PC foiling Mac, or maybe Sony sucks

I like Mac.

It wasn't until after starting school at the Art Institute that I learned the true value of Apple. I learned, I loved, I got a Mac Laptop. Macs are fantastic for a variety of design tasks; design wise, I'd say Mac is the better computer. However, I realize that PCs hold a lot of importance in animation and gaming. Besides, PCs work great with things like my new video camera.

When I first went shopping for a camera, the first question out of my mouth was, "Could you show me what is compatible with a Mac?" The sales clerk clearly had his head up his ass when he pointed me towards what I thought was the camera of my dreams.

Oh happy day, I got a video camera for Christmas. I was thoroughly excited and ready to start taping the world... was. I shot a few "for fun" things (snow, drew's work, etc.) and I attempted to import this videos to my Mactop. In a word, diseaster.

The people at sony include two DVDs with the camera. One includes a highly obnoxious cartoon character that teaches a young fellow (oddly resemblant to paul degeorge) how to properly hold a camera. Fantastic, fast forward. DVD number two is a free program for PC users to import video to their computers. Great, so what does a girl with a Mac do?

On to iMovie!
I open up my trusty iMovie, break out the help screen and follow instructions line by line. What does iMovie do? "No Camera Attached". What? After puzzling about 20 minutes in iMovie, I moved on to try Image Capture which would directly rip the videos from the camera. That doesn't work as the videos are all specially MPG encoded. Yay...

Let's try reading the Sony help manual. Hmmm... all that says is, "Software not available for Mac." Thank you Captain Obvious. Could you please explain how in God's name Mac users are supposed to get your Sony MPG encoded videos into a Mac? No? Ok thanks.

Maybe their website will help. For reasons unbeknownst to me, the site started me in "Sony Germany" and any searching in the toolbar is all directed straight to google. Helpful.

Next idea to try, iMovie FAQs online. Every FAQ covered how to import video cameras involving tapes, not crazy hard drive mpgs (of doom). After searching for 30 minutes I came across a forum where a number of Mac users were having the same/similar problem that I face.

"I am trying to import video from a Sony camcorder. It records in MPEG2 format and is not recognized by iMovie. Can anyone tell me what program I would need to import these video files from the camera? Here is sony's reply to the problem--"The Sony hard drive camcorders use the MPEG 2 image format. The Movie software supplied with these camcorders is designed for Microsoft's Windows only. Currently SONY is not aware of any Macintosh video import and editing applications that support the MPEG 2 format used by our models."

I'd like to pause for a moment and thank Sony for the consideration of Mac users. Of course when I say thank, I mean kick in their tail bone. It is primarily Mac users in the video industry and to exclude that portion of the market is poor planning, bad marketing, and just downright bad form.

The answers on the forum suggested buying a PC. Purchasing expensive software. Buying a DVD burner so that you could burn the MPGS to DVD. This of course would also require to rip the DVD so that I could edit it. Hurray for extremely expensive solutions.

In conclusion, I have a fantastic camera that I cannot use due to poor marketing.
Rossini's words, "Know your market before you sell to them."
Pashley's words, "Do your research."
My words, "Sony, kiss my bum."

Home for the Holidays

Christmas break has been extraordinarily appreciated. With a week in California, nearly a week spent in Minneapolis and one last week to come in Dallas, I've come to the conclusion snow sucks. Cold weather still isn't fun.

I remember the days when I would wake up in Dayton, praying for freezing weather so that I may have one of those rare snow days. Now that I'm older there's just nowhere near as much fun as when I was younger. I have few urges to go diving into a deep pile of snow. Making snow men just means freezing my fingers off. Worst of all there's driving.

I give my brother and his wife all the credit in the world for braving this cold, yet deadly weather condition. Watching them casually point out people who are stuck in the snow or have swerved off seems like a regular pass time to them. Why on Earth would anyone want to live in this frozen tundra?

