Welcome to RISD!

I'm finally updating my poor, neglected blog. Here's a huge update for everyone who has been wondering "What the hell is Jessica doing at RISD?!!"

The first weekend of school was Welcome Week, a three-day event sponsored by the school to get students acquainted with the school and with one another. Some of the activities were lame, but I'll spare you the boring details and get right to the fun stuff.

There was a block party held on Benefit St. where all of the school clubs tried to recruit new students. There were also several food vendors, 'sumo wrestling', and kangaroo and panda.







Also present was RISD's bizzare school mascot, Scrotie. I took these pics especially for you, Echo. :)



There were two people doing free screenprinting for the students too. I got a shirt from H&M and had it printed.




Artist's Ball was fun as hell. I had four shots of rum, dressed up in a turntable costume, and danced my ass off. The DJ freaked out when he saw me, came down from the DJ booth, and took his picture with me.




The workload here at RISD is pretty intense. The majority of the students here are competitive, highly opinionated, and very self-motivated. It's good to work among more intense artists; they really motivate me to push myself. RISD is more of an 'idea school', so some majors focus less on technical education and more on developing concepts, especially in the junior and senior year. This can be a good or a bad thing, depending on the student.

Lately, I have been working furiously on final projects for animation, painting, and video. I am really getting into DJing, VJing, and creating music videos as a career option lately.

More pics and info soon!

I GOT MY DJ EQUIPMENT!

I have been listening to records nonstop afeter I got my DJ equipment in the mail over the weekend. The experience of listening to music on vinyl as opposed to CD or Mp3 is, in my opinion, far superior. Some great things about vinyl are that you can manipulate the pitch, start easily from anywhere in a track, and best of all, SCRATCH!

I have been practicing slip-cueing a lot, since I haven't recieved my second deck and mixer yet. Slip cueing involves scratching over the first beat of a track so that it starts right on beat. The most difficult thing about slip cueing isn't getting it on the beat, but getting an instant start. It sound really shitty when a record is started so that the vocals seem to 'bend'--it sounds a bit likte the audio on a old video tape.

I got the most amazing pair of Technics headphones. They have ridiculously broad frequency range--5 Hz to an ear-bleeding 30,000 Hz. They make everything sound as if you're in a stadium hearing the music. I will definitely be using these in video editing and sound classes!

Only a few days left until school! I am so excited about the opportunities I will have there to improve as an artist and work my way to a great job! I can't wait for the freedom and not having to ride the stupid bus to class anymore!

You can get it on EBAY!

This weekend I finally decided enough was enough--I HAD to get some freaking DJ equipment before school started or I was going to explode! I have been bidding like crazy on Ebay for all the equipment I'll need, and the prices are really reasonable.
I also bought a ton of new records, including some from Pendulum, London Elektricity, and Klute.

While on the subject of Ebay, I am selling four pieces of my artwork--three drawings and a sculpture--in a few auctions! Please feel free to check it out! Search 'Jessica Taylor' and you should find all four. Better get them cheap now before I'm famous ;)!




Here are some more figure drawings from last Tuesday. Drawing was difficult again due to the lack of decent lighting.



Here is a drawing I did in Mike Manley's figure drawing class at DCAD. I decided to clean up the pencils and I'm going to finish it this week and ink it.
I bought a copy of "The Art of Comic Book Inking" and it has helped me understand
the inking process better.

More Summer Figure Drawings

Here are more figure drawings from Tuesday's drawing session. I tried more challenging poses this time.






These 20 minute poses were tough, so I didn't have the chance to fill in everything in the drawings. I'm still not happy with my work; something about it looks unattractive for some reason.

I missed Saturday's painting to go to Providence, RI with my parents. They hadn't seen the campus, and I hadn't seen the dorms I will be staying in, yet. Everything was very nice, and I'm glad my dorm is more apartment-style than traditional barracks-style!

