Obligatory Holiday Title

Now that I'm out of school and the Christmas season is supposedly in full sway, I ought to have more time to work on projects and update my blog (keyword: ought).  Each day I remember new things I need to get done before school starts again and each day I don't get a single thing finished.  But I decided to make posting in my blog at least once a prority (don't ask me why, I just thought it was a good idea).  So here I am.

As aforementioned in my earlier post, my friends and I went to see the midnight showing of The Hobbit.  It was a blast, the movie was awesome, and we had a ton of fun trying to find our way home at 4 in the morning.  I won't go too much into my thoughts on the movie so as not to give out any spoilers, but I will give a brief review.  I really enjoyed the story and the characters and the Riddles in the Dark scene was by far the best part of the movie, but it wasn't the same as The Lord of the Rings (for the record, I've read both The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings).  I'm kind of unsure about the whole Pale Orc stuff that they added, but we'll see how that pans out in the next movies.  My biggest disappointment was all the CG (computer graphics).  I understand it's a lot less expensive to create scenes and backdrops on the computer and I know you can do a lot of cool effects and things with all this technology we have, but a shiny, perfectly rigged orc just doesn't seem as real to me as the laytex and prosthetic-ized ones we saw in the trilogy.  The Hobbit was comical and a first-rate movie, but it was also just that - a movie.  A very believable and awe-inspiring movie (you should all see it, by the way), but at times it just felt a little impractical.  I'm sorry, maybe I'm so biased against CG because its downsizing my hopes and dreams.  Ever since the Lord of the Rings I've wanted to work with movies in set design or costuming or model-making, but ever since the Lord of the Rings CG is becoming more and more accessible and more and more popular, pushing traditional set designers who are no good with computers slowly into extinction.  I'm sorry, that actually ended up going on for probably longer than was necessary.  Let's move on to the real purpose of this blog and why I even brought up The Hobbit . . .

 My Hobbit outfit!  This actually isn't the completely finished product, but it's the best picture I have at the moment.  The only thing I actually made was the vest, and it's really not very good.  The shape is all wrong and it ended up too tight, but at least I tried.  Only one other of my friends dressed up, it was a little disappointing (just kidding, my friends are all amazing).  Also, just a thought I've had recently, but does this count as art?  The age-old question, "what is art?"  I mean, anyone can sew, given a little practice and instruction, but does that make it any less of an art form than something like, say, watercolor?  I'm really curious to hear other people's thoughts on the matter, so please feel free to comment and let me know.

I don't know if I've ever mentioned it on my blog before, but back in October, my teacher really wanted me to enter our school's Reflections contest.  She was completely convinced that my person-statue-thing fit the theme perfectly (by the way, it's recently been named Carl and will from here on out be referred to as such).  I'm honestly rather curious about how exactly she thought Carl fit the theme (The Magic of a Moment) but I just went along and filled out all the paperwork and carried the cumbersome Carl to the Faculty Room.  Little side note: it apparently had a wondrous adventure in that room whilst awaiting to be judged.  Apparently one of the teachers put it right behind the door inside the women's faculty restroom and a lot of people were freaked out.  It also apparently traveled to various other places around the school on Halloween in several different outfits.  The Reflections people were none too happy when they found this out, but Carl's none too worse for wear (except I had to re-glue the face) so I'm not all that offended.  I've learned to accept the fact that a lot of people think I make creepy things, so why not roll with it and be amused by all the comments like "what's that creepy thing?" etc.  Anyways, so I entered it in Reflections and by some stroke of miraculous luck, I won an Award of Excellence at the school level.  Another little side note: earlier that day I had had my interview for Sterling Scholar and it had pretty much just been a crazy stressful day in general, so you can imagine how elated I felt for actually winning something.  Then, however, one of the teachers came and told me I wasn't really supposed to get that award and unpinned my really awesome medal from my coat and took it back to the awards table.  My hands were full of Carl, so I couldn't really do anything about it and I just kind of stood there looking dumb.  And then, the Reflections representative had a . . . discussion with said teacher and brought me my medal back.  So I went from being stressed to deliriously happy to embarrassed and discouraged to just kind of exhausted.  It was a really interesting day.  Okay, side note over.  So, a week or so ago, I was informed that my piece has again received an award at the council level and is now moving on to Region 9.  I'm kind of excited, even if I completely made up my artist's statement about how Carl represents the Magic of a Moment.  In honor of this occasion, I decided to dredge up this photo of me that my sister took while Carl was merely a creepy papier mache thing that freaked people out when they came down the stairs in the mornings.

Yeah, Carl was kind of fun to make and I'm kind of proud of him, but ever since I decided that I was going to stop making things based upon what I thought the world would accept and started making only the things that really make me happy, I've been so much more proud of the things I've done.  Like our most recent assignment that I finished for AP Art.  The assignment was to do a close-up.  This project is easy enough for 2D artists, all you have to do is crop it in the right places.  You can't just 'crop' things in three dimensions.  After much internal struggling I decided to sculpt a bug larger than they normally are - therefore 'close-up'.  I started out with some designs for a soft-sculpture potato bug, but decided against it as potato bugs seem almost too common and I didn't really have the necessary materials.  I then decided upon a Box Elder, because they remind me of one of our old houses where we had this great backyard with a massive willow tree and a shed where we used to jump off the roof into the rhubarb bushes and my brother and I tried to build underground fortresses.  Basically, Box Elders make me happy.  Although, it turns out, a lot of people are actually creeped out by the adorable little bugs - ah, well, another project to add to the list of things that frighten my friends.  I wonder, is this how Tim Burton feels most of the time?

