End of a chapter (Part 1)

...4 years later lmao

Needless to say, a lot's happened in the past few years since I updated this blog, but I figured I'd do it anyway for my own sake.

This entire art school journey/saga has been a timeee - and it's nice to see how far I've come, but weird to know that it's over. I'm currently laying in my bed in Canada, a fresh art school graduate, and soon-to-be Disney intern, but I'll give a summary of the past years, for shits and giggles.

2015:

Maybe like 2 or 3 weeks after my last post on this blog, I received my acceptance from Sheridan Animation, and I was ecstatic! I remember having to convince my parents a little to let me go, but it eventually worked and soon I would be on my way. That summer during 2015 had to be maybe one of the best summers I've ever had??? I spent almost every day out and about with my friend Britney and we would go out and draw and have sitcom-like adventures. I learned a lot from her in terms of what to prepare for in art school, and by the time I got to Sheridan in the fall, I felt decently prepared. I gained popularity as a standout in my year - partially due to my work, but I really think it was my loud personality at the time lol. I was really excited to be in art school so I would engage with people a lot. My memory is a bit vague with certain details of this year, and there are certain things that happened that I'd rather....not publish....but I also had quite the active romantic life during this year, so things really went well for me for the most part. Came out to my family to this year, since my cousins and grandma all came out for a cruise around my birthday around June.

2016:

This year was a huge challenge for me in pretty much every year...and frankly, one of the worst years I've had in a while. 2nd semester of first year was pretty okay from what I remember, but overall I vaguely remember having a harder time - it could have just been my personal life, which was experiencing some issues at the time. But really, it was the summer that wrecked me...long story short, I experienced a massive betrayal by two people extremely close to me, and I realized I had been manipulated for months. Unfortunately, this ruined my summer, but it somehow gave me a drive to do something crazy??? I decided that I would flesh out one of my story concepts, "The Chargers" and pitch it by the end of my 2nd year, and that I would apply to the Cartoon Network internship. Idk exactly what inspired me to do so, but when I got back to Sheridan, I moved in to one of the apartments with a friend of mine from my year (we had a cat from our 3rd roommate too lol) and I hit the ground running. And by winter break, I starting dating the guy I liked for years - so it looked like things were going well entering the new year.

2017:

Hmmm...this year was a weird mix. 2nd year ended both really good and really bad. Artistically, it ended well - I didn't land an internship but I made a portfolio that I was super proud of, and I completed the leica reel for the first episode of "The Chargers" and I pitched it a couple of weeks after I got home for the summer. It ended badly though because I had a really bad falling out with a friend, I wound up breaking up with my boyfriend (it was my decision but it still sucked), and I made and lost another friend in the span of the summer over something kinda dumb. Got into my first car accident the first week of summer and idk it was just messy. It wasn't ALL bad tho - I had some really great times over the summer, and frankly, I think the year was mostly pretty alright. When 3rd year started, I was kinda complacent (maybe too much so) because I had already made a portfolio, so I wasn't stressing as much, I started up in the stop motion group and things were going pretty well at the time - AND Sheridan had a 5 week teachers strike...which meant no one had any classes for over a month. Personally, I enjoyed it, cus 3rd year's class structure was super loose anyway and I wasn't learning much, so I pretty much just chilled a lot more than I should have. That winter, Steve (my roommate) and I went out to LA for winter break and had a great time. We had to be back before new years since the strike ate up our winter break time, but it was still good.

2018:

Oh boyyy....what a year this was. Looking back on it, it was kinda...bad. I mean, TONS of good stuff happened during the year too - of course, but I just remember being sad and feeling emotionally neglected for the better part of the year. I didn't land any internships...again.... which sucked because I had a pretty good lead with Cartoon Network, but I didnt get any callback, and all my friends got jobs. My stop motion group film was a mess because I basically became the problem child, so I felt a bit emotionally distanced from my group, and the whole summer break I was struggling to stay afloat since my self esteem was at an all time low - which didn't help when I had two extremely difficult romantic struggles piled on top of that. The great parts of the year were meeting and bonding with my friend Alfred, mentoring under Richard Chavez (who lives 10 min from me), and having an amazing first week of summer with my 3rd roommate Liam (not the guy with the cat...guy with the cat moved out after one year). The summer was honestly pretty good overall, and the fall semester, though I was in constant emotional pain, I had a ton of artistic success. I was reviewed by big studios in the span of 2 months. I got reviewed by Disney feature animation, Disney TV, Pixar, Dreamworks TV (two different reviews), and Nickelodeon. Somehow, I actually did really well at all reviews and I got really helpful feedback. I got the reviews at CTN, except for the Nick one, that one I got during the Ottawa International Film Festival - which i attended and it was also super fun. Over winter break, I just binged watched Bojack Horseman and started my story portfolio for Pixar.

