It's Over!!!

It is finally complete. I am talking about the first quarter. I finished up on Monday December 8th after my fabulous 20 minute critique. I basically had to take all my deliverables and present it to a panel of 4 people. Usually my panel will be people I don't know, but this time only had 2 people I had never met along with 2 of my instructors. One of them being the instructor of my hardest class. Long story short, I presented my work as the last person of the night. Right on the 15 minute mark, I allowed them 5 minutes to let me know I had by far the best work of the night, immaculate presentation skills, and one of the panelists was surprised by me being a 1st quarter and could tell I had been designing for a while. With all that being said, I walked out of the critique a free man and on top of the world. We won't receive critique scores until the end of the break. It keeps us on our toes but I also think that it will be nice to have a few weeks from not thinking about school. The night after critiques were over, I reserved the upper room of the Taco Mac at Lindberg Marta station. Most of the 1st quarters came and we all got to celebrate the completion together.

So now being the break, me and some friends have been tearing up the city. We rode the Marta and explored the downtown area, hitting Centennial Olympic Park and some other spots. After that we rode over to little 5 points which is just an incredible part of town. Its basically a little strip of vintage clothes shops, different cultured bars and some music venues. Even further down the road you will run into the Viriginia Highlands, which is my favorite part of town. I describe it as the Greenwich Village of Atlanta. Even further down is the East Village which also has some great bars and music venues. All in all I have been pretty busy.

This upcoming week I will be enjoying some alone time around my apartment and getting ready for my trip down to Greenville. I will be going Friday to visit some friends and hit up a Christmas party and then heading to Augusta on Saturday. I will be there for a little over a week enjoying the holidays then heading back to the Atl to spend the New Years with al of my returning friends for school. We have to register for classes on January 2nd and then we will getting into the 2nd quarter starting the 5th. So lots of exciting stuff on the horizon but for now I will be around getting enough sleep. 

Studio week to critique, and then to the sack!

Hey guys, quick update. I am in studio week currently, or as I refer to it, HELL WEEK. Basically we are in the stage of perfecting and completing all our projects (deliverables) for the quarter. We are completely done with classes and we have the entire week to work on our own, which isn't much time at all. Hopefully I can fit some sleep in there somewhere. Next week is critique week, which we take all our finished deliverables, dress up in our sunday's finest, and do a 20 minute presentation in front of a panel of 3 to 4 people. They could be some of our instructors from the quarter or people we have never met. We take 15 minutes to explain our 11 deliverables from this quarter then they have the remaining 5 to rip everything up in front of our eyes. Its a tough life but it will only make us better, have thicker skin, and be toting out some kick-ass work when we graduate in two years. Anyways, had a quick minute to write. I hope all is well with everyone and I will be soooooo very excited a week from tonight because I will be a free man for about 3 weeks. The journey is far from over however, but I am loving it. 

Going to the chapel, and I am NOT getting married

Hey, early weekend update. I will be headed to the Aug (Augusta) after class on Friday to go to my step-sister's wedding on Saturday. I haven't gotten to see the fam the entire time I have been in Atlanta so I will be excited for the reunion, as well as seeing Ashley get married off and start her own journey. Also, I will be bringing a friend of mine home with me. Her name is Jessica and she will be getting the chance to meet some of my family. I am excited about the weekend. Get out of the city for a couple days, but I will return to the A-T-L saturday night to get caught back up on homework. 

Also, my cut paper poster is COMPLETE! I stuck the text on earlier this week, put the plexi glass over it all and framed that sucker up. Its a bit surreal but it's nice to see my first complete deliverable of the quarter. By deliverable, I mean finished piece that I will take with me into critique at the end of the quarter. 

Hope all is well and more to come!

Seeing the light...

I am starting to see the light at the end of the 1st quarter tunnel. Feeling like I have been here for about a year, these past 5 weeks have been a whirlwind of loads of homework, projects, trips to kinkos, outings with friends and lots of coffee and energy drinks. Oh, and did I mention the extreme lack of sleep I am having to endure as well. All that being said, I am having the best time of my life. The mania of learning in the art world is indescribable and is a great outsource of creativity and emotion. I have worked on some awesome projects, and are still perfecting those. The goal is to be introduced to these projects and spend the quarter creating them, and using studio week to perfect them to make sure they are perfect for critique week. I attached a couple shots of my cut paper poster, which is basically an advertisement for an Aboriginal Penguin exhibit at the St. Louis Zoo. The trick is, there is no ink allowed by any means, it is completely created out of cutting out different shades of gray paper. Basically you become best friend with the xacto knife and you begin to master your craft. The other was based on a tracing of a picture, that went through scanning, a bit of photoshop touch up as well as illustrator work. My logo can be found in the bottom right and the text behind me is some that I wrote in using my Wacom graphics tablet. I also have the New York skyline in the background, as well in my glasses. It was definitely one of the most enjoyable projects since we did it completely in class. With my buds in flowing some Explosions in the Sky, and working in complete darkness, it was a relaxing time for innovation and filtering out some of the stress that has built itself to quite a mass from the past weeks.