He took quite a long time to make, but overall, I think it was worth it.  He's made of Sculpey and I had to bake him in several stages.  I made the abdomen first (even though it was one of the last parts to be baked) then came the eyes, antennae, and proboscis-mouth-thing which were baked and then pressed in to the head.  The whole head was baked again and then attached to the body, at which point I finally baked the body and only had the legs left to do.  If you ever get into sculpting with polymer clay and you need an armature, make the whole armature all at once and not in stages.  I made the legs with a wire armature and then attached them the body and it was pretty much a really terrible idea.  You can kind of see in this picture that several of the legs are cracking.  That's because my armature isn't attached to the armature in the body and so the two don't really support each other.  I ended up propping his tail on a rock to relieve the pressure on his legs, but the cracks remain and all I can do now is hope they don't get any bigger.

 This is a rather . . . interesting picture.  I mainly put it up because I really like the view it gives you of his underside.  I thought it looked rather good and buggish.

 Detail of the back.  The end of the wings took forever, but they were also kind of fun.  Also, these pictures don't show it very well, but although I varnished the whole bug, the eyes and the ends of the wings have gloss varnish on them, so they're shinier than the rest of him.  It actually looked pretty cool.

But wait!  That's not all.  I don't exactly remember where the idea first came from, but I really wanted to have a little person riding the bug.  I warn you now, there are a lot of pictures.  All the details that did make it into this project are only a fraction of what I really wanted to do.

 Unfortunately ropes and ribbons and things don't hang the same way in miniature as they do on larger scales, so I'm rather disappointed with the reins on the bug.  They just don't look natural enough.

 This snail could've been a whole lot better, but he was kind of a last minute decision.  He also has a trail of slime I made with gloss, but you can only really see it in certain lights and from certain angles.

 I tried to paint markings on her hands and face similar to those on the Box Elder, but I don't really think it worked all that well. :/

 It took me all of "It's A Wonderful Life" to bead her belt.  I tend to get a lot of movie-watching done while working on these more detailed projects.

 I really like the perspective on her antennae in this one.

 That chair!  Again and again I tried to weave my own backing for the chair of the saddle and then what do I do?  Give up and sew on some burlap.  It looks great.  That is, it did, until I completely hid it behind the backpack and the creature.  Bah!  Why do I spend so much time and energy on things you can barely even see?

 Bundle o' sticks for making a campfire.

 By the way, this little creature is a rare species known to inhabit overgrown and remote backyards.  They are called Fettishes and range greatly in color and type.  They're very shy but tough and resilient creatures, not very apt to show themselves to any humans.  They're incredibly resourceful and love to tinker.  They're very hard to spot as they're light on their feet and only a few centimeters tall.

 The base was a lot of fun to make.  I don't usually make bases for my sculptures (hehe, what sculptures?) but as this was a project for school, I wanted it to be a little more stable for transport.  I started out by taking some rocks from a bag of gravel in our garage and placing them 'artistically' across the wooden base (acquired from Hobby Lobby).  Starting from the center I then glued down sawdust I had collected and had been planning on using to make my own mache.  I knew I didn't have enough to cover the whole base evenly so I made a sort of path shape instead and filled in the edges with modelling moss that was left over from a model my brother had built of Falling Water.  Then I glued the bug down.  Easy as pie, really.

 The bag was a lot of fun to do and it was kind of inspired by The Hobbit.  I knew there was going to be a bag and that I would roll up the quilt and attach it to the bag, but the accretion of those ideas into something more substantial didn't come until after seeing The Hobbit.

 By the way, I'm really incredibly disappointed that you can't see more of the detail on the quilt.

 This was a great concept in my head, but I don't think I quite managed to pull it off so well in creation.  Maybe it's the color of the thread, or the fact that the Christmas light doesn't actually light up.

 Can you tell the blue pouch is supposed to be a canteen?

 I want that hat.

I really really really love the lighting in this picture.  I love the stark shadows and the highlights in her eyes.  But I don't know.  I'm not a photographer, so there's probably a million things wrong with it.

Sorry for the overload of pictures.  I probably could've summed everything up in just one or two, but oh well.

There's really not much else I've been doing lately.  I have started to work on some concepts for a friend of mine for a short film he's making, I suppose I could show you those.  It's just a character and costume concept, but I like how it's going so far.

Now it's time for some Edumacation.  (Okay, where did that word even get started?)  I decided that since I'm blogging for the whole world to see (really just my family and some neighbors, actually) I should make my posts a little more helpful and informative.  So each time I post I want to include a spotlight on another artist or something artistic that isn't me and also some sort of word of wisdom or tip that I've learned through my very limited experiences.

Expanding Your Horizon
A few weeks ago I watched the movie The Dark Crystal.  It's made by Jim Henson and is kind of mind-blowing if you think about it.  The cast is entirely made up of puppets, and yet it is so incredibly believable (oh yeah, no CG involved).  If you haven't seen it, you should really watch it and then you should watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KPMc2VowQM  It's a documentary about how they made the movie.  It's way cool and really worth giving it a watch.

Words of Crafty Wisdom
I can't guarantee this will always be completely amazing and helpful, but this time I actually have a tutorial that I decided to make a while ago about how I made my hobbit vest.  I don't really know if anyone's interested, but here it is all the same.

It's kind of a large file, so sorry.  Anyways, it's time I signed out.