Recently in Design & Photography Category

I've been admiring some fun composite photos by one of the people I follow on Flickr, so this morning at 6 a.m. while on console, I decided to try it myself using my iPhone as the camera. I put them together in Photoshop and this is the result. It was a fun little project to do, so expect to see more various scene composites in my photostream.

The new Japanese module, Kibo, was just "ingressed" today -- meaning they opened the door and went inside. It is huge! The crew looked like they were having a lot of fun bouncing off the walls -- literally. There aren't even any wall lockers installed yet, so the module is nothing but empty space in which to play. I bet those are the most fun times to be an astronaut.

Heavens rejoice! Angels are singing! The semester is over and I survived taking two classes on top of all my other overcommittments -- and I think I may have even managed to earn an A in both classes. (For the first time since taking classes at UHCL, this was in doubt. It's easy to earn an A when I take a single class. It's harder when I double the class workload and add in all the other stuff from this spring!) I had my final test in my digital media studies class last night and as I walked out just before 8:30, hand aching from the four pages of essay questions I had to write, I felt so, so relieved.

(Side note: When did my hand become so wussy? In high school, I used to write pages upon pages of notes by hand. I only remember my hand aching once -- my senior year, towards the end of the week of IB exams. By that point I'd probably hand-written tens of pages of discussion and essay questions. Ugh. I can type much faster than I can write, that's for sure.)

My 3D modeling class finished up last week when we all presented our final projects. The assignment was to create a story and depict it using at least 5 models and 10 frames. Now, I'm not much of a writer so the story part was a little tough, but it was easy to come up with something I wanted to model. Since I'm already starting to think about our November trip to Japan, I decided to model some Japanese things and write a story about a ninja. I'm not going to include the cheesy storyline that goes along with the scene I depicted, but I'll show you the models. I was pretty happy with how the project turned out. Four months ago I had zero knowledge of how to use 3D modeling software, much less make something actually look somewhat realistic. And after four months, I was able to produce this! Pretty cool -- though the learning curve for Maya is so freaking steep that I could continue for another year and still not understand how to do everything I want.

Two weeks ago, I met with a client about my first real paying design gig -- putting together the program for a local event to be held in late March. They had contacted one of my former professors at UHCL, and he put them in touch with me. When we met, and they found out that I am not simply a student, but that I am working on a design degree and doing the odd job here and there on the side, they seemed a little thrown. But we talked about what they needed, and they gave me all the materials from last year including a sample and four CDs worth of files. They asked how much I charged, and I was honest with them: I told them that I I would talk with my professor to come up with a reasonable rate considering what they needed done and my experience level.

We communicated via email over the past two weeks, organizing the project and what needed to be done at what point. The event is in late March, and the printer requires 10 working days. That put our "to-printer" date sometime in the middle of the first week of March. Their deadline to the event participants to get their photos and other materials in was March 1.

That deadline would leave me exactly 3 days to put together an entire program for an event. Three days. Not nearly enough time to do quality work. So I expressed my concern that the timeline was too tight for me to do an acceptable job and asked if the deadline for participant submissions could be moved up to next weekend. They seemed amenable to that, and we were working towards that new date, which would leave me a full week to put together the program.

Last night I finally heard from my professor and sent the client an email with my hourly rate, along with an estimate of how many hours I expected the project to take.

This morning I checked my email before I left for work. The client emailed. They said nothing about my rate, but instead said that they were not going to be able to work with my schedule to get materials in next weekend. "Thanks anyway."

Am I wrong to be feeling a little put-off here? I spent two weeks talking with them, and while I had not started doing any design work for them, I had started putting significant thought into what I need to get together and what kind of schedule I needed to be on. It seems a little odd that they told me they no longer needed me after I gave them a quote on the cost of the job. Maybe they thought I was too expensive. On the contrary, my rate was reasonable and much cheaper than a professional would be.

Oh well. It's not a huge deal, and I think I'm mainly disappointed because I was looking forward to getting the experience of working for an actual client and doing some real-world work.

Moving on...

I mentioned a few weeks ago that one of the classes I am taking this semester is 3D modeling. Though I've messed around with a lot of graphics programs, 3D modeling is one area I have never even tried. Never even opened any of the software. So I know nothing about Maya or how to use it. And yet after opening the software for the first time on Wednesday, yesterday I made this bowl of fruit.

Pretty cool, right? I think it turned out surprisingly well for my first attempt.

The weekend was nice. I still can't believe I set a new 10K PR on Saturday. Crazy. My other weekend workout plan to bike 20-25 miles yesterday morning was thwarted when I woke up at 7:00 to see a blanket of thick fog covering the area. I drove over to the high school, wondering if the fog might be thinner over there, and indeed all of the Bay Area Multisporters were there and ready to ride. But the fog was just as thick, and I did not feel comfortable. I've had enough close calls in broad daylight, and I really was not liking the idea of riding around Clear Lake in conditions that would prevent cars from seeing me until they were practically upon me. I don't even have a light on my bike (because I don't ride at night). Everyone else took off, while I climbed back into my car feeling a little bit sheepish. Oh well. I make my own decisions. I made up for it with an hour on the bike trainer instead. My first outdoor ride of the season will have to wait until next weekend.