We have also had some incredible seminars, which is where the school meets each Thursday mornings at 10 and have a speaker from different studios around the nation come and share with us what they do, and basically give you the idea of possibly working for them if thats where the Portfolio Center path leads you. Frog Design, an interactive design agency based in places such as San Francisco, New York, Amsterdam and Shanghai. After picking my jaw off the floor, I found that this could possibly be a job for me when I get out of here in two years. I spoke with another agency called Brew Creative based in Minneapolis, which have worked with such clients as BMW. Check their site out at www.brew-creative.com. I wrote the creative director an email of just basic interest and showing my gratitude for his presentation, also throwing my portfolio so far in there. You never know what will happen as far as jobs go, and all these agencies know we are basically incubating at this point in our life, and are going to be incredible creatives when we graduate. Alright, all I got for now. Hope everyone is well and I may see some of you soon. 

Pulsing

Hey, still alive. New entries to come, just have been sort of limited on time lately. Things are absolutely amazing right now though so no worries!

Skipping class

Sitting here in Typography Fundamentals and thought what better time to catch up on my blog entries. School is going AMAZING. It's tons of work but it also is a lot of knowledge which is just molding us into better creatives. Some of the time I feel like I am in an advanced summer camp after we have finished working with glue and finger paint, but really the stuff we have made is pretty interesting and gets our minds flowing. It is all about mind expansion. In the future when we're working for whatever company we are employed by, we may have some type of design block and can think back on some of these projects and will probably shoot us right out of our bunch. This class I am in currently basically is 4 hours of font lecture. Although that may sound boring to some of you, which sometime it is hard to sit through at 8:00 am, I find it very interesting and know it will assist in my skills. Alright, that's all you get for this time. We have first quarter party this weekend, which is basically a big house party that the second quarters throw for us. It's 80's theme so it should be a lot of fun, and a much needed stress reliever. Alright, buhbye

Portfolio Center so far...

Hey everyone, long time no talk. Alright, so my experience here in Atlanta at Portfolio Center is nothing short of chaotic and the most overwhelming thing I have ever encountered. But you all know that, speaking from the past entries, so time to look at the positives. I have made a ton of new friends, including people all from my quarter as well as upper quarter people. I have made a point to do some sort of social outing everyday so that I don't go crazy nor get burned out on this stuff. Its hard work, but completely doable and very rewarding.

Friday night I was invited to a drinking break over at my friend Hayley's place, who also lives here in Colonial Homes (the PC dorms basically.) Virginia and Jessica came as well, who are room mates and also live here. As they sipped their red wine and I drank my six pack, we all got to have some great conversation just discussing all the nutty stuff that has been packed into our tight extremely short schedules. As the drinks continued, so did our depth of conversation, which became pretty humorous. But it was really cool to connect to these people who are going to be like family for the next 2 years, and as I can already see really cool and fun friends.

Saturday, went to a party at an upper quarter student's house off of Roswell. This was an awesome opportunity for me to meet some more upper quarter people which really helps from the advice they give us of how to deal with this ridiculous load. After a couple drinks there, I headed home to work strenuously to get some work knocked out. 

Sunday, I ended up working from 10:30 am to 5:30 am straight, except for a friend coffee break from 9-11 that night. I made a deal with myself that I could sleep once I finished all the work from one of my classes, which I did indeed. So I slept from 5:30 to 9:30, feeling great I got up and dove into more work. I can definitely feel my work ethic positively changing and fast.

We had seminar up at school Monday night and had Frog Design come in to speak. They are here recruiting and they are an interactive design company, based all over from san fran, nyc, austin, to shanghai and the newest in Amsterdam. Very overwhelming to talk to people that could potentially hire me and send me to one of those places. Crazy, but freakin awesome.

Anyways.

Tonight we had a party over at Binders, which is where most of my loan money will go over the next 2 years. It is an art supplies store and the point of tonight was to show us around, but I have already been there 6 times this week. 

OOOO, I almost forgot. I tagged along last night on some friend's homework assignment to attend the Claremont, which is the oldest gentlemen's club in Atlanta. To me, that equalled the nastiest sketchiest place I have ever attended. Needless to say, it needs to be experienced. 

Alright, thats all I have energy to write now. I'll update you more later. I have a ton of stuff still to do. Back to class at 8 in the morning