Summer Figure Drawings

Here is some work I have been doing over the summer. I have been attending an open figure drawing session every Wednesday for the past few weeks, and I think its starting to show in my drawings. It would be nice if the sessions were held three times a week instead of one.






Hopefully I will get to try my hand at painting this Saturday!

Artistic Constipation

I am very excited that RISD has accepted more of my DCAD credits; now I will be able to attend this fall as a junior instead of a a sophomore. That makes things much more affordable. I can't wait to have more time to make art, no more commuting, and live in a cool artsy town. I think it will be a great experience for me.

Strangely, at the same time I am feeling some artistic constipation. Recently I haven't had any desire to draw; the act of sitting down to draw is stressing me out! I doesn't make any sense! I have always loved to draw!

Everytime I think about drawing, I think about long nights with painfully brief amounts of sleep, being too broke to buy anything, and the horrible taste of too many ramen noodles. Especially figure drawing.

I feel really torn right now. I keep squeezing myself into a restricted, regimented little box when it comes to art-- "Draw 10 figures every night, in pencil, only in the sketchbook, and not from your imagination!" I think there is a prudish old schoolmarm in my head.

To be honest, I feel like doing some fashion illustration, design, and a little sewing too. I have had ideas for clothing and accessories lately that would be really fun to make and wear. I want to make some collages and experiment with color, and make some fun sculptures. To be honest, I don't want to do much of anything that I did at DCAD until its time to go back to school. I'm just worried that following that impulse will land me far behind everyone else skills-wise and the other animator's work will kick my work's ass.

What do I do!?

It's over...It's ALL OVER!!!!!!

I am finally graduating from DCAD! Time to party! Actually, time to work on making money for the next two years of school.

My final animation project "Going Nuts" turned out well. It features a birdwatcher's overkill attmepts to get rid of a pesky squirrel. Unfortunately, I didn't get giant killer robot scene in time for the critique. Hopefully it will be done in time for the graduate student show.

I think the sets are the best aspect of the project.




Some still images from the animation.






I can't wait to finally get my bachelor's degree and get into the job market, hopefully doing this type of work for a living.

The Big Payoff

I just found out that I was accepted to RISD on a 15,000 dollar scholarship. I am so relieved and excited about attending! Now I feel like all the late nights working on assignments have paid off.

Many thanks to my uncle and Pahl for connecting me with important people there.

RISD Drawings

I finished these a while ago but never got around to posting them. These are the Drawings I sent to Rhode Island School of Design.
The drawings could be abstract, so I decided to take them in that direction since my portfolio is so direct-observation heavy.



The bike drawing. I made a compostion of the bike parts.



The interior drawing. I decided to draw an 'interior of the mind'. Its a crazy idea, I hope admissions likes it. The gears make up a brain-like shape, suggesting someone who is always thinking or working.



The optional drawing. I wish I nad more time to come up with an interesting concept for this one. I had to settle for a direct obervation drawing of a tripod. I tried to create an interesting composition.

Me Smash Bad Art!

According to the superhero quiz on echo's website

Your results:
You are Hulk

Hulk 65% Iron Man 65% Green Lantern 60% Wonder Woman 50% The Flash 50% Superman 40% Spider-Man 40% Robin 40% Batman 30% Supergirl 30% Catwoman 15%

You are a wanderer with amazing strength.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Test


Me go to RISD. Me get big scholarship and smash puny Fine Artists!
Fine artists make Jessica angry. Fine Artist slap paint on canvas, know no perspective!

The Joy of Animation

I had a pretty decent day Thursday. Wednesday night I stayed up all night working on a puppet animation that turned out pretty nice. Hopefull I can reshoot some of the weaker sections this week and put everythiing to gether in a nice presentation.

In animation class, we did an animation with Mickey Mouse--he did everything from flicking people off to pulling out guns and cigars.

Here's a Mickey drawing I did in class, featuring drunkard mickey, chainsaw mickey, and steroids mickey!


Some keyframes from an animation I did.



