Dem Hands

For our Animation Tutorial class- hand gesture study and animation.

Struggle

This week was doing an 8 panel sequence depicting 'Struggle'-could mean inner or outer struggle, in my case I opted for outer struggle in the cliffhanger sense.

Critiques for the sequence boiled down to 'Do Not crop the important bits of the shot'. This was applicable to panel 2 with the dude hanging on for dear life, and also with my panel 6- where I completely lost the hanging dude as I was trying to emphasize the other one pulling him up. The positive thing I got from my entry was that from the first panel- the hands holding on to each other,was a nice opening shot and an attention grabber.

13 Assassins and Bus Stop Beats

Field Trip

My Interdisciplinary Critique class went over to this Oakland artist for some lecture on what's he up to and how his art developed.

Unfortunately since this is Art that involves the whole deep thinking processes and discussions-and I was tired- I kept nodding off in his talks. Tried doodling classmates and things to stay awake.

Pacquiao vs Marquez Jr.

Spent the weekend over at relatives to watch Pacquiao fight and celebrate baby birthday. Ended up working on some class assignments with my laptop up until the fight itself. Doodled my sis, and cousins and their hubbies and babies.  

Indian concert #2

Went to my second Indian Music concert which was really my teacher Matthew Grasso and two friends he invited who played Tabla and a Sarod. The concert was nearly two hours long but overall it was a lovely listening experience.

Occupy Oakland

So I spent the morning flip flopping whether or not I'd go and miss school, or not go and consider myself a coward. Thing was though our school was totally fine and down with it (classes still continued, but anyone participating were pretty much excused) and then I realized last minute I had TIME before the shuttles arrived so I could attend parts of the rally, go back to school, and come back again and attend it.

So I did.

In the morning I hung out a bit with Garrett and later int the afternoon with Colleen. We saw a load of webster peers in there and we walked, dashed and marched all the way to one of the oakland ports. I missed my evening shuttle ride so I just took a Bart to class.

My feet are bloody tired.

The highlight of the night is that I got a lot of free food today- I got a free sandwich and water in the strike, and later on June gave me a load of chicken wings. It made up for the fact I felt miffed for spending 4 bucks on a meal after two months straight of just making my own lunch/dinner.

Weekend at LA

Tita estela was visiting her kids in LA over the weekend and we hitched a ride with her. In LA, hung out with Achie, saw her comic WIP, and over the weekend we watched some Adventure time, Paradise Kiss the Movie (hilariously horrible), and Thor (surprisingly good).

Most of the Saturday was spent walking around the Getty Villa museum that was built to look like an actual Greek/Pompeii villa.

Webster Open Mic Night

 Our Webster dorm's first open mic night! The 'stage was actually just the stairway between the 4th and 5th floors, so I was watching the whole thing from the 5th floor 'balcony', hence the weird ass 'perspective' going on. It was pretty surprising at all the talent there was in this place. We had guitarists, singers, poets, heck- even an opera singer!

Baby Baptismal and Hokkaido Seafood Buffet

Geese taking a break in the Church lawn

 Went to Foster City to attend a baby baptismal of a cousins. The event was thankfully small and quick, and that since another cousin gave me a camera to take pictures of the whole thing, I had reason to get up and go around the place. Well that and there were babies and toddlers running around the whole place.

Afterwards it was just binging on sushi and other delicious food at a Buffet. The highlight of the day was helping a cousin try to snag a picture of a pretty cute waiter going around the place. XD

Going Home for the weekend.

Decided to humor my ma and go home for the weekend despite the workload. Ended up having to Bart over there but at least I have free food(?) Had to do my acrylic assignment at the bathroom again because ma doesn't like me painting in the living/dining room >_>

I freaking hate acrylics.

CCA Treasure Hunt

"Crazy Dame" Colleen with her trusty
wooden katana. 

Went over to CCA to join in on the Pirate Treasure Hunt.
It was a barrel of fun- I joined up with some Webster peeps and before the games had another duel round with the wooden katanas (though we accidentally cracked one).

When the games did start though, I realized quickly that it was a bad, bad idea to go on a pirate treasure hunt with a backpack.

On the flipside, it was great having bloody fast and quick minded friends, and though it was a shame we didn't win, it was still fun exploring the school and its knook and crannies.

Spent the rest of the afternoon working on my animation assignments again- not doing too well with my 3D assignment and might have to redo it.

Blackout

Well that was interesting.

We did our usual 3D animation stuff and just when I was getting the hang of things we get a blackout.

