August 3? Already?
Well here we are, at the end of week 3, the last week where I spend 8 hours a day with 8 year olds. Next week I'm back to teaching teens - think I'll tackle working on my portfolio and maybe watching all of Breaking Bad. (Kidding. Sort of)
The kids this week have been fantastic. I have 3 of them - they're all very different but thankfully not complete and utter spazzes. The curriculum was tough for all of us to tackle (except for one girl who's been animating since she was 6...she's absolutely incredible. She's currently making a 30 second animation about wolves and fairy things in a field eating berries...it looks awesome): about 3 weeks ago they told me what programs I had to teach, and they were two programs I'd never even heard of. Yikes. ToonBoom is like AfterEffects for dummies, its so simple it almost hurts. The cool thing is that shows like Family Guy, South Park, and the Simpsons all use a version of ToonBoom. The other program, Comic Life, is so easy to use it makes me a little sick. You make comics in about 3 steps: pick a template, import your image, throw on some speech bubbles. I guess this is why they're having 8 year olds do this stuff - its simple. I feel bad for the kids that had to learn Photoshop and Illustrator, those are no picnic.
This summer's been pretty different because its been divided in half - one half with ob9 and the other here with DMA. The past two weeks I've been living at my grandparents in DC. By some crazy stroke of luck, they live less than a mile away from the GW campus and makes commuting a breeze. So much better than waking up Caroline, having her drive me to the metro, jumping on the train, then jumping on a shuttle. No longer, here I wake up, maybe even have time for a run, then can walk to work (or my grandpa drives me, he's a gem). At night, I walk home, and usually play scrabble at 5:30, dinner at 7, then watch the Olympics or whatever. I go to bed super early and it feels great.
A little about my gparents, because they are the coolest grandparents you'll ever see: my grandma is a fiber artist. To break that down, she paints with a sewing machine. She also paints, draws, etc, but her main/favorite medium is thread. Check out her work here. She has the sweetest logo, makes a lot of her own clothes (as seen below) and is just so fun and has the funkiest fashion sense. Her jewelry collection puts yours to shame. (I'd offer that it puts my collection to shame...but I don't have much of a collection)
My grandpa is a cool guy as well. Played football for the University of Utah, flew in WWII, fiercely political and sharp as a tack. They both are. That's what not retiring will do to you: keeps you busy and not sitting around, wasting away.
Their house is my favorite place in the world. Its every bit as funky as they are and I'm sure I'll steal some ideas for my own home one day. For example, here's a picture I took of the basement:
The kids this week have been fantastic. I have 3 of them - they're all very different but thankfully not complete and utter spazzes. The curriculum was tough for all of us to tackle (except for one girl who's been animating since she was 6...she's absolutely incredible. She's currently making a 30 second animation about wolves and fairy things in a field eating berries...it looks awesome): about 3 weeks ago they told me what programs I had to teach, and they were two programs I'd never even heard of. Yikes. ToonBoom is like AfterEffects for dummies, its so simple it almost hurts. The cool thing is that shows like Family Guy, South Park, and the Simpsons all use a version of ToonBoom. The other program, Comic Life, is so easy to use it makes me a little sick. You make comics in about 3 steps: pick a template, import your image, throw on some speech bubbles. I guess this is why they're having 8 year olds do this stuff - its simple. I feel bad for the kids that had to learn Photoshop and Illustrator, those are no picnic.
This summer's been pretty different because its been divided in half - one half with ob9 and the other here with DMA. The past two weeks I've been living at my grandparents in DC. By some crazy stroke of luck, they live less than a mile away from the GW campus and makes commuting a breeze. So much better than waking up Caroline, having her drive me to the metro, jumping on the train, then jumping on a shuttle. No longer, here I wake up, maybe even have time for a run, then can walk to work (or my grandpa drives me, he's a gem). At night, I walk home, and usually play scrabble at 5:30, dinner at 7, then watch the Olympics or whatever. I go to bed super early and it feels great.
A little about my gparents, because they are the coolest grandparents you'll ever see: my grandma is a fiber artist. To break that down, she paints with a sewing machine. She also paints, draws, etc, but her main/favorite medium is thread. Check out her work here. She has the sweetest logo, makes a lot of her own clothes (as seen below) and is just so fun and has the funkiest fashion sense. Her jewelry collection puts yours to shame. (I'd offer that it puts my collection to shame...but I don't have much of a collection)
Here's their family back in the day. All such good looking people!
Sewed these next two dresses for my mom:
My grandpa is a cool guy as well. Played football for the University of Utah, flew in WWII, fiercely political and sharp as a tack. They both are. That's what not retiring will do to you: keeps you busy and not sitting around, wasting away.
Their house is my favorite place in the world. Its every bit as funky as they are and I'm sure I'll steal some ideas for my own home one day. For example, here's a picture I took of the basement:
Well, one wall of the basement. The carpet is bright red, there's a red pool table, red ping pong table, a full sized bar, and these red arrows all over the walls. Walk up a little flight of stairs and you reach the "red room" aka the guest room, also with thick red carpet, red everything. Up another flight of stairs is the kitchen - white and black everything -, the living room, and dining room. Up some more stairs is another guest room, up more is my grandma's studio (needs a whole new post to describe it), up more are the bedrooms/2 offices. Then there's the attic. For anyone keeping track, its about 7 floors. Her work is everywhere. Its beyond the coolest place I know. I'm pretty lucky to have these people in my life.
Thought I should give them a shout out - they're awesome AND last night I tied with my grandma in scrabble. Went first and had a seven letter word (NIMRODS haha) so I started off with 74 points...then they both caught up to me and eventually tied. I also made cauliflower dough pizza. Sounds weird, tastes good. Thx Pinterest!
If you've made it this far, you're a trooper. Thanks for reading. If you have any ideas for songs that I should run to, let me know. I need 4 hours worth of music, that part of the marathon will be dedicated to you.
Bye!
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