WEEK 2

Hmm what to say not much to report. Monday was pretty uneventful. Class went ok I guess. Don't know if I got my concept through to Clive well. After class Eric, Frank, Jesse and I went to get lunch at Mamma's. After lunch it was a nice nap. After waking up for my nap it was time to get to work on my Font Design homework.

Tuesday's Font Design was cool. I had to take off early because I had to go to court. Back in November I got a ticket for crossing over the double yellow lines to go into the carpool lane which is some bs. Oh yeah and since I got the ticket in Whittier I had to drive way out there. Anyways on top of that I also had a failure to appear because the "courtesy" notice never came to me. So off to court I go. I pled not guilty to both charges. The judge dropped the failure to appear since I showed that the notice I did get once they were ready to put a warrant out on me, since it showed the incorrect address. It's funny that the first notice couldn't find it's way to me but the final once did. WTF! That took care of going before the judge. The judicial system sucks! Why do I need to post bail aka pay my fine if I am taking my ticket to trial. I should only have to pay if they find me guilty. I think this will be a great topic for Information Design this term. Since I was sans money I have to go back within 3 weeks to pay the bail. After court I went for a victory burrito at the taco spot.

On the heels of victory I woke up early on Wednesday so that I could go to school and work on my Information Design and Business 101 homework. I needed to take 15 photos from home to the classroom for Info. So I took some photos till I got to the cafeteria where I made a pit stop for some grub. After eating and finishing up my Business 101 hw I continued my way through school taking pics until I reached the classroom. That only took about 5 minutes before I was back in the cafeteria laying out the photos so that I could print them out. Class didn't start till 3 so I was making perfect time. After a short trip to the computer lab to print I was off to class. This class is pretty chill not like normal classes at least in how its structured. Today's exercise in class was in ways of organizing information. We laid out our prints on the floor in different ways.











After editorial was Bus101. Class so far has been really enjoyable. Not boring at all. Check out these awesome animation stills from Erol's presentations.





After class I went home and relaxed before going to pick up Cristina. She was coming up to LA because in the morning she was going to be flying out of LAX to go to Europe. I picked her up from the Greyhound station.

Thursday morning I woke up early so that I could go to school for the AIGA meeting. When I went into the kitchen I found Cristina cleaning the kitchen. Awesome! After the AIGA meeting I went to try to talk to Leah about my sketches for Font Design. Unfortunately I wasn't able to see her since I had to take Cristina to the airport.

After the airport it was back to the house to take a nap. After walking up I got to work on editorial.






Somewhere in South Central.

On Friday I woke up early to finish up my editorial homework. Class went well and I kinda have a direction to go in. This class is going to be really self motivated and I am going to have to rely on criticism from my classmates.

Friday after class I went to pick up Miguel from work. Afterwards we came back to the house to drink some beers. When we were at the supermarket I saw Maura walking out and we stopped and talk for a sec. I invited her over to hang out. She came over with some instruments and we drank and played into the night.











Saturday was nice and relaxing. I didn't do much just chilled and watched some tv and movies. At night I did my info homework. I needed to find 100 objects of trash that were the same and organize them in some way. I had started a bottle cap collection some time ago in anticipation of this exercise. I was surprised at how little of the collection I needed. The glass jar that holds them was pretty much full after I took 100 caps out.





Sunday was more relaxing and not doing homework. Have to enjoy the little amount of work I currently have, it won't last long.

Random Photo of the Week


Dope all coat on this dog

WEEK 1

Monday started off with a bang in my first class of the term. Term 5 that is and half way done with my career at ACCD. More on that in another post. Anyways my first class of the term is Advanced Graphics Studio or AGS as I will refer to it as from here on out. The teacher for the section I enrolled in, as there are at least 4 teachers in different sections, is Clive Piercy. Clive is British and a hard core ball buster, which going to make for lots of laughs this term. As you get into the upper term classes you get a lot of freedom to do what you want. I hope that my ideas for my project will come far as I am hopefully am going to try to push myself to do things I might not. We will see. Oh and Jesse, Frank, Eric are in the class which is cool too. Class ended early and Monday was in the books which ended with a nice nap.

Tuesday started out bright and early like Monday and with my second class being Font Design. Can you guess what I will be doing in this class? That's right designing a font. Hopefully it will be a decent one. Leah Hoffmitz is the teacher from this class. A lot of the teachers at school have very successful careers and her's is no different. Her claim to fame, the Fedex logo. This class ended early too. 2 for 2!

