adiva_calandia

Latest creative pursuits chronicled on the blogosphere:

Photography: Des Moines, WA

Music: "This Year"

Oh god I need to go grocery shopping like right now.

Art!

( . . . I would put a relevant quote here, but I left the book in my room. Damn. )

The coloring is fresh raspberry juice. (Well, it was what I had handy!)

It needs a little more editing in Photoshop, I think, but I'm pleased with it.

So recently I got a key to the Drama building's computer cluster.

And realized that there's a scanner in here. And Photoshop on all the computers.

Which means I can actually work on the pictures I draw on my crappy lined notebook paper in a way that's not taking a picture with my crappy webcam and trying to make it look not crappy with my crappy GIMP Photoshop knockoff.

Which means I can bring you works in progress like this!

( Team Buffy )

Speaking of Twilight, at some point I may rant about this clip and how much the fact that this guy is filming his violence against Bella makes my skin crawl (it's not the violence against her that makes me twitch, it really is the camera in his hand), and I'll relate it to the feminist theory we've been reading about the male gaze in cinema, but right now I'm too busy just feeling my skin crawl. And I'm hungry. I should go eat.

YAY SCANNER. If anyone with the appropriate skill set and too much time on their hands wants to color the stuff I upload, lemme know.

Are you sure this is logistically sensible? Aspen tried to hide behind me in chat. I asked if that made sense, since I'm 5'0" and she's probably 8+" taller than me. Batya said she suddenly imagined us as chibis playing that out. Thus . . .

Just had an entertaining half-hour chat with Doc, which ranged from a proposal before the school senate to abolish letter grades for freshman and replace them with pass/fail grades, to alleviate stress and provide more time to participate in extracurricular activities (need I say that this is a monumentally stupid idea?) to professors publishing books to, finally, Godzilla and the inability to turn off the critical eye.

Doc spent a good fifteen minutes describing "the Gospel of Godzilla" that he taught to some of his students a few years ago. According to him, Godzilla is on one level the Japanese fear of atomic power; on another, Godzilla is this thing beyond human understanding, to whom we are insignificant and from whom all moral stances are taken. He also talked about Godzilla being a guy in a rubber suit, and how that alienates the audience in a Brechtian way.

He brought in a buddy of his, a film studies prof at Pitt, to talk to the class, and the visiting prof spent the whole time talking about camera angles and cinematic techniques. Doc asked him afterwards "Can you just enjoy a movie anymore?" The prof said no. Doc pointed out that since he's not a film scholar, he can go see Jurassic Park 3 and know that it's a terrible movie, but enjoy it nonetheless because he can close his critical eye when he watches movies.

". . . Doc," I said, "if you're watching Godzilla 2000 and coming up with a Gospel of Godzilla, you're not watching it with your critical eye closed."

He cracked up and admitted that that was true. Clearly it's not the same critical eye, but it's wide open and observing nonetheless. I told him that I sympathized; I can't watch Supernatural without noting the race and gender issues. I can enjoy it, sure, but I can't turn off that analytical part. And having had a little tech training, I get to watch it with two critical eyes open -- I'm noting lighting, sound design, camera work, at the same time. (I still think one of the most brilliant bits of sound design I've heard is the moment in "All Hell Breaks Loose, Pt. 2" when Jake says "You should be dead," Sam looks at Dean -- the realization hits him -- and a scratchy fiddle wails on the soundtrack. GNNH. But I digress.)

And then we got off on rants about whether it's better to have a dumb evil leader or a smart evil leader.

*thumbs up* Not a bad morning, even with the cold.

Oh, and! I drew something cool.

( Playing with foreshortening, perspective, and action )

A CMU/Pittsburgh picspam!

( Also known as, I have a new camera! PLAYTIME. )

Stolen from innerbrat and a_is_for_amy!

Instructions:

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first article title on the page is the name of your band.

2. http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four words of the very last quotation is the title of your album.

3. http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/
The third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

4.Use your graphics programme of choice to throw them together, and post the result.

( I've done a couple. )

Art! :O Art that evidences exactly how much attention I was paying to Religion this morning!

( I want you to look at me. )

One day, I'll learn to do people in something other than profile. And I'll have a way of getting pictures online that doesn't involve holding them up to my webcam and then GIMPing the living daylights out of them. And I'll draw them on something other than lined paper so I don't have to GIMP the living daylights out of them.

Today is not that day, but I'm okay with that.