I remember quite clearly my first car accident. I had just wrapped up my first play at high school over the weekend, and I was driving to school monday morning. During the 45 minute drive to school six inches of snow added onto the foot of snow that had started early in the morning. I was so excited to see sight of my school because I thought I was home free. I pulled into the turn lane and saw car coming rapidly in reverse towards me. I tried to slow down, hit black ice and ended up meeting the car at a lovely 60 degree angle. There's really nothing like the inevitable feeling of sliding on ice knowing your about to hit another car. Why you would want to deal with that, beyond me.

So to Drew and Becky, I salute you. You're far braver than I. I say we start celebrating Christmas in July so that when I come see you it isn't freezing.

Fairy Tale Final

Little Red

11 weeks spent on one work of art.
I couldn't be happier with the turn out.

My trip to St. Louis

Potter Journal Chamber of Crazy


I can hear the bells

Sea World

Shamu's belly flop
Originally uploaded by dani_wolf.

I figured I should give you a link to my pictures from Sea World. I just got them up tonight. Fun day. Hard to believe the whales can get themselves that far out of the air.

http://flickr.com/photos/dark_fairy_76/sets/72157602265265864/

WEEEEEE!

WEEEEEE!
Originally uploaded by dani_wolf.

How to properly celebrate the completion of portfolio one.

1. Sign waivers.

2. Strap yourself up to one of your best friends who took the class with you.

3. FLY.

Campaign coolness.

My campaign is up and running!

Link

The newspaper portion is out. There are no bus ads or kiosks yet. They said they'd do it in time if they came up with the money. Still cool.

Learning to model in a new program.

I made these in class today. YAY. =D Steinbach, the teacher, says i'm way ahead. I've never used the program before. That was my third time ever opening it. Go me.

link 1
link 2

just for fun

I think solving mysteries would be fun. Velma always was the smartest one. She figured out the whole thing and never got kidnapped like Daphne.

a little update

Missouri, Universal Studios, Long Beach, Disneyland

Those are links to my internet photo-albums from this past summer. 95% percent of the pictures are mine. Occasionally I'll slip in pictures that Mom or Amy took.

So yesterday Brandon showed up on my doorstep. That went as well as it could go. He called later that evening and we fought/cried on the phone for a good hour. Fun. What a great way to be welcomed back.

Post-Brandon-Drama, I was bummed and on the internet venting to one of my friends from school. She informed me that Ciera is back. Ciera is the roommate who dropped out and ran-away to New York for the 14 year old drug dealer/cheater. Personally at this point, I'd rather she stayed in New York and I really don't want anything to do with her.

It's going to be one hell of a quarter.

i love my cousins

i love my cousins
Originally uploaded by dani_wolf.

a good time was had by all.

Dallas City Hall Ad Campaign

That's the idea that started it all. I made that design for my internship class. Every person in my class (about 26 total) was fighting for the ad campaign for dallascityhall.com. They wanted more users and a creative campaign to bring people in. Intially they grabbed the three best campaigns from my class and held on to my idea to use for a t-shirt. Cool. I didn't hear back from them for a couple weeks.

I got a call from my teacher on Friday and it turns out my idea is actually going to be used in the campaign. I won. My idea is going to be spread through dallas news papers for sure. Possibly other places too. I'm not sure what's going to happen from here, but hurray! Exposure! I get to throw all of this on my resume and in my portfolio. Yay. =)

Dude, I'm on MTV... whole screen...

Dude, I'm on MTV
Originally uploaded by dani_wolf.

LINK

MTV
Thurs 6/7- 5:50am, 6:50am, 7:50am, 8:50am, 9:50am

MTV2
Thurs 6/7- 4:30am, 5:30am, 6:30am, 7:30am, 8:30 am

MTVU
Wed 6/6 8:45pm, 9:45pm,
Thurs 6/7- 12:45am, 1:45am, 2:45am, 3:45am, 4:45am, 5:45am, 6:45am, 8:45am, 9:45am, 10:45am, 11:45am, 12:45pm, 1:45pm, 2:45pm, 3:45pm, 4:45pm, 5:45pm, 6:45pm

I'm on MTV news.

I'm on MTV.

