The Final Spring Break…
Spring Break officially began for me at 3:50 p.m. on Friday. Unfortunately, I don’t have rich parents to send me on a fabulous decompressing trip to a far-away exotic place. In that stead, I’ll be at the home front, working on assignments due the Monday we get back from break. What kind of cruel instructors assign things due the Monday after Spring Break???
For my entertainment, I’ll be working on a seven page research paper, three separate Flash assignments, an invitation to our annual portfolio show, and the cover for my illustration book we’ve worked on all semester. Somehow, I find the motivation to even begin on such tasks evading me. We’ve really worked hard this semester, and I feel we’re truly entitled to a week off. By nature, I am not a complainer, but I’m having difficulty not letting the emotion rule me…
Perhaps the weather is contributing to the mood – it’s a rainy Sunday. Hazy, dreary, thunderous and lightening-filled. I hesitate to even be on my beloved Mac in this weather! I thought it had cleared long enough to get a Sunday post in, but puppy dog just jumped and cried at the rumble of thunder. Lightening is striking and rain has started pouring again as I feel I must bid farewell on this short post.
I’ll try to post daily over the “break” as this is the last Spring Break I’ll probably ever get. Enjoy your day! *k*
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The Robot Unicorn Attack…
I can tell we’re all starting to feel the crunch of our final semester coming to a close. We’ve got a ton of projects going and still about two weeks away from Spring Break. We’ve been going hard all semester and people are starting to break. I’ve seen more people lose it in the last three weeks than I have seen all three spring/fall semesters combined. Fortunately, one of our classmates found Robot Unicorn Attack on the Adult Swim website. The game features the song “Always” by Erasure and for some reason, it just seems to put everyone in a better mood. Unfortunately, our instructor would rather be pierced in the eye with a molten fork than hear the song being played. The other day all seven of my classmates were playing the game, volume all the way up, just smiling and flying and making dreams come true. They’ve even added a leader board to our dry-erase board at the front of the room to keep track of high scores.
All in all, I’m proud of them for finding a way to deal with the stress we’re under right now. Spring Break is way too late this year – we’ll have about four weeks to graduation once we return from the break. Our school doesn’t get a mid-term break, either, so we’ve been hard at it since the beginning of the year. Perhaps if Spring Break came a little earlier, our instructor wouldn’t be forced to run from the room, covering his ears, screaming all the way…
In their defense, Robot Unicorn Attack is a Flash game and we’re learning Flash this year, and research is important… But the instructor just doesn’t seem to grasp the value of the exercise… He did make a valiant effort to distract from the Robot Unicorn Attack when he brought in doughnuts the other morning. One of my special classmates screeched “oooh! doughnuts!” and literally did a jig over to them. The class erupted in laughter for a good three minutes before continuing on the attack. (yeah, there were tears!)
I’ll surely miss the Robot Unicorn Attack and the doughnut jig when we’re no longer all together. I wonder if the others think of these things or if it’s just me?
So, if you’re feeling a little stressed, or need to hear some Erasure, try a game or two (but be sure to look out for those @*#% dolphins!) (and if you want to cheat a little, they’ve found that if you open a ton of applications on your computer, it will slow the game down a little for you…)
Robot Unicorn Attack enjoy! and relieve some of that stress! 🙂
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Tags: jake, robot unicorn attack, school
Cheaters sometimes win…
For the past couple of semesters there seems to be a recurring issue with plagiarism within our class: what constitutes plagiarism / copyright infringement, the prevalence of such issues within the industry, plagiarism vs. inspiration, etc. Pablo Picasso was even quoted saying “Good artists borrow. Great artists steal.” (surely Pablo wasn’t a plagiarizer!!!) The ethics of original artwork tend to follow the common saying “there is nothing new under the sun.”
Some of the more stellar designs students turned in were found to be more than 20% replicas of professional logos created. Unfortunately, these similarities were not noticed before grading, or even the semester’s ending. The effect of plagiarism had a trickle-down effect as the more stellar designs were given perfect, or close to perfect, grades while the original designs of other students were curved by the perfection of plagiarism. As a student, it is hard to compete against a seasoned veteran, and this is the position many of us have endured. However, this only made us better in the regard that we strived harder to produce more professional designs. While the situation is not “fair” (just as life is not guaranteed, but expected to be) it has made each of us better in the long run.
Yesterday, our instructor provided us with this linked news story:
Senate Candidate steals hockey logo
The implications of this theft are not entirely clear, as the artwork was not paid for. A volunteer donated the design to the campaign. However, the fact that the logo remained in use after the awareness was raised may be another issue… If the NHL choses to pursue this via legal channels, I truly hope emerging students will follow the case and be aware that even if no monetary damages are awarded, there will still be tons of legal expenses which must be paid. As a designer, if you provide a plagiarized work to a client who uses it and is caught, the client will have to deal with the legal issues and, in all likelihood, they (or their insurance company) will provide you with a new legal issue to contend with as well.
