Over this Bank Holiday weekend I went down to Rochester in Kent to visit my sister for her "Bring a Friend Day," where I had to participate in all the lessons she would normally have in a day with her. She goes to a Performing Arts College (PAC) so I had to do a lot of dancing and it was a lot more energetic and hardcore than I expected, as some of her fellow students brought parents, and a lot of the "friends" weren't trained dancers/performers, so it was quite exhausting, but I really enjoyed it, and enjoyed meeting and getting to know some more of my sister's college friends and their "friends." There was also a cake sale where some of the students and friends brought and baked cakes to sell at the college that day, and the cakes I had were lovely. One was like an angel cake, but with all the colours of the rainbow, and I thought that was visually impressive as well! When I was participating in some of the classes it did make me think what if my life was a video game and that these classes were rhythm action minigames, but the difficulty level would be a lot higher for me as I am not a trained dancer or performer, and perhaps don't have as much stamina as the students.
But because I was away, there wasn't really any chance for me to do any of my college work in Rochester, but I returned to Stafford on Saturday because I was aware I had quite a lot to do, as well as the fact I was due to meet some of my old college friends to see Iron Man 3, a film which I thought was really good, despite hearing mixed reviews about, and I admit there were a few random and unnecessary parts. I loved the appearance of all of the different Iron Man suits, and it made me think that I would love to see any concept drawings or designs of any of these suits, as there were quite a lot of variations of the classic Iron Man suit in the film, including the Iron Patriot, a version of Iron Man owned by the government to protect America and the President, if I remember correctly.
I also went for a walk with my family to a countryside area where lots of Bluebells were growing, a Bluebell Wood, which was a lovely place, and even though I had my college work on my mind, I really enjoyed being there.
I finally managed to get a bit of college work done, over Monday and Tuesday (I had the day off on Tuesday because of Staff Training), where I spent a lot of my time on modelling my spirits and have nearly finished 7 of them. However, I did have a problem with the hands on some of the spirits. I noticed that on the hand I had modelled for some of the spirits, I didn't leave any gaps between the fingers (this was probably because I didn't want to add too many subdivisions on my model at first), so I decided to import my gladiator model and take the hand from that model to try and save time. However, Maya kept on closing down whenever I tried to do something with the hand, so some of my models don't have any hands yet, and this is something I will have to model very soon.
I have felt over the past few days though that it is really starting to sink in how much work I really have to do over the next 2-3 weeks, and it is worrying me slightly how I am actually going to get what I need to do done for my college projects. I have made mum and dad aware, as I feel it always helps to tell them whenever I am nervous or anxious about something, and my dad has offered to help by finding somewhere other than college I could print my work if I needed to find somewhere else. This is because college will undoubtedly have loads of print orders for the end of year show, and my work might take a bit longer to complete for the print order deadline for college.
Anyways, today I worked on the wind spirit, the only spirit I haven't started at home this weekend, because I remember Neil (B) showing me a technique in Maya to get the shape I wanted (a tornado) the best way possible, so i decided to wait until today to ask him to remind me. All my other spirits are almost finished in terms of modelling, I just need to perfect the hands for some of them, which is something I was struggling with this weekend. Neil showed me how to make a decent effect by using the deformer tools after building a cylinder to get the shapes and effects I wanted, and can be something I feel I could use in future projects if necessary. The deformer tools let me manipulate an already made polygon and add effects to them, such as twisting the shape, which is what I did to achieve a tornado shape.
It was good to get this spirit underway, and after a morning of experimenting with the new skill I learned in Maya, I then continued to model the rest of my design for the Wind Spirit. Because the head of the wind spirit had a similar shape to that of the nature spirit, I decided to import the head of the nature spirit into the Wind Spirit file and edit the shape of the head slightly to match my Wind Spirit design better. I also had to extrude a beak from this shape, as well as merge vertices that weren't properly matched up. I also started modelling the wings and talons, but at the moment I feel these look a bit chunky, and I will be able to finish these very quickly hopefully.
I also had to help move the boards from the storage cupboard on the top floor of college to our room on the floor below, ready for the end of year show. These were quite heavy, and my clothes got quite dusty, and it has been a very energetic few days for me. Feeling good but still need to watch my progress on my project.
I am nervous about the Oxford trip next week, as I'm not really sure what to expect, and I'm not really sure to be honest what the whole purpose of the trip is. It has also come at a busy and stressful time of year for college, which makes me question if it's a good idea for a college day trip in the first place, and also makes me think if the Contextual Studies modules have been put in order the most efficient way.
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