This is what I've been working on at my internship:
I'm making videos on how products work for Nexcelom Bioscience; I've also started learning Flash animation in order to produce videos that demonstrate assay principles, in order to make them easier to understand. It's funny; I've actually had to learn some biology for this job. But hey, it's work. It's money. And it's actually pretty fun.
We've got four more videos at various stages of completion (that one up there is the first finished one), as well as several assay principle animations.
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Saturday, June 12, 2010
Phoenix, follow-up.
Well, it's done.
...
Copy-pasted from the deviantART description, because I don't feel like rewriting it:
"So after a rather stressful series of events across this week, discussed in the above blog posts, here is the finished product. This ended up being a commissioned piece for an art auction as part of a charity event for..some group of people who are uh..something to do with American-Chinese doctors? Um..establishing connections between the countries..something-something. I'm not exactly clear on it. I should probably figure it out.
"I finished and mounted it this morning - it's in a black shadowbox - and we went to deliver it in the afternoon. They ended up giving it a starting bid that I think is..absurdly high, but what can you do. I'm not good at selling my own art, so whatever. They're doctors. They have money.
"Anyways, the first version of this was a mask. Same colors and form, slightly different shape. I'll probably take better photos of that and post it too. Part of a new project I'm working on, which involves..making a bunch of cool-looking masks. Simple, right?
"People are trying to prod me into making a few more of these and selling them. Should I?"
...
Guh. So I got four hours of sleep last night, because I stayed up painting until two thirty; while working on the gold rachises (I had to look up the plural of that word), I realized that I was falling asleep and that I was starting to screw them up pretty badly, so I decided to go to bed. Told my mom, who had fallen asleep on the couch watching me work, to wake me up early so I could finish it, so she took that as an invitation to shake me awake at six thirty this morning. -headdesk-
After we mounted and everything, it was twelve, and I wanted nothing more than to stumble back home to bed. But we had to deliver the thing. So my mom and I drove into Boston to the Holiday Inn where the function was to take place. Got there around one forty-five, and it turned out June-the-organizer - my mom taught a business class of which June was a student, so that's how they know each other - wasn't going to be there until two. (It was kind of funny; the area was on the top floor, and the regular elevators weren't going there yet because it hadn't started, or something, so we ended up having to take the service elevator. It's a magical back-of-the-hotel conveyance with dirty floors and broken mirrors, where cleaning staff throw trash while making their rounds.) Shitloads of traffic, the arrival of several volunteers and committee members, and about forty-five minutes later, she showed up. Blah blah figuring out where to put it when Michelle-the-floor-manager arrived ten minutes after June; many Chinese doctors telling me that I am extremely talented while I kind of just stood there embarrassed; the organizers and my mom setting the starting bid way too high dear lord, but June says people will definitely buy it so whatever, maybe Chinese doctors like spending money; wandering around checking out the setup for the conference; helping the student-volunteers-from-prestigious-schools-in-the-area with things like gift bags for VIP guests, one of them took a class on 3D modeling so I talked to him about that for a while, that was cool.
Then we left, around four, before the event actually started.
Then we went home and I slept until dinner at seven thirty.
Today was kind of an adventure. I still think it was priced too high.
...
Copy-pasted from the deviantART description, because I don't feel like rewriting it:
"So after a rather stressful series of events across this week, discussed in the above blog posts, here is the finished product. This ended up being a commissioned piece for an art auction as part of a charity event for..some group of people who are uh..something to do with American-Chinese doctors? Um..establishing connections between the countries..something-something. I'm not exactly clear on it. I should probably figure it out.
"I finished and mounted it this morning - it's in a black shadowbox - and we went to deliver it in the afternoon. They ended up giving it a starting bid that I think is..absurdly high, but what can you do. I'm not good at selling my own art, so whatever. They're doctors. They have money.
"Anyways, the first version of this was a mask. Same colors and form, slightly different shape. I'll probably take better photos of that and post it too. Part of a new project I'm working on, which involves..making a bunch of cool-looking masks. Simple, right?
"People are trying to prod me into making a few more of these and selling them. Should I?"
...
Guh. So I got four hours of sleep last night, because I stayed up painting until two thirty; while working on the gold rachises (I had to look up the plural of that word), I realized that I was falling asleep and that I was starting to screw them up pretty badly, so I decided to go to bed. Told my mom, who had fallen asleep on the couch watching me work, to wake me up early so I could finish it, so she took that as an invitation to shake me awake at six thirty this morning. -headdesk-
After we mounted and everything, it was twelve, and I wanted nothing more than to stumble back home to bed. But we had to deliver the thing. So my mom and I drove into Boston to the Holiday Inn where the function was to take place. Got there around one forty-five, and it turned out June-the-organizer - my mom taught a business class of which June was a student, so that's how they know each other - wasn't going to be there until two. (It was kind of funny; the area was on the top floor, and the regular elevators weren't going there yet because it hadn't started, or something, so we ended up having to take the service elevator. It's a magical back-of-the-hotel conveyance with dirty floors and broken mirrors, where cleaning staff throw trash while making their rounds.) Shitloads of traffic, the arrival of several volunteers and committee members, and about forty-five minutes later, she showed up. Blah blah figuring out where to put it when Michelle-the-floor-manager arrived ten minutes after June; many Chinese doctors telling me that I am extremely talented while I kind of just stood there embarrassed; the organizers and my mom setting the starting bid way too high dear lord, but June says people will definitely buy it so whatever, maybe Chinese doctors like spending money; wandering around checking out the setup for the conference; helping the student-volunteers-from-prestigious-schools-in-the-area with things like gift bags for VIP guests, one of them took a class on 3D modeling so I talked to him about that for a while, that was cool.
Then we left, around four, before the event actually started.
Then we went home and I slept until dinner at seven thirty.
Today was kind of an adventure. I still think it was priced too high.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Phoenix take two.
Okay so.
I am in the process of remaking the phoenix.
This is why.
- My mom keeps pushing me to get my work out. Sell it, get it seen by other people than the ones living in my house, et cetera. To grow as an artist, and build my stupid self-esteem, and such.
- Couple of days ago she was telling me that I ought to sell the phoenix to one of the doctor-people she knows through work. Said it would fit as a decoration in a clinic or office or hospital or something. This idea made me slightly uncomfortable and extremely self-conscious, but the only coherent answer I could give was '..That would be weird. Then lots of people would see it.'
- Last night at dinner my mom offered to buy it from me. I asked what she would do with it, because she kept talking earlier about letting her sell it for me since I'm apparently so afraid to do it myself. (I could sell it myself. On the internet. I could totally do it over the internet. Not in person. That would make me feel awkward.) So I said, 'Sure, buy it from me,' and we worked it out.
- Then she says, 'We're going to have to mount it.' Okay. No problem. Will take some effort, because I was dumb and didn't take display into consideration while making it, but we'd been discussing it with my dad earlier and he said we would figure it out. (Parents are many things, including engineers. Dad's a physicist. We've got this down.)
- Then she says, 'I'm donating it to an auction for charity.'
- Then my brain says
-
-
-
- Then I kind of sputter for a bit.
- This amuses my family, because they know that I'm this way about my art.
- My parents and I stare at the mask for a while, trying to figure out a good way to mount it. You see, I did not take mechanical structure into account while building it, because I'm stupid and don't think ahead, so we have a difficult task ahead.
- We go out to see what we can find.
- First to Michael's. They have display cases; unfortunately, we cannot find anything that will hold the bird's eighteen-inch wingspan. They have shadow boxes; unfortunately, they are all very shallow, and the bird is five inches in depth.
- Then to A C Moore's. Not really expecting anything better, because in past experience Michael's has more stuff anyways, but we try just in case. They have even less options.
