Good things on the horizon...

I've got opportunities this week for awesomeness... Here's hoping they go well.

Also, I've been at the hotel for 2 years and 2 weeks now.  And grave shifts are kicking my butt.  I like my job there, don't get me wrong.  I'd rather do that than any of the other jobs at the hotel and I genuinely enjoy it... But lately my body has been telling me it wants to be awake during the day and asleep at night.  Apparently artists aren't nocturnal. :)  

I only get about five hours of sleep at the most and usually three or four.  Somehow I'm still functioning but I'm tired all the time, and regardless of that I still can't make myself sleep more.  Eh well.  Hopefully the good things on the horizon will resolve this before I have to think of something else.

Fluuuuu.

So I managed to get the flu. I thought it might be food poisoning at first, but alas. Everyone else who ate the same food is fine. I don't recommend it as a weight loss plan, but I expect I'll be happy to see the scale when this is all over. I haven't been that sick in a long time. The really horrid part was I was supposed to have an interview for one of my dream jobs yesterday. Luckily through no effort of my own it was moved to Monday. Phew.

Today will be a day of napping and movies. I really needed that too. I've been pretty busy lately. Hopefully I'll get paid soon so I can do my Christmas shopping.

More dreaming...

I decided to do NaNoWriMo this year. The first time I did it was in 2007. I had just gotten divorced and I needed to do something to prove to myself and the world (and my ex) that I could create anything I set my mind to. To write a novel length story in a month means you have to write 1,667 words or more a day to hit at least 50,000 words - anything shorter is a novella or something.
The first day went really well, as did the rest of the first week. The second week however was crazy hard and I had days where it felt like a chore to pop out 500 words. I hated my characters and my plot and everything about my story that week but I kept plugging away. A couple of 5,000 word days at the end of the month meant I won that year, on the very last day barely a hundred words over the 50,000 word goal.
It was a creative kick. I did more art after that and while I've shelved the story to finish at a later date, I still haven't killed it.
The following year I'd just started art school and had five classes. I tried nano anyway, and hit 13,000 words before I quit somewhere in week two.
The year after was the same story. Art school was taking all of my creativity and drive, but I made the honors society so it wasn't all bad.
Somewhere in there though the writing bug bit me and I had a feeling I wasn't done telling stories.
Since I finished art school last December and had only one job at the start of November I though I'd try it again this year. I was already used to carving lots of time out while working one full time job, so I was sure I could do it again... Only there was one problem. I had no plot whatsoever.
Most of my stories have had their roots in dreams. Every now and again I'll get some cool character or setting thrown at me, and it'll take root and I'll just have to write. Somewhat rarely I'll have an entire plot thrown my way by my subconscious, which is really cool.
So when I started to write this year I had nothing but an old woman walking up a hill. A few days into the month I had a seven thousand word outline. Seven. Thousand. And let me tell you it's a good thing I didn't go more in depth with it. As I've gone along my characters have taken on a life of their own and are telling their own stories more often than I'm making them up, which is incredibly snazzy.
In short I've written at least 2,000 words a day and won as of yesterday. I have a bunch of momentum going though and now I plan to finish the story.
It seems weird having graduated art school and all, but I think I could be a writer. I'm sure some of my writing is terrible. I know that there are whole hordes of commas that were rounded up and abused throughout this draft, but at the end of the day... I will have written the first draft of a novel, and that's more than most people can say.
I'm also inspired enough to want to edit and finish the first one, which has waited a long time now.
On the days I'm afraid I can't create my way out of a paper bag, I'll have this living thing that I've made, that perhaps I can hammer into the shape of a novel other people will want to read. That's one of the best feelings in the world. Take that, artistic self-loathing!

Random writing...

So I'm writing a novel... because I wasn't busy enough.  It's going really well... and it makes me feel like I'm wasting my time to be typing here instead of on that... but hey.

Too many elipses.

Only have one job at the moment, so I have tons of free time for noveling and gaming, which makes me happy.  Im working my way through Dragon Quest VI at the moment and holding off on finishing Mass Effect 2 'till the novel's done.  Finished a bunch of games lately... including Dragon Age 2, Gears of War, Skylanders giants, and probably some other things I'm forgetting.

The special for the Hallmark channel I got to animate on (squee!) will air the day after thanksgiving this year, and probably a zillion times this holiday season.  I also got to work on a spot for another tv show, as well as a bunch of commercials.  Yay for stop motion!

And tonight I have to go back and work at the hotel, so perhaps I should get my butt in gear.  Hope everyone is well.

Tired.

So now my hotel job is five nights a week and the studio job is four days a week. I'll let you do the math.

Beds, beds everywhere and not a spot to sleep.

I've taken to napping in my jeep between jobs. It really says something about how tired you are when the back seat of a jeep seems like the most comfortable spot ever. I think I'll get a pillow and blanket out there this week. I've also been napping in the park at lunchtime. The vitamin d is doing wonders for my attitude. Hopefully my boss will get the memo and drop my schedule down some. On the upside, my student loans are getting paid.

For stress relief I'm currently playing mass effect 2. Bioware makes me happy.

Feast!

I got hired this week at two studios! One has a day's worth of animation work for me and the other has a week's worth of puppet fabrication.

This animation/artist business is so often feast or famine, but every now and again things go just right. At the moment this means I technically have four jobs this week, three of which I'm having fun doing, and one of which I'm doing because it pays the bills. Oddly though it isn't particularly stressful other than getting to the right place at the right time. To be honest I got an email about one of the jobs and due to the fact there are people with the same names involved at both places I nearly goofed up which studio at which to be.

Nearly.

With all the furring of puppets I've been doing this year, you'd think Laika would be more interested in calling me back though.

...because I need MORE jobs. :)

Technolust

I want an iPhone 5. It's near the end of my contract and I could technically upgrade right this second if it weren't for the fact that the preorders sold out in an hour or so... But even so I want to jump ship and ditch my crappy carrier too. Which means I have to wait till January. Meh.

So in the mean time I wait and download the new iOS. So far it's neat. Some of the features I was most interested in are only available for the 4s and 5, so I still have to wait... But alas.

In other news I'm still animating. And they asked me to come back next week and work on another project, so things are going well. I still have no social life but I'm taking steps to make that happen too.

Lastly, blogger apparently has an app, new from the last time I went looking. No landscape keyboard or anything, but perhaps this means my blog will update more. :)

So I saw Paranorman, and immediately went home and applied to every Laika job I could find.  Which ultimately means I have to try and remember how to update my languishing webpage so my resume is accurate.  Which means finding my original InDesign file so I can upload the snazzy "hey, I'm a designer type person" looking one for downloading purposes so that it matches the simple text version.  And then I remembered my reel is somewhat old now but I can't put all the fun things I did this summer on it until January (at which point there will be more professional work than student work on there, yay!), so there's no point messing with it right now.  And then I remembered that there are a couple of tweaks I'd like to make to my web page.  And then I remembered that unfortunate blog post that just made me look like a douche, which is still out there somewhere whether I delete it or not (nothing is ever forgotten on the internet).

Man.  Job hunting is hard.

But when it comes to jobs, I find I have more than most people right now.  Still working the hotel (in spite of the very insistent and passionate advice that I quit and rely only on the entertainment industry and unemployment), and soon will be moving up the small food chain, if only in implication rather than actual title or pay (thankfully - there are distinct advantages to being a peon).  I like it in some ways.  It's a great safety net, I work for the best General Manager I will likely ever have in my life (and I really appreciate her, not to mention she's fun AND professional - a very delicate balancing act), my student loans, car payment, and rent-type expenses are getting paid for the most part, and my coworkers offer a lot of amusement.  The job is not too easy, nor too hard, and I truly enjoy it at times, but it's not what I want to be doing with myself.  I look forward to the day when I can leave because I have enough art type work to keep me afloat.  Though I fear that day will be followed by a day where I have to find something like it to fill the holes, but that's another problem for another day.

I spent the summer working 40+ hours on a television special, which was awesome.  I learned a lot, made friends, gained valuable experience, and worked my butt off.  Also, since it involved a bunch of people I'd worked with before, we ran like a pretty well oiled machine for the most part.  It was like a reunion in some ways, and I'll admit I teared up near the end at the last few, "we've got the best crew ever and I can't wait to work with you again" speeches.  Hopefully we will get to do another thing together... I truly love it.

The wonderful people at the hotel also scaled back my hours for me to 24 a week, so I could run off and do the project without completely killing myself.  I also have an art gig I'm working on every week for about another 10 hours, give or take, so once I figured out my time management, things went very, very well.  I think the only reason I hit any kind of burnout is because there was a definite end in sight, or I might have gone with that schedule indefinitely.

Oddly, when you go from working almost 80 hours a week to 40, you have loads and loads of free time.  I remember having only one job for years at a time and feeling like it took so much out of me that my free time was nonexistent, but suddenly it was like I had a wealth of free time.  It may have been an illusion, but it was there.  I spent about a month doing fun things like art for myself, finishing off some of the video games I'd gotten halfway through but not finished, and small bits of nothing.  After about a month of that though, the old artistic self loathing comes back into play, and suddenly I felt completely guilty for not doing anything with myself.  Go figure.

Luckily the studio came through with a bit more work - this time for some commercials and random projects - so now I'm filling all of my free time with studio work and that aforementioned art gig.  Once again I'm crazy busy, but I think I'm thriving with it.

Hah.  I remember thinking in my late teens that it would be crazy to work full time and go to school full time... and now I'm so used to it that when I have only one thing to do I get bored.  Though I miss the video game time. :)

"The Saga of Harold and Ang"

Or "How I'm an epic Troll"

I'm working in an animation studio that just happens to be squatting in a building that was once an old grocery store.  Now it's fairly beat up, and the rumor is that it'll become condos or something in its future, but my coworkers have determined that it houses a ghost.  They've named it Harold (or discovered his name, I'm not sure which), and being artists have drawn pictures of Harold all over the place.  New Harolds are discovered and created daily, and it's become a fun game to find them all for some of us...

On June 12th I got a wrong number text asking for a Harold.  In gleeful abandon at this bit of random chance, I decided to send some of the Harold pictures from around the building.  The following are the texts that followed.  Her texts are in blue, and my replies are in green.  I've not cut anything out of this thread, nor have I edited it.

Is this harold this is ang
-Punky brewster ...


No, that is Harold.


Also, this is Harold.


This too, is Harold.
 
 
More Harolds.
 


So i went to jail and got a new phone and u an ur num came to thought so as gust now a gray truck went by just now
-Punky brewster ...

So r u still at work
-Punky brewster ...

June 13th.  At this point I thought, "hey, why don't I just keep sending this random person ALL the Harolds?  That'd be fun!"  Also, my understanding of the situation at this point is that this girl named Angela was in jail, but now that she's out and has a new phone, she's trying to remember Harold's number.  I gather he came to visit her in jail with his mom as a guest and he also drives a gray truck.  Though in re-reading it now, apparently that translates to, "So I went to jail, and now that I'm out and have a new phone, I thought of you and figured I'd text you.  Was that your gray truck just now?"  To which I replied:

Harold.


Narwhal Harold.


Banana Harold.


Tranny Harold.  
 

Unamused Harold


Red hot Harold pepper.


I love the story so u at work
-Punky brewster ...

Rule maker Harold.


Harold is always at work.


Harold meeting.


June 14th.  At this point I thought for sure the girl would  find the real Harold she was looking for, or realize someone was messing with her.  I figured I'd just keep sending Harolds until she let me know she knew I wasn't Harold.

Muppet attack Harold.


So where u be today
-Punky brewster ...

 
 (No caption was included in this one, since it's already in the picture.  This is the escape route map of the building, and someone had drawn a creepy "Harold is here" right next to the "you are here."  It made me giggle.)

Work or on the beach
-Punky brewster ...

Sandy Harold.
 

Work i see
-Punky brewster ...

(Apparently the real Harold works somewhere that includes sand.  Though this is really sawdust, so I suppose I can understand her confusion.)

Tantrum Harold


Venting Harold.


So tell  me wer u want me 2 meet
-Punky brewster ...

Doorway Harold


(clearly I was thinking "run away!" here.  I tried from here on out to make the responses match what she'd asked as much as possible.)

So please comm get me i need some
-Punky brewster ...

(Woah!  Some what?!  My first thought was that she was looking for sex, but at this point I know she's from Coos Bay, OR, which is one of the meth capitals of the world, so perhaps it is drugs?  I'm not sure. In any case, she started calling my phone here.  Luckily I'd thought to ditch my personal greeting for the informal computer one.  She didn't leave voicemails for most of the many calls, but here are the three that she did.)

**dead air** Hey, I was hopin' that maybe you were in town, or close to town or whatever.  Bah.        

(Followed by this voicemail.)

Hey it's Angie.  Uhm... what, uh... what are yoooou, hello I need your help.  Hullooo.       

(And a third voicemail.)  

Hullo.  Uhm.  You're not comingtof-inpickmeup?


(...she still thinks I'm Harold, which is disturbing in itself... but the weird part is, she thinks this is perfectly normal behavior for the real Harold. ...and back to texting we went.)

Creepy hermaphrodite Harold


Megalomaniacal Harold


Mirror Harold.
 
 (Seriously, this is viewable only in the bathroom mirror.  It's a bit creepy.)

Sad cookie Harold


Wh y so sad
 -Punky brewster ...

Abstract Harold


(June 15th.  This can't possibly go on, can it? )

Edvard Munch Harold


Chompy Harold.  In 3D!


So i want  to no wha his name is i like the book but whats the title and oh i dont no how to read
-Punky brewster ...

(Yes, apparently it *can* go on.  And apparently she texts with her voice and her autocorrect has taken it upon itself to spell everything BADLY.  Which just goes to prove that autocorrect, like furbies, is an evil, self aware entity bent on world domination.)

Avenging Harold   
   

Dapper Harold


Ragtime Harold 


(June 16th. I figure she's got to be getting bored by now.  Also that last one is a ripped pair of underwear.  I wish I'd known that before I touched it for the picture.) 

Runaway Harold


R u gong to work if u or rag want  to share  im n empire
-Punky brewster ...

(Empire is a neighborhood in Coos Bay.  The meth capital of somewhere, for those that have forgotten. Have we gained a third player?? Who is this mysterious "rag"?  What are they sharing?  I doubt seriously it's a ride to work.  I'm still betting on meth here.)

Emergency Harold
 
(It's an emergency light.  Heh.)

Ceiling Harold


(June 17th.  It's been 5 days.  There's no way this girl hasn't figured out she's texting the wrong number.  I keep sending pictures of ghost Harold!  But she replies.)

Horrifying Harold
  

I like him
-Punky brewster ...

(Of COURSE she likes the scary one!)

(June 19th.  The 18th slipped by with no texting, so I figured she's finally figured out she's got the wrong number.)

Shadow puppet Harold


 I love them but what else r u doin and i need some so bad plese  tell me u  can help me
-Punky brewster ...

Lurking Harold


Toast Harold


Sandy Harold


(Woo!  I finally found one in sand!  That would have been great for the other day, but, y'know.)


So r u close
-Punky brewster ...

Holy Harold


(June 20th.)

Awkward family photo Harold.


Lubed Harold


(What?!  He's in a pot of vaseline!  *I* didn't put him there.  Sheesh.)

(June 21st.  She *must* have figured this out now, yeah?  I have to wonder if at this point, all the ghost Harolds are making her think that the real Harold has taken so many drugs he's fallen off the deep end.  I have delusions that she may just be so horrified by this, it'll scare her straight!  ...yeah, not so much.)

Drowned Harold


Pet rock Harold


Broken Dreams Harold


(The plastic container is labeled "Broken Dreams")


(June 22nd.  I've figured she's found something else to do, but now I've got like 50 Harold photos that need a home, so I decide to just keep sending them until I get an, "OMG WHO R U??" text.)

Screwy Harold.  And demanding Harold.


So  i need some help some one just got me again
-Punky brewster ...

(Holy crap, she's still here!?  And what does that even mean?  Did someone deliver her more meth?  She wouldn't be needing help already then, would she?  Or is she trying to kick it?  I don't think so, since she wanted to share with Harold and rag just days ago.  Or is she just needing another shipment of puppies?  Will the world ever know?)

Harold in the wall.


(June 23rd.)

Wall Harold redux.


(June 24th. Ang begins to question.)

Is this harold

-Punky brewster ...

Strung out Harold 

K so i have a genarator and i want to sell it help me

-Punky brewster ...

(For some reason she found "Strung out Harold" reassuring.  Wha-- I don't even...)

So im walking down ocean were r u

-Punky brewster ...

(Ocean Blvd. is a street in Coos Bay.)

Ice cream Harold

So were r u

-Punky brewster ...

Christmas Harold

********************************************************

So that's where we are as of 2:52 am on the 24th.  It's been 13 days and this girl has been having the longest running wrong number conversation of her life, in which the person she's talking to has done nothing but send her random pictures of a ghost named Harold. I've sent her 49 of the 60+ that I have.  Where will it end?!

This is why you don't do drugs, kids. 

    

Well the stress dreams have quit... because I have three jobs.

At the moment I've cut down my hours at the hotel to 24 a week.  I'm working grave shifts on the weekends (Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights), and during the week, I'm working another 40 hours at an animation studio!  Phew.  I was hoping that would come around, and it did.  Nondisclosure agreements mean I can't talk about it, but it's stop-motion, and I'm excited.  I've also been hired as an on-call animator for when they start shooting, which is good too.  Perhaps I can do some rigging as well, since that's fun and interesting sometimes. 

Stop-Motion seems like it's the most MacGuyver-esque kind of animation there is.  It's all about fixing weird problems with duct tape and paper clips (really; I rigged something for those Bing commercials a while back with just those things), and the puzzle solving involved is fun.  Also, they want me to animate, so hey: awesomeness.

The third gig is a freelance job doing a web comic.  This is awesome on many fronts, not the least of which is getting paid to do comic work.  Also, I just have to be the art monkey.  There are a couple of other people that take care of the hard stuff like script writing and social media.  Phew. 

There have been a couple of small freelance animation gigs in the last couple of months also; one of which I enjoyed immensely, and the other of which the client dropped off the radar completely.  That was odd.  The fun one though, that one will hopefully turn into a series, which should be even more fun.  It taught me what I'd forgotten about flash, not the least of which was that flash is a buggy, cruddy program in so many ways.  Give me illustrator for vector drawing any day!  It did, however, give me a basis for learning Anime Studio Pro, which the boyfriend was wonderful to give me as a graduation present.  So far, that program is flash minus the annoying bits.  I'll probably have more to say on it as I practice, however.

I also got a Wacom Inkling from my mum and pop for a graduation present, and I've been exploring its potential as an animation tool.  It saves layers which easily export to photoshop with the press of a button, so I've done a few experiments with animations done on one sheet of paper.  It's a little weird to use for some things... because there's a gap between the pen tip and where the censor actually picks up the pen, it's not a great tool for finished line art unless you are extremely careful about how you hold the pen, and even then it's not perfect.  It is, however, really good for concept sketches.  I've used it with both photoshop and illustrator, and there are awesome things you can do with both.  Photoshop gathers the pressure sensitivity, and Illustrator (with a 95% smooth on the lines) ends up with pretty passable lineart that doesn't need much tweaking after some practice.  I should have been typing up my thoughts on it here, rather than facebook perhaps...  but that's the gist of what I've learned about it.

I got another free ticket for E3 this year.  The boyfriend was trying to get one too so we could both go, but he got turned down the other day because he has no purchasing power for Apple.  Bummer.  I'm still going to go, though, and pass out business cards like crazy.  Maybe that'll get me some more work once the animation gig is over, again.  The last thing I did a bunch of work on, video game-wise, was for Doctor Who Worlds In Time.  That was a blast to work on both because I loved the art style, and I love Doctor Who.  Go play it: it's free and a fun adventure/puzzle/mmo type game.  You can play it here.

Lastly, I've been teaching my friend Becky jujitsu.  She wanted to learn and I wanted someone to practice with, so I'm calling it a win-win scenario.  Teaching is one of the best learning tools ever.  She's forcing me to remember things I hadn't had a lot of chances to practice, since I haven't had anyone to practice with since I've been in Portland.  She's also my height, which is awesome.  It makes throwing each other much easier on both of us.  Unfortunately, when showing her what she was doing wrong in a slap fall, I managed to hurt my wrist a bit.  ("And this is why you don't do this!" she says, with a wrist brace on.  D'oh.)   If I can remember to quit putting weight on it, it'll be fine in another week though.

Well, thankfully I get to do four tens this week at the studio, which means when I get off work at 7 am on Monday, I can go home and sleep instead of going straight to the other job.  That's a bit wearing; I've been zombified the last couple of Mondays.  It still means I have about an hour gap between jobs on Friday, but I'm used to being up all day Friday before work anyway.

It is ironic that all of this means my stress dreams have quit.  It's probably because I feel like I'm doing something useful now; something that I've always wanted to do.  Yay life.

After graduation blues...

Nobody told me that after graduation I would have stress dreams. Well they did, sorta, but I didn't think they'd be due to an extreme LACK of stress. I don't have anything I have to be doing, including job hunting, because I have what amounts to a day job. At night. Which pays the bills. I just have found the art front rather more lacking. Though I could be trying harder. Instead I'm just working on my skills and making sure I do something arty every day. Really. I've been putting off skyrim for it, and that's responsible right?
In any case, life is mostly good. There are a few opportunities on the horizon, and while they're not the one I was really hoping for, I'm excited for them all the same. And I'm planning ahead for the day when I have to start paying back those student loans. silly things. But I got a lot out of school and I'm really happy I went when I did. I made some good friends and colleagues, and my first short film is being screened again this weekend at the Hollywood theater. No matter how many times that happens it still feels pretty awesome.