep track of time because I usually get caught up in my work. When I'd finish, I'd wrap things up and exit the building into a dark night. I never got used to this feeling, I'd be shocked every single time I left the building and it was completely dark. I never felt the transition, and it'd always make me feel sick. Some nights I'd just walk outside and upon realizing how dark it was, and failing to fight against my emotions, I'd just suddenly start crying. I hated the fact that I felt like the whole world was moving on without me, and I just left with more problems than I entered the building with after a bad critique. And maybe I'm reading too much into it, but I had thought that it reflected how my life really was. I became such a workaholic that I pushed my social life away, and whenever I'd meet up with a friend a few months later, I'd find out about how their lives have changed so drastically and significantly. Finding out about more important details of their lives would give me the sensation of my shoulders and stomach aching and dread, pure dread, the same feeling I'd get as I walked into the darkness of the night.

Advice

Now those were mostly the negative things that I took with me out of the building. I know that the program was vital for my education (obviously, I can't get into Second year without it) and self-esteem though. While on the inside, and being caught up with work and such, I learned a crap ton of things there:
1. Always be honest
Give honest critiques, explain your work honestly and be honest to others without getting too personal. A professor will elaborate on your design if they know what you're really aiming for, and they begin to understand what you're trying to get at. It makes communication between your professors and you much easier. It only makes you better.
2. Compliment work while giving criticism
It cushions the blow and makes the person feel like they didn't completely mess up. Also, it makes them feel inclined to actually listen to your criticism. It makes you a reliable peer, and a bonus is that your professor will give you a better participation grade. You'll also get some pretty good feedback on your own work, and your reputation as being a nice person goes up, so everyone benefits really.
3. Take care of yourself first before attending to others
You'll only hurt yourself if you think of others first. Be sure to have your work done first, you never know what could happen, and you could easily fall behind. And if you do help someone, it's preferable that you only really help those that you are close to. It's more likely that the favor can/will be returned in the future.
4. Don't trust people too easily
A lot of people are just users and liars. You don't want to be labeled as a push-over if people begin to take advantage of you. So be careful with who you befriend, and try to not get tangled up in studio/classroom drama. It's hard, but sometimes it just comes down to being the better, mature person and getting over it.
5. Be secretive about your work
Never run around sharing your work or bragging that you're finished. Someone will try to mess you up and you'd have to start over and be late. Design is really quite a cut-throat game.
6. Avoid talking about grades with your peers
Some kids really suck and will try to bring you down somehow, even if it resorts to them lying to a professor about you. There is a lot of competition amongst students for advancement into Second year. Also, there's a lot of gossip amongst students, and you want to avoid drama in school. You don't need extra stress.
7. Take care of your work/portfolio
There are people who like to sabotage. It's always good to have some amount of paranoia when it comes to the well-being of your work. Keep multiple back-ups of all your work. Have a copy of your design folders on your flash drive (which is easy to lose or forget at home), external hard drive (which can crash), computer (which can also crash) and school network (which is quite reliable) as a MINIMUM, especially when it comes to your portfolio. When handing in a CD to a professor, make sure to burn an extra CD and hand it in as well as a back-up in case the first one you burnt doesn't work for them. You have no idea how many positive responses I've received for this, and how high it pushed up my professionalism grade. You can be extremely good at designing, but without the evidence, no one will know.
7.5 Take care of your equipment
Supplies don't come cheap, and the bookstore often runs out of an item, especially during the Fall semester. Once they're out of stock, you can fall behind due to lack of equipment, and trust me, equipment takes up a major role as they're trying to introduce you to different techniques and... equipment. Don't leave anything laying around. You can ask people to watch your things, but they have their own things to do and can't be constantly keeping their eyes on your stuff. Also, another good tip is if you're leaving at night, and stuff is laying around, you can just take it and keep it as an extra in your locker or at home. People will jack your stuff eventually too. I've taken things out of my locker, placed it on the chair behind me so that I could lock my locker again, and I'd hear a swish behind me, turn around and see all my stuff just got stolen. So watch out for stupid things like that happening.
8. Be open to suggestions
There's nothing more annoying than a pretentious prick who thinks they're amazing at design (unless you really are amazing, but I highly doubt it). Also, don't run around screaming about how you're a self-proclaimed photographer/artist/painter/designer. If you have to say it so much, you probably aren't even what you think you are. Being open to suggestions makes you better as a person and designer. Try it out, and you don't lose anything if it doesn't work because you learn about what does work.
9. Sleep and eat
A lot of people believe in order to be good, you have to choose design over all other forms of life. But honestly, you need to cut back on the caffeine and get some sleep. Your work will be a lot better when you are feeling a lot better. And eat something healthy. Confidence in yourself shines through in your work.
10. Take a break
It can get damn stressful, but sometimes when you're running late and feel like you won't meet the deadline, it'd actually be beneficial to step back for a bit. Go eat, nap, watch an episode of something, listen to music, scream, cry, I don't know, just something not related to your project (unless screaming and crying is, then I'm interested in your project. Care to share?). You need to let off some steam somehow, and coming back to your work could give you a new perspective on how you could make it better. But overall, breaks are good for your health. You'd probably die without them...

Speaking of breaks, I've been up for 24 hours now and I'm meant to be up early for a family brunch. I just really wanted to get this post out before the results for who gets into Second year come out. I'm thinking a lot clearer about Foundations right now, and I kinda hope that someone will type something into Google or whatever search engine they have, and stumble upon this post and it will somehow help them. I really do wish that I knew more of these things before I came into Foundations. I don't like being unprepared.

In conclusion: reread the whole post and come up with your own conclusion. I'm leaving the choice up to you to choose the most important points. I think a lot of this stuff also applies to other fields of things and interests. Hopefully at least.

Anyways,
-Deena