Adjusting to the Bamboo

I think it's pretty clear that the Bamboo tablet and I are not friends yet.  A couple nights ago I opened one of the most exciting presents I received this holiday season, and by the title of this post I'm sure you know what it was. I was beyond thrilled because all through P1 I kept thinking about how my life would be infinitely easier if I had a tablet to help me in creating my campaigns. I'm not sure why exactly I thought I would be such a natural at it, because one of the first messages I created is shown up above, and, like it says, "its not lookingood..." (sheesh, I can't even spell on this thing!) As someone who's been drawing my whole life, I started out thinking the tablet would be just like drawing on paper. That definitely is not the case. The fact that you have to look up instead of at your hands as you draw, to see the result actually makes a huge difference, one that I was not prepared for. There's a disconnect there that you have to get used to, and I guess I'm just not there yet. Shortly after this, I tried writing out the whole alphabet and it looked slightly better, so I'm counting on the fact that if I practice enough I'll get the hang of it. Let's just hope I'm right.

Staying Creative

I don't know how I did it, but I survived the most intense, work-heavy semester of my life. I'm not complaining even a little though, because a majority of my work included drawing out creative ideas and creating things on photoshop and illustrator, all of which I tend to do in my spare time anyways. I don't think I've ever been so dedicated to class assignments in my entire life like I was to P1, but hey, that's how you know you're in the right major.
It's been a week since final critique, and I'm still not used to the fact that I suddenly have all the free time in the world. I've been using most of it to so catch up on all the shows I didn't have time to watch during this crazy semester, but Dexter and Gossip Girl can only hold my interest for so long. I went to my other favorites shows for further distractions, and it worked for a few days. Several season finales later, however, I was back to having nothing to occupy my time.
Needless to say, I'm still not used to having no campaigns to work on after being so engrossed in three all semester. It's been worrying me that if I advance onto P2, by the time I'm back I'm going to have to relearn how to be creative and come up with good campaign ideas. Which is why my best friend and fellow P1er David Bassine and I came up with the best idea EVER. (Well, I think it's the best idea ever.)
To keep from losing touch with our creative side, David and I decided to work on a campaign together over winter break. I'm really excited about it because let's be real, what else am I gonna do in El Paso for a month? We're still figuring out a client but will probably be starting soon on that. Looks like my lazy break just got a whole lot more productive.

How you know you're in love

My popcorn campaign is finally complete, tentacles, popcorn kernels and all. Flashback a few days before today and cue to me curled up on the floor rocking myself back and forth slowly into insanity, yet now I'm seeing just how much the chaos was worth it. I couldn't be happier.
For the past few months I have made P1 my priority. While all my friends were downtown slamming shots and stumbling down sixth street, I was at home immersed in some combination of brainstorming, thumbnailing, photoshopping, and illustrating. Creative has pushed me like nothing I've ever experienced before. My social life sufficiently decreased upon my acceptance into the program and my other classes received significantly less attention than I alotted to it in other semesters of school. Because of all these reasons, and more, that is how I know how perfect my major is for me.
The Texas Creative Sequence has an unspoken requirement of 30 + hours per week of your devotion, and the way I see it you have to really love something to not only spend 30 hours a week with it and not get sick of it. I've never actually counted, but I wouldn't be surprised if I surpassed that thirty hour mark, and I've enjoyed every minute of it.
Though the sequence has pushed me to my breaking point many times over, I wouldn't trade it for anything. To do well, you really have to make it your life, and that's how you know if you love it. Even if you just kind of like it, being forced to spend that much time with something you're indifferent to will make you start to resent it. You have to really love it to be willing to spend so much time with it. That's how I know I'm in love.