Game Over

A majority of yesterday I ran around all day acquiring paper samples for projects and running errands before my trip to New Orleans. I worked on homework from 3-10pm and it was an all around long day. Around 11 pm I was burning archive CDs of my portfolio. I was in the middle of backing up my homework that I had worked on all day when my (laptop) computer stops. I figure it's normal freezing and I reboot. Well when I reboot a very discomforting ticking sound starts. Think of a metronome, that's the sound my computer was making.

Well I start to get a little antsy as my laptop now sounds like a time bomb. I call Brandon in my room, as he was conveniently going to stay the night. He sits down, looks at my computer and goes, "Ummm... That's not good." He's working on my laptop and diagnosing while I'm digging through my Computer coverage plans. My laptop coverage expired May 7, 2007.

Meanwhile, Brandon is going to town with my computer, honestly I'll never understand how he can understand computers so well. He tried everything he could. The laptop rejected all of the rebooting disks. He even had me try erasing the hard-drive. The computer froze, clicked, and breathed it's last. Brandon says he can fix it no problem, it's just going to cost me a new hard-drive around $150. If I take it to Apple, they'll charge me triple that for diagnosing and shipping it out. I figure I'll let Brandon fix it as I trust him and pray that this works.

-The big things I've lost-
my homework. I've been up since 8 re-doing it.
the art programs I use constantly. Now i need to find someone to go swipe a copy from.
some personal artwork.

The best news, it's fixable. I've lost everything but my computer should run again. Also, I got my master portfolio backed up before it crashed. I intend to burn a few more copies of my master portfolio and send them off to various people for safe-keeping in case anything happens to my apartment. I don't want to re-do 3 years of work. So that's the news. I'll keep you posted.

Advertising Trivia

Most research projects I have to complete are fairly boring. History of asbestos flooring, the affects of “Guernica” by Pablo Picasso on society and other winning topics have flooded my past. I recently got a pretty good research topic, Extreme Ideas in advertising. I’ll hit a few highlights.

1840
“The Greatest Show on Earth.”
Of course I’m talking about P.T. Barnum’s circus. Sure the circus was great, but the big deal is that he is the father of advertising. Barnum was the first person to document the increase in sales based on the increase in hype and public events. In a way my profession has roots in the circus. Cool.

1920s
“Always a Bridesmaid Never a Bride”
Listerine was invented and intended to be a general antiseptic. After exploring various uses, Gerard Lambert asks if it does anything for breath. Well, sure enough a scientist rummages through some doctor magazines and finds Halitosis, a fancy name for bad breath. Lambert begins building hype about the dreaded disease Halitosis and educates the public. Mind you in the 1920s people bathed once a week and the soap from animal soap often smelled worse than B.O. Lambert pushed an ad campaign about Halitosis causing people to be single. He started in 1922 and made $115,000 in profits. By 1929 he was making more than eight million a year.

1930s
The Secret about Santa
Ever wonder where the idea of Santa came from? The first story introducing Santa, a golly man to slide down chimneys came about in 1822. Slowly people begin interpreting him in a variety styles ways and colors. A certain company sold beverages and needed a way to push their drink as winter refreshment. They decided to use Santa and began refining his look. He must be friendly, round, wear big black boots, and of course feature the red an white corporate colors. Thus, the Coca-Cola Santa was born. Haddon Sundblom painted every image featuring Santa and Coke. Sundblom did nothing but paint Santas year round from 1930-1950. By 1940 Sundblom’s Santa took over. It became common knowledge that Santa has to wear red and white and thus the public had a unified vision of Santa. Funny how there are campaigns to keep Christ out of Christmas, but we can’t lose Coke. Ah the joys of "halmark holidays." Advertising Nirvana.

Pity Pepsi. They must hate Christmas.

I don't know where to find these things.

Jackie and I went on a massive quest for Pixi Stix. I found NONE at Kroger, Tom Thumb, Walgreens, Sweet Factory, Walmart, Target, or the Dollar Store (my normal supplier). No Pixi Stix for me.

What would you do?