Last night Jose and I went to the Rockets game against the Jazz. Yao was out for the evening with a respiratory infection, and his absence was obvious. The Rockets could not get in a groove, and ended up losing by almost 10 points. We still had fun.

Jose went flying yesterday afternoon after the fog had finally dissapated. He's scheduled for his check ride -- aka the final big test with an FAA examiner who, if he passes, will sign off on his private pilot's license -- on Friday afternoon. Once he gets his license he'll finally be able to take passengers (ahem, me!) with him, and I'm so excited to finally be able to go flying with him that I can barely stand it. Everyone cross your fingers for good weather! And send lots of good luck wishes Jose's way!

My "cool-down" from the 10-Miler yesterday was an afternoon walking around the Bayou City Art Festival. My legs felt (and continue to feel) surprisingly good. Only minor soreness. I was much more sore on Friday and Saturday after playing catcher Thursday night.

The Art Fesitval was much better than last year, when Jose and I headed downtown after a weekend of rain to find that 75% of the artists had packed up and gone home. This year everyone was still there, despite some drizzle. It took us about two hours to cover the whole site. After that we had dinner at Cafe Adobe, where we sat outside but were driven back in by a sudden but intense downpour. We were under an awning, but it leaked, and I didn't want to eat beans that had gotten all watery from being dripped on. It was an interesting meal.

Things I bought:

• A small flower vase/stand from Meyer Wood Designs (the one pictured at top left). It is really neat. I tried to find a single flower for sale at Randall's last night to put in it, but all they had was bouquets. Full disclosure: I snapped a single small flower off a large mum sitting outside the store. No one will notice! And I wanted a flower for my vase!
• A matted 5x7 of this photo from Big World Photo. Because it made me laugh a lot. All of her photos were of little figurines doing funny things. Jose bought this one because he said every time he looked at it, he heard the sounds of a construction site in his head.
• A gnome-be-gone Superman from Sugarpost, similar to this one, but with a cape and able to hang from the ceiling. I've seen this guy's work in the Uncommon Goods catalog and like it.

Things I would've seriously considered buying if I had unlimited amounts of money:

• One of Sean Fitzgerald's photographs. He had some gorgeous shots of mountains, deserts, and even Patagonia.
• One of Jennifer Cavan's pastels -- particularly the ones with starry night skies. The intense colors were awesome.
• Something from the Pressed Leaf Botanical Art booth. It was amazing to see what they made with all natural components like leaves and berries. I particularly liked Cropped Maples and Aspen Ridge.
• One of Michael McKee's awesome pastels. I would've had a very hard time picking just one. I liked Aspen Dream #17 (can you tell I like aspen trees?) and his mountain scenes, but I also liked the red and orange New Mexico-inspired scenes.
• A painting from Geoffrey Harris. His work is inspired by 1950s era toys and games, and I love the style and subject matter -- rockets, planes, robots, and other technology.

Honorable mention for sheer interestingness: Tardy Sculpture, which features sculptures made out of scrap metal and other random parts.

I came home wanting to quit my job and become an artist. C'est la vie.

Houstonist.com offers up some betters views of H-town - Houston Press

A new vision of Houston, through 42 lenses - Daily Cougar (UH)

Last call to come to the opening tomorrow night! M2 Gallery in the Heights, 7:00 - 10:00. Fun and photos, what could be better?

If you've got some free time on Saturday night, have I got an event for you... This show will feature some absolutely fantastic photos of Houston, including two taken by yours truly! I'm pretty excited, as it's my first official photo show. (My two contributions are this one and this one.) If you do decide to come, definitely let me know...

Neat little Flickr app I came across today, letting you embed this nice-looking slideshow of any sets you have...

Typography class ended last night with presentations of the fonts that we spent all semester designing. I ended up happy with my font, though I must admit that it is not the most useful of all fonts. It was inspired by a photo in one of our textbooks showing snippets of the sign for a Noah's New York Bagels shop. See how the sign is really a mosaic and the letters are made of tiles?

After doing a quick search on the net and not immediately finding a similar font, I decided to make a mosaic font. Mine's called Bagel Shop, and here's the poster I made to show what it looks like (click to see a PDF). Obviously mosaic letters also reminded me of the subway.

If you want to use it, you can download it. I still want to do a bit more work on it, not with the letters themselves but with the spacing. Even without that, it's usable right now.

It turned out better than I expected.

Last night I turned my handwriting into a font. It was really easy (provided you have the software) and really fun. I'm very excited. I want to turn everyone's handwriting into fonts now!

If you just adore my handwriting and want to use it yourself, you can! I made it available as a TrueType font that you can download.