I'm actually super tired right now, so I'll post a part 2 tomorrow lol

I'm back from the dead but not really.

So I decided I was going to abandon this blog, but I'm back because my friend told me I should update.

I'm looking at you, Christian.

Anyway, the last few months have been absolutely crazy, and I felt like I should write about some of it. I'll summarize as best as I can.

November/December: Decided to NOT apply to Calarts but to apply to Sheridan instead and hope I get in. Spent time drawing with my friends and practicing, and my uncle came out for a surprise visit....that's it.

January: Went to Canada with Lauren, one of my best friends, to visit Sheridan. Had an amazing time and got positive feedback on our artwork. We don't know if we'll get in, but whatever. This month was eventful and stressful but very fun.

February: Hahaha....this was an interesting month. Of course, drawing all the time as usual, but I began organizing actual draw jams with my friends and it's been amazing so far. Here are some pics:

I also have life drawing 3 times a week...which is intense to say the least. But it's fun.

Also, I managed to do something else I never thought I'd be able to do: Tell someone how I really felt about them. This person shall remain nameless. Long story short though, I was able to confront someone whom I've had feelings for for a long time and basically just told them how I felt. It was an interesting exercise for me, even though it was borderline terrifying. But I think it had less about being honest to them, as it was being honest to myself, which is the hardest thing a person can do. It may not seem like a big deal, but I'm writing about it to remind myself that fear really can just be an illusion, and I'm happy I did it. So February was pretty interesting.

Now we're in March, and this month is supposed to be freaking crazy. College acceptances and rejections come out this month, I'm going to be learning how to draw digitally, and I'm doing something else this month, which I can't tell a soul about until it happens. But it's going to be random and awesome (not art related).

I probably won't update this for a while again. But whatever. Laterz.

Nick Internship Spring 2015 Portfolio

 Personal Art/Miscellaneous Sketchbook Pages

Life Drawings

Summer Update

Yeah.....so I completely neglected this blog for a while now haha.

Needless to say a buttload of stuff has happened. I think I'll start changing this (slowly) to a pure art blog, and get a tumblr as well, since I need a professional site of sorts to put my work.

Anyway, super brief life updates:

1)Finished up at Calarts, in my final review they said I had a lot of work to do, but getting is this year, while slim, might be possible for me.

2) Started drawing from life more, trying to drop character design for a while.

3) Hung out with friends a lot and saw a bunch of new summer movies, including Guardians of the Galaxy

4) Went to San Diego with my Calarts friends this last weekend to go the zoo. I stayed the weekend and had an amazing time.

5) Did caricatures at a birthday party like 2 weeks ago and made $70.

That's the gist of it. I'll post more as I think of it. I'll post art work next! There's a lot though.

Anyway, laterz! :D

Calarts Program: Day 2 and 3

Hello people of the internets. How goes it?

I definitely tried making a post yesterday, which was my second day here at Calarts, but my internet gave out whilst writing it, so....yeah.

DAY 2

Here's the Character Animation Hallway by the way. It's pretty small, I was literally at the corner at the end of the hallway when I took this.

Anywho, yesterday was interesting to say the least. It was our first day of classes and it was a lot of fun. First we had Design for Film with Linda Dorn. She's very upbeat and quirky but she's also pretty hardcore when it comes to drawing. And she's verrrryyyyy skilled. It seems effortless almost to her. Anywho, so during class we all went to the student store and got art supplies and whatever and that was the end of class.

I hung out with some of my new friends here while we waited for our 6:30pm class with Robert Lence, and we just chilled, drew together, and had a good old time. Honestly as I sit here I can't fully remember specifics.

Before Robert's class I ventured to the library and ran into two fellow students named Mike and Ben. Both are roommates and both did the summer session last year. Mike had been accepted into the program and we just sat there for almost an hour and talked about Calarts and we shared work and everything. He had some pretty great advice.

Robert's class that night was hyped up by Linda and Hilary, who were super excited, and honestly....the class turned out to be a tad dull, only because it was the introductory phase of the class and we were all tired and we primarily watched student films from the 70's, all which were actually pretty awesome, but we didn't do any work ourselves so it was a tad..eh.

DAY 3

Okay, so, today. Hollyyyy crap today was crazy. At 10am we started our Life Drawing class with Linda, and it was intense. First of all, she has us do all our life drawing on the floor, which is actually a unique experience because I did feel like I had more control over my drawings, except my back began hurting but whatever.

Yeah, so we did that till like 5pm, it was great though. In the hour and a half break we had between Linda and Robert's class (which started at 6:30pm) my suitemates and I decided to go out for pizza. We just hung out and got to know each other just a little bit more and it was nice. Robert's class today was a lot better, primarily because we all had a storytelling assignment to do. Each person had to come up with a story and tell it to the class.