It seems that graduation will not solve this situation, other recent claims of plagiarism extend to Shepard Fairey (Milton Glaser on Shepard Fairey link), among others (other rip-off artists). Plagiarism is real, and practiced in daily life. It’s a fine line one must walk to balance plagiarism and inspiration. But be aware, if you claim it as your own, it must not be more than 20% similar to the inspiration it was derived from…
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Yeah, I’m famous now… :)
Here’s the link to the Sylva Herald & Ruralite (local paper) announcing my winning design for the Jackson County Greenways Project logo
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Tags: awards
FontStruct Rocks!
There are a couple of us in my class who are interested in developing fonts, so I thought some of you might be interested as well. I’m going to add a link for FontStruct to my links, as well as with this post. If you want to building your own fonts, check out FontStruct! It’s free, you can download a truetype file for your own personal use, you can share your font in the gallery for others to download, and you can set the rights people have for use of the fonts. All in all, it looks pretty darn cool to me!
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Tags: font creation, FontStruct, typography
sick & slacking…
Somehow I have acquired a cold. I think I’m going to blame this one on Jake (a classmate)… He’s got the sniffles, it had to be him who gave it to me! I told him today that he makes me sick… 🙂 I truly have no patience for being sick. I get frustrated because I have ten million things to do, but just don’t have the energy to get anything done.
I got home from school and slept for about four hours. So, now it’s almost one in the morning, and I’m exhausted, but can’t sleep… I worked on the watercolor piece some for this week’s book page. I’m doing “fly by night”, it will be a grey/silver dragon flying in front of the moon with a girl sleeping on it’s back. Yesterday I did the background in blue and black washes and put a salt treatment on it to make the sky look starry. I did the moon in whites and grays and applied the salt to it as well, I’m really liking the way that moon looks… Tonight I worked in watercolor pencil and started on the dragon wing and did the base layer on the sleeping girl. I should be further along on the project, but I’m sick and slacking…
I got too tired to work on the watercolor any longer and checked my emails and checked in on facebook, and thought I’d go ahead and blog this, too because, well, it’s part of life. Everyone gets sick, but the world doesn’t stop for any of us. The best we can hope for is that it won’t take too long to catch up.
So, think some happy thoughts for me, and everything will be just fine. Come to think of it, I believe they’re calling for some snow tomorrow. A snow day would be godsend right now… Come on snow, help a gal out!
ps:
oh, and guess what, the word of the day on thesaurus.com is
fructuous: fruitful, productive.
hahahahahahahaha!
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Post 3 of 3 this week…
So, I blogged about the cut paper project, and the inspiration project, and added a tab for animation to share my first Flash animation. (you can check the other posts by scrolling to the end of the page, look to the left on the bottom – it will say previous entries) It’s been another busy week & still have lots to do…
And, because I found myself searching for inspiration this week, I decided to add links to the column on the right so you can check out things I found interesting! I also made new tabs for print and illustration and added a few things there.
This week I submitted two pieces of artwork for the Raleigh competition – the linocut of the Night Owl (viewable on illustrations tab) and my Alley Cafe, taken in Asheville across from the BB&T building (viewable on the photography tab – it’s the only picture so far…)
I made the local paper this week – for the President’s List at school. The Greenways press release went in this week, so I’ll be in again next week for that. Now, what should I do to make the paper the next week? 🙂
For the book project this next week, I think I’m going to do a watercolor piece – wish me luck! 🙂 I’ll do my graphic designer presentation on Monday, and I have to take in a two-page magazine spread to reproduce (that should be a total blast…) and I’ve got to get caught up on the rest of that Flash stuff. So, while I don’t have a lot of new assignments to work on (I’m certain that will all be changed by Monday, or Tuesday at the latest), I find I still have lots to do. (Don’t forget about the English assignment! We have to take in (5) visuals for a report, correctly annotated & a list of specific instructions & the materials required to do something relevant to the field we will be entering. yeah, that’s not too much…)
I can’t help but wonder if the “real” world out there is going to be this demanding & fast-paced. I would certainly love to get back on a regular sleep schedule and be able to fall asleep without recounting all the things I have to remember to take in the next day, or what projects are due…
Speaking of remembering – I’ve got to remember to take in my embossing stuff to show Aly, a fellow classmate, how I got the finish on my Night & Day paper stained glass piece. She did paper stained glass this week & wants to try the embossing on the central part of her design.
So, with Sunday afternoon pretty much gone, and lots more things to do, I’m going to leave it with y’all. I hope you enjoy some of the new links – a life without inspiration can be a pretty dull thing…
have a good week!
*k*
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create your own fonts!
Kristi Cunningham
snapfreak 