If there's a giant alligator on the highway what would you do?

a. Call animal control
b. Throw cones at the alligator

"Police threw orange traffic cones at the gator, but it just snapped at the cones and flung them away."

Good job guys. Link to Story

oh what a day

For the record I'm better. About 97% back. Eating still feels funky.


What a day.

Capstone, the class where I work with two different culinary students and design them logos, menus, stationary, and corporate id while appeasing the interior design students. I’m working for two different restaurants, a sushi bar and a steak house with Fridays’ flare. The sushi bar is coming along great, the steak house is less than par. The core of my problems sits with the fact that the girl changed the restaurant name on me and gave me clip art to inspire me. I met with my graphic teacher about it today, we discussed that the clip art boot wouldn’t work. In walks miss clipart boot culinary student. Well after about 2 seconds of looking at what I have, she screams, “I hate it! This is not the boot I showed you! Where’s the picture I gave you!?” My response, “I can’t make a logo off of clipart.” Culinary girl gets pissed and storms out. Enter the Interior design teacher. She starts yelling at me, “You should have left the attitude at the door! You can’t do this! YOUR JOB IS TO APPEASE HER! In the real world you’d never survive!” and on…
I’m pissed and tearing up. My graphic teacher told me “whatever you do, stay away from the clip art boot” and here I have an interior teacher yelling at me to use it. Teacher storms off. Miss culinary clipart comes back and starts shouting at me, “whatever. Fine! WHATEVER!” Mind you, this culinary student is around 45 years old. The interior student sits down and tries to draw me a logo and tell me to use it. Don’t tell me to use a crappy logo you just made up if you know nothing about logos. I’m not about to touch your floor plans so stay the hell away from my logo. Eventually my graphic teacher comes back and I relay the story to her. Ok, so I cry and my witnesses have to explain it to her while I try to compose myself. My teacher has to go meet with miss clipart on my behalf and mediates. Joy.

My second class, the internship. We pitched our campaigns to dallas city hall today. There was no yelling involved! Hurray! Imagine that! Grown people not throwing a shit fit for not getting a goddamn logo the way they want! Anyway. We pitched two campaigns each then dispersed for an hour while city hall critiqued them. When we were let back in we picked up our campaigns, read over notes and now we have a week to redo them. I keep telling myself it’s good that they put down so many changes, that means they want to use it, right?

On the positive side, I got GOOD mail today. I got paid, stickers and buttons from the Switchblade Kittens, and an autographed book from Meg Cabot. Yay!

To My Favorite Mother

A day for joyous celebration, Happy Birthday Mom.

In other news the stomache flu seems to be winding down. I have regained the ability to eat bread and crackers. Hurray! After 6 days of liquids I was extremely ready to chew on something.

I think I have the plague.

Since Sunday at 1:05 in the morning, I've been sick. I went to a doctor yesterday since there was no way I could make it to class without falling over or reclaiming my throne of power-vomitting. The waiting room of the doc's office had two tv's running simultaneously. Finding Nemo and Ella Enchanted. Trying to watch and listen to both was straining, but fear not Nemo over came his magical enchantment forcing him to obey the fairy.

When I was finally called the nurse weighed me in and I was delighted to see that I did lose some weight. *I've been eating healthy and excercising at least three times a week. I'm aiming to be able to comfortably fit into my bridesmaid dress again before May 14. This task can be daunting as the exercise center only has two treadmills and the third person to come into the room looking to walk or run is SOL. One misfortunate fellow actually farted in my general direction while I was walking, in an attempt to get me to leave. But alas, I'm getting sidetracked.

In the exam room I enjoyed som more high quality Finding Nemo and listened to the nurse make encouraging statements such as, "Whoa... Your blood pressure is really low. That's a really not normal number."

After being poked, prodded and examined, the doctor gave me a fantastic list of maladies and a variety of perscription drugs that are sure to leave me feeling loopey. If I say anything unusual, now you'll know why. I was told don't even think about solid foods for another 3-5 days. Awesome. Pass the apple sauce.

