Day 42

So today, we didn't end up going anywhere. I was a little disapointed to begin with, but really I was quite content. Tanja and I ordered Chinese food and I watched Angel with Alicia. Other than that, I finished up some of my packing.

Later in the evening (well more like 3 am), I decided to take one last walk and take some more pictures. Some of them turned out really neat just on their own.

I'm excited to be going to Eugene tomorrow, although I'm not really looking forward to flying. Hopefully I'll be more awake so I'll be able to enjoy it a little more. Well, that's really all for today. I'll have lots more to write about this weekend--FaerieWorlds!!!

PS: 5 days!

Days 40 and 41

Day 40

Yesterday was another day of errands and printing. We had several errands so we had to run around town first. We went and bought more ink, and then went to Target and Staples in search of some containers that they could use to transport their books and prints that they are going to sell at FaerieWorlds. It was interesting to see them pick out the containers that they could use, even if Donny thought it was a waste of my time. After we had the containers, we went to a store called Smart and Final; basically like a BJ's with bulk products for restaurants. There we purchased bags to give to customers at FaerieWorlds as well as groceries.

With all our errands done, we went back to their apartment to finish up my printing and to begin packing their prints. When I was done printing my images, we went to FedEx Office to get my buisness cards printed along with the newsletter sign-up sheets. Donny also wanted to ask about papers for Tuesday, because Joseph was working on an exclusive image only to be sold at FaerieWorlds. Unfortunately, the woman who Donny dealt with was not very polite, and she left very upset. My cards got printed fine, but we ran out of time so we couldn't cut them. When we got back to their place, I cut some by hand to place in the back of my prints (just in case I sell any). I also helped rearrange their 13x19 portfolio, although I'm not sure when that happened exactly; it all sort of blends together.

Day 41

Today's objectives for me were to cut my buisness cards and do laundry, both of which have been successfully completed. The cards look really nice. I'm quite proud of them.And Donny got the exclusive image printed alright. She first tried to get it done at Staples, but their print quality was not so great, so she reluctantly went back to FedEx Office.

Now all that's left to do is to pack for FaerieWorlds! I also need to package my masks to mail them home. I decided to try mailing them because the gold one had a tiny crack from the flight out here and I'd really rather not risk it getting more damaged. I just hope it doesn't get hurt in the mail. I'll have to insure it.

But I'm very excited for FaerieWorlds. As Donny pointed out, it's really the big finish of my internship. I get to show my work to the crowd I may eventually sell to. Getting to see their reactions will be quite different from the reactions of my classmates who generally don't get fantasy; although to their credit, they usually like my work anyway. But it will be very beneficial to see how the fantasy crowd reacts. I kinda wish I had my work from last semester to show too. In some ways I feel like the little body of work that I did over the internship is rather scattered and not as polished as last semester's work. I guess I'm just concerned that it's not a good representation of my work...although I think it still has that edge that most of my pieces do, so hopefully it'll work out. I'm a worrywart, I know.

Well, tomorrow we are supposed to go to a museum or something; maybe get sushi. Something fun that gets us out of the house and enjoying LA before we leave. Even though I haven't done very much site-seeing and I only went to the ocean once I still have enjoyed my time in LA. I'm not much of a tourist. And I'm even less of one when I'm by myself. In order to fully enjoy the tourist-y parts of LA, I'll have to come back with friends or family. But until then, I'm content with my stay in Los Angeles. It's neat to be able to watch Angel, hear a street name and be able to say, "hey, I've been there." I'm definetly pleased with my travels thus far, and I expect my short trip to Oregon to be the same.

PS: 6 days left!

Day 39

So today I actually went to work. But first, Donny and Joseph took me with them to Big Lou's (a comic book/figurine rarities store) and then Best Buy. After feeling so under the weather all week, Joseph really wanted to get out of the house, which I totally understood.

After the brief outing, we arrived back at their apartment and began working on various things that needed to get done before we leave for FaerieWorlds. First, Donny had me design a banner to top the Newsletter sign-up sheet that they will have at their booth at FaerieWorlds. That was simple enough and I was soon on to another task. After that, I wrote up the newsletter about FaerieWorlds and the store being up. For this, I had to practice HTML coding. It was kinda fun, if a little stressful.

After that, Donny continued working on printing the 4x6 prints and I made my own Newsletter sign-up. Then I got to work on printing my own images. It was really cool to see them printed; it's amazing how different and usually better they look on paper rather than on the screen. I only had enough paper to make 2 copies of each, but Donny and Joseph encouraged me to try to sell them anyway. We'll see if I sell any.