- Next to Home Depot. (These stores are all very close to each other.) I have been insisting the whole time that maybe we can just build a box to hold it, to which my dad replies that we will not have adequate time to build a box nice enough for it. (The auction is on Saturday.) We do not find anything that will help. My box idea won't work, because the miter saw in our basement only holds a two-inch board while ours would be a six-inch, and the band saw on which you can have them cut board for you at Home Depot does not do miter cuts.
- I have an idea: What if we take the glass out of a shadow box? The other two dimensions will hold fine. We go back to Michael's, and buy the largest one.
- Back home. We sit staring at the mask again. My dad decides that the best and probably only stable way to go about this is for me to make a cushion shaped as a face, as part of the display, and that we can glue the mask to the cushion and, since the cushion would be built with structure in mind, it will be easier to fasten it to the back of the box. I think this is a good idea; I say that I will go get materials and make it the next day.
- It is today now. My mom calls me from work, and I wake up. She tells me that she and dad have been talking about it some more, and they think that it will be much easier for me to just make a new phoenix.
-
-
-
- Okay, so maybe it would be easier in terms of design. This new one would be built over a sturdy armature, which will make it easy to mount it on the board in the box. Now, also, I won't have to attempt something totally new with the cushion, which might not even work.
- Still, though.
- Making it again?
- I sigh and tell myself that it will probably be easier the second time around, now that I already have the design down, as well as the techniques, and hey, the armature should make it easier, right?
- No.
- I soon remember why I hate building on wire armatures. I mean, even if you forget the fact that I couldn't make it sturdy enough, so my parents came home for lunch so my dad could help me with it. -headdesk- No, the real reason why wire armatures are frustrating is when the wire isn't where you want it to be, and it comes poking out of the clay. Then the clay starts sliding off it when you want it to be going back on. Then you can't get the wire into the right position without tearing off all the clay in that area, and then once you've adjusted it, the wire is wrong right next to where you just fixed.
- So it took about an hour longer to make this phoenix.
- And it's just a phoenix, now; we decided that since this is purely decoration anyways, and we don't necessarily need my mask concept - I just wanted to be able to make a phoenix into a mask, after all; it was a personal project - this one's just a phoenix. No eyeholes. So this is a good thing and a bad thing. I had to adjust the design a bit. Then it started looking unbalanced. Got all frustrated. And even though making the feathers is fairly easy, it's tedious.
- One good thing that came of this: I've been taking WIP pictures at every step (although I forgot that I was planning to until after I had covered the armature a teeny bit, so there's no photo of just the wire). This is a good reference for myself, and also I might put them together and put them..somewhere. This blog, maybe.
So anyways. Phoenix take two just came out of the oven. I'm right now waiting for it to cool down, and then I'll put down the base red. Hopefully the paint job will go faster than the last one did, at least.
Olivia
PS. The blood-sweat-and-tears rating for this project is nearing a four. Just because it is so frustrating to have to redo everything, and for a while I thought it was going to be fine, only to be vastly disappointed in my skills in dealing with armature.
I am in the process of remaking the phoenix.
This is why.
- My mom keeps pushing me to get my work out. Sell it, get it seen by other people than the ones living in my house, et cetera. To grow as an artist, and build my stupid self-esteem, and such.
- Couple of days ago she was telling me that I ought to sell the phoenix to one of the doctor-people she knows through work. Said it would fit as a decoration in a clinic or office or hospital or something. This idea made me slightly uncomfortable and extremely self-conscious, but the only coherent answer I could give was '..That would be weird. Then lots of people would see it.'
- Last night at dinner my mom offered to buy it from me. I asked what she would do with it, because she kept talking earlier about letting her sell it for me since I'm apparently so afraid to do it myself. (I could sell it myself. On the internet. I could totally do it over the internet. Not in person. That would make me feel awkward.) So I said, 'Sure, buy it from me,' and we worked it out.