One small step for man, one giant leap for my patience

This weekend I'll be away at a small town in Texas. Why? My boyfriend's mom is getting remarried.

It's a pretty well known fact that the woman and I don't get along and now I'm off to spend a weekend with her. Here's how I found out about the wedding.

wednesday night
Brandon - "Hey, what are you doing this weekend?"
Dani - "No definite plans yet, why?"
Brandon - "Well, my mom's getting remarried and I know it would mean a lot to her and me if you would come. Be my date?"

poop.

I've now managed to secure a weekend away at a "small wedding" with a woman who's most common form of interaction is screaming threats over the phone. I'd be happier if it was a bigger wedding and less time I have to interact with said person. This is the third marriage for Renee, Brandon's mom, and of course all the family will be there.

Now normally I get nervous enough when I have to talk to or deal with Renee, but now it's for a weekend, on her turf, and I'm meeting the WHOLE family. Well at least I've had a whole TWO DAYS of warning. Thanks Brandon. Now I'm not sure I'll even make it to the mall to go buy myself a new dress or something for the weekend. *sigh*

Wish me luck. I'll be back on Sunday.

Happy Easter

This weekend I've done everything in my power to keep busy and ignore the fact that this was my first easter holiday without going home or having some sort of easter dinner. Growing up is really starting to bum me out. First Christmas, now Easter, Thanksgiving is quite possibly soon to follow. I really hate being so far away from my family but I can't exactly follow them around, I know. Besides it's not like anyone stays in a location for more than five years anyway. I guess I've just got a bit of the holiday blues.

Jackie and I went to Easter Vigil mass since the latest mass on Sunday would involve waking up before 10 am. The girl who sat behind me couldn't have been more than 14 and was quite talkative.

"God, I can't believe I'm Catholic."
"What's with this Church anyway?"
"Why is there reading VII?"
"This holiday is stupid. He wasn't even dead for three days, we shouldn't celebrate it."
"(refering to the baptismal font) What's with that bathtub thing?"

wow. Just wow. It was a major trial of patience not to turn around and teach this girl about her own faith. Ah, the joys of teen years.

First day of school

First day of school = done.

Monday - Art Diretction 2 - 1-5
Monday - Design Direction - 6-10
Tuesday - Vector Animation - 1-5
Tuesday - Advanced Presentation Techniques - 6:30-9:30
Wednesday - Work - 2-6
Thursday - Work - 2-8

Art Direction 2 is also known as the Capstone class. I'm designing menus, logos and style manuals. I interact with culinary students and interior designers.

It's the alternative to internships. They bring in a client and we work for them. Our client, DallasCityHall.org and Dallas phone number 311, needs posters, ads, mail inserts and bus designs. Whoever gets the campaign will have their work all over dallas. Sweet. I want it. I want it BAD.

I'm working as a Tutor again. Back to teaching math and english. Long division and diagramming sentences at minimum wage. Indeed.

What an exhausting day.

Catalina Bay.

Catalina Harbor 2
Originally uploaded by dani_wolf.

Yesterday marked a landmark moment in my life. For the first time in my life I got sea-sick, which happened on the boat ride to Catalina Island. The family once attempted the trip to this lovely getaway in the 90s but dad ended up in the hospital the night before we went. Moral of the story, Catalina makes people sick, but if you can get beyond that intial journey, it's lovely.

view from the top

view from the top
Originally uploaded by dani_wolf.

I'm in California, and this was the view from the plane about 20 minutes before we landed. Cool.

hurray

FINAL PACKAGE
box
labels

an 80. much better than expected and undeserved.

Channel v. Barbie v. Gucci

Yesterday I went to the eyedoctor. Always fun having my eyes poked, prodded, air blown in, and blinded by a green glowing machine which we'll call the "optomap".

I walk out of the doctors office and into the eyeglasses selection area and I'm overwhelmed. I hate finding new glasses. It's like trying to pick out a new face for an entire year. After an hour and a half of trying to find Lenscrafters finest I found three different pairs of glasses.

