Well, it has been an extremely busy past week or so. It seems as though everything in all my classes and extra-curricular collided. It was a bit overwhelming. Oh well, better than being bored.

In the Dems I have been working together with the campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to arrange for students to go up to New Hampshire and canvas for a Saturday. As of right now, we have plans to go up on the 17th of November with other colleges in the area. We will be taking a bus system that will be meeting at Stonehill College. It should be a great deal of fun. We also hosted Jass Stewart, a mayoral candidate for the city of Brockton. He came in on Thursday and talked to us about his campaign and what he stood for. A great deal of people showed up, and many of them volunteered to help him on election day. We will be going on Tuesday to do things like call people to remind them to vote, as well as monitoring the polls.

In my themed house we have been pretty busy as well. November 5th marks the kick off of our food drive, so we have been organizing donation box locations with various offices around campus, as well as generating a lot of publicity. We also went trick-or-treating for canned goods on Wednesday. For costumes we dressed up as a box of crayons. we all bought colored shirts and birthday hats, and I painted and airbrushed them the proper color and the crayola logo on each shirt. It was a little awkward, but people were very friendly and willing to donate, which was fantastic. We plan on bringing everything to the Cupboard of Kindness this coming Monday.

Classes have been very fun. We recently finished a self-portrait project in Graphic Design. We had to draw a rough portrait of ourselves, and then use tracing paper to re-create our portrait using only letter forms. We could do quotes, words, song lyrics, or just words themselves. It was incredibly fun, and the results of everyone’s work were great.

In Animation, we finished our pixelization project and moved on to rotoscoping. Rotoscoping is when you take a video of something, then break the video down into a series of images. Then you alter the images in some way, but keep the motion evident. I took a video of myself doing a cartwheel, then printed out the images, and traced a drawing mannequin over each of my poses. I then set up the scene so it looked like a workspace, with my drawing actually moving. It ended up looking like a mannequin doing a cartwheel. It was very cool, and my classmates videos were excellent as well.

In Great Works we have moved on from Classical Greek and Roman art to Early Christian and Byzantine Art. On Friday we looked at the Hagia Sophia, church in Turkey, which absolutely took my breath away. It was stunning. Beams of light shine in from nearly every direction, and the architecture was incredible as well.

Finally, in 3-D design, we are doing a series of clay sculptures. Our first had to be a transformation from one thing to another. I chose to do a bird changing into a fish. There was just something that attracted me to the idea of feathers changing to scales. The next on was a figure done in geometric shapes rather than organic ones. I chose to do a sculpture that is modeled after the Greek Doryphoros, or the Roman Augustus Prima Porta. I liked the idea of using a classical pose, but reinventing it in geometric forms.

Well, that’s just about it. This is a pretty exciting upcoming week, with lots of fun stuff that will be happening. Until next time!

Things have certainly been busy in the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving break.

We just finished our countdown video in Animation. It was a two-week project and we had to create a ten second countdown video, going from 9 to 0. Initially I had chosen to work with pictures of natural elements like fire, water, clouds, and leaves. The Wednesday night before it was due however, I was so disappointed with my work that I decided to switch topics. Instead I chose to animate a forest at night with a beam of light moving around, illuminating the woods and revealing each of the numbers. Though I had to pull an all-nighter Thursday night to get it done, I was very pleased with how it turned out.

In Graphic Design we had a project that was about a hierarchy of information. We were to write directions from our home to school, and then arrange it on a poster to create that hierarchy. It was a very fun project, and we got to work in the Graphics lab a great deal for it.

In 3-D Design we were able to get our clay sculptures out of the kiln, and fortunately most of my pieces escaped unharmed. Only my tree was missing a few of its limbs. We also started a new project, a wax-dripping project. We created a rough skeleton out of wire and other materials, and then dripped a hard red wax over it, building the form as we went. I chose to do a very fat, Buddha-ish character. Overall it was a very fun project, but it ended up looking much more like my grandfather than a Buddha. Oh well.

A week or so ago a fellow Democrats member and I went to campaign for a local mayoral candidate, Jass Stewart. The two of us walked from door to door of known Jass supporters and made sure that they had gotten out to vote that day. It was a bit cold, walking around Brockton after dark, but it was fun and it felt good to get out and canvas for a candidate. We also finally got our movie series kicked off with “War Room.” Though I could not actually go, it seemed to be a success.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, my house kicked of its Holiday Food Drive on campus, and it has been an enormous success! We have gotten tons of donations in just a very short amount of time. It was incredible, and the Cupboard of Kindness was very grateful to receive all the donations. We also went in the Sunday before Thanksgiving break to help them unload turkeys for their Thanksgiving handouts. The people were so nice; they gave us a huge box full of candy. I think it is more candy than I have ever seen in one place. We are still trying to give it away to friends and parents.

Well, we have a mere two weeks before final exams. To be honest, my finals week is going to be very relaxed. I will only have one final on Friday, the rest being final portfolios and projects that will all be due the week before. So that pre-final week will actually be the one where I tear out all my hair. I may get a few grays anyway. Well, that’s about it. Until next time!