Daily Dose of dutch #7

So, I handed in the first major project for Visual Communication this semester. And I shall not go further into it at any cost, for this subject and I have a lot to disagree with each other. Nevertheless, I think the project didn't go too badly. After almost three entire days without sleep, I finished redoing a number of workshops, homework assignments, along with the two final tasks, plus rationales and journal work for them. As much as having a deadline on the first day of mid-semester break sucked, I felt completely relieved after submitting it Monday morning. The following ten hours in bed was inevitable. I deserved that break. (Actually, I didn't. The project was supposed to have been done, breezily, over the course of 7 weeks, I did it in less than 7 days...)

And since it IS mid-semester break, I get to relax a little bit. Well, a little bit more. I'm always so relaxed, if you know what I mean. Enter Jamie and John. The first time I saw their bag a month ago, I was like, 'Holy shit, that is going to last you guys for months!' and John was like, 'Yup.' Yesterday when I arrived at their place (Well, I'm still at their place right now, blogging. Details to come.) and looked at that same bag, I went 'Holy shit, you guys are almost out!' and John was like, 'Yup.'

But I'd arrived here earlier yesterday afternoon before John came home from work, as planned with Jamie, (No, kids. No wrong mental images here please) to have an art jam with him. I know. New term. In our books, an 'art jam' means two or more humongous geeks sitting together drawing and chatting about art and shit like that, then look at each other's works and go 'Challenge accepted.' Jamie was doing his short comics for a contest on deviantART (check out his gallery here) and I did a 'fanart' of one of his original characters (the dude creates original characters for breakfast, lunch, dinner, supper AND the unintended midnight snack. Fantastic story writing too.) This character's name is Sofia, a badass 11 year-old girl:

Just as I was about done with the above piece, and Jamie was done with his contest entry, John came home carrying his gigantic, majestic, logic-defying 27'' LCD screen, adding on to the already impossibly outrageous computer setup he already had (whopping speakers, powerful machine, you get the idea.) He then proceeded to spending the next couple of hours deciding where to place this screen (in conjunction with the smaller one he already had - which was still huge) and which wallpaper would look good running across both screens. To celebrate this occasion, I called for three pizzas. You know me, pizzas and I are best friends. Expensive, but worth it. After all, we were gonna have a night of nights.

Next morning. John made us all coffee and everyone was doing some art while chatting on deviantChat. In that process, I created this character:

Pretty chill dude, eh? Story behind this is that Jamie encouraged me to create a comics alter ego of myself, since John and he both have their own manga universes with interesting characters and backstories. And I thought, why the hell not. So there we have it, a dude smoking a joint, chill as a rock, with futuristic costume and an inter-dimensional travelling pad that are full of win and creepy smiley faces. The Time Traveler.

It was then when they decided to introduce me to Evangelion, a futuristic, beautiful, creative but immensely twisted and antagonistically depressing anime series they've both been fans of since they were kids. So they asked me to stay another night for enlightenment. Well, before enlightenment, we all went to the groceries store to get stuff: Jamie got soda for the night, John got stuff they've run out of at the house (which is quite a shitload of stuff. I doubt they would even think of all that if we hadn't have to go groceries shopping), and I took care of food for the night: beef, broccoli and mushrooms (I don't even have a name for that recipe, but if you must know, there's also lots of red onions, garlic with tomatoes, black pepper and some marinading sauces) It was alright. No one died and the food was swiped clean.

And then, Evangelion Rebuild 1.11 and 2.22 happened. Without prior knowledge about the original series (which, according to the two experts, is far more brutal and plain rude to fans), I watched three hours of this very marvelously crafted world with levels of cool technology and creativity, compelling and deeply troubled characters, hopefulness and hopelessness, rainbows and gore, love and anger, more anger and pure depressing shit that gets you to commit suicide. It was epic. I shall now go back and study this series, from scratch. Challenge accepted.

These past two days have been good indeed, but I still have four days left to go before school restarts. Tune in again for more adventures of Wally the Time Traveler. Bahahaha.

Over and out!

Wally