- Then she says, 'We're going to have to mount it.' Okay. No problem. Will take some effort, because I was dumb and didn't take display into consideration while making it, but we'd been discussing it with my dad earlier and he said we would figure it out. (Parents are many things, including engineers. Dad's a physicist. We've got this down.)
- Then she says, 'I'm donating it to an auction for charity.'
- Then my brain says
-
-
-
- Then I kind of sputter for a bit.
- This amuses my family, because they know that I'm this way about my art.
- My parents and I stare at the mask for a while, trying to figure out a good way to mount it. You see, I did not take mechanical structure into account while building it, because I'm stupid and don't think ahead, so we have a difficult task ahead.
- We go out to see what we can find.
- First to Michael's. They have display cases; unfortunately, we cannot find anything that will hold the bird's eighteen-inch wingspan. They have shadow boxes; unfortunately, they are all very shallow, and the bird is five inches in depth.
- Then to A C Moore's. Not really expecting anything better, because in past experience Michael's has more stuff anyways, but we try just in case. They have even less options.
- Next to Home Depot. (These stores are all very close to each other.) I have been insisting the whole time that maybe we can just build a box to hold it, to which my dad replies that we will not have adequate time to build a box nice enough for it. (The auction is on Saturday.) We do not find anything that will help. My box idea won't work, because the miter saw in our basement only holds a two-inch board while ours would be a six-inch, and the band saw on which you can have them cut board for you at Home Depot does not do miter cuts.
- I have an idea: What if we take the glass out of a shadow box? The other two dimensions will hold fine. We go back to Michael's, and buy the largest one.
- Back home. We sit staring at the mask again. My dad decides that the best and probably only stable way to go about this is for me to make a cushion shaped as a face, as part of the display, and that we can glue the mask to the cushion and, since the cushion would be built with structure in mind, it will be easier to fasten it to the back of the box. I think this is a good idea; I say that I will go get materials and make it the next day.
- It is today now. My mom calls me from work, and I wake up. She tells me that she and dad have been talking about it some more, and they think that it will be much easier for me to just make a new phoenix.
-
-
-
- Okay, so maybe it would be easier in terms of design. This new one would be built over a sturdy armature, which will make it easy to mount it on the board in the box. Now, also, I won't have to attempt something totally new with the cushion, which might not even work.
- Still, though.
- Making it again?
- I sigh and tell myself that it will probably be easier the second time around, now that I already have the design down, as well as the techniques, and hey, the armature should make it easier, right?
- No.
- I soon remember why I hate building on wire armatures. I mean, even if you forget the fact that I couldn't make it sturdy enough, so my parents came home for lunch so my dad could help me with it. -headdesk- No, the real reason why wire armatures are frustrating is when the wire isn't where you want it to be, and it comes poking out of the clay. Then the clay starts sliding off it when you want it to be going back on. Then you can't get the wire into the right position without tearing off all the clay in that area, and then once you've adjusted it, the wire is wrong right next to where you just fixed.
- So it took about an hour longer to make this phoenix.
- And it's just a phoenix, now; we decided that since this is purely decoration anyways, and we don't necessarily need my mask concept - I just wanted to be able to make a phoenix into a mask, after all; it was a personal project - this one's just a phoenix. No eyeholes. So this is a good thing and a bad thing. I had to adjust the design a bit. Then it started looking unbalanced. Got all frustrated. And even though making the feathers is fairly easy, it's tedious.
- One good thing that came of this: I've been taking WIP pictures at every step (although I forgot that I was planning to until after I had covered the armature a teeny bit, so there's no photo of just the wire). This is a good reference for myself, and also I might put them together and put them..somewhere. This blog, maybe.
So anyways. Phoenix take two just came out of the oven. I'm right now waiting for it to cool down, and then I'll put down the base red. Hopefully the paint job will go faster than the last one did, at least.