It was a pretty interesting experience since I haven't experienced a total blackout in the US yet, and inside school to boot. Turns out the whole of Upper Oakland lost power, so it was pitch dark outside save for a couple of emergency generators and everyone using their celphones, bike lights and my clip light to get around.

I ended up hanging out with my old Character Design teacher Ed Bell, Cel, Dan and Adam and we all walked and talked to the Rockridge Bart which we took so we were a good 45 minutes ahead of the shuttle.

Walking and talking in the dark reminded me a lot of things- like the time my cousins and I went up their hill and saw the night sky, the time my family and I took a firefly river boat ride and the time me, lal and pa got lost looking for a resort, and it was such a gorgeous night too.

We spent the rest of the night having a 'fight night,' basically Adam teaching the guys and Colleen how to box, then they started sparring with wooden katanas and made me try- I gave Colleen a bruise to the face D8.

Asha Boyle Concert

 Went to see an Indian concert for my Intro to (classical) Northern Indian Music class at the Paramount theater in Oakland. Fortunately I had a dormate/classmate who was also going and another classmate who had a  car. I was slightly disappointed that since this concert was part of the SF Jazz Festival, much of the music had more upbeat jazz or pop tunes and I'm guessing because of the roar of applause or approval, some songs were popular film songs she's sung before.

The highlight of the night I think for me was seeing a dad making a tabla drum out of his kid's head during a really nice tabla solo piece.

Afterwards we just drove a little bit around Oakland for a late night diner/place to eat, but nothing was open at 11 (besides the fast food joints) so we ended up just going home straight. 

SF and Fentons

Headed out (again) to SF this time to Japantown with some more Webster peeps to show them where I got my waterbrush pen and just o hang out.

What I got out of the trip was this sketch of the tower a clip light for my notebook.

Going back to the dorms, I hung out with Alex and Kyla and watched Baccano with them-and then we all got out for Fenton's with Cel.

Going to Fenton's was a blast-we actually went out as a group of 16 (more met us in the place) and it was a miracle we got seats so fast.

SF outing weekend-1

My new dormmate Bonnie arrived early this morning.

Later in the morning, Colleen invited me to do some bird sketchings in the aviary near Lake Merritt (haven't been there yet) so I agreed.

What we ended up doing though was going as a big group of peeps to San Francisco to do some sketching of the SF Grand Cathedral. I thought I did a good sketch of it until I saw Cel's freaking near architecture clean etchings and just gave up. Spent the rest of the time exploring the artwork they had around the place- weird mesh of past and modern day artwork and stain glass.

Afterwards we went to the park right outside of that and drew the fountains and people-One of them looked like Dan lol- and I totally regretted not bringing a thicker jacket because it was freezing. QB lent me his but they joked i looked like a big tomato since I was tiny in his sweater.

We trekked back down SF, saw a modern gallery and couldn't decide on anything to eat so headed back to Oakland and me and Colleen decided to make a huge batch of brownies and Cel donated a tub of ice cream and Emily provided Tangled as the night's entertainment.

Afterwards I watched Alex play AC: Brotherhood and saw major backseat nerd gaming rage happening all night over Portal 2. I love this dorm so very much.

Exploratorium

In celebration of my belated birthday(7-19), me, lal and JJ had an outing on the weekend of my choosing.

I chose the San Franisco Exploratorium which was basically like a humongous science interactive place which just ignited the excited geeky little kid in me (they even had a special exhibit that time called the Science of Color) . Had I more say in the matter, I would have been happy spending the entire day in there, but we left a little early so we'd be able to catch the BART back.

Animal Farm

Headed to an animal farm with the Aunt and kids. Unfortunately Aunt chose a day the farm was 'closed' (meaning no special demos or animal rides) but we still got to go around and see a lot of penned animals-
Horses, chickens, sheep, goats, pigs and rabbits.

Children's Play Park

Attended a little children's play with aunt,cousins and their kids. The play was a hawaian adaptation of Cinderella, and even my 5 year old niece recognized the similarities of plot XD. Just doodled the audience since the kids barely acted but just said their lines out loud.

Family lake outing

For this 4th of July weekend, my family and then the cousins and their friends and family all went to a lake to swim.

The only problem was-
1) I had no swimsuit.
2) Even if I had, I was in no condition at the time to swim.

Which meant I spent the entire, bloody, scorching day having a near heat stroke (really, no joke.) under a tent while my sibs had a blast being in the cool, cool lake.