I was 4 images away from being done when the printer ran out of light magenta ink. So we are going to get more ink tomorrow along with go to FedEx Office and get my buisness cards and the newsletter sheets printed, and a few other errands.

Days 36-38

Day 36

Thursday I didn't go into work, again, because Joseph was still sick and Donny was too. Thankfully, I still feel fine. So I spent the day working on touching up images so that they are ready for printing. This is an incredibly tedious and annoying process. It involves flattening the image and then duplicating that layer. Then I adjust "levels" which changes the contrast/exposure. Then I go through and use the burning/dodging tool to make certain areas lighter (and therefore come forward) and others darker (and thus drop back). When that's done, I can toggle that layer to see if I like the changes. Assuming that I don't feel like anything is too dark/light, then I can do the last step which is to enlarge the image and go through it in a grid pattern while taking out specks of pixels that don't seem to flow well. This part is the worst because it's so up close, but it really does make a difference. It's like with any detail work, it ends up making the piece stronger, I just can't stand doing it.

Day 37

I wasn't sure if they were going to want me to go in on Friday, so I started working on some buisness cards. I figured that I could get some printed like Donny did when we went to AnimeExpo; they were fairly cheap and we had to cut them ourselves, but i think they looked pretty nice. I figured that if there was a FedEx Office close to where I live (so that I could walk and get some printed without having to bother Donny) that I might as well get some printed for FaerieWorlds. Thankfully there is one that is about a half mile from my apartment, so I began the day designing them. I did so while watching Angel, so it took me the majority of the day, but I think the design turned out rather well. We'll have to wait and see how they look printed.


While I was just starting to work on the buisness card, Donny texted me and said that they were taking Joseph to the hospital. I still have yet to get the full story, but I gather that everything is mostly ok. I just hope he's feeling better by Thursday, since that's when we leave for Eugene.

After I had finished the buisness card, I decided that I really needed to get out of the apartment, even if it was just to walk to the Yum Yum and buy a donut. But as I got to Yum Yum, I decided that I really wanted to go on a longer walk than just to the corner and back. So I decided to walk to try and find the FedEx Office. This wouldn't be that odd if it wasn't for the fact that it was already 1:30 am. As Joseph pointed out, LA really is not a late night town; as Donny pointed out, no one walks in LA. I think I met maybe 3 people walking around on my mile walk. Which was fine with me.

I do like cities in a certain way. They have this energy about them that the country lacks. But in turn, the city lacks the energy of all the plant and wild life that the country has. It depends on what type of mood I am in which type of energy I would like. Last night I was definetly in a city mood. And even though LA is not what I would typically think of a city, and even though there were few people wandering around, it still had that vibe. It's hard to place. I think part of it is all the lights. When I walk in a city at night, I feel like I'm walking through the stars in some weird alternate universe where the sky is made of electricity and is on the ground.

While I walked home I was struck with the memory again of how when I was in high school, we all dreamed of going to LA. We all said that one of the first things we would do would be to run through the streets barefoot. As I thought of this, I decided that I would fulfill that oath. So I ran for a block or more with my flip flops in hand, laughing the whole way. I'm sure if anyone saw me they would have thought I was crazy; I guess they wouldn't be wrong.

Before going back to the apartment I decided to actually buy a donut, since I was hungry. I also made the mistake of getting a Mocha Chilla (which is like a dutch ice/slushie but with actual coffee in it). I didn't think anything of it until it was like 6:30 am and I still was not remotely tired. I ended up calling Alicia as she was getting ready for work so that she could wish me a goodnight. It was funny because I had been awake the entire time that she was asleep. I did, eventually, get to sleep. I'm definetly going to have a hard time adjusting to a normal sleep schedule when I get back to New York. Not only will I have jet lag, but I'll also want to stay up later than I can in order to go to school/work on time. But we'll deal with that when it happens I guess.

Day 38

Today I got to work from the apartment while Donny, Joseph and Maxwell worked on printing images to bring to FaerieWorlds. My goals for TOTF stuff were to update the blog on their website about getting ready for FaerieWorlds and also to add all the images that I put in their store into the Etsy store. That took a lot longer that I expected, but it got done eventually. In addition, I finished up two images that I was only half happy with. I still have to do the final touch-up stage (see Day 36) but I can do that tomorrow. For now, I think I'm going to read some of Brisingr (since I finally finished Eldest and am on to the last book in the Inheritance series!) and go to bed. And look, it's only 4 am. Gotta start somewhere, right?


PS: 9 days til I come home!

Day 35

Day 35

Today was a short work day since Joseph called Donny while we were out and told her he felt really sick. However, we did manage to get the pages of stickers printed at Kinkos. It was a terribly lI ong time since they were understaffed, but the stickers turned out quite well. Donny said she would wait to cut them and actually make them into stickers so that I can see the machine that she uses. It's really too bad that she didn't find a button maker. But se la vie.

After the trip to kinkos, the work day was over; This evening I plan on working on some more images since last night I spent 4-5 hours working on a design for my website. I'm quite excited to get my own website started. I really like what I have as a starting design, but I need to talk to Donny and Joseph about the logistics of it working out the way I would like.

I'm also really getting excited for FaerieWorlds. I'm not sure how much time I'll have to actually walk around, but I'm also excited to get to see how running a booth works. I really would like to make some buisness cards before we go, although I'm not sure that I'll be able to. I should ask Donny about it. At the very least, I need to buy a book so people can write down their e-mail addresses in so I can send out a newsletter when I get my website up and running. For now though, I need to finish up the images that I'm going to print and show at the event.

Days 29-34

Days 29-33

So this past weekend was spent entirely doing my art; I also did a lot of reading and fininshed the second season of Angel. It was a lonely couple of days, but I got a lot of work done. I now have 8 close-to-being-done images. I showed what I had to Erin and Alicia and was surprised by some of the reactions. I'll post two of my most finished ones. For the others, you'll have to wait.

So that was pretty much all I did for the last 4 days. I'm excited about the images, although I'm still a skeptical about some of them. I'm definetly excited about showing them at FaerieWorlds.

Day 34

Today I actually did some other work. Donny picked me up and we went on some errands. First we went to Borders in Culver City. There, we pulled down a whole bunch of magazines that we thought looked like something that Joseph's work might be able to get into. Then we sat down and flipped through them to figure out if the magazine could take his work and where/why. Next, we located the contact information on the editors or art directors and wrote down notes so we could file them away later.

After the trip to Borders, we treked over to a photo supply place to buy ink and paper so we could print images for their booth at FaerieWorlds. The bill came up to $300. Supplies are definetly expensive. I bought myself some paper too (20 sheets cost me $50.00).

Lastly, we went in search for a button maker at Target. We unfortunately did not find one. Donny was very sad about this, but she'll just have to find one online or something. Once we were back at the apartment, Donny had me type up the list of magazine info. Then she sent me a zip file of all the new images that needed to be added to their webstore. I worked on that for a little while, but then Joseph and Donny told me about how to use Photoshop to design a webpage. It was informative. But it takes a lot of pre-thinking and knowing exactly what you want the site to look like when you click on the various links and such. One of my goals tonight is to work on that. *sigh* That and I need to finish up the images so that I can print them in the next week. Busy busy.

Days 26-28

Days 26 and 27

Monday and Tuesday were my days off. I spent a good chunk of time relaxing, watching Charmed or reading. I also did laundry, did some light grocery shopping and updated my blog. In addition to these mundane things, I also got to FINALLY work on some art of my own. This whole trip has been incredibly inspiring, so the fact that I didn't have any photos to work on was rather frustrating. I worked on three images over the course of the two days (I haven't become as efficent at working as Joseph who seems to finish 2-3 images a day when he puts his mind to it. I just don't have the attention span to stay on the computer that long all at once. I have to spread it out a bit more.) I'm pretty happy with one out of the three. The other two I'm still sort of skeptical about, but I think they're getting there. I'm excited to work on some more in the coming days.

Day 28

Wednesday was back to work. Donny and I spent the time editing their webstore. I got to learn some HTML coding, which was surprisingly not as difficult as I expected. I wrote out the privacy section of the store and also uploaded the 8 prints that they are starting out with. It was kind of fun, even though it was tedious and a littler frustrating at times. Lastly, we sent out a newsletter about their new calendar (which I got to flip through; it was quite nice. I really liked some of the new images). This was, again, another lesson in HTML. It was a lot to absorb, but I think I got most of it.

Now my next task (along with working on images to show at FaerieWorlds) is to begin designing my own website. I talked to Alicia about it a little bit today...it is clear that we have very different opinions about color, although I think I agree with some of her layout ideas. I'll have to spend some time browsing through some webpages that I like and do some sketches of layout ideas. I think the hardest thing is going to be picking a color scheme....

But that's for another day. Today we are doing some inventory so that we are sure we have everything we need for FaerieWorlds. Should be interesting...