You're a wizard Harry

It always seems that when there’s a vacation or a break from school coming up, the days in between you and that break seem to stretch on forever. I’m going home tomorrow afternoon, but I’m guessing today will be the longest day ever.

The other night I went to see Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire with a bunch of girls from the house. It's lucky that our college colors are the same colors as Gryffindor so we all wore our USC scarves that can easily double as Harry Potter scarves. The crowd was so tame for a midnight opening show. We got there around 10:15 thinking we'd be beat out and there'd already be a huge line formed, but there wasn't a line. People were already in the theater but it was only half full so we got pretty good seats. We spent the time playing trivia games and hanging out. I know that all the people who are devout harry potter fans are going to knock the movie for all the things that it left out, but overall I enjoyed the movie a lot. It didn’t bother me as much as the 3rd one. I thought the special effects and animation were well done and they fit in most of the important stuff. My favorite scenes are when they have something going on in the great hall. In this movie, they were having the Yule Ball and all these ice sculptures were everywhere and snow was falling. Let’s face it, I just want to become a wizard and go to Hogwarts myself.

I had a rather unsuccessful invite last Friday. I ended up going with a few girls in the house because all the sororities were having invites that night, which made finding a date even harder and we were too burned out to bother. I wish I had tried though because going with a group of girls…not so fun. Also, I was getting sick so I spent most of the night sitting outside at one of the tables on the patio sneezing.

I downloaded a trial version of Adobe After Effects, which is one of the professional software programs used to create lettering animation so probably most movie intros you see where it has cool effects with the cast names is created with After Effects. I am seriously considering buying it before I graduate and Final Cut Pro, which is $299 at the bookstore at the student rate. That’s really good considering it usually about $1200 for Final Cut Pro Studio. If I practice at that, I might be able to eventually get a job at The Cimarron Group or somewhere like it, which does almost all the movie trailers created.
I registered for classes a while back, but yesterday decided to take advantage of the fact that you can take 18 units for the same cost as 16, so I added a 2 unit class just for fun that I’ll probably take for pass/fail. I'll be doing a lot of studio type classes so I feel like I'll have a really productive semester. So here’s my finalized list of what I am taking in the spring and I couldn’t be more excited:


*Advanced Design Projects (4 units) Advanced information design within a flexible curriculum. Emphasis on team-oriented projects.

* The World of Visual Effects (2 units)- Introduction to the expanding field of visual effects; topics include magic lanterns shows, stop-motion fantasies and animation combination films employing the latest digital technologies

*Printmaking (4) Introductory course in various printmaking techniques; necessary skills and inherent expressive qualities of different printmaking methods are explored.

*Advertising Design and Production (4, Sp) Production of advertising materials; emphasis on the creation and design of advertising elements.

* Writing 340 (4 units)- topics involved with arts and humanities

Harry Potter tonight

I'll be the first to admit that I have an obsession with the fictional characters of Harry Potter. This being the case, I'm going to see the opening of the Goblet of Fire tonight at midnight with other equally obsessed girls in my sorority. I'm so excited! I'll write more tomorrow about what I thought.

A bunch of design babble

Ok so I updated my design that I posted yesterday because I slept on the idea and I didn't like it as much as I did yesterday. So I changed it to this new design. I think that it's more sophisticated and more reflective of my work over the course of the semester. It's still really simplistic, but I think it would be inviting for someone to open up the book and look closer. I'll probably bind the book with thick twine material. I'll post the final outcome soon.



In the meantime I finished tweaking my coaster design. The assignment is to design a collaborative self promotion with a group of 4 classmates and represent the different people in the group as individual designers but also as a cohesive group. My group decided to make a set of coasters with an intro coaster with contact info and then 4 coasters designed by each individual. We wanted to do it with a quirky edge to show that we are a fun group. Each coaster has a picture of the person and a saying. We're going to try to seal them and glue them to corkscrew on the back so that they function as real coasters but who knows how that'll turn out. Mine is kinda goofy because I'm smiling like an idiot, I have totally the wrong boxing form and as my roommate says "It doesn't look like I could beat up anyone." I tried to make it so that one could hold it from any orientation and it would still function and make sense. This may go through more changes too so I'll post the whole project when it's done with the other coasters too.

So one of my projects before the end of the semester is to create a process book, which is a book that has all of our designs from this semester along with our notes and how we went about creating the designs. I've been thinking about making something like this the cover with my name in the middle and a snipet of each design from the semester in the flower petal and printing it on a thick paper bag material. It's really simplistic and almost childlike, but I think I like it like that. What do you think?

This city is a point upon a map of fog

As the semester winds to a close, I couldn't be happier for winter break. I don't know how people in the working world manage to work every week year round and not get burned out. I guess I should savor these breaks now because I'm going to be one of those working people soon enough.

So I skipped the weekender trip that I usually have such a wonderful time on each year. This year, the school decided to ration tickets and I didn't win the lottery, so I wouldn't have gotten to go to the game anyway. I was thinking I might drive up anyway and bum around San Francisco and Berkeley, but I realized typography class doesn't end until 5 on Fridays so it would've been pointless to leave that late. I think my typography teacher would have personally shown up at my apartment and handed me a big red F if I skipped another class. Instead I decided to take the much needed mental break and go home. On Friday evening on a whim, I stopped by the grove and decided to have dinner at the Farmer's Market. What an interesting place it is. I decided to have dinner at a crepe stand which turned out to be delicious and I sat next to an old women who had a shopping cart filled with hundreds of plastic bags. I wondered what they were for. I think it may be the perfect spot for people watching. All in all, I'm not that sad I missed the weekender. A separate weekend trip somewhere may be in the works though. I kind of want to take a trip by myself somewhere. Just hop on a train or something. I will be heading to New York in April though which I'm super excited about. I'm going to New York City to visit Jess and see the city, and then probably up to New Haven to check out Yale and visit Lexi.

I had a very spinster-like weekend, but it's just what I needed to relax and clear my head. I saw the new Pride and Prejudice which I didn't have very high expectations for because it's my favorite book and I thought it would be hard to squeeze into 2 hours. I liked the movie overall, but I was right. It felt like everything was being really rushed and they brushed over some really big parts in the story like Mr. Wickham and Elizabeth's relationship and Mr. Collins, but it's as good as it could've been to fit in that timeframe. The 1996 miniseries with Colin Firth is at least 5 hours. They did a great job in this version creating the image of the Bennets as a really poor family with pigs and geese walking through their house. Some of the scenes were done much more romantically than the original which was appealing but really unbelievable. At one point, Kiera Knightly is taking a walk at like 5 AM and Mr. Darcy just happens to be taking a walk in the same place at that time. Kiera Knightly was ok, but not as good as the previous Pride and Prejudice, but Matthew Macfayden was a great Mr. Darcy. So good looking! I read one article that liked the movie but referred to Kiera Knightly as "a long necked Winona Ryder" and later "elongated Winona." To complete the spinster image I got the urge to take up knitting. Megan knits so she said she'll show me how. I'll probably get fed up with it within an hour and give it up.

I think I'm just at a weird age. I'll be 21 in 3 months and so I really want to go out to nice clubs, bars and restaurants for a more relaxed time with friends and having a drink or two but I cant quite go yet. Right now, I find myself over going out to any kind of frat party or under 21 party because most of the guys there are 18 and it's a lot crazier feel. Much more drinking and people passing out in the street. It's a craziness I think I could do without.

I think I found out what my parents got me for Christmas. I feel really guilty now. My dad let it slip when I was talking about this design software I wanted that they may have already gotten me a present and so I started in with my annoying habit of naming everything they possible could've gotten and looking for a reaction. I mentioned this one and he flinched. If I do get this though I'll be sooo happy. I have a digital camera now, but I can't get the kind of pictures I want with just the one setting. The fine arts club is going on a "Sketch Crawl" which means taking a bus around LA this weekend to draw or photograph anything we see.