I'm Justin Bieber

So. I'm Justin Bieber.



(I do work here. I promise.)

Spring Break

Here I am, back at school, after a great spring break with climbing at the New River Gorge, WV. First, I headed down last Saturday with Jay to visit a friend in Claysville, PA. We had planned to only stay one night but ended leaving mid-Monday morning due to poor weather conditions in Summersville (town near the climbing area).

At Cabela's in Wheeling, WV

Mary and I try on some hats at a souvenir shop. Good luck finding anything without a confederate flag on it.

We arrived later that day at the house of Mark and Kamila Spitzer in Princeton, WV (farther south than the climbing area by about 1.5 hours) after doing some exploring of our own in the Bridge area of The New.

The New River Gorge Bridge - The 3rd largest arch bridge in the world

While we only had 2.5 days to climb at the New, our experience was great. The weather cleared up within twelve hours -- from snow to 70's and sun. We climbed primarily fairly easy sport routes the whole time (5.7-5.10). The sandstone was shockingly good quality of rock but took some getting used to.


Whippoorwill Area. When the lake is filled, the water rises up to the dark mark on the cliff. You can see Mark and Kamila by the cliff on the left.


View from inside a small cave.


CLIMBING IS DANGEROUS!


Jay climbs a 5.9 at Orange Oswald area

We left Thursday after a short morning of climbing. Unfortunately, our trip back did not go smoothly at all. We had some minor navigational errors, but the major problem happened when we decided to stop in Nutter Fort, WV for a lunch at Subway. We hit a vicious pothole at speed and damaged the sidewall badly enough that the tire was completely flat within a minute (note to parental units: I wasn't the driver). Luckily, we were able to put on the spare -- which was only rated to 50mph -- and drive to a tire place in town, thanks to the advice of a random guy with a heavy southern accent who also lent us a tire iron. Although our tire was beyond repair, we were able to purchase a new one and got back on the road.
Quality establishment. Thanks Tom & Keith!


$38 in tolls and 600 miles later we made it back to Providence and school work. Hopefully I'll be able to put up some more school work later on this week, as it is piling up in my room right now.

Computer Animation Final

I realized today that I hadn't posted anything from my computer animation wintersession course. That's partially because I'm very underwhelmed with the work I produced in the class and partially because I haven't put all the videos up on youtube. In any case, here is my final from the class. A disclaimer: I basically put this together in three nights (we only got a week to animate and I had my other course to worry about). So between the shortness, the poor narration (I had half an hour to record), and some awkward animation, I'm not too happy with it. But enough complaints, here's the video:

Comics Class Final Project

This is really late in arrival, but I decided to put up some pictures of my comics final. The first page was scanned in six parts (thus higher quality), while the other five pages were just hastily photographed on my dorm room floor and adjusted for levels. Ideally, I will be able to scan each page whole on a scanner in the computer lab, but I won't have the time nor motivation for that for a while. In any case, my comics final assignment was to create a 4-6 page comic with a title, beginning, middle, and end. Pretty broad, huh?

My piece is about a girl finding a "magic" pencil and how she chooses to use its powers.








I loved the class and hope to make more comics in the future, classes and time permitting. My thanks go out to the excellent professor, Kikuo Johnson, for making my wintersession coursework productive and enjoyable.

Comics Class

Seeing as it's been almost a month since my last post, I thought I'd put up an update while I have the time. Wintersession is going great and I actually have enough free time to get a few hours of sleep now and then. While I enjoy my computer animation class, so far my comics class is much better. The major decision balance is tipping towards illustration...

In any case, I have three assignments I can post from my comics class. The first assignment is visual instruction for a task (climbing!). The second, also wordless, is an interpretation of the Tortoise and Hare story. The most recent one is an assignment involving sound effects and an argument between two characters. I don't want to post every single page on here, so I'll post the first part to each assignment. The rest can be found on my DeviantArt page here. My apologies for the poor image quality...I haven't got around to scanning them in the lab yet.


How to Climb!


Tortoise and Hare


So Says I

Holiday Break

Here it is, New Year's Eve, and my Holiday Break is almost over. Soon I'll be back in Providence and taking my Wintersession courses: Graphic Novel (aka Comics) and Intro to Computer Animation. Hopefully I will have more time to climb and possibly even set at the RI Rock Gym.

Anyway, here are some videos of my favorite blind dog playing with his new toy :)





Enjoy!

Drawing Final!

About an hour or so ago I called it quits on my drawing final. The assignment was fairly open but required that we include ourselves in a large drawing that communicates space. My drawing is approximately 40"x55" and I would guess that at least twenty hours were spent working on it (not including planning, sketches, etc). It is 100% charcoal with about 500 layers of fixative on top...



I decided to depict my floor in Homer Hall to tell a sort of narrative about my first semester at RISD. In the far back, the silhouette is standing next to the door of my room. I have a packing box in place of my head, representing my arrival. The next three figures are stand-ins for my three studio classes: 3D, 2D, and Drawing (in order from farthest to nearest). The lightbulb exploding is due to the large amount of theory and concept we covered in our drawing class. The front figure is me, holding an egg...which could mean a variety of things but I decided to leave it ambiguous.

The whole drawing is meant to communicate a sort of disjointed weirdness -- like how my time at RISD so far has been a somewhat unreal experience so far removed (figuratively and literally) from my years at high school in the PacNW. This is why all of the figures have something amiss with them. The alterations to the back ones are fairly obvious, but even if it's not readily apparent, the front figure is larger than would make sense considering the perspective and placement.

While I'm not completely happy with this piece, I am fairly pleased with the way it came out and the concept behind it. Now all I have left to do at RISD this semester is finish my English essay...and I'll be free!

2D and 3D Final Projects!

After many hours of toil and frustration I have finished two of my final projects. I am always curious to see how many hours go into the pieces I make at RISD but honestly I have no idea. It should be enough to say that in the past week my average bedtime has been 5am. But really the fatigue doesn't matter when you're doing something that truly fascinates you.

In any case, for my 3D project I made a sort of soap box car, loosely based off of a prototype I made earlier in the year. Working on it was a series of failures, redesigns, and reconstructions. I never learned how to use power tools with any semblance of skill, so I used this project as my own personal woodshop class. While the car (working title: rocketcar) didn't turn out like the idealized image I had first envisioned, I am happy with the amount of learning that took place while working on the assignment. I would love to make another soap-box style car again in the summer if I have the time and money.

The rocketcar does not have true axles. In each "axle" there is a five inch lag bolt in the 2x4 where the wheel (plywood) connects. Each wheel therefore rotates independently. The car has steering by means of pushing the front axle with your feet. I unfortunately did not put in any brakes yet, so I won't be flying down College Hill anytime soon -- But the car is functional and I would estimate holds up to 180lb.


I test out the car during crit


Comparison to my early prototype (illustration board)

My 2D project, entitled "Furs," is a short animation based on the concept of climate change. It is comprised of approximately 250 hand drawn and scanned frames on tracing paper. I unfortunately had to put the thing together in iMovie, which probably added at least three hours to the editing time. I started with the idea of animals removing their fur as one would take off articles of clothing. It turned out a lot darker than originally intended, but I suppose that's all you can expect from such a creepy idea.



Still to be completed is my drawing project, art history final, and a research paper for English...But with these two projects out of the way my workload is essentially halved. Maybe I'll get some sleep this week? One can only hope.