Thursday, March 16, 2006

CalArts baby!

Hooray! On Sunday I'm flying over to California for a week of pure relaxation....lol not really.

I made an appointment on Monday to go to Calarts and visit their film department :D I'm really excited. It's quite odd when you already decided your dream school without ever being there. Everything will be great until we get to the topic of.....financial aid....and crappy portfolio lol.

Yeah...my portfolio isn't great right now. I still have huge problems with proportion and anatomy. Oy, even my art critique in class pointed this out 0.o
I still am not sure whether to transfer or finish my degree. I will probably figure it out this summer when I cram and make my arms bleed. I have a plan...if I don't improve this summer greatly I will finish my degree.
I shall: take summer drawing classes, get a pass for the zoo, do "master" studies of cartoon stills, draw people until they are annoyed, and break dance :P

And now random stuff that is happening in Colorado currently.

HOV lanes and Tilly
http://9news.com/acm_news.aspx?OSGNAME=KUSA&IKOBJECTID=fa783fbc-0abe-421a-0004-f1a90731c39c&TEMPLATEID=0c76dce6-ac1f-02d8-0047-c589c01ca7bf
Poor Tilly at auction lol
http://cgi.ebay.com/TILLIE-THE-DUMMY-HOV-LANE-PASSENGER-TILLY_W0QQitemZ7751812682

And morbid but intriguing Body World: I'm bringing a barf back to this.
http://www.bodyworlds.com/en/pages/home.asp

Oh and before I forget :D
New Avatar: The Last Airbender tomorrow
I'm still debating whether to buy the dvds because I wonder if there will be a season pack someday.

5 comments:

Jeff Harris said...

Cal Arts? Not bad. Hope you enjoy it on the West Coast.

I remember my dream school when I a school dreamer. Rhode Island School of Design. RISD. I was a little kid when I first read about it in a newspaper. This guy made this excellent sand sculpture, and that's where he said he was from. They showed off a bunch of his drawings too.

I told my mom "I wanna go to the Rhode Island School of Animation and Illustration," because that's what the guy had called it in the paper. She said, "Alright, now go to bed, boy." Hey, I was seven, go figure.

Years came along, and I still had that dream of going there. Took the SATs, passed them (got my name spelled right and everything) and had them send off my information to all the schools. By the time I got to high-school age, I did learn about CalArts, probably based on reading about guys like Donovan Cook and Craig McCracken going there in those animation magazines (come to think of it, I think it WAS Animation Magazine). I sent off my portfolios to them. Got accepted to RISD. Got accepted to CalArts.

But then I also got accepted to Penn State. So, I chose Penn State because I really wanted to work more on my writing skills as well as my art skills. Plus, my folks wanted me to have a "full education," woefully unaware of the classes you have to take in art school.

Of course, my experience at Penn State was . . . defeatist to be kind. I was stuck, and it was too late for me to reapply to CalArts and RISD. So, I went to Old Dominon. Didn't want to stay near home, but at least it was a real school with an excellent art department and an excellent English department.

Got my major in Fine Arts (concentration in Illustration and Design) and my minor in English. I became the first in my family to go to college and stay there and I got the diploma to prove it.

Regrets? I had a few, but something told me to stay at home. Three years after I started college, my grandmother passed and my grandfather got Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. I'm pretty much his caregiver now. It's hard, but you do what you got to do. But at least I've managed to remain creative.

Gosh, I think I've gone too long on this. Any, Ellen, hope you have a safe trip and I hope you get in, and when you become a crew member on a show or movie, holler back at your boy!

Jeff Harris said...

Oh, one more thing. Thanks for the reminder of new Avatar. With that and Doctor Who on Sci-Fi, my night will be, as the Doctor would say, fantastic.

Ellen Yu said...

Yeah, Rhode Island's school looks promising as well. I only heard of it because the creators of Avatar came from there lol. I can't believe how incredibly amazing Avatar is...even more amazing is that it is on Nick.

Wow you got accepted into such great schools! That's it I demand to see art on your website pronto :P

You made the right decision. You're a wonderful writer and a great person. Your grandfather will be fine since he has such a great person taking care of him.

Now if I do make it into the business to some degree, I will hire you and Enoch as writers lol. I'm not that great in the writing department so I need all the help I can get. If my company yells at me, I shall slip your names in the credits :D

Thank you for the well wishes.

E.A. said...

Thanks for the vote of confidence, Melon!

This is the first time, AFAIK, I have seen Jeff open up more about his past! Terrific!

Anonymous said...

Definitely finish a degree, then transfer. Transferring before would be more like taking two steps forward and at least one backward. Half your credits prolly won't transfer and you might be subject to some novel undergrad requirements at the target school...like more gened or foreign language. Calarts may not be a typical university, but I think it's safe to generalize anyway. For example, one of my peers took calc 1-3 in Oregon, but had to retake them at my school because it was taught in a different order. Lets use this analogy... If calculus was an orange, my school cut it into three pieces in the way European schools do. The Oregon University also decided to cut the orange into three pieces, but did so in an unconventional manner. Either way, the three pieces equal an entire orange. This person transferred into my school with an entire orange however, because the orange was divided differently the university crammed the orange in their mouth and got medieval on their ass. In the end, this person had to obtain the second and third orange division the way my university arbitrarily sliced them. When you transfer in with a degree, you're the one doin' the cramming of your oranges. :) I would definitely see what percentage of your credits transfer before deciding.