yesterday

Yesterday was crunch-time day...the day all of our big projects needed to be finished. Last tuesday we were given the assignment to brainstorm ideas--we were given prompts like "what was the most beautiful thing you've ever seen" and "what was the weirdest thing that ever happened to you." I ended up not using anything I wrote down for the prompts. Anyways, the past seven days have been nothing but animating and goofing off. A good healthy dose of each, I'd say. Any time we'd lose our steam on animating I'd watch Jeff and Jordan wrestle or try to join in in a game of hacky-sack. We took turns plugging in our ipods into the stereo in the Palace.
Well about 1/4 of the class had actually finished their projects by Monday (all cut-out puppet animation). I was given all morning and then some time after lunch to finish drawing storyboard-type frames to quickly wrap it up. At 3-4pm I was supposed to shoot, and I used the full hour. It was a good feeling, to be so close to finishing, but that's not what made our day so good.
At the end of our last Bijou screening Trixy (department head) introduced to us Sanjay Patel, who had come down for the day from Pixar. COOL! He came back to class and hung out with the class. Eventually Lori D. brought him over to our table, and as I was about to shake his hand he said, "Wait, I remember you--" and I was a happy happy person!!
The first time I met Sanjay was at Wondercon 05, when I was taking a rest in the lobby with a pile of Ronnie and Enrico's books on my lap, along with one of James Baker's as well. He happened to be sitting right next to me, and he said, "Are you a fan of theirs?"
I also saw him at the Combined Weight gallery opening earlier this year. Actually it was his wife who recognised me, because she had been at Wondercon as well! I'm glad that he was the one who knew my name this time. :)
Right after I finished shooting my project (in a hurry!) I ran with Jackie the Pirate (cool friend) to Sanjay's big talk in the Modular Theatre. That was awesome. He brought along his friend Chris Sonnenburg too. It was really interesting to hear about Sanjay's life and all the stuff that got in the way of his art education. He had acually been a CSSSA student too. Ironically, he was giving a speech in the Arts and Culture class, apparently the class he hated the most when he was a student here. I've heard that it's one of the least-favorite classes among the visual art students. Glad we have our little screenings in the Bijou with our good-natured staff!
After dinner we all went back to the animation department and stayed there until we were kicked out at 10pm. That's pretty much how it's been every night, actually. I went back and fixed up my rushed ending, then created a CD and then recorded some minimal sound effects onto it. AHH it feels good to have that done!