Most of my life, I’ve always been thought to be one of those always-happy people. Lately, I haven’t felt very happy.

Not that I’ve felt mostly sad or depressed, but I don’t have the HIGH on life that I used to have in my day-to-day life.

Is the effect of my living in limbo, right now? Is this because of my many insecurities? of myself?

Whatever it may be, I’ve been stuck here for the last few months. I don’t seem to laugh as much, don’t seem to smile as much, don’t seem to enjoy my time as much. A shame, really. I WANT to live every day up, but it’s become fairly mundane and…. un-exhilarating. Unchallenged, every day a slight variation of the past, I’m living the cycle of what I criticized most from the corporate, day-to-day jobs that I disliked. Ironic, since now I have all the freedom to do whatever I want.

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I know in the past I didn’t intimately mention my time at Embark much, mostly because I know things on the internet are easy searchable and didn’t want to risk mentioning things that other folks would care about. But after our reunion last Thursday night, I really needed to share. I can wholeheartedly say that these folks are like second family.

It’s amazing that we even all worked together. I mean, seriously? Who would ever believe that we got all our work done when they see us all go out together, singing, chanting, and playing the way we do? My favorite thing of all is that we’re like a huge group of kids.

Last Thursday, Janelle and Christine organized a reunion at Koh Samui & The Monkey. Our table for 20 stretched the whole width of the restaurant. It was also Patson’s last day after 10 years at Embark, which is kindofa really big deal! To hype the event up even more, there was a public warning sent out: “Oh god! Warning to Embarkers: Adam Park will be there tonight! WARNING!”

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My good friend Craig recently worked hard to compose a great concept for his video application to Murphy Goode’s “A Really Goode Job” Wine Country Lifestyle Coorespondent position.

To be frank, after watching several video submission, I got the impression that most folks didn’t put as much time and thought into their videos.

PRESENTATION. A lot of the videos have horrible sound quality, or there’s too many visual things happening, making the video seem like an infomercial. Yes, sell yourself, but do it with CLASS! Craig worked hard to ensure that the sound and video quality wouldn’t compromise the presentation of his message.

For a job application where your video is your submission, I’m glad Craig’s is clean, tidy, and went through drafts. You would NOT submit a messy resume for a job, right?

ORIGINALITY + HUMOR. Most of the videos are simply the applicants talking about their experiences, why they should be fit for the job, with a cheesy clip of them sipping some Murphy Goode wine. Since most of the videos are like this, they really lack personality.

Okay, I’m biased, but I honestly think Craig’s video is very different from the other submissions. Even the CURRENT Murphy Goode Lifestyle Coorespondent gave props to Craig’s video and blog post: Andy’s Goode Life Blog – How to Make a Killer Job Application Video.

The best part is that Craig transparently shares his video-making process, and provides an extensive “Murphy-Goode Job Applicants Video Fail Guide” for other applicants to learn from. Craig’s Video Notes + Video Application “FAIL” list.

Do you agree with me, that his video blows the others outta the water?
PLEASE vote for Craig’s video here: http://tr.im/goode by next Friday, June 19th!

The last few weeks, I’ve been living up my childhood nostalgia quite a bit. For the last few projects for my Color Dynamics class, I decided to use classic Nintendo/videogame characters for my assignments.

Assignment: Anomaly and Bridge Tones

Part 1: Create 3-like compositions, using a tightly unified color field. e.g. complementary tones, analogous or monochromatic tones, limited value range.

Part 3: Change two of the existing colors to create bridge tones that will soften the starkness of the anomaly.

I wanted to do something simple, since I had to do 3 iterations of the same composition. What better to do than a tribute to the Super Mushroom?

Here’s what I came up with:

Final Product: Mario Mushrooms

Alllrriiiggght, so I didn’t really follow the assignment! I added a bunch of white to the bridge tones for fear of the mushroom looking too toxic! I changed the golden yellow sun streaks in the background to a yellow-greenish tone (but with LOTS of white), and the mushroom spots from red to a very slight purple (tho it looks blue next to the blue mushroom base color).

I had a LOT of fun working on this project! I might go back and redo the same composition with more popular Mario mushroom colors: the new super mushroom (red base, white spots), the 1-up (neon green base, white spots)

Assignment: Proportional Inventory Study

Part 1: Make a proportional inventory of an image that has an easily countable number of tones.

Part 2: Create a composition of your own using the colors and proportions of the inventory.

This is my FAVORITE piece at the moment!
For Part 1, a few days earlier, I had stumbled upon this image by strongstuff

Optimus Prime Commission by strongstuff

I just thought this Optimus Prime image was AMAZING: blocky style, and minimal colors used to denote the curves and shadows around Optimus’ form. I decided to use this piece for my study.

Here is my Proportional Inventory, breaking down the proportions of how many colors there are in the Optimus Prime piece, and also how MUCH of it exists in the piece all together. (Ex: 20% white, 5% light gray, etc.)

NOTE: Depending on your computer monitor’s settings, the colors might not match. My desktop monitor’s colors are all kinds of whack so I used to my new laptop to view the Optimus Prime pic. From there, I spent a while mixing the colors on my palette until it matched closely the colors on my laptop screen.

Then came the fun part!! I needed to figure out what Nintendo character was mostly blue and red… At first thought, of course I thought of Mario! But I had a few problems: Mario is mostly red with blue overalls, plus he has skin tones, which was not part of the Optimus Prime color inventory! I texted Norvelle, Brent, and Greg in class and we came up with a few options: Mario, Yoshis, Sonic(!!). As much as I wanted to do a piece on Sonic <3 <3 <3, I realized that I could do something with Megaman. Megaman has very minimal skin so it would be a nice experiment!

But what could off-set Megaman’s mostly blue body with red?

Here’s what I came up with ;)

Final product: Megaman+Protoman

Protoman’s red base served as a perfect balance for Megaman’s blue. Being Megaman’s brother, I found it appropriate to do a split down the middle between the two. The ultimate battle between Good and Evil!

Result? Bubbling New Ideas For Future Pieces!

After I started taking on the assignments with subjects that were more of my style (illustrations, more graphic/character-based), I concentrated and spent more time working on my pieces. I noticed that I enjoyed it x100 more doing fan art! Soooo…

My new project will be to create a series of classic videogame fan art!

Have any ideas or requests? Please comment and let me know what characters or game you would like to see!

Oh, and if I’m not already familiar with the game, I promise to play it to learn the ridiculous intricacies of it. (ex: Ninja Gaiden’s CHEATER birds. BULL.SHIT.)

Follow your dreams.

We’ve all heard it since the day we were born. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: As children, we’re asked the grand question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” From that moment on, we’re taught the idea that we can do ANY and EVERYthing that we want, so long as we want it and work hard enough. I long realized that these ideas and dreams usually dissipate by the time we reach our adult lives.

I mean, don’t get me wrong. I know a handful of people that knew EXACTLY what they’ve wanted to be since childhood, and they’ve worked hard from day one to achieve it. To name a few: Steven H, Sarah, Cotroneo. They’ve always had their vision on their dreams, and they stuck to it.

This is something I highly respect and highly admire, mostly because this comes so rarely in the lives that I know. It also hits home in my own life, reflecting how long it’s taken me to pursue my own dreams.

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