I hate Mae. She inspired me to be productive this Christmas by posting her new Deviant Art drawing stuff. It’s pretty cute actually and you can find it HERE. So I took one of my old doodles in school and colored it in Photoshop.

So here’s a before and after pic. It’s pretty much the same except no freckles. Yes, I do take notes. Those are guidelines for testing your prototype with test subjects. I drew the girl laughing because the prof mentioned to ‘look at user’s reactions’. The girl on the left is doing a WTF reaction.

I’m at home in Manila for the holidays and my friends are MIA so this is what I’ve been working on late at night when I should have been partying or something. Am I that pathetic? Do I have to beg someone to take me out?

I’m back in the Philippines for Xmas so I am now bored enough to post a new blog… actually, there’s a party later but this can be a quickie.

So LITZO was a project for IAT 336 that I did with Derek, Manuel and Joel. For this one, we had to make lamps using LED’s and the laser cutter or 3d printer at school. Inspired by Tetris, our idea was to create 5 tetris shapes for our lamp. Each piece would be made of assembled acrylic puzzle pieces lit up by LEDs. The cool thing about our idea was the “switch” to turn it on: you turn it on by stacking them. How? The current will run through each piece by magnets. Cool.

PROCESS

Here’s how we did it. First I drew the shapes out in vector. This took a while since a made a little boo boo with our first set. Then we took the shape into SolidWorks to see what it would look like in 3d, if the pieces actually FIT (since the boo boos didn’t). Then they were cut. It was cool watching the laser burn through making shapes but it stank like a mofo. Joel was our electronics guy since Derek and I had no clue how it would work. The pictures show the magnets soldered onto wires, and that’s just a bit of what we needed. We experimented with different adhesives when puttin the shapes together. We used this chemical that melts the plastic and dries up for all the corners of the puzzle pieces. For reinforcement, we used stinky epoxy inside.

RESULT

Here it is! I’m glad that the acrylic we picked out was that lovely white color. It was opaque enough for the LEDs to shine but still hide all the wiring and glue. The pictures show them all stacked up and now I wish I took pictures of them individually.

And that’s what I do in school. Tadaaaa! Wait for the process video coming up by Derek.

I really like my sound class and I didn’t think I would at first. One of the greatest things about this class is that all projects are individual, a refreshing change to working with groups. Not that I hate people, it’s just nice to have a class wherein you don’t have to rely on groupmates to show up for a meeting and vice versa (I don’t have to meet anyone!). I get to do what I want, when I want.

Secondly, the prof, Philippe, is a french guy and his accent makes me listen. I feel I have to pay extra attention to understand what he’s saying which keeps me awake. Also, he knows his stuff. Same with the TA, Andrew. He’s cool too.

So here’s what I did for the second project (I don’t like my first one so you’ll never hear it). We were supposed to re-soundtrack a short clip using Pro Tools software, an industry standard….oooo. I think mine was cute and I got a good grade. It would be such a waste to let it sit in my hard drive and be forgotten.

Clip taken from an old Dick Tracy episode. It’s entitled “Mr.X”

Click HERE to view (and listen) to the original.

It’s still raining! But a lot warmer so it’s not so baaaad. This is for Virginie and her little card business. Now I’m considering making it a Threadless sumbission….for more $$$. Contract sez I can’t use it until after 6 months AFTER the contract is over in 6 months. If you understood that last sentence, that makes a year. Aww…

Ugh. That was a bad pun. I’m going to Seattle in a few hours for a good ol’ girly shopping trip. I’m thinking shoes, hopefully a cute pair of Nike Dunks or those lemony colored Vans with laces that I’ve been eying. Also, we’re going into the city so if the outlet fails to be a success (which I doubt), there’s always Goods in Capitol Hill for some sneakers or some design books from Peter Miller.

For this month’s desktop, I wanted to try the new/old trend with the vintage, geometric, rainbow gradient look. Thanks to PSDtuts for the cheat sheet. I added some bling cuz it’s no fun without some diamonds. I think I’m slightly blind now thanks to a month of hot pink April.

Finals week is finally here and as interaction design students, we don’t need to do exams. As a replacement, we get to do final projects or portfolios that sum up the whole design process of the entire semester. Woohoo. There’s 333 due tonight at midnight(tuesday), 404 due thursday, 391 presentation on friday and Italian exam on saturday.

I quit a long time ago. I’ve stopped to care. After I do my part, I stand back and watch. Not a very good thing to do but it’s already officially summer in my opinion. So today while waiting for Azmina and Paula to finish up the documents, I completed my mother’s day card. I took off the wings since Virginie was worried that they wouldn’t fit in 5×5. She was right.

It’s now 12:29am and Derek is still in front of me finishing off his own project. Poor Derek.

Yes, mom. I got the job.

Well, sort of. For Patrick’s consulting company, he wanted to hire someone to do branding and a whole functional community-based website thing. I wouldn’t be doing any of the coding but that kind of things was out of my league. Website-making is not my forte. He hired another guy for that job but he hired me too just for the branding stuff and logo. Yay? Yay!

We had a meeting yesterday (Sunday) at his super awesome office downtown on Richard’s Street, a block away from Waterfront station. The place was an old original building with exposed brick and old school radiator (the one that coils up like a snake). He furnished the place with Wassily chairs and other stuff from Yaletown Sofa and Koolhaus. Now I kinda wish that this job was an office job instead of a contract work-from-home deal. Boo. After the meeting we had a nice lunch at a sushi place which he paid for as a “business meeting”. Free meals are always more delicious.

Virginie, a nice girl who wants to start her own card business, also let me do some of the designs. Totally up to me whether I want to do it. No pressure, which is nice. It’s not much pay but I didn’t really expect that anyway. So here’s what I’ve been working on for mother’s day. She wanted a tattoo style “I love mom” design since she saw the stuff I did for my website. Honestly, I’m getting a bit tired of those. I like cute, colorful, Tokidoki stuff. Whatev.

If everything could ever feel this real forever
If anything could ever be this good again
The only thing I’ll ever ask of you
You’ve got to promise not to stop when I say when

Stuff I’ve done/thought recently:

• My new desktop wallpaper!
• I suck at making website layouts
• Still fat (f*ck)
• School stuff
• New hot guy at school: Shawn Desmond (white guy, tall, shaved head, muscle-y, hotttt)
• Looking for new sneakers
• Saw Foo Fighters <3
• Just came up from a game of DDR with Andrew at the mez
• Need a haircut soon

I’m done! Now it’s time to sit back and wait for the money to roll in.

So I decided to tinker around with iMovie…