1. A bright pink snazzy pair of glasses with a large pink flower on the side. Channel.
2. A regular set of metal frames that are either pink or blue depending on the light. Also featuring a large BARBIE logo on the side.
3. A fairly normal looking pair of frames, burgandy.

Option 1 was taken away because it was an overwhelming amount of pink and the flower would have obstructed my vision. Option 2 was a little snug so I opt for option three. When I sat down and looked at the label,... gucci. good gracious. That's some seriously expensive taste.

Behold the first gucci item I've ever owned in my life.

Jack Greens Style Manual.

I just printed and put the final spin on my corporate id style manual. I've spent 11 weeks writing over 35 pages on this thing. Here, you can watch me talk for 6 minutes on what it is rather than make me write more.



Still picture

Knowing that I'm done with the work for Corporate Id and 3d packaging fills me with an unending bliss.

That weight on my shoulders... gone.

In much need of a break.

It's been a bad couple days.

I royally screwed up my 3d packaging final and nearly got into a fight with the directer of the print lab at school. Long story short I paid 40 bucks for prints that had blood on them when I picked them up. Fantastic. My final has blood on it. Unbelievable.

Brandon's mom just called and yelled at me. She demanded I stay on the phone with her until she talked to him. After about 30 seconds of awkward silence I hung up.

Somedays art school is like being in kindergarden.

Most schools have some classes that are important, and others that are purely bogus. I happen to be taking a class this quarter in which the teacher is full of it.

For the past 10 weeks I've been studying shapes and what each shape means. This wouldn't be so bad except the teacher will project a large image of a triangle on screen and then ask us, "What does it mean?" That little voice in my head cries out, it's a triangle, it doesn't mean anything! I've spent hours learning about how circles, squares and triangles are not shapes, but rather "primitives" and what each form represents. Let me just say that listening to those lectures on a friday night are just flat out painful.

Anyway, I had a project where we had to use "primitive forms" to tell a story. He referred to the project as a rebus, telling a story with pictures. I opted to go with Wicked, and here's what I came up with. A wicked rebus.

2 am insomnia.

My sleep schedule is screwed up. Stupid daylight savings.

Parking Space Dilemma

When I first started attending this fine establisment known as a school, students and faculty were required to park around the back side of the building. Things worked out well with this setup. The security guards could see everyone out the front doors, and there plenty of spaces for everyone.

The owners of this building wouldn't allow this ideal parking situation to occur. No, let's build a parking garage and tear down the old spread out lot. Within a year the garage was set up and my school was allowed to park anywhere on floors 4 through 7. Ok, it got a little full at times but we managed.

Our school faculty got extremely tired of this. "Why should we park with the students? We need special reserve parking." And thus the fourth floor was deemed faculty only.

This is where the problems begin. Students can only park on 5-7 and each floor holds 100 spots, max and during the prime hours of school there are at least 500 students on campus. 300 spots for 500 students doesn't work. Showing up to school and parking across the street at the Bed Bath and Beyond was an alternative, as well as parking in a dirt field construction area. The dean got increasingly frustrated with the students. Apparently we are not supposed to park in either place, we just have to continually circle the lot until a spot opens up.

The 3,000 students here didn't take to well to that answer. Why would we? The students rebel and start parking anywhere on floors 1-7 that happen to be open. The Owners of the building throw a very large hissy fit and now we have police patrolling floors 1-3, threatening to tow any student who parks on the inappropriate level.

This greatly frustrates me for the following reason. The entire parking garage is not monitored by security, yet it's ok to have police babysitting students on where to park. That's rediculous and a perfect waste of tax payers money.

The Dean finally gets his butt in gear and calls a lawyer and prepares to sue our landlord. Meetings are held, lots of debates, memos, letters, and so on. Bottom line, a new parking lot will be built and finished by 2009. What we do in the mean time, is a mystery. I'm glad we solved that problem.

my forty dollar C

Well I just printed, glued, folded, created and gave birth to a my first package design. I’ve spent the entire quarter arguing with my teacher over a design that we both like and doesn’t look like I want to boil children.

