Monday, May 18, 2009

Final Week!

This is now my final week at CalArts/Valencia, CA in general--on Friday I hop in my car and make the 12 hour drive back to Oregon. I've been up to several things since the last post--here's a quick summary:

On Thursday night the now annual Scavenger Hunt took place. Started at 10:30 at night until close to 2 in the morning. A pretty fun/epic night. Anyways, here's the main event--the release of the hundreds of bouncy balls onto the crowd below(took place in the Main Gallery for anyone who cares):

Video stopped because I needed to start collecting said bouncy balls. The team I was on collected about 106 of these.

The next day(Friday) was the 2009 CalArts' Graduation. My classmates and I attended to support our 4th year friends as they recieved their diplomas. Good luck class of 2009! I know I'll definately miss seeing you guys around the labs, cubes, and campus. And of course a huge Congratulations--you made it! Now get out there and rock the world! :)

Here's a shot of the courtyard where everyone gathered.

The weekend was spent packing up the cube and getting everything in order for the summer. My little cube is back to bare-walls/shelves...I know I'm going to really miss the whole "cube environment", but September is going to be here before I know it--and until then I have a ton of work to do like animating more, drawing more, and doing anything to address my weak-areas and improve(spacing, your day will come! haha)---oh yeah, and start brainstorming a whole new film idea.

Today(Monday), my friend Kristen and I headed on down to the La Brea Tar-pits to study the fossils. I've never been to the tar-pits before, so I was looking forward to the visit:

Statues of mammoths in one of the actual tar-pits(there are several tar-pits throughout the park). Apparently the mother mammoth is the one trapped in the asphalt as the baby and father watch on. There's a nice little museum just behind me where we spent the greater part of our trip. On a side-note: ever smelled the air around a road-construction site? The tar-pits smelled exactly like that--tar/asphalt.


HUUUUGE mammoth. Had to stand quite a ways back to get him entirely in the frame.

RAWR! Fear my saber-teeth! I don't think he flossed very much with those pearly-whites.


They had saber-tooth tigers all over the place. Some behind glass, others posed on pedestals. One of my favorite beasties.

A Short-faced bear. Really fascinating proportions--though definately creepy. These animals are larger than polar bears/grizzly bears! The following image gives you an idea of what this guy would look like with muscle/skin, etc.

I think the displays that really caught my attention were the ones that really gave you an idea of just how vast/rich the tarpits really are. Below are a couple of examples:

The Dire Wolf:

One of the posed skeletons on display. Right across from:

This. I took a picture of the sign--it'll do a better job describing the above image, than I can:


Next up, are Golden Eagles:

And of course, a picture of the sign next to the display:

Really fascinating. Apparently the archeologists recently uncovered more fossils buried in one of the pits(2006 or so)--a sign said that over the next 5 years about 3.5 million specimens will be unearthed! That's mind-blowing to me! They've already discovered a full mammoth buried within the tar...his name is "Zed" and should be fully complete within those 5 years.


An example of the station that the archeologists work at. Reminds me of the cubes with the only difference being more sun/fresh-air. haha

Of course after taking oodles of photos and geeking out about the various displays, Kristen and I dug out the sketchbooks and started drawing some of the skeletons. Here are just a couple---I took my time on these and before I knew it, it was 5pm and the museum was closing.




Anyways, had a great time and will be planning another drawing expedition for sure!

1 comment:

Martin W. said...

wow, thanks for that post! nice to see what real animation students are up to ^^
i love the skeletons in the museum..makes me think about a museum in berlin i should go to.