My Cafe Sketch Blog

http://www.zirngisketch.blogspot.com/

This is the blog I'm keeping for the "Cafe Sketch" class in CCAD's animation department.  The name is a little misleading, as we have yet to sketch in any cafe, hehe... So far we've done the CCAD quad, North Market, the Grant hospital (my choice), and the BalletMet.

I'll probably dump some of those images directly onto this blog, eventually.

I did it again!

Yeah...

I kind of forgot about my blog.  Actually, it became one of those vicious cycles.

I was going to do a mega-post of everything from second semester, before I realized that I didn't really like much of anything I did second semester -- too rushed!  A few were OK I guess, but the plan was to post them after improving them.  I did a couple new little things, but didn't want to post them until I'd put the earlier stuff up.  And the longer I waited, the more I felt like I had to post better stuff to justify all the lost time.

Then my 15 credit hours of LA summer school started, I had to help my family move, and some other big stuff came up... and I barely had time to work on anything art-related.  During that time I DID make a blog for a business class I was taking, where I watched the games industry.  It took a good bit of work, so check it out here:
http://www.kzexploringbusinessmarketwatch.blogspot.com/

Now I'm considering skipping the heap of 2nd semester stuff altogether and just moving on...  but it doesn't sit well with my slightly OCD mind.

I know blogs are supposed to be fun and casual... why do I always have to get myself into these gridlocks?

As I have mentioned (maybe not here), I am working on a book project.  I still haven't made up my mind as to how much to post of this onto my blog.  There's something to be said for keeping one's ideas to themselves...  I would love to post some teasers, though I may make a separate blog.

Another thing I HAVE been updating is my formspring account:  http://www.formspring.me/KirstenZirngibl
If you ask me a question, I'll try to answer it within a week.

So... before my school year starts I'll try to post all the not-so-great 2nd semester stuff, or just move on.  Either way It'll take a little courage.

Have a good rest of summer,
~Kirsten

Kirstenzirngibl.com is LIVE! Check it out!

>>> www.kirstenzirngibl.com  <<<

In this past 5 days or so I worked pretty hard at designing this site and getting the content together.  I had never really done an actual, functional website before, short of the rinky-dink projects in early High School.  I wanted to "do it right the first time" so that I wouldn't be tempted to go back during this semester (or a year or two from now) to develop/overhaul it again.  I originally had this super-complicated idea, and almost went with flash (which I haven't even tried yet), but I'm glad I used a more conservative layout and HTML.  I think it's faster and just easier to get to the work.  (Google likes it better anyway, and I hear art directors actually want to be able to download images so they can keep your work in a folder for future reference.)

I still need to fix some stuff in my bio and add some better titles/descriptions to the pieces, but for the most part I'm going to call it done for now, though I hope to update it with new work regularly.

Anyway, my site also represents the visual "brand" I plan to use in marketing myself.  I wanted something kind of quirky, with structural forms in an organic layout.  I wanted something that could somehow communicate versatility and detail-oriented, complexity-driven style.  I wanted to enhance that message by making it look both new/futuristic and historical (kind of steampunkish?) at the same time, hence the color, texture and choosing serif font).  I hope I at least somewhat succeeded at this.  (By the way, I just realized not so long ago that this kind of reminds me of conceptart.org.  If you thought that too, just know it wasn't intentional, and when you compare them side-by-side they look pretty different.)

(And major thanks to my dad for helping with the code.  While I did some HTML/javascript/CSS back in High School and have a basic understanding of it, it probably would've taken me a week to look up and relearn how to do what my dad hammered out in half a day!  He also had some valuable web design advice that I'm glad I listened to.)


Anyhow, I'd love to hear your comments/critiques about it.  If there's anything easily fixable that you think would be better fixed, I'm open to going back in before I start getting busy.



Finally, make sure to check out the "links" section.  I've got some well-known artists, but also some less well-known ones as well listed there, as well as some cool resources.  And also, if you know me at CCAD and have a personal site of your own, I've probably linked to you.  (And they're not in a particular order, just as they popped into my head.)

Spectrum 17's Call for Entries Poster

I first found this through Irene Gallo's Blog.

I haven't seen this many puns in one place for a long while now.  If you're a digital or traditional illustrator, I challenge you not to chuckle on at least one of these!

It also reminds me to enter a couple of things this year-- who knows what'll happen?

EOW #130: The Water of Life at the World's End

This was done for the latest Environment of the Week.  VOTE HERE:  http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=177432

(I'm still tweaking it, too.)

I realized I hadn't really done much surreal/fantasy work.  Never really felt like I could identify with it so much, but I did really enjoy making this piece.  It was a challenge, though.  I ended up solving a couple of my problems using 3D.  For example, I initially sculpted the actual water in modo 302, then applying a water material (refraction index 1.33, just like in real water) in order to figure out the distortion of the figures underneath.  But I really backed myself into a corner compositionally.

In fact, it's got some problems what probably can't be solved unless I overall the whole thing, so it's probably a good idea to move on.  But big thanks to the awesome folks at the critique center at conceptart.org for helping me out with a myriad of issues.  Juggling a complex image is so hard to do objectively!

The 3D really makes terrible reference compared to a good photo.  Thanks to my brother for letting me take this ref of him.  I'm lucky to have him at hand while I'm home for break!