Creative Lesson Learned

I'm pretty sure not even ten minutes have passed since my last post, and I already have something new that I learned and am ready to share. Call it me passing on a lesson that I learned the hard way, call it me wanting to knock out another blog post before this impending deadline, or call it me not wanting to face the damage I've done since getting back to work on this torch that I now hate with a fiery (heh) passion. They pretty much all apply either way. But I digress, I think it's important for you to know that when you're working on something very very important, make sure you PRESS SAVE, LIKE, EVERY FIVE SECONDS. Or at least every time you make some decent progress. I'm pretty sure you can infer what just happened to me, and my torch ( or lack thereof, thanks to my stupidity.)

Okay so like I said, it's only about ten minutes of work that I lost. It could have been infinitely worse. Either way though, with critique just a little over a week away and so much work to still get done, every second is precious. Even taking the short bit of time to write this blog is stressing me out right now. (I also just pressed 'save' on this blog post, because well, you never know.) As much as I feel like I'm about to sound like a bank or insurance or wal-mart commerical, I have to say it, because I promise you'll thank me later- ALWAYS SAVE. Even if you have the world's second-slowest computer (mine is the slowest) and it takes longer to save your work than you would like, it's gonna take even longer to get it back if something happens. NOT WORTH THE RISK. Just save everything, and save it often.

Now, it's time for me to get back to work on this campaign, I'll keep you posted (pun intended).

Those six dreaded words

Small update from my last post: after those seven attempts to make perfect tentacles, and then add about four more, I finally got the perfect look for my campaign, but before I could even stand up to do a victory dance I was back to illustrator for execution number two. This one involved a statue of liberty, seen only from her crown up since she's buried in a popcorn bucket of epic portions (yes, I did just work the tagline into my blog). Before I got started on that, I was doing my best to turn a kernel of popcorn into the look my copywriter envisioned for these executions, aka a vague combination of  vectored but not too cartoony, painted but not too textured, and realistic but slightly more cartoony except not really. With all that in mind, I did my best to create the perfect popcorn kernel which would be worked into all our executions several times over to fill this bucket of epic portions (oh look, I did it again!). We realized after a good amount of time that the only way to get it right would be to vector it then apply about eight different effects, much like we did to the tentacles. Not at all in the mood to undertake that task, I worked on illustrating a statue of liberty. The crown was easier to recreate, but when I began with the torch, the thought of tracing all the intricate engravings, as well as the fingers wrapped around it made me want to vomit. So instead I dove straight into applying the effects to the photograph I was illustrating from. I knew right away that it wasn't gonna work because the style would look completely different, but wishful thinking won me over and I gave it my best shot. I showed my copywriter the result, and he confirmed my fears with six dreaded words- "You're gonna need to vectorize it."
This whole thing has just taught me that when it comes to advertising, there really are no shortcuts. There's no such thing as the easy way out, and even though there's seventeen things I'd rather do right now then vectorize a popcorn kernel and a statue of liberty torch, that's exactly what I'm about to do the second I press 'publish' on this blog post.

10 days, 7 tentacles

I just realized how often I find myself tweeting about the creative sequence, especially lately because things haven't ever been as crazy as they are right now. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't trade this for anything, but sometimes its nice to take a 10 second break and tweet about stress, meltdowns, and attempt number seven to create tentacles coming out of a bucket of popcorn. It's ironic that I'm currently undertaking task of making something that would never actually happen in real life look realistic and believable on paper. (Find me a real photograph of an octopus, kraken, or any other tentacled marine creature attacking a bucket of popcorn, and I'll retract my previous statement with an embarrassed apology.) As noted earlier, if you follow me on twitter you'll know I'm currently on my seventh attempt of creating these tentacles that I'm slowly starting to resent. (If you don't follow me on twitter, now you know.) I've gotten to the point where I've been at this for so long that it's necessary to take a short but productive break, hence the purpose of this blog post. Though I'm currently making something that right now seems impossible, I'm a lot further than I expected to be. Everything I've created for this today on illustrator and photoshop is something new I just learned. I know that I'm learning a lot as I go along and this will make it easier for me when I come around to the other three in this campaign.