Birthday
Finished, FITC, and Freedom
So… I’m officially a real person. Or at least I’m supposed to be. I’ve finished college, but I’ve yet to find a job… or even job prospects! I’ll always look back at my time at Seneca College as a good one. There’s been ups and downs, but I’d have to say I’ve been the happiest the last two years, learning to do the work I enjoy doing with people who share the same interests.
I’d like to thank a few people, starting with Samina Patel, Alex Steacy and Danielle Pepin. You kept me sane, you kept me on track, you were my partners in crime, as well as on projects. You were always there when I needed an ear to bitch to, or just a shout out for help on work in the middle of the night. You listened when times were tough, when I felt like giving up, in school or otherwise. Thanks big sis Samina, thank you ARECKS, and thank you Danielle… cause I never call you anything silly. Derp.
Next I’d like to thank Frank Duffy, without you I’d never have gotten that Flash site together in time, and Kim wouldn’t have either.
Also I’d like to thank Laura Kucharchuk, Amanda Davy, and Daria Magas-Zamaria (not that she’ll ever read this, lol) for being super-awesome.
Lastly, I’d like to thank Kimberley Hollett for spending many an all-nighter on work, cracking the whip (people will lol hard at this, but in all seriousness, I wouldn’t be where I am without her) lighting the fire under my ass (same applies to this) being my partner in almost every project possible, being my partner in dinner preparation, being my partner in Brawl, putting up with my sometimes grumpy moods, and being all around the best person ever. I love you. <3
—–
With that out of the way, after we finished classes, we all loaded up the truck to take our Senestuff to FITC. FITC was three days full of presentations, booths, swag, and dinners out. I manned the Seneca Booth a lot of the time, answering questions for people that came around, converting videos to show on our screens, and trying to get people to blog. Which they didn’t much. (If anyone’s wondering about the skin, Kim couldn’t get the FTP working with the info we were given. -_-; )
—–
Now for part three, freedom. What have I been doing, what will I be doing? What is next for Craig Follick?
Well, since I got home on Thursday night, I’ve just been hanging out at home, sort of winding down. I borrowed my friend’s PS2 and I’m re-playing my copy of Klonoa 2: Lunatea’s Veil (one of my top five favourite games of all time) to prepare for the remake of Klonoa: Door to Phantomile that’s coming out for Wii next week. Also, Kim bought me Animal Crossing: City Folk and SSX Tricky, so I’ve been playing those too. In the near future (probably tomorrow) I’m going to start building a website for myself, probably simple at first. Finally, my domain will have a little more than just an “Enter the Blog” button! Tuesday, I’m going to a concert with Kim, Ben, Sonja, and Jess, and then I’ll be staying overnight at my place until Wednesday… I haven’t thought much further ahead than that! Job hunting will be soon after, no doubt.
Anyways, I’m gonna go have dinner with my parents now, then go hang with Cindy for a bit, then hang with Nate, Phil and Shayne for a little belated birthday celebration for Nate. Craig, out!
This week
has been friggin’ long for no reason. Don’t know why. It just seemed really long. Sunday night seems forever ago.
Anyways, I did a lot this week. I bought a Dreamcast. I went to many classes. I saw Slumdog Millionaire. I watched Kim get over-spiced on Lamb Vindaloo. I froze to death walking to Steeles Staples only to find that they were out of what I needed. I went on a Viva Orange adventure right after that and froze to death more. Samina liked her birthday present. More lightbulbs turned on in ActionScript class. Sailor Moon is lolz. People seem unable to make plans for the weekend without getting really confused. (Well, just Ben.)
So… the Dreamcast was an excellent investment. I can burn games straight to CDs and play them with absolutely no modifications to the system. It’s awesome. I’ve been enjoying games from my childhood such as Toy Commander and Soul Calibur as well as ones I never got to play such as Jet Grind Radio and Bangai-O. Lots of fun! I can’t wait to play Soul Calibur and Power Stone with Ben and Max this weekend.
Classes this week weren’t terribly exciting, with the exception of ActionScript class last night. We didn’t go to Combustion cause it was just a work period… so after Intro to Print on Monday, Kim and I headed to the grocery store for some dinner supplies and grabbed a pizza for lunch. Wednesday we had two things due in Project Management but they weren’t huge assignments or anything, the rest of the class was kind of a brief on the existence of Microsoft Project and how it’s cool if you… manage projects. Aviva’s Wednesday half of our Intro to Print class was a bit of a work period as well, and we just worked on our business cards with the type logos we’d created last week and had them critiqued by her. After that class we headed out to get Samina’s birthday present, which I’ll explain later.
