while I am swimming alongside my year-mates in the sea of unemployment and generalized floundering, I have made these things! All are acrylic, chalk pastel, and charcoal pencil on cardboard. Seeing as I can't be splurging on nice paper, and I have a lot of cardboard boxes lying around from the recent move..........

working with my hands is the absolute best feeling. it feels weird to say it like I hadn't really known, because I definitely realized it sometime during school.

I don't know if it's selfish or stubborn of me for thinking that I can get a job that fulfills the creative itch some day.

for now i just need to find some kind of. employment. 

the masses weren't kidding when they said it's gonna be a rough first three years out of school HAHA.

GAMBATTE EVERYONE.

day 3 in brooklyn!
job hunting is as harrowing as they say.

i've been developing two story ideas, one dark, and one cute. i think i need both to keep my brain entertained, lol.

the above character has no name, and doesn't speak. i think in his story there will be no text, and no color.

i have named the above characters Gochi, Nimo, and Ko, who live in Tojii. still tweaking their designs and color, not quite there yet. but minus Ko who doesn't talk, they are lively and chatty. Tojii is extremely colorful.

I have been thinking about painting a lot. and felting, haha.

it is time for a new post! this one's super wordy. scroll to the bottom to skip to the new drawings ^^

for the month of September I traveled to South Korea with my mom :) Somehow it had already been 9 years since my last visit. Did a lot of things, saw a lot of things, met family members I hadn't seen in a long time. I'm really glad I went. I haven't organized all the photos from the trip yet, so that'll be another post. My trip can be summed up in these words: food, mountains, dragonflies, and weird family dynamics, lol.

But big news! I'm making the move to Brooklyn in less than a week, joining a handful of my classmates and a lot of alumni. No, I don't have concrete plans, but I'm determined to try a lot of things and meet a lot of people. Try to figure out what it is I can do. How to make money! Haha. *sob* I'm interested in a lot of things...different kinds of puppet fabrication, set fabrication, visual/concept design, children's book illustration, 3D illustration. But I'm not quite good at one thing, so. I'm hoping through experiencing different "jobs," I can start to funnel my skillset into something marketable.
There are a couple things that are consistent across my work, though...whatever medium it is. I place a huge emphasis on color, and character. I find the details of a small moment just as fascinating and important as an entire story.
I LOVE watching detailed character animation, but DOING it is another beast. It's just. so. difficult, lol.

Anyways! So I've always enjoyed using chalk pastels, but my first real attempts began sometime in sophomore year, for fun. My roommate had a new box and gave them to me. That summer I took a children's book illustration class, and used pastels to do some of the assignments. Then junior year happened.....that was a crazy nightmare lol. Used pastels for my graduation film's visual development. In the middle of senior year I was so stressed that I sought out my pastels again as a kind of mental break from the frenzy of trying to make my graduation film. Ended up using pastels in the film itself. For one of my last semester painting assignments, I used pastels again.
and on my Korea trip, I packed my pastels. You never know.

I wrote all of that because I don't know what it is about them, but I don't fight them like I do with pencil. I think it's because it's similar to sculpture? You have to push the material around; it's very physical, yet forgiving. It's hard to be very detailed with pastels from the getgo because it'll get covered up anyway, so your brain doesn't even think about details when you begin.

Two new recent drawings. Each is about the size of a large hand.
this one I tried combining with charcoal pencil.

heavily influenced by Joe Sorren, a contemporary painter. I absolutely love, love his work. joesorrenart.com

it's alive!

website is good to go! gogogo! TOOK FOREVER.

an update

website resdesign, woo!!! i've been working on it pretty diligently for a little over a week. the address is the same, but instead of using a blogger template, i'm using weebly.com to help me build all the things.
i'm hoping that i can publish it by saturday! all that's left is making the drawings for navigation icons, haha.
i'm really excited, i've put a lot of thought into it. my skills are pretty limited, but luckily there was a super clean template on weebly that gives me just enough flexibility to get creative with the organization.
i find that my best work comes from problem solving within strict limitations. *sigh* haha.
anyways! here is an image preview; i will post when the new site design is published. slightly worried about redirecting the domain name thingy (i always get flustered when i'm dealing with this kind of stuff HAHA), but weebly is so helpful and user friendly, i think i will be okay ^^

also, here are some drawings i've cleaned up to put on my website. you'll recognize the yellow monster. i've sort of grown attached to him after two years, haha. 

finished this in photoshop. the original sketch for it is in the previous post. i've liked fauns since i was little, probably when i first watched fantasia as a tiny child, lol. harpies, centaurs, fairies, etc.

i guess i should try to put in a background? nothing crazy, just a nice suggestion of trees/woods.

i hope i don't ruin it, lol. i'm not very good at backgrounds, but it does look a bit empty.

i'm thinking about how i first used photoshop 3 years ago as i began sophomore year. and oh GOD it was so terrible HAHA. 

a photo post to follow soon.

3 months after graduation

ah. it has been nearly 2 months ^^
have been doing a freelance job that ends this week.
in september i am taking a month trip overseas, and in october i'm going to do my best to find an apartment in new york..somewhere..haha.
i've been really confused about how i should "market" myself.
i have trouble trying to call myself one specific thing, like "illustrator," or "animator," etc. etc. because i don't think i'm any of those.
i'm probably a bit scared, because i'm not quite good at anything yet, and in the industry, they say you get your foot in the door by doing one thing really well. a technical skill.
.....aiya.
honestly, more and more i think i'm not an animator. i love and appreciate the medium so much, but actually doing it is a little bit like torture. is it because my technical skills are too lacking? or am i genuinely not interested in animating in and of itself?
i do love most the design and development part of production.

so while i flounder around hopelessly, i've been developing a story. it's been fun just drawing, like when i was little. the ideas have been floating in my mind since may.

more to come. i don't know in what way this story should be executed. but if there's anything i learned from school, it's that every time i think i "should" do something a certain way, it always fails. some things are their own thing, have their own innate way of expression.

i guess it's my job to try and let that happen without letting my own brain get in the way.