Tuesday night Jesse, Chris and I were in for a treat. Tonight Massive Attack was playing at the Wiltern. The show was pretty good and it was nice to go out to a concert. After the show we got a nice Korean meal that was a big spread.













Wednesday's classes are Information Design and Business 101. Info luckily is my first afternoon class which will be nice after two morning classes to get through the hump. This class was super short as the teacher was in Europe giving a lecture at a conference. So after roll was taken and the syllabus was given out it was time to go. I headed home since my next class wasn't for about 4 hours. After a nice nap it was time to head back to school for Bus 101. Business 101 is going to be a fun class as it looks like each week will be a motivational speech with business information peppered in.

Thursday will be my off day and I ended up waking up really late and just did laundry and some other chores.

Friday was another late start since my Editorial Design class didn't start till 2. That class went by pretty quick. Should be another good class. It helps that Frank, Eric, and Paul are in the class as well. After class Frank, Jesse, Eric and I headed over to Lucky Baldwins to cap off the week with some food and drinks.


Where is Jesse?



Saturday I woke up and started cleaning my room. Esmelda texted me and ended up getting me to leave the house. We went down to Redondo Beach to catch this band that she likes called Casa de Calacas. This cumbia latin rock type band. They were pretty good and we had a good time. I ended up getting home around 10:30 and left almost right away. I went to Miguel's to pick him up. We went and got some grub before heading over to Alex's loft for his birthday party. The party was cool and nice to hang with some art center heads that have already graduated.


Beautiful Southern California day!


Near the pier.




Getting some grub on Olvera Street.


Miguel and the squirrel shopping cart.

Sunday was work day since I didn't do much work all weekend. I got a good start on my AGS project and called it a day around 2 am.

Oh and for those that care here is the list of my classes and the course descriptions

Advanced Graphic Studio 1
The overall intent and direction of each of the sections of this trio of courses is determined by the instructors who teach them. They, individually, bring different professional interests, experiences, and areas of expertise to each section. However, students can be assured that, as a group, all of these instructors are able to inform, direct, and mentor in a wide range of subject areas. While some instructors may take the traditional role of ?teacher?, others may prefer to act as design director, giving students a professional design office experience.

Font Design
Students in this class will explore classical and experimental letterform design to produce a complete alphabet.

Information Design
This class is concerned with the processes and procedures of understanding and ordering complex data into useful and persuasive information tools.

Business 101
Building a successful career requires not just talent, but an understanding of what it takes to be in business. Business 101 is an introduction to the business side of creative practice. The 14 week course is divided into two parts: general business information, including starting up, intellectual property and money; followed by a second part covering topics specifically geared towards the illustration, photography, or design business, including marketing and self-promotion, pricing and estimating, contracts, and client relationships.

Editorial Graphics
This course is about integrating text and images in sequential applications, such as journals and magazines. Students learn to synthesize typography, color, and imagery to develop a project that addresses a defined audience.

BREAK WEEK 3

This week was a lot more relaxing that the first two. Unfortunately I caught a cold some where and I tried my best to get better before school starts. Monday and Tuesday were pretty low key. I mainly worked on redesigning and building my website. Some coding issues made me put that on the back burner for now.

On Wednesday Katie, Jesse's friend who is out here from NYC visiting came over and shot some of our work. Jesse, Frank and Eric were here for most of the day to get it all done. After about 6 hours we were done. After a break we headed over to Tavern on Brand in Glendale. Frank had gone home and some friends of Katie joined us. We had some drinks and dinner. The food was good but the service was terrible. After a couple hours we headed back to the house.


Katie in action.


Trying not to hit her head.








"Discussing" how we were going to hang the posters.




Behind the scenes.

I was super tired but still had to pack and drive down to San Diego. My final trip home was a short one. I was only going down for the day since my new laptop was going to be getting delivered the next day. Thursday was spent waiting for UPS and watching tv. Oh and I was finally able to wash my car. It was super dirty and in need of a cleaning. A couple hours after my computer was delivered I was back on the freeway heading back to Pas.


My new set up, 15" Macbook Pro.



Friday I went over to Jess's house. She and her roommates were throwing a bbq. It was a perfect day for a bbq too. It was a nice way to end the break.

On Saturday I started cleaning up the kitchen and spent the majority of the day watching tv. Miguel hit me up to go see Iron Man 2. It was pretty good and the fx were dope. We saw the movie at the Paseo theaters which had a makeover. They are now an Arclight theater, which also has a couple bars inside which is a nice treat.


Jack n Coke in hand waiting for the movie to start.