ActionScript class on Thursday was great. We actually started moving stuff around on the Flash stage, which was great because so far it’s just been placing images and stuff. I’m actually starting to grasp this stuff. It used to be horrifying before, but now it’s starting to make some sense. I think it just took a good teacher like Tim to really get the ball rolling for me. I hope that other people in the class are learning too… because this is a great learning experience while it lasts, and I don’t know if everyone sees it or not. Certainly the people who are visiting our class from the other ones from time to time have noticed I think… I heard they aren’t learning too much in their own class.
Today in AfterEffects, I’m getting confused by the program and sidetracked by blogging. That is all.
Work went pretty well this week. Nothing eventful. After work, Kim, Samina and I went to Cineplex Odeon Varsity to see Slumdog Millionaire in VIP 19+. This meant that the theatre was really small with really comfy seats and waiters. And hoity-toity rich couples who looked at us like we didn’t belong there. Anyway, the movie was great and I enjoyed it a lot. Happy end. I’m not spoiling anything… for the 0 people that read this… but go see it if you can. Or rent it if you read this when my blog actually has readers like a year from now. Lol. Anyways after the movie Kim and I walked all the way to the Annex and had dinner at some Indian place as our usual Thai place was closed (and Indian seemed appropriate after seeing an Indian movie with our Indian friend.). It was pretty good, but the Lamb Vindaloo that Kim usually orders from our usual Indian restaurant was SUPER HOT from this restaurant. I had her leftovers last night with added veggies and a half a can of coconut milk and it still took me a glass of milk and 4 glasses of water just to get through the bowl of it. SO HOT.
Wednesday night, Kim and I headed out to get Samina’s birthday present. We’d decided on the cheapest Wacom Bamboo tablet (as an introductory tablet for her, and incidentally the cheapest one of the bunch and the same one I own). We’d decided on the weekend to get it, but we forgot to ask Sonja to pick it up on Sunday with her 10% Staples employee discount… so we just went out to get it in Toronto. We hiked up from Seneca@York to Staples at Steeles and Keele to pick one up… but they were right out of stock. Of course, it was -13 degrees Celsius out, so we were a little (a lot) pissed and exhausted. We decided to take the VIVA Orange into Vaughan like my room-mate, Patricia, suggested. After hiking back to the university bus stop to catch it, we had some debit troubles but eventually got tickets and got on the bus. If you’ve never rode VIVA… IT’S LIKE, THE FUTURE, MAN. Everything is clean and streamlined and it’s kinda cool for a bus system. We passed a Future Shop and a Wal-Mart Supercentre/Sam’s Club and freaked out… and we were going to turn around until we found a Best Buy, TigerDirect.ca and Staples at the next stop. This proved adequate, as we picked up the tablet from the Staples. Don’t forget, it’s still -13. By the time we’d made it back to the bus Kim was laughing/sobbing at our terrible plight, and her near-hypothermic state. We made it back to the campus in one piece… albeit a frozen one… and made it home and bundled up. Kim’s leg still hurts from the cold a little, we think she got a bit of frostbite. At least Samina liked her present!
Lastly, Kim and I have been watching Sailor Moon episodes out of boredom. It’s funny because like 10 mins of footage is re-used every episode in transformation sequences, and it follows an extremely repetitive formula. I haven’t watched a lot of Sailor Moon before now, and this is really making me appreciate it’s terrible campiness and repetitiveness and… I don’t know. It’s kind of relaxing to watch a fluff show for once. However, I’ll stick to other anime that is good from now on, probably.
Anyways… I’m about to head home for the weekend. I hope it’s full of Dreamcast-playing, hangin’ out, and Combustion homework… but we shall see. Maybe I’ll even find some time to mess around in ActionScript. Woot.
Woot. An Update.
So I haven’t updated in a good two weeks or so. There’s a lot that’s happened… at least in terms of school.
We’ve been doing some print layouts for our Intro to Print classes… for our Wednesday portion we did a 2-page spread in Illustrator. Super Paper Mario seemed like a good subject. It was well-recieved by the teacher when she critiqued it, and I’d say it was one of the better ones in the class. I will upload it with this post in .pdf format. We also did a one page layout in InDesign for our Monday class. I did it on The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass. It would look pretty good, if it weren’t for the fact that the project specs called for an outline on an image and a drop shadow on another, so I don’t think I’ll post it. Ugh.
