Corinn: AAAAAAAAA!!! Is this a dream or reality?!?!?!
Wow. I cannot believe how fast everything flew by for my first quarter at RIT! 11 weeks felt like a long way originally, but that went by in a blink of an eye. During this time, I got to know my classmates fairly well and even found time to hang out with them! I even got to meet a couple cool people in the working world like Zhu Wen (Chinese Film Director), Leigh Rubins (Cartoon Artist - http://www.rubescartoons.com/), Paul Gasek (Executive Producer from Discovery who is known for his shows Deadliest Catch, Discovering Ardi, How the Universe Works, and many more) as well as Jon Shih (Technical Director at DreamWorks Animation). My weight had managed to stay around the same which is a good thing considering my eating habits changed significantly as soon as I stepped through the RIT threshold. I’m hoping not to gain the dreaded “freshman” 10, 15, 20 or whatever pounds it is over the next several years.
Talking about gaining weight, Thanksgiving this year was probably the most complicated planning we’ve had to do in McBe Holiday history. I miss hosting T-day back in Vermont, but it looks like I’ll be cooking again this year (yay!) and for a lot less people. Corinn’s family will probably be joining us as in previous years and a classmate or two will do the same. I’m looking forward to hitting up Rochester’s Public Market tomorrow for some fresh goodies to prepare for Thursday’s feast! However, I got to be careful as I’m not cooking for an army, so I have to be conscious of what to pick up and how much to make. Again, about a 1/3 of what I normally prepare. I’m just glad RIT gave the students this week off to enjoy with family and friends, especially after a long, stressful stint of sleepless nights working on projects for classes.
Talking about fruits of labor, I’ve been posting much of my stuff on Youtube! If you’re intrigued and are interested to see some short animations and films, visit this link: http://www.youtube.com/user/spunkyddog. I’ve been too busy lately to update my portfolio site (http://www.spunkyddog.com), but hopefully I can do that soon. I usually link my stuff from Youtube which is why these videos show up here before they hit my website. I also have a bunch of other photos and posters to post that I did in the past few months. Maybe I can make that a priority within the next several days.
Sometimes, the home space was taken up by my need to finish projects on time.
Levitating tripods: A work of magic and a necessity at times.
Working on putting together a scratch film for the class.
Oh, and I got straight A’s during my first quarter at RIT! I did not think that this was achievable, but now I’m starting to worry about the work for the second quarter as all experienced students say it only gets more difficult. Frankly, 17 credits was pushing it. I’m taking 18 this upcoming quarter and that’s only because the student body complained (with good reason) that we didn’t want to pay for the extra 1 credit of the 19 credits RIT wanted us to take. So the school simply reduced one class from 4 credits to 3 credits, but this only is cosmetic, as we’ll still need to do 4 credits worth of work. God help me. I’m thinking straight A’s this upcoming quarter will be next to impossible… Either that or I achieve them by not sleeping at all.
In other news, Corinn finished up work at Geva, had a great experience, and then moved into another job and has been there for little over 5 weeks already! She’s working at Constellation Brands (http://www.cbrands.com/), the largest national and international wine maker and distributor. Needless to say, she’s enjoying the job. The perks on the side of getting discounted wines or even free bottles from time to time has also been enjoyable. However, we’re not big drinkers (or at least not yet) and so wine in our cupboards will sit for a while before enjoyed. We might soon change that as we have SEVERAL CASES of wine sitting in many various rooms of our house. Not to mention what we had when we moved, which wasn’t much to begin with. Yes, it’s a little crazy and silly. We did break down and bought ourselves a 21 bottle EdgeStar wine fridge so that many of our good wines don’t go bad or spoil.
Regardless of the perks, I’m proud of Corinn for not letting this move get the best of her. It was a rough transition for both of us, and she never gave up pursuing something that would be right for her. This is also the first job where she’ll have business cards, so I’ll have to figure out how to appropriately celebrate this achievement in her life. It’s a big move from theatre, but it’s an important move she’s made, as it’ll continue to challenge her. She works really enjoys a good challenge… That’s probably why she married me. ;o)
Despite the crazy schedules, I’ve been making it an effort to be with Corinn at night at the very least. This move has shifted my view on life quite greatly. In three years time, I’m unsure where we’ll be. In some ways I’m worried if I shot myself in the foot for not pursuing a more technical degree. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not regretting my choice for pursuing animation as it always was my dream to work for companies like Squaresoft (SquareEnix now), Blizzard, Pixar, DreamWorks, Disney, etc. Actually, it always was my dream as a kid to become an animator… The tech side of things followed as a means of bypassing what others never supported while I grew up. The lit path of this dream only came when I met Tim Comolli, a teacher at South Burlington High School, and was strengthened by Ann DeMarle, a professor at Champlain College. I had no backing or support for my dream until I met these two important mentors in my life.
I still enjoy being the big Tech Geek that I am. It helped guide me through some interesting choices I made for jobs and I got a lot out of supporting people and communities who needed help on a daily basis with technology and needs for solutions. It was definitely time though to pursue an art path. I’m just hoping that this path leads to some good things at the end of three years. I’m constantly wondering too what my thesis will become. I thought I had to enter into RIT knowing what I will be working on and during this past quarter, the idea changed at least three times. Maybe I could look into the tech side of animation and do something with that…? Installations? Not sure if the major supports this, but maybe it can happen. I guess I should just ride the wave for now and see where it takes me.
Literally labeling each individual frame... what a daunting task.
I’m curious when the next time I blog will be? Or maybe when we hear from Corinn? Stay tuned! :o)