justin owens

This weekend has been the first in some time where I’ve had two days off in a row, I feel like I’ve finally had some time to rest. During the week I always have two days off from work, but then of course I’m at school those days.

It’s tough, I really wish I wasn’t working at all so I could put all my energy into school, but I’m enjoying work so much, I’m getting to do lots of things I’m really interested in (baking, food prep and soon I’ll be getting training on the line). Bill keeps joking that Kimi and I will probably take over the Bread Workshop, that really caught me off guard. I’ve always had a dream of having a bakery/cafe/small restaurant. I’ve no idea what the future holds for me, and there’s no way I want to stop pursuing animation and art in general, but all of a sudden it seems like that dream has much more of a chance than I’d have thought. Interesting.

I have a lot of homework to get done today. YCON starts this weekend and lots of friends will be visiting. I’m starting with my 3d animation homework as I find it a lot easier to focus and get started on computer work.

I just ordered a new 24″ iMac, I’m looking forward to getting that setup. I had thought of getting a new tower instead, but the iMac includes a gorgeous monitor and has such a small footprint (I should be able to get rid of both my g5 tower and pc box), that I couldn’t resist. My work area at home isn’t ideal at the moment, I have the aforementioned two towers next to my desk, two keyboards and mice on my desk and it’s just too much. I can’t wait til it’s simplified, I think it’ll work much better for me.

I’ll still be using two monitors, so I won’t lose that functionality. I forgot to order the mini dvi to dvi adapter though, so I’ll drop by the apple store before school sometime this week.

Last week when on break in my intermediate figure drawing class, I had a chance to speak with my teacher Keith. He attended the Art Center College of Design, an amazing school that many artists I admire have come out of.

I mentioned such to him and his reaction was interesting. He told me how competitive the school is, where it has you submit a portfolio for review to try and get in. He said that meant all the students around you already knew how to draw and were incredibly talented. He worked extremely hard to keep up, and so the environment really pushed him to learn. He said a lot of students couldn’t take the stress and would drop out.

I’ve heard so many amazing things about the school and as I mentioned above, the artists that I’ve seen who’ve graduated are just so talented. He really gave me a different take on it though. Money aside (it’s at least twice as expensive as theAcademy of Art), I don’t think I would have been able to get in. It’s an interesting system. It picks out individuals who already have great skills and then refines their craft to a great degree. I don’t like that it leaves others behind, regardless of whether or not I think I’d be one of the people left behind.

Now I don’t know what they look for in the submitted portfolios, but the impression I was left with was that you had to be pretty good to get in. The academy accepts everyone, so long as they can pay (a serious issue unto itself), but at least people aren’t turned away for not having the skillset they’re coming to school to learn.

The bake shift was fun, I only destroyed a few breads. I’m going to keep things short for the moment, I’d love to get into the details of what I did, but I’ve had very little sleep these last few days. We can safely say, pastries, I has them.

After a bit of a nap I met up with Kimi in San Francisco. We shared some pasta at Bristol Farms and then ate creampuffs at Beard Papas. After that I went to the animation lab and animated my two dimensional butt off. I was able to get around 75% of the project finished, I’ll need to go in tomorrow morning to finish things off. I’d do it Thursday before class, but I might be reporting for Jury Duty.

On the BART ride home I struck up a conversation with a woman named Karen, who was born blind. We discussed accessibility and how the blind audience isn’t a concern when it comes to visual medias, including movies. It’s very interesting to me, as I deal so much with visual works, be it drawing or animation. I feel motivated to try and include the awareness of the way others experience media into my work.

I was thinking about that and was trying to come up with specific examples for myself in how I could make my work more accessible. Based on my conversation with Karen, the first thing that comes to mind is story. She goes to the movies and was telling me that she doesn’t need to see to be able to enjoy a good story.

Thirty minutes before I’m off for my pastry and break baking shift. I am exhausted. It’s not so bad at all when I’m moving around, but now that I’m just sitting and waiting, the exhaustion has set in. I’ve just about been up for 24 hours, which is rather rare for me, I typically can’t go that long without sleep. I’m confident though that once I’m moving and out in the crisp air, I’ll wake up again.

On top of everything else I feel emotionally drained. It’s been a long day. I look forward to sleep, only five and a half hours to go and I can lay down!

I’m doing decently on the homework front. I finished my figure drawing homework earlier, that felt nice to get out of the way. I’ve a few supplies I need to pick up before class, but I otherwise feel ready. The only homework item left is for my 2d animation class. We’re doing a falling leaf animation this week. I need to finalize my background layer and path of action for the leaf and then onto animating it. After work I’ll sleep, then I’ll head to the animation lab to get that all finished. I hope it won’t take more than a few hours.

Wednesday evening I need to check in with the court house and see if I need to report for jury duty on Thursday. I decided to not try and get out of it this time (I know a few tricks). I feel ready to finally give it a go, but the downside is that my initial report in date is a school day. Because of that, I’m hoping I don’t have to report in, at least on Thursday. I only have each class once a week, so missing a single day cuts out a lot of instruction.

And now fifteen minutes have passed. Time to brush my teeth and put myself together. I feel the pastries calling me!

On Monday Kimi and I drove over to the Compusa in Emeryville, they’re closing down and we wanted to see what sort of deals they might have. As it turns out, not a lot at that point. We’ll check again in a few days and see what we can score.

A half block away we saw the Pixar Animation studio. It was pretty grand looking with a big archway and everything, I felt chills. I’ve always been so impressed with their storytelling and seeing how close they were to where I live really made the place seem approachable. I’m thinking of trying to get a job there. I do have some qualms about working for such a large company, but I’ll talk about that at another point.

I’ve always had a hard time disciplining myself and it has hurt my progress in the arts. I want to get better at drawing and animation, but I don’t put serious time into working on those skills. Instead I sit at my desk and think how much I want to be drawing, but I don’t draw. I have a mental wall that keeps me from getting started.

If I want to have any chance at working for a company such as Pixar I really need to focus. And so I’m going to try and do that. I have some story ideas I’ve had percolating in my mind that I’ll use as a training ground.