Unfotunately, I am getting kinda restless since it almost graduation time. It's starting to affect my classes. I hope to turn things around so I don't end up regretting it.

The College Crunch

It has been a while since I last updated this! I have been really busy juggling college applications, work, and homework. It's tough and I'm worrying a little about getting accepted to the next school witha scholarship.






Various arm drawing from Mike's figure drawing class. Mike got sick, and everyone really missed his teaching and feedback. I think I'm improving a lot because of him.
Some of the proportions are still off, but I think there's an improvement from earlier in the semester.



Bike drawing for RISD. I think it needs a lot of work. Maybe darker darks will help.

Well, it's back to work for me. I hope I get into RISD.

Bye Bye Blahs

I think I am over the 'blahs'. My animation came out fairly nice. The secondary action on the cape and the fat fox's boobs was surprisingly good.


Damn amateur photograpy skills! I got my slides back today and most of them don't look good enough to send to colleges. One more shoot aught to do it--it seems like F2.8 with shutter speed 60 is working( I hope that is right). At least they didn't turn out like the last four rolls I made--the film never advanced in the camera, so I got $40 worth of black film back from the camera shop.

The new puppy, who is now called Ginger, is happily peeing all over the carpet. She doesn't like the designated "wee-wee" spot, so she'll dart over to a spot near the door and pee before you can catch her. She is still insanely cute, though.

A Case of the Blahs

Unfortunately, I am feeling really shitty and unmotivated right now. I'm trying to finish cleaning up my animation HW but I can't help feeling really apathetic about it. Blah.

Maya Animation class is going better now. Last HW I modeled a dragon and a giraffe; much better than my crappy pear house. Blah.



I'm doing a bit better in figure drawing too; the techniques Mike shows me really help. Trying to keep next week's HW from sucking as much as last week's. Blah.

Blah blah, freaking blah. I hope I'm not burning out.

New Puppy

My mom just bought an apricot-colored, miniature poodle puppy today. It is really cute and REALLY frisky--right now its running around like someone gave it a Red Bull.




My hard drive is finally fixed! HOORAY! Thanks a bunch, Dad.

The STOOOOOORM of the CENTURRRRYYYYY!

The whole eastern seabord from VA to ME just got pimp-slapped by a huge noreaster.
Here in Newark, DE we got about a foot; NY has record breaking snows, according to the sensationalist Weather Channel.

Did everybody go out and buy bread and milk?! If you didn't, you will DIE!!!!!

Best Day EVER!!!!!

Today was the Corcoran trip I was really looking forward to. It was a blast! Luckily the snow held off until we left.

Thirteen of us piled into a van early this morning and drove from Wilmington to D.C. The ride wasn't as bad or as long as I had expected it to be.

Corcoran is a very nice school and I really think I would enjoy going there. A lot of the group was really excited about the facilities and how nice the dorms were!
I'm pleased that they have a good scholarship program; I really hope I can get one.

The whole ride up and back we talked nonstop. I enjoyed it because I don't get a lot of time to socialize. I threw a couple of snowballs at Thomas at a rest stop, too. There's nothing like pelting your fellow students with snowballs.

The Corcoran is a museum school, and it has a beautiful gallery for historical art work and considerable space for student work.





There are also many beautiful examples of sculpture and architecture on the campus.





I was really inspired by the work in the digital media class. I want to pursue creating animations for music videos. Time to get back to the animation homework!
Overall, I think everyone had a good time!

Catching Up on Schoolwork

Today I decided to take a day off from work to tackle my various projects.
I'm redoing my 'Sparks and the Foxy Lady' animation for this weeks HW.
I Finished the majority of the extreme poses today. Here are some shots from the rough story boards.





My hard drive crashed, so I couldn't fix the brightness/contrast like I wanted.

Tomorrow is the Corcoran trip! I'm really looking forward to it, and I hope we don't get the 6-10 inches of snow forcasted this weekend.