HEC-TV's Scope did a very nice piece on the gallery exhibition. Big thanks to Paul Langdon for producing the piece and Alexis Nugent for setting it up! I've been helping our Gallery Director, Deb Jenkins, with promoting our latest gallery exhibition: Black Girl Culture by Scheherazade Tillet. I worked with our new Marketing and Communications person, Alexis Nugent, to get the word out and secure some media coverage for the event. Also made flyers, of course.
Scheherazade was kind enough to fly directly in from L.A. and spend two days with our students doing workshops. The first one was "Art and Social Change" which involved a really interesting presentation by Scheherazade followed by the students collaborating on the creation of art focused on social change. The second was a portraiture workshop in Erica Popp and Giada's class. The events culminated with the gallery reception and artist talk Thursday night. A very cool event! The exhibition will continue through April 7th so if you're in St. Louis it's definitely worth checking out! Black Girl Culture Art Exhibit Feb. 27 – April 7 Contemporary Gallery (IR-111) About the Exhibit: Black Girl Culture is a pioneering photographic exhibition that gives black teens a safe place to tell their stories. The exhibition is the brainchild of photographer and youth organizer Scheherazade Tillet, who founded a nonprofit that uses art to inspire young women and protect girls from violence in her Chicago community. Article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/how-photography-helps-black-girls-define-their-culture-on-their-own-terms_us_570ff602e4b0018f9cb971cb Those who know me know that I tend to like to make my Birthday by doing tons and tons of work, usually Flo Valley related. Well, this year I got a two-in-one Birthday treat: taking my students to the Global Game Jam at UMSL! My students split up across a couple teams and I joined my friends, Caitlin Moriarty and Jen Patton on another team. We spent the weekend attempting to build a working video game prototype. Spending the whole weekend hanging out and doing something creative was a lot of fun, it's been waaaay too long since I've done something like that. We didn't get it finished but I did get a chance to do character designs and animation for a nice little trailer to the game. Big thanks to Caitlin for writing the script and Jan for PM-ing, background art, and editing the trailer. The trailer Game play mock-up. Basically, it's a simple avoidance game where you jump from one Cosmic Wave to another trying to avoid the Space Jellies. If they hit you they glom on to the ship slowing it down until, eventually it gets completely stuck.
It's official, I am now Department Coordinator of Graphic Communications at Flo Valley! Yay!! A huge thank you to everyone who helped me during this process, your support has meant so much!
Watch out, Spring 2017, cuz here I come, loaded with even more drive and determination to make this program the best one in the district!! I had been planning to spend Winter Break working on animation but then I found out that the impossible actually happened... The college approved opening up a full-time teaching position in my department! There was a huge laundry list of application materials required including a Statement of Teaching Philosophy, Letters of Recommendation, and 20 examples of my Students' Work. Putting it all together ate up most of my time but, fingers crossed, it'll pay off.
It wouldn't be a LARP for me if I didn't make a costume, and in true Neko-LARP-fashion I didn't even start on it till the night before, hah hah hah! The hair was one of those cheap plastic "Morticia Adams" Halloween wigs. I pulled from my class prop/ costume bin and as you can imagine it was a matted mess. I used fabric softener and a lot of brushing to detangle it, then styled it up so it looked less fake and aweful. I also made the feather capelet, sooo many feathers to glue! I'm pretty proud of how it all came out. I fell in love with the idea of incorporating augmented reality components into a LARP because I've never seen it done before.
Doing this required my to create a wide variety of elements from a QR code based scavenger hunt to a couple simple video games. Plus a website to hold all the games and QR assets. You'll see the website here: shadowstatelarp.weebly.com It looks pretty basic because most of the 20+ pages in this site are hidden from navigation so as not to spoil it for the players. Those pages were accessible only by locating QR codes hidden around the convention center. My absolute favorite thing, however, was creating two text-based adventure games which players could run through to complete various objectives. "Help Desk" is a social engineering challenge, while "Dagger Quest" is more of a traditional text-based adventure game. Not only were they a ton of fun to make, they're proving to be a good marketing tool for us because now people can get a sample of our LARP anytime they want, not just at a convention. It took a couple weeks of nights and weekends to pull it all together but I had a lot of fun doing it. The game ran at Archon and all the players seemed to love it, so time well spent in my book! It's finally here! The fifth installment of the popular "Five Nights at Freddy's" video game series. I was lucky enough to be hired on to do the Vampire Soap Opera (not sure what Scott chose for the final title yet) 2D animated episodes. Due to Scottgames' production schedule I ended up churning out over 3 minutes of animation in under 3 weeks. It was a ton of fun to work on and, most importantly, the client was extremely happy with the outcome! Check out my new animation reel to see a few clips, or better yet, download the game and experience all the terrifying wonderment that is Five Nights at Freddy's: Sister Location! Download: http://store.steampowered.com/app/506610/ Scottgames Website: scottgames.com
This week I did brand identity for a lawn care company. I designed a logo, business card, letterhead, etc. I did two versions, this is the more whimsical one. I wanted it to have a bit of a retro feel without looking dated. This one is a bit more traditional. I swore I'd avoid photos of grass but the client really wanted one. Oh well, at least it's a nice photo of grass. (Photo is creative commons licensed for reuse w/o modification. I know better than to steal people's sparkly grass photos. ^_^)
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