Sunday I finished cleaning up the kitchen and watched more tv. The break went by quick. I wish I had an extra week to veg out. Oh well I am looking forward to this term and the classes I have in store. More on those next post.

Random Photos

BREAK WEEKS 1 & 2

Break started off strong. Jesse and I drove down to San Diego on Sunday night. The drive was easy and we got to San Diego around 9pm. Monday started off unusual. Jesse woke me up for a change and I had to get ready with the quickness since I woke up really late. We still made it to City College on time. Today we were going to be giving a lecture to a an acquaintance of mine's class. She's a teacher at City and asked that Jesse and I give a lecture on our process and show some of work. I never had her as a teacher, I don't think she was teaching while I was at City, we know each other through AIGA events I have attended. The lecture went great and we hope we got through to at least one student. There were a couple that seemed to have their head on straight. We were there for about 2 and a half hours before we were on our way.


This was in the classroom we gave the lecture in. This was from the first AIGA meeting I went to at City. That was back in 2007. I signed in above the U. I wrote to be involved.

The next stop was Pokez. We hadn't been there in a long time and Potato Flautas were much needed. Other than Pokez we didn't have anything that we had to do so we headed over to the Museum of Contemporary Art in downtown. There were only a couple exhibits and they were ok. Then we drove over to Pacific Beach and walked around for a lil while. The weather in SD was typical May gray even though it was April. It was also pretty breezy. After PB, we drove around and then went back to the house to hang out.







That night we went out to dinner with my dad and sister. My dad had asked me when I cut my hair. I didn't realize it but I hadn't seen him in like 9 months. Way too long. Anyways it was nice seeing my dad and we talked for a while before leaving Fudruckers down in Chula Vista. After that we headed home.



On Tuesday we went to the mall and walked around for a lil while. Jesse was in need of some sunglasses. No luck at Fashion Valley so we made our way to Urban Outfitters downtown. Tonight my mom wanted to go out to dinner with us so after walking around for a lil while downtown we went over to Venice in Normal Heights. After dinner we headed back to the house to pack up our gear.

Once packed up we went back down to the Valley to meet up with our Friend Jeff, his wife Trish and their son Romeo. It's crazy how much time has flown by. Jesse, Jeff and I were in the portfolio class together at City. Jesse and Jeff also took a class at Mesa together during that time as well. Anyways during our portfolio class Trish was pregnant with Romeo. Seeing how big Romeo was really put in perspective how long it's been since we had seen him and how long ago our class was. An hour or two later and we were on our way back to Pasadena.




Rome watching his movies on his iPod Touch.

Wednesday I headed over to Echo Park to hang out with Miguel. He was hangin out at Jakkie's house and Alex was there both of who just graduated with Migule who I had yet to meet. They were pretty cool and we just hung out there for a lil while before Andrea showed up. Then after a while longer we headed over to Prado for some drinks. While we were there Andrea's boyfriend showed up. It was good times as you can see from the photos.


Doing the TJ arm wave.


No photos for Migs


Mini wave


Group Shot...kinda


Da boys




Trying to hide


Deep conversation

Then on Thursday it was back down to San Diego. I was supposed to have dinner with my family. My Aunt was in town from Mexico with her sons. That didn't work out. A couple hours later I met up with Jimmy and Shawn. We hit up downtown. We went to Siren, a pretty chill rooftop bar at the Se hotel. Shawn would be playing there next week and we were just checking out the scene. Should be a pretty dope spot once the SD weather warms up.

While we were there I ran into an high school buddy of mine that was doing promotions for the club that night, Elgin. We caught up and hung out for a lil while. After a couple hours it was time to hit the road. We walked over to an all night dinner that I never knew about. After grubbing it was time to call it a night.

Friday I didn't do anything until the evening. Tonight I was going to the Padres game. I went out to Lakeside to pick Bryan. We went downtown and had some food and drinks before the beer fest that was taking place before the game started. Jason and Tek met us at Tavern before we walked over to the ball park. The beer fest was a bust. Too many people, small beers and they cost like $5 each for tasters. We promptly left the park and walked over to this spot we know of. They serve $2 pints and have a nice selection of beers. We were there for a handful of beers before Ana, Bryan's wife joined up with us. We didn't head over to the game until it has already started. The game was pretty boring and we ended up leaving around the 6th inning.


Jason and Tek.


Bryan sportin my shades and Jason.


View from our seats.


Petco Mascot? Bring Back the SD Chicken!


Jason and I.


