NO. Not easy, dammit. Not easy at all.
You see, audience, I started out with this project flying high with a lot of good ideas wiggling about in their seats like children wearing Mickey Mouse ears off to Disney Land, but I ended up having to fling most of that child-weight out of the rear door in order to pull out of a death dive. This project goes on record as the first to make me consider giving up all hope — the little hamster in my brain finally cracked from all the years of being overworked and under paid and decided to lay down in the street near a set of abandoned railroad tracks still hoping the bus that was rolling up would end it all. But what he forgot to realize was that all buses stop at railroad tracks, so now he’s just laying there looking silly.
The goal was to train our eyes as artists in order to start viewing the world differently. Oh, I view it differently alright… I’ve considered conjuring up a new language and mathematical system so that I don’t have to deal with the regular letters or numbers anymore. When I walk around now I do see them… everywhere… and it leaves me with a sense of bitterness. So now I look silly when people stop to look at the strange redheaded girl who is arguing with a pile of twigs or cracks in a building, screaming, “Where were you days ago when I needed you?! Do you know how hard it was to find the letter ‘Q’?! And here you are, just mocking me!”
Seriously… do you people know how hard it was to find the letter ‘Q’ occurring naturally?
But all fits full of rage aside, as this was the first project to bring me to my ultimate low, it ranks in as the first project to make me challenge myself in a way I have yet to be challenged.
When my original set of image files decided to go and get all ‘error: corrupted‘ I had to scratch my first idea of making a video and go out and retake nearly half of my alphabet and numbers. No big deal, really. I still had plenty of time and a few more design options at my disposal. Once I had all the images back, I figured half the battle was won. What a fool I was…
With a lack of tools and lack of time, I was literally hours away from the deadline and had no final composition coming together. I had this really wicked idea of making the photos look like they were in jumbo-sized negatives on a poster, but I realized quickly how in over my head I really was (that’s why as you’ll soon see, audience, all of my numbers are in black and white and are horizontal). I really don’t know what the hell had happened… the hourglass I had been carefully observing and managing had broken and now the sand was slipping through the cracks of my fingers at a rate I could not even dare to hope to control.
It was then I realized two things:
- If the deadline hadn’t been extended on this project I would have been screwed since the beginning (so thank you, Professor Waldvogel).
- I needed to pull my head up and out of my hands, rub the sand from my eyes, and get this thing going.
I had to produce some kind of physical presentation, because it was a whole heck of a lot better than walking into that classroom with nothing at all. This is what ultimately came to be:
NOT AT ALL what I had planned, but it was… something. Like I stated, it was a challenge. Simplicity and I don’t make very good dance partners; I end up stepping all over toes and it really just ends up looking like what the Tango would if it was performed by two fish flapping about outside of water. This time, however, I had no choice; I had to find the middle ground. I had to utilize what few resources I had to make the composition be simple enough to where I’d have enough time to get it done to meet the deadline, yet at the same time appear even borderline interesting. I could have just pasted all of them on the mat board in even rows — clean and to the point. But I didn’t want to make that sacrifice. I knew some sacrifices had to be made, but please, God, not that one.
I got it done, though. In time.
And then my car stalled on the way to class.
Like I said before… I can’t even make up jokes that good. That punchline, oh boy, it was a heart-stopper. So much so I forgot to laugh.
Critique — Moment of Truth:
My peers… liked it. Yeah, I kind of had to resist the urge to slap myself in the middle of all of them. Wasn’t expecting that one. The biggest parts I could have improved on were, of course, craftsmanship (one of the few sacrifices I made in the struggle to get this done) and some of the photos themselves. More than I want to admit were pixel-y and, if I had had the time, I would have wanted to find a few more of the letters in brighter colors. Most of them are dull and don’t pop out as much, which messes up the flow of the entire piece to me. I also would have liked to have picked a different ‘I’; it doesn’t look right sitting there next to the ‘H’, it almost gets lost considering they’re both of the same material.
Still, though, I want to thank my cats for providing me with a couple of the letters through their tomfoolery, the endless wave of supporting hugs from my fiancé, and C. Matthew Jackson for being my messenger owl to the professor when my car was going through its suicidal phase.
Letters:
Numbers:
Note: Funny enough. The title of this post was going to be the song I would have used in my video.