Olivia
PS. The blood-sweat-and-tears rating for this project is nearing a four. Just because it is so frustrating to have to redo everything, and for a while I thought it was going to be fine, only to be vastly disappointed in my skills in dealing with armature.
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Phoenix mask.
This marks the beginning of a big mask kick I'm on right now. A few days ago, I decided that I really, really like masks and I want to make a bunch of them. So here we are.
Nearly done; gotta varnish it, then add the ribbon. When it's completely finished, I'll take nicer photos. (I occasionally took WIP photos with my cell phone throughout the process to show other people, and they all thought it was pink. Damn those terrible-quality cameras.)
Why did I decide to make a phoenix mask? Easy answer: Phoenixes are awesome. Fire..birds. And since they're (presumably) not real, appearance is up for interpretation. I'm a pretty muted-colors kind of person when it comes to things like clothes, so art is my big way to express myself and go all-out; painting bright red-and-gold birds is fantastic.
I have a list of mask ideas I hope to implement. Phoenix was at the top. I knew right away that I wanted the bird to be the mask, rather than decorating a more conventional mask like a phoenix, or making a beaked mask with feathers, or something. Took me quite a while to figure out the actual design, though; twelve horrible, failed concept sketches, in fact, before I landed on the winner. Usually I'm more of an impulse sculptor (with the exception of everything I did in my fall semester sculpture class, because planning was part of the assignments), so this was an interesting process. I followed the sketch almost exactly, which I think is kind of cool, because, again, I usually don't draw out my ideas more than a quick blobby doodle.
Initially, I'd planned to do a bunch of carved details on it, feathers and stuff, but I realized as I started making it that that might prove annoying, and make the mask look too busy. I created a totally-cheating way to easily sculpt the feathers, so that cut down the exasperation and frustration I'd been expecting from them.
Unfortunately, I'm kind of stupid when it comes to considering mechanical structure. As in, I didn't think about it much until late in the creation process. I inserted a paper clip where the right wing meets the body, and another where the neck rests against the left wing, but nothing else. Halfway through painting..it broke. About half a centimeter after the paper clip in the right wing ends. I..almost cried. Especially after my never-has-failed-me-before craft glue only half-held it on (it was still wobbly). Then I tried Gorilla Glue, and that didn't even work entirely. So I filled it up with more craft glue, patched it with raw clay, laid on a coat of varnish over the area, and painted it over. It has worked rather nicely, and it should be even better after I put down the finish, but as should be obvious, this is an item meant only for display. (Though it's a mask, I didn't build it with wearability in mind. I made it as a decoration; perhaps I will also make a version that's more practical for actually wearing.) Thankfully, disasters are also learning experiences, and though I was ready to break down along with the wing, I've figured things out that will prove useful in the future. (One good thing about drawing the design beforehand: ease of structural planning.)
The painting, however, was do-as-I-go. It was quite fun, really. I put down a couple of layers of red over everything first, and went from there. It's easy to pick the colors for a phoenix; it's just fire. I also added some purple because I thought there ought to be some dark in it. For the rachis of the feathers (that middle part, thank you Wikipedia), I debated with myself between a whole spectrum of colors, from black to white to red to yellow to purple, until I finally settled on gold. I'd been thinking about it the whole time I was painting; that was the last element that I painted, so I had a lot of time to choose.
As for finish, I have three varieties: matte, gloss, and pearl. I'm almost definitely settled on matte; pearl is a definite no-go, because it would mute the colors way too much, and for some reason I can't explain to myself, I think gloss would be inappropriate for this. It just..wouldn't look right.
I'm trying to decided what color of ribbon I will use for it. I have black and white; I was considering getting some red, but decided against it. Maybe I should track down some gold ribbon?
...
Materials: Super Sculpey polymer clay, Delta Ceramcoat acrylic paint, (eventually) Delta Ceramcoat matte varnish, ribbon.
Number of preparation sketches: 13.
Raw clay to ready-to-bake: 4 hours.
Painting and post-work: 10 hours.
Days spent: 2.
Blood-sweat-and-tears rating: 3 out of 5.
Satisfation rating: 8 out of 10.
Nearly done; gotta varnish it, then add the ribbon. When it's completely finished, I'll take nicer photos. (I occasionally took WIP photos with my cell phone throughout the process to show other people, and they all thought it was pink. Damn those terrible-quality cameras.)
Why did I decide to make a phoenix mask? Easy answer: Phoenixes are awesome. Fire..birds. And since they're (presumably) not real, appearance is up for interpretation. I'm a pretty muted-colors kind of person when it comes to things like clothes, so art is my big way to express myself and go all-out; painting bright red-and-gold birds is fantastic.
I have a list of mask ideas I hope to implement. Phoenix was at the top. I knew right away that I wanted the bird to be the mask, rather than decorating a more conventional mask like a phoenix, or making a beaked mask with feathers, or something. Took me quite a while to figure out the actual design, though; twelve horrible, failed concept sketches, in fact, before I landed on the winner. Usually I'm more of an impulse sculptor (with the exception of everything I did in my fall semester sculpture class, because planning was part of the assignments), so this was an interesting process. I followed the sketch almost exactly, which I think is kind of cool, because, again, I usually don't draw out my ideas more than a quick blobby doodle.
Initially, I'd planned to do a bunch of carved details on it, feathers and stuff, but I realized as I started making it that that might prove annoying, and make the mask look too busy. I created a totally-cheating way to easily sculpt the feathers, so that cut down the exasperation and frustration I'd been expecting from them.
Unfortunately, I'm kind of stupid when it comes to considering mechanical structure. As in, I didn't think about it much until late in the creation process. I inserted a paper clip where the right wing meets the body, and another where the neck rests against the left wing, but nothing else. Halfway through painting..it broke. About half a centimeter after the paper clip in the right wing ends. I..almost cried. Especially after my never-has-failed-me-before craft glue only half-held it on (it was still wobbly). Then I tried Gorilla Glue, and that didn't even work entirely. So I filled it up with more craft glue, patched it with raw clay, laid on a coat of varnish over the area, and painted it over. It has worked rather nicely, and it should be even better after I put down the finish, but as should be obvious, this is an item meant only for display. (Though it's a mask, I didn't build it with wearability in mind. I made it as a decoration; perhaps I will also make a version that's more practical for actually wearing.) Thankfully, disasters are also learning experiences, and though I was ready to break down along with the wing, I've figured things out that will prove useful in the future. (One good thing about drawing the design beforehand: ease of structural planning.)
The painting, however, was do-as-I-go. It was quite fun, really. I put down a couple of layers of red over everything first, and went from there. It's easy to pick the colors for a phoenix; it's just fire. I also added some purple because I thought there ought to be some dark in it. For the rachis of the feathers (that middle part, thank you Wikipedia), I debated with myself between a whole spectrum of colors, from black to white to red to yellow to purple, until I finally settled on gold. I'd been thinking about it the whole time I was painting; that was the last element that I painted, so I had a lot of time to choose.
As for finish, I have three varieties: matte, gloss, and pearl. I'm almost definitely settled on matte; pearl is a definite no-go, because it would mute the colors way too much, and for some reason I can't explain to myself, I think gloss would be inappropriate for this. It just..wouldn't look right.
I'm trying to decided what color of ribbon I will use for it. I have black and white; I was considering getting some red, but decided against it. Maybe I should track down some gold ribbon?
...
Materials: Super Sculpey polymer clay, Delta Ceramcoat acrylic paint, (eventually) Delta Ceramcoat matte varnish, ribbon.
Number of preparation sketches: 13.
Raw clay to ready-to-bake: 4 hours.
Painting and post-work: 10 hours.
Days spent: 2.
Blood-sweat-and-tears rating: 3 out of 5.
Satisfation rating: 8 out of 10.
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