It’s funny I haven’t posted anything about my 3D projects since they’ve all been in transit longer than any of my other work this year. I have like 4 going right now still unfinished. My professor is nice enough not to hate me for it thankfully. I do all the hating myself! Anything this is what I call the “reminder coo coo clock”. It’s based on the classic coo coo clock style with several new twists. They’re are four doors instead of 1, which are magnetized on the inside to accommodate your own customized characters. These characters represent small reminders throughout your day. Like walking the dog, brushing your teeth, taking out the trash etc. I also painted the whole thing in chalkboard paint so you can write in extra to do notes and whatever else. Love notes, passive aggressive notes to your roommates, that’s your choice. 

I carved some children’s sidewalk chalk into the pine cone shaped things that hang off the bottom of the usual clocks.

like these,

I’m so close to finished! Pictured about is the almost done clock, and the little charms I made out of sculpy then baked to be strong! and make it on their own! I’m hoping to finish all this by tomorrow. I can do it! 

Hi Hi :) This is my newest silkscreen just finished this week. I’m super proud of it and how it turned out. I’ve come to appreciate the tiny blips and imperfections of silkscreen and the humanity that shines through those accidents. But I printed 35 posters (13x19, 4 color layers) altogether, and about 25 worked out almost perfectly. I did the last two color layers in one session and I’ve been sore and dead the past two days from it. I’m insanely out of shape but I’m surprised in the amount of work goes into printing. 

So this is a drawing I had in one of my large sketchbooks since this summer and I decided would work purrfectly for a poster. The colors are so vibrant I’m in love. Anyway, I’m selling them for 20 each if anyone is interested! 

I was sifting through my old school work folders last night, since my macbook is almost 4 years old aka 87 years old in mac years, and I found some fun stuff. (and some terrible stuff that have just been sitting on my poor feeble computer for months taking time and energy away from newer, better projects). Anyway, I did some February cleaning and I wanted to share some work I did in my sophomore year for a class with Richard Wilde called “Visual Literacy”. The class is mandatory, so everyone has to take it at some point their second year and it’s pretty much you either hate it or love it. Every week or so you’re given a template for a project, usually a set of boxes where you answer “design problems”. And for me every week was an escape from my design classes where I could draw and create whatever I wanted.

In general sophomore year was a terrible year for me. I had a tiny room in the George Washington building which felt like a prison in the back of the building. I had no real friends to speak of that went to my school, and I was up to my eyes with work and most of it I wasn’t enjoying doing. I was stressed out and mildly depressed all the time and I was still really intimidated by new york. I felt like a tiny insignificant ant in the middle of a very, very large and prosperous ant farm. So basically I cherished anything in my life that brought me any kind of happiness.

I think you can tell in these few projects how much fun with them. In one of the projects we had to spell out our name in different ways that reflected the sentences underneath each box. Like “I’m a cross dresser” and “I’m lost”.  Then there was the “ego” project where we filled in the blanks for math problems that equated to parts of our personality. And then for the last project of the class we were given a big poster sized sheet of paper where we had to fill in a little drawing that described our day for a month. I put SO much work into that one, I created a little jellyfish character to represent me and water colored scenes from my day. I took a pilgrimage out to the only Michael’s in nyc, it’s crazy uptown somewhere I don’t remember exactly. And I bought blue paper and glitter glue and all the aquatic themed stickers I could find and went crazy on the boarder. I got an A+++++. Not kidding you, 5 pluses.

At the end of the year Richard wrote notes to everyone telling them their grades and how well they did in the class overall. I still have mine, I got an A+! 

This is what I casually call “my mermaid animation” but the officially title is “Born Without a Heart”. It’s a pretty straight forward description. It’s a short 30 second or so animation of a grey scale mermaid born from a bubble without a heart. In fact she is missing the entire heart shaped area where one would go! She quickly goes on a journey to find said missing organ with her small fish friend at her side. She finds her sparkly pink heart, and as the scenery gain their color back she bursts into a joyous and colorful sea of fish. (Not shown yet…because, well it’s not done). This transformation shows she is one with her world, and without her happiness, nothing around her thrives. 

I illustrated all elements by hand, then again in illustrator as well as photoshop. The textures are taken from various origami paper, tin foil, and glitter. And then of course animated in After Effects.

Most of my inspiration for the piece centers around me waking up one morning overcome with a desire to animate a mermaid. (Being a big fan of them since the Little Mermaid probably having a big part of it as well). It’s also partially an ode to Tara Mcpherson, an illustrator I find deeply inspirational and all around amazing. It’s not fair to mention this piece without those things I think. Though of course I feel I took these things into consideration and went on to make the concept my own. It’s been fun but I’m ready to finish these last couple seconds and MOVE ON! I’ll post the video when I’m done, and on my website as well…as soon as that’s done! 

I’m not stressed at all don’t worry! Nope, not at all.

In my spring semester I thought it might be a fun direction to take a silk screening class. I worried this might be a waste of my time considering I am a full time motion graphics student also balancing 3D design with the all mighty Kevin O’Callaghan. (Not to mention the creation of my senior portfolio and professional identity! This is crazy time for me, obviously).

Needless to say I kicked myself within five minutes of my first class realizing this medium is the perfect venue to take my illustrations to the next level! Spending every friday in a laid back and friendly atmosphere, spending time finessing previous illustrations and dreaming up new ones has been a wonderful new addition to my life.

I’m hoping I can master the art of the silkscreen quickly so I can possibly put together pieces worthy of selling! I’m asked often if there’s a way to purchase my work and a silkscreened poster would be perfect! So I’ve posted some pictures of my first EVER attempt at printing! Starting with the original drawing in my sketch book and ending with one of the few good prints that came out. It was my first time so I underestimated how easy it is to make mistakes with prints, especially with multiple layers of color. 

So unfortunately I don’t have enough nice ones of these to pass around unless you’re interested in an….”artistically chaotic” rendering. 

Looking forward to sharing my future silkscreening attempts! I think it shows how much I love it.