Our next stop was the Fleetwood. A couple more drinks and we were off again. This time we were heading over to Santee and Noelle's parent's house. She was house sitting with Jay, so we hung out for a lil while. That was my Friday night.


Tek, Ana, Bryan at the Fleetwood.


Saturday was the Mayweather/Mosely fight and I was going to hang out with CJ and watch the fight somewhere. Around 6 I headed over to Cj's so that we could get dinner before the fight. Di, Cj, Caiden and I all got our grub on at West Coast BBQ which is right near Cj's house. I hadn't eaten here yet. I tried but they have weird hours. It was pretty good and a good start to the night. We were going over to Dustin's new house to watch the fight. There were a gang of people over there and it great to see a lot of people I haven't seen since I moved to LA.


Caiden playing at the table with his cup and plate.



Sunday was a lazy day and I ended up leaving in the late evening.

Monday Miguel had asked me to take him to job follow up interview/meetings. I took him to the first place which was on the miracle mile, aka Wilshire, which was really close to LACMA. After that we went and got lunch at this BBQ place on La Brea and Santa Monica. It was ok. While we were eating this other place called Miguel. So after eating we were on our way over to Venice. Once Miguel was done with his second meeting we drove over to the LA Gun Club to get our blast on. He had mentioned going here the night before but I figured he was joking. Anyways he selected a Baretta .9 and a .38. I hadn't been shooting in like 10 years and it was a blast. I definitely need to go back soon. And I still haven't lost my touch. Don't mess with me! After going through a couple targets and boxes of ammo it was time to head home. I was pretty tired and in need of a nap.


Miguel on the .38


Hammin it up for the camera.


Me, handling the .9

Tuesday Jesse told me about Broken Social Scene playing an in-store at Amoeba Records in Hollywood. I had heard about this on Oh My Rockness.com but had forgotten about it. So when Jesse reminded me about it I was down to go. The show was decent. they played for over an hour and had some dope horns come our and play with them. After that we went across the street to Unami Burger. Hands down the best burger I have had. After that I don't want to eat another burger from ANYWHWERE! Anyways after that it was time to head back to Pas and call it a night.


View of BSS from the second floor.


Mexican Coke mixed drink. Another reason why I love this place.

Wednesday I woke up and started cleaning up my room. I unpacked my stuff and started doing laundry. I was supposed to go back to Amoeba with Eric and Chris to catch the Flying Lotus in-store but was tired and didn't feel like doing anything.

On Thursday I went and finally saw Dirty Hands, the David Choe flick playing at the Sunset 5. It was pretty good and inspiring. I had heard about this movie a couple weeks back and was looking forward to seeing it.



On Friday it was almost a repeat of the day before. this time I was going to Westwood to see the Banksy movie, Exit Through the gift shop. The movie while about Banksy wasn't about him. It was about the guy who wanted to make a documentary about Banksy. It was a good movie and very inspiring.


Bad photo of the couches you sat in at the Westwood Lankmark.

After the movie I headed over to Otis. They were having their grad show and I wanted to check it out. After searching for parking I finally made my way over to the campus. I am very fortunate to be able to go to Art Center. Visiting Otis made me even more grateful than I already am. Art Center has an awesome campus. Otis's campus is more like an office building. Anyways the show was kind weird. Art Center's grad night seems more oriented to getting a job in the sense you are able to see a good deal of the student's work. Where as at Otis they only had walls or a small stand to put work on and the work was maybe 1 or 2 projects. Not a great way to see what someone is capable of. After walking around all 6 floors of the building it was time to make my getaway. As I was walking back to my car a couple asked me what I thought of the show. I said I am not the best person to ask, but thinking back maybe I am. Who knows. Anyways there was some good work but it was far and few between.


Going behind enemy lines.

I don't remember how I found out about the Chaz Boroquez lecture at the Hammer museum on Saturday but I was really stoked about this. Eric and Chris went with me over to the west side to see the maser of West Coast gang graff. I planned ahead and broke out a brand new huge sketch book to get Chaz to hit up in.


Third line in the bottom part says Enrique.




Chris and Chaz

After the lecture we headed back to Pas. Gabe was coming up so we could see the 15th anniversary of the Latinologues. Gabe had acted in the Southwestern College production of the play and wanted to see Rick Najera, who wrote the play, act in it's re-mex for this special occasion. The play was pretty funny and I got to see one of my crushes Odalys Garcia. I used to watch her all the time on Lente Loco back in the day. She is still pretty banging today. After the play we got some grub at Fatburger before going to get some drinks. We ