One of the artists I had the most pleasure meeting was an animator from Fox News, Eric Wagner. While looking for a seat on the Metro North one Friday night, I chose to sit down next to a younger looking gentleman. Interested in the hand-held game he was playing, I inquired what type of device he was playing on. He politely told me he was playing a Nintendo Switch.

We began engaging in a casual conversation and it turned out we both attended the School of Visual Arts, studied 3D animation, and knew some of the same professors. The major difference was that he was ten years older than me and he had won an Emmy at his previous job working for Good Morning America. I was in awe of his accomplishments.

Anyway, he and I exchanged information.  Then we met up for him to show me “Spiders Walk,” his thesis project. His film was very unique and showed the world from the perspective of two spiders. It was even featured on Good Morning America. I don’t want to give away the plot; I will drop the link down below. While I am extremely arachnophobic I have never seen a film like his and I will never see spiders in the same way again.

I felt like I made a major connection with Wagner and he gives me pointers on my senior design project I am working on. I feel very fortunate we have met and am glad I made his acquaintance. Meeting him made me realize you never know who you’re sitting next to.

Here is the link to Eric’s thesis:

Another creative app I tested was called Penup. While visiting the Best Buy in Union Square (a store I frequently visit), I noticed an application was open on a Samsung tablet. The application’s interface looked similar to AutoDesk Sketchbook. It had the same arrangement of tools to create digital illustrations. The brushes were on the left hand side of the drawing page. The color picker was on the right hand side of the page. This was an exact copy of the arrangement of tools in Sketchbook. Either way, I did not mind. The program was easy to use. I quickly began drafting a digital illustration, changing line width and adding different colors. No tutorial was necessary due to its simplistic and intuitive user interface. I enjoyed it so much I created an illustration of Madonna wearing her famous cone bra. Unfortunately, I accidentally deleted it. Maybe it was for the best. It was not my best work. Like the AutoDesk application, I will give Penup a 10/10. They were both simple and fun to use.

A creative app I am learning to use is AutoDesk Sketchbook. The program is intuitive and provides a wide variety of drawing utensils to use. Such utensils include brushes, markers, pens, pencils, and airbrushes. Also, there is a great variety of colors that can be added to your palette with the color editing tool. While digitally illustrating, each tool allows you to alter the size of the brush tip, as well as the opacity of the color on the page. You can also change the brush pressure on the page as well. It is almost like using an actual brush or drawing by hand!

Another feature I enjoy altering is the texture of the brush. This allows you to create unique strokes on the page, giving you, the user, a wide variety of brush strokes. The organic, realistic sensation of the drawing tools in the program are so natural, you can paint realistic drawings with the application. I give this program a 10/10 stars!

Another artist I had the pleasure of meeting was Tanya St. While walking through the 14th Street Union Square train station, I saw a long line of beautiful paintings displayed against the wall. Each painting was a portrait of a person’s face with warm blends of colors dripped onto the canvas. They appeared to be organic, irregular splotches of color that had been poured onto the frame, boldly forming an easy to identify face. Her work was a breathtaking combination of classic and abstract art. The way St combines vibrant water color hues makes the canvas appear explosive. I was able to get her business cart and speak with her. To view her work, visit http://www.tanya-st.com.

One Sunday, I unexpectedly networked with an artist on the streets of New York City who was conducting a public art project. Her name was Jaime Sunwoo. Her creative process was very unique:

She had a table with various crunchy snacks on plates, such as pretzels and other delicious treats. She asked random people to select a snack of their choosing. Then, after selecting a snack, she would take the snack, put it in her mouth, and much away at it. While chewing, she would put her cheek next to your ear so you could hear the sound of her eating. It was quite an unusual experiment. On her website, jaimesunwoo.com, she describes her work as a “sensory performance,” which it was.

After listening to her chew, she offered me a snack to chew and let my friend who was with me, listen to me chew. I am not sure why, but after letting my friend hear me chew, I felt much closer to them. I felt her project was not only unique but had the potential to unite New Yorkers  in an unusual way.

To see the videos of the chewing experiment, visit:

https://www.instagram.com/jaimesunwoo/?utm_source=ig_profile_share&igshid=1kzaa2s5f9f34&fbclid=IwAR195CheZDoxIaAQpP-6EOos_XoIHI3DuLGg74URb8bw0qtXt-dxRWMzuzk

Another networking event I attended was a solo artist exhibition by artist Andre Lamonte. While he is an artist from Pennsylvania, he featured his work in Williamsbridge, Brooklyn. His exhibition focused on the aesthetic form of women’s faces. The best thing about his work was that under regular lighting, they appeared to be typical acrylic paintings, but when lit with a black light, the colors glowed an appeared to be neon.

While I was at the exhibition, he described his work to me and others who were watching him speak. I met other artists and got the contact information of him and the gallery owner. It was a wonderful experience.

Below are photos from the event:

While working at my internship, I attended networking events on my days off. One networking event I attended was a screening of Black Panther at the School of Visual Arts (SVA) Theater.

First, everyone in the theater watched the movie Black Panther. It was a ground breaking film because it was a Marvel movie that nearly had an entire cast of color. The movie focused on African culture, spirituality, and the relations/ social dynamics between Africans in Africa and African Americans.

The main plot revolved around African people in a fictitious nation called Wakanda fighting over a fictitious natural resource called vibranium. While African people in Wakanda had control over the resource of vibranium and thrived, African Americans lived without it and struggled. The protagonist, an African from Wakanda, and the antagonist of the film, an African American living in the United States caused the audience to question whether or not the antagonist was truly evil because his intention was to help people from his community. Such a difficult choice divided the audience and caused them to wonder if Africans should share their natural resources of preserve them from the rest of the world.

After the movie was played, three CG artists who were SVA almumni answered questions in a panel. It was a truly inspiring experience to see three artists of color, one Black, one Asian, and a Hispanic CG artist speak. Since I am both an SVA alumni and person of color it was a great experience to see them share their amazement over the diverse casting in a Marvel movie. It was interesting to hear them speak because they informed us the CG artists were not as diverse as the cast but it was still a major role to play in a piece that made cinematic history.

Below is a picture of me with one of the CG artists from the film:

One of the qualities I greatly respect and find educational about my supervisor is her organizational skills. I am learning how to utilize guidlines in a way I have never used them before. We use them to the teeth (in a good way) which I appreciate because it allows our work to look more structured and balanced.

One manner in which she uses the guidelines which I am learning is extemely helpful is sticking the text to a loose-leaf like pattern of guidelines along a page. When dividing the page in half, this allows two columns of text to line up precisely. This prevents the battle of having to adjust the leading of text constantly on a page. She is teaching me shortcuts to move faster in Indesign and have a more clean body of work.

One of the second things I learned to take full advantange of in Indesign under my supervisor’s wing are specific functions within the “find and replace” dialog box. While I normally use find and replace to substitute words within large bodies of text, I was not aware the box could be used to reduce the spacing between individual words and letters. For example, there us a “script” or code (I believe that is what it is called) which you can select to delete additional spaces between areas in a document or multiple documents. A similar script exists in the find and replace to delete ‘double entries,’ or the amount of time someone has pressed enter in a file.

This was extremely useful for editing multi-page documents I was given to layout. One document had a rare high number of 24 (yes, 24!) double spaces within the body of text. The document was only 2 pages, which was odd because it was a highly disproportionate amount times someone should press the spacebar twice within sentences. It was a good learning experience. Had I not used it, I would have been forced to click between each word in the entire document to find the hidden double spaces.

In the Center for Court Innovation I learned how to reapply fundamental tools in Indesign so my work is redeveloped in a more organized manner. One of the tools my supervisor has guided me to use is the “text options” box. While it is a simple tool, it has many features you can use to structure your work so you can have a more clean layout. For example, if you have a lot of text in a text box and you have a colored rectangle behind it, you can ebable features in the text options box tool to center the words within the rectangle.You can press Control + B to open the dialog box and the following options show up:

After selecting the text and the rectangle, then, choose alignment of the text in the window, the words stay centered within the box. This works even if you change the dimensions of the rectangle. It’s extremely helpful when centering large bodies of text into simple shapes, without having to measure them.