AshofRebirth

Python!

I recently joined the Technical Art club at our school and yesterday I started learning how to code in Python. I know I won’t need to know this stuff until next year, but I find it fun and practicing is never a bad thing!

We learned pretty basic things like:
How to make lists
How to make tuples (that was an accident haha)
How to “pop” things from and append things to lists
How to add another list to a list
..How to add a list within a list (with was another accident, on my part)
How to use “raw_input”

Then we finished off by making a simple program that asks our name and greets us. Fun stuff~

My friend Isaac had the idea of making a create-your-own-adventure game with code, so I’m thinking that I’m going to try that out.. I’ll definitely post more about it if I do!

** Excuse any noob-y mistakes I’ve made referring to things, because I’m not actually sure what I’m doing! XD I’m just playing around with it for now

Riot! •

Technical animator and Ringling alumnus Jeremy Putnam and Lead Tech. Artist Seth Gibson of Riot Games came to our school for two presentations!

The one in the morning was a very helpful presentation about not only Riot Games as a company, but about how to get into the game industry in general and good tips. Then a more personal Q&A session (at Game Design club. Wootwoot!) with those two along with Tyler Good, who just recently graduated from Ringling and got hired at EA as a tech artist.

I learned a bunch and it gave me more of an idea about how to go about my career. One especially good tip I learned is networkiiiiing… And being a good real person, but don’t be afraid to sell yourself (not only your portfolio, but your personality) So I’m going to take Jeremy’s advice to create a  few more different social networking accounts soon and join some forums. 

Riot seems like a really cool company to work at! That may very well be a place that I will apply to in the future~ x)
Hopefully I can get over the distance from Texas, though!

(Definitely going to back and play some LoL again! Hehehe)

Great man with great advice •

Who is this man? Ryan Woodward! He’s a storyboard artist and traditional animator. His most famous independent piece so far is Thought of You. If you haven’t seen it, Youtube/Vimeo it. RIGHT NOW :O

So, why am I talking about him all of a sudden? He visited us Wednesday evening! He showed us some of his previous works, from advertising illustrations to storyboards and animatics of Spiderman 3 and Cowboys and Aliens. It was such a great pleasure to have him speak to us and show us all of that.
He also had a really awesome sense of humor lol He constantly kept the room laughing.. It was like he could have been one of our friends the way he was so “chill” with us.  
Anyway! Throughout the presentation, I wrote down a few things he said to us. Things that really resonated with me, caught my ear, and that I feel will really help me in the future. So I’m always going to share it here, for anyone who didn’t get to hear him speak. I posted a few on Facebook while I was at the presentation, but here’s the full “list” (They are paraphrased of course):

Tips from Woodward

1. Get engaged with your pitches. You’ll make your director, or whoever you’re presenting it to, more exciting and they’ll understand the exact emotion you were going for [He even was asked to take an improv class by his job to help with this]
2. Even when doing storyboarding and pitches, you have to still think about the budget [if you’re working in that type of job]
3. The faster you are, the better. Meaning if there’s an easier, quicker way to do something that will get the same results, or the point across, do it. [He also said that the faster you are, the more you get paid xD I guess that depends on where you work]
4.  Don’t get to married or too emotionally invested into your pitches and art, for work anyway. [A lot of his work is disposable, i.e. Director suddenly changes his mind about the storyboard of yours. There goes all that hard work!]
5. Working on your own project at home helps you not get emotional with your art at work [a great example of this is all of Ryan’s indie work :). At home, he pursues something he really loves: Traditional animation]
6. Never let go of something that inspires and excites you. That’s when you’re not living up to yourself as an artist
7.  When you’re overcome with emotion: That’s the perfect opportunity to do something with it [another great example; Thought of You]
8. If you don’t satisfy your creative beast every once in a while, it’ll eat you up
9.  When you feel strong emotions when doing your art, it’ll transmit into it and communicate to others

 One of my friends said that these tips were kind of obvious. And I realized, after getting used to cranking project after project out, I forgot alot of these things that should be “obvious” to every artist. It was great to be reminded of these things. I’m not sure if these’ll help anyone else, but it’ll sure help me! x)

www.ryanwoodwardart.com 

Writing pieces •

So, for writing class, we have to make I think it was seven pieces of fiction, plus two works of art, which will beo ur writing portfolio. We also have the option for this portfolio to be a webpage, or on a webpage. Since I said that I’ll be posting stuff from college here, I’m going to go ahead and post my writing pieces on here too. :) So expect those soon!
Now, I really struggle with writing (Hopefully I’ll greatly improve with this class. I think I have a pretty awesome teacher. ), so don’t expect super great pieces, but I’ll make sure they’re decent enough to post. ^^;

‘Suuup

Still trying to figure this out… I told myself I wouldn’t get a Tumblr. But I wanted a place to put my stuff that I do in school, and it was between Tumblr and Blogspot.
So anyway, hi!
My name’s Ashley Bamgbala~
I’m a future freshman of Ringling College of Art and Design.
Majoring in Game Art and Design.
My stuff from college will go in this blog! Woohoo!