I was one of four people to go up and tell a story, and I basically told everyone about the time I got kicked out of the kid's section of Barnes and Noble by an angry pregnant lady....yeah, good times.

Anyway, that was fun. And after class me, my friends Lizzy, Becca, and Bobby (who's also my suitemate) just stood outside and talked for like an hour. Lizzy, by the way, was actually accepted to Calarts and her working is freaking amazing but that's a story for another time.

And now I'm going to go to bed because I have another long day tomorrow. But I'm loving it. :)

Minus the fact that my room is unusually cold....but whateves lol

Also here's some stuff I've done since I got here:

And here's what my friends and I have done:

Laterzzz

Calarts Program: Day 1

I am here!!! I'm at Calarts sitting in my dorm as I type this and today was quite a busy/long day.

I'm going to attempt to make this a daily journal for my program here Calarts, though I know I'm going to fail horribly.

So today was check-in, and my parents and I arrived just before the 1:00pm check-in time after we had lunch and went for a Walmart run. Check-in went pretty smoothly and I finally got to meet Hilary Darling, our director. She's super chill, like everyone else here at the school.

I have 5 other suitemates. One is our RA named Daniel. He's awesome. Another one is Syd, whom I knew of prior since I had seen her floating around AnimatedBuzz. The rest of my suitmates are pretty cool too, and with the exception of Daniel, we're all in the animation program! One girl here was actually already accepted but she decided to do the summer program anyway. haha

Hilary gave us a brief tour after check-in and I got my Calarts ID and my picture sucks. lol

After we got settled in, we went for a grocery run with another RA, Amanda Candler, a recent graduate and a person whose blog I occasionally visited. She was great too. She drove us to and from the grocery store and showed us around quite generously and I talked to her about the whole admissions process and stuff.

Once I got back to the room, I decided to break the ice and I suggested to my suite mates that we invite people over and exchange sketchbooks and draw together, which we did, and it was great. This is the result of the comic game we all played (I was making dinner for us while this went on, so I went last lol):

Yeah, so I made a bunch of food and almost no one had anything....except the tater tots. But it's all good I guess. More for me lol. But it was nice to get most of us together and just hang out.

Tomorrow I have Design for Film at 10am so I'm gonna head to bed. Here's a pic of my room by the way. 

I'll probably take pictures of the whole suite later on. Laterzzz

Super Update! Because I've been busy and stuff

Heyyy reader-less blog. So it's been about a month since I posted anything here, which really sucks because a lottttt happened in the past month. Like...it's been cray. So I'll summarize as best as I can.

So, rewind to my last post. Remember how I had just had a good day, well, turns out the rest of my week was like that. It was great! I went on a field trip to the Getty Museum with my Drawing I class and had a great time and even made some new friends. I really wish I had energy to upload a bunch of pics but I dont.

Anywho, so, I'm done with school for the semester now. I had to make a full portfolio for my Life Drawing class and produce 4 surprisingly difficult drawings for my Drawing I class. I basically left those assignments to do over the weekend (which wound up pouring into the week a bit) but I wound up getting "A's" on everything so it worked out great!

But, even better than that, the main thing that happened in the past month was that I went to DreamWorks and had lunch with an animator that my dad's coworker knows! His name is Hans Dastrup and he was really chill. We had a great time. He even gave me some feedback on my work and he said he thought it was pretty cool and he thinks I have a future in the industry! :D

Yeah, so that was fun. It's really hard to remember all the little things that happened, so I'll just dump photos instead.

ANNDDDDD actually today (technically) I am going to be off to Calarts to begin the Animation Residency Program! I still need to pack some things though...lol. And I'm leaving home at 10:30. Check-In isn't until 1 but still.

Alright, I'll make it my business to update regularly while I'm there. OHH AND ONE MORE THING. I went to a club last night with my friends and we got TURNT. Which is funny because it's somewhat out of my nature, but by the end of the night I was in the middle of the street with my shirt of dancing on street poles and I regret NOTHING. heh. Yeah.

Good times. I'm nervous as hell for check-in, I hope I make some friends, I have no idea what the people there will be like......oh well. Gonna make the most of this :D

Drawing I field trip.....yeah, that statue has a boner. We all found it funny.

Peoples from class. 

My friend Alex got a new car. I'm not even into cars and I thought it looked cool. The picture serves it no justice.

Alex and I played video games to kill time before we had to pick up our sisters from school. I kicked his ass hahaha......only once.

That's Alex.

This was one of the 4 drawings I had to do for Drawing I. I liked how it turned out. Sorta

Another one of the 4 drawings, I did this cow skull in micron pen. Technically it's no good because it looks almost nothing like the skull I had to draw...but eh, got an "A"

Part of my life drawing portfolio for class

This one was my favorite. I feel like her head is slightly too small, but I like it for what it's worth.