My product is “Toil and Bubble” a bath products set that will change the color of your water, create large amounts of bubbles, or create mist. Of course these can be added together to create a magical enticing bath. I found test tubes in target and fell in love with them. They’re just adorable.

Anyway, I wrote the marketing brief, designed logos, packages, and now this week I had my first set of color printed packages due. Say hello to my $40 C.

bag side 1
bag side 2
box while closed
box while opened
box back
the test tubes that started it all

I get to make changes and print everything off and make it all again next week. Joy. Conversation between my teacher and I;

Mr. Abraham – “I love this. You have a strong package.”
Me – “You always seem to say you love my work, then give me a ton of work to do.”
Mr. Abraham – “Yes, but then you go work like crazy and come back with something even stronger.”

*sigh*

You're in my personal bubble.

I was sitting in a computer lab, diligently working on Advertising Slogans. Out of nowhere a video production student walks up to the empty seat next to me, sits down and turns the chair to face me. This is a fairly empty room, mind you, and there's no shortage of seats. I brush it off and keep working, all the while he continues to stare at me. This proceeds for 10 minutes until he starts uncontrollably laughing while staring at me.

I'm just as confused by this as you are. Art students are crazy.

Why school is stressing me out.

There's no good way to describe what I've been working without pictures.
Corporate ID

This would be my massive pain in the ass Corporate ID style manual. Let me start off by explaining what a Corporate ID is. Imagine any blockbuster you've ever walked into, and notice how everything looks the same. The signs, the carpet, the displays, the way the logo is used, that's a corporate identity. Every major corporation at least 3 binders that are several inches thick that explain down to the last fraction of an inch how the company should be represented. I've been given the task of creating a company, writing a ten page history, explaining how the company works, making the logo, and now creating the corporate identity. Thankfully I don't have to do a 300 page binder, and my minimum page requirement is 21. All the same, a rather large pain in my ass.

Now let's move on to 3D packaging.
The class is much more exciting than Corporate ID, but much more intense. At the start of the class we picked products are random, created a 6 page company history, created a new product, created a logo, designed a package, shopping bag and inserts. We use a large format printer, print off giant posters, then cut fold and glue it all together. In the end you get a great box. HOWEVER, the smallest fraction of an inch off and the whole box won't fold together. Having 26 people in a class room manuevering over posterboard and trying not to screw up a project that costs thirty bucks just to print, well let's just say tension runs high. My first color print versions are to be cut and pasted together on Wednesday, but for now, here's a look at the box, product, and bag (without handles) that I've designed. Box and bag Product in the box

Time to get back to work.

I caved.

This marks the fourth blog I've created. Goodness. The first one was shut down when the hosting company went bankrupt. The next had to be locked down because of random stalkers kept finding me and posting weird picture of decapitated teddy bears. Plus, Leisel (my former roommate) has a crazy/creepy boyfriend that likes to read everything I write. The third journal is entirely fictional, just for fun Harry Potter stuff. The Potter Journal.

Well now that it's settled, I figured I should post a blog for family only. Hopefully this will work out well. =)

I went to 11 am mass today, which is rare as I prefer a good Sunday night mass. Anyway, the presiding priest has a running theme in both homily's he has delivered. "Harry Potter is Evil." The priest called the kids up to the altar to engage them. I try to sit there and pay attention, and I'm watching a flock of 40 children listening eagerly when the priest announced, "Harry Potter is trash, and shouldn't be read." One child started crying and ran from the altar back to his mother. I always enjoy making children cry and shattering dreams while sharing the proclamation of God. Really... *eyeroll*

In other news, my next door neighbor moved out. I'm extremely excited about this as I was growing tired of his random outbursts and shouting matches with his friends.

Finals are upon me and that means I'll be posting a massive amount of art at the end of the quarter. I'm extremely excited about completing my first ever package and shopping bag for bath supplies. It's a hell of a lot of work, but very fulfilling and rewarding.

I suppose that's enough for my first ever post. On here. Now to go and customize this thing. =)