Finally Home

Well it's been over two weeks since my last entry and my entire lifestyle has pretty much changed since then. Spring Term is over, I managed two A's and an A-, and I'm finally back home in good ol' Georgia. It's been really nice to just relax at home with my family after six months of being away. I ended up getting quite the awesome surprise when my younger sister, Hannah, showed up at my door in Provo with my mom to help me move out. I had had no idea that she was coming. So we had a lot of fun touring around campus and generally just acting like crazies. But now we're back home. We still act like crazies, and she's been dragging me along on her biking adventures in an attempt to make up for my lack of walking to and from campus every day. It was pretty painful at first, but it's gradually getting better. We went out riding in the evening today instead of the morning, and it was actually really exciting. It wasn't ridiculously hot, which was nice, and we got to ride this dirt road through the forest at twilight when all the fireflies were coming out. And our timing was fortunate enough that we were standing on the old graffiti-covered wooden bridge when a train passed right beneath our feet. The wind coming off the cars nearly blew my helmet off.

In other news, I've started working for Flash Potatoes remotely. (Well, technically, I haven't quite started yet. I'm still training, but...still.) It's pretty awesome. I was fully expecting that I'd have to come home and get some lame, poorly-paying day job for the summer, just like everyone else. But instead I get to work from home, doing what I want to do. So my work doesn't cut into my home-time, and my lack of a car doesn't frustrate my work. Hooray. (But I have no idea how to make a Flash file work here on Blogger, so if someone would be so kind as to inform me how to upload a Flash movie, I would greatly appreciate it.)

Also, I went to the midnight showing of Wall-E. It was pretty much amazing. How they managed to pull so much emotion out of robots who barely speak....man. Brilliant.

Now on to the art stuff!

These are the stamps Stephanie and I made for the Museum of Peoples and Cultures. They're having this activity for kids called Passport where each kid gets a little passport and they go around to these stations, each of which teaches about a different culture. When they're finished with a station, they get a stamp in their passport. So these stamps represent the main exhibit (with the same Kachina doll I painted for the poster), the Great Basin, Mesoamerican, Ouelessebougou, Asian, and Polynesian. And now moving on to a bunch of sketchbook pages. I realize you guys already saw this page, but...it's got snow leopards on it now.
My bishopric, BYU 94th Ward
Random guy sitting across the aisle from Hannah and me on the plane home, a stretchy cat-thing, and Littlefoot. We watched The Land Before Time on my laptop during our flight and holy cow, Littlefoot has the most prolonged mourning period ever. He's basically emo for half the movie.
Reliving my childhood with some thrilling Pokemon fan art.
Hannah's feet, a duck, and my fantastically adorable dog, McKinley. He is big and fluffy and I love him to death.
Hannah (represented by the cat-otter-creature, Pinweasel) was cooking the other day and somehow managed to get too many pots going at once.

And here's my last shot of the semester for Kelly's red-head movie. Yay rat.

Classmates and a Crocodile

Funny story. I got an email today from an animation studio here in Provo called Flash Potatoes. They want to give me a job. Apparently, they heard about me from Jake Wyatt (Thanks, Jake). So that's pretty exciting. Of course, I'm going home for summer, but hopefully we'll be able to work something out for fall. It would be pretty awesome if I could get a job animating. What better way to make money than to do what I love doing, right?

Other than that, my life has been pretty boring lately. I go to class (where I draw people instead of taking notes), I come home and read, and I animate hunchbacks and rats.

So here are some folks from my American Heritage lecture. I'm not terribly fond of most of this page, but I do like the girl with the pointy chin.

This one I like much better. The top two are students from my LDS History class, and the guy on the bottom is our teacher, Brother Fluhman, who is made of awesome.

Yay ducks. Man, sketching at the duck pond is harder than I thought. Those things never stop moving. Fortunately, I was able to find a mama duck sitting on her eggs. She was nice and still, though she didn't seem to appreciate my being so close to her nest. She kept spreading out her tail and hissing every time I moved.

Random folks from the ward, waiting around for our ride to Heber for our camp-out. ...And a donkey.

More people from LDS History...

I totally saw that crocodile in the clouds while I was lying on the floor in my apartment, staring at the sky through the window.

Hoorah American Heritage...bleck.

I thoroughly enjoy the Converse All-Stars. And then below that, I was playing with an idea of what Kim would look like as a cat.

This bird-thing was inspired by the shiny white highlight on the clock in the room where I have LDS History. I seem to be getting ideas from a lot of random places lately....

My American Heritage TA, Will.

Kung Fu Panda

I went to a special preview showing of Kung Fu Panda this evening. It was awesome. It was actually a really great movie - better than I expected. It was very funny and original and had some good messages behind it. Jack Black really did an awesome job of making Po feel really natural while keeping him funny and likable. And I did like the message about believing in your own potential and abilities. Overall, it was a really fun movie to watch and I had a good time going up to Sandy with my friends, aunt, and cousins.

So now for the art update!
This is a speedpainting I did the other day while my roommates and I were going over our American Heritage reading. It was mostly just an exercise in color theory and impressionism. I ended up making it into a get-well card for my sick Grammy.

And then we have some more random sketchbook pages. Below are some students in my LDS History class along with an exciting robotic bird-type-thing. I like the guy with the tall hair, but he cut it all off a few days later.

And then there's Stitch, Tarzan, and a rat I'm currently animating for Kelly's film.

Speaking of which, here's my most recent shot of Igor.