In Combustion class, we’ve been working on doing some lightsaber stuff… which is kind of fun, not terribly difficult, but lame as I’ve never really liked Star Wars. Also we’re not allowed to make purple lightsabers, as our teacher, Gavin, hates the colour. Lamesauce.
I went back to work for this semester on Tuesday, which will now be the day of the week that I work. It wasn’t terribly busy, and I played Konami Krazy Racers for GBA all morning, and then browsed the internet and played DS for most of the afternoon. The help requests were plentiful later in the day.
In Project Management we’ve been giving the new teacher an idea of where we are in terms of Flash skills by recreating a sample banner ad he made. I’d say mine was extremely close to what his was. We’re to bring in our best work to class this coming Wednesday. I’m trying to convince Kim that we should bring in the Racoon site we made last semester, because it’s awesome. I don’t know what other work I’d really want to show. Maybe my frame-by-frame animation from semester 2.
In my Art and Technology elective on Thursday mornings, I’m to participate in a debate three weeks from now about whether or not the internet isolates people or connects them. Kim and I are on the “connects them” argument side. I’ve thought of some arguments but so far I haven’t really written anything down. We also have a project due in two weeks’ time. It’s a research paper and presentation, and the topic we picked to do was “Computer Games that teach us something useful”. I’m particularly excited to show off Crayon Physics Deluxe and World of Goo to a class full of kids that probably think of video games as Halo and Grand Theft Auto. I’d like some more games to show off though… so I’ll have to come up with something. I can’t think of something right off the top of my head, but I’ll talk to my friends Nate, Ben and Cindy and I’m sure one of them will suggest something. My friend Mike might also know of something. I’d best get on it.
In ActionScripting class, our late Thursday night class (5:10 – 8:50 that often goes overtime is considered a late night class!) we’ve been learning AS3 from the ground up. I’m actually beginning to grasp AS3. Really. Because before, the thought of scripting HORRIFIED me and I’m pretty good at timeline animation and tweening so I sort of steered more toward that. I talked to our teacher, Tim Willison of Oddly Studios, and he said that there is room for animators in the industry and he’d show us a way to create a workflow between an animator and scripter that works well for him. That kind of relieved me. I hope I keep picking up ActionScript, because it’d be great if I could actually be good at it. Good career asset I figure.
And finally, our AfterEffects class on Friday has had us dabbling in simple AfterEffects projects, beginning with Slideshows and applying one filter or so to things and making a short animation. AfterEffects seems exciting. As Kim says, if Photoshop, Combustion and Flash had a baby, it’d be AfterEffects. I guess with the marriage of raster graphics, video compositing and keyframed timeline animation in the same program, it makes sense. I don’t know if it’s my cup of tea though, and I also doubt my computer’s ability to run it properly after I messed around in it for a while. I made a 10 second long animation, and it could only render like 4-5 seconds of it before erasing what it had already rendered. I had to actually output the render to a file to see what it looked like. I think my problem was that my image was too big. I’ll try it with a smaller image later. Also what frustrated me about AfterEffects was the fact that I can’t seem to figure out how to save to legacy formats… i.e. saving for CS3 out of CS4. Basically, anything I make in class I cannot look at on my laptop unless I install CS4. Which I don’t want to do because I don’t want to risk losing my only working install of CS3. Also I don’t like CS4… yet? So ha.
In terms of the rest of my life, things are going quite well. I’ve been into Pokemon LeafGreen which I bought used from EB for like $12. It’s pretty cheap for re-living my childhood with pretty graphics. I turned 21 on the 18th, so happy belated birthday to me, I guess. I got Eats, Shoots and Leaves from Kim, which I’ve wanted for a long time. I also got a book about famous left-handed people from Sonja. I love being left-handed. We get special status. 
My mom also got me a cookbook for college students (which I won’t be for much longer…(!)) and a left-handed planner that’s bound on the right side instead of the left so that… you don’t have to deal with annoying binding when you’re trying to write something. People thought I was crazy when I started a sketchbook from the back. I guess one could say that my birthday was left-hand themed. Well, just two gifts, but… yeah. Ben got me Pineapple Express, which I’ve already seen twice now… but I suppose if I’m bored I can see it again and watch the extras or something. I can’t wait until my flashcard for DS (Ben’s (late) Christmas gift (they were sold out)) arrives in the mail though. That should be awesome.
Anyways, if I remember anything else to write about, I’ll certainly post it.
Calendar
| M | T | W | T | F | S | S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| « May | ||||||
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | ||
| 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
| 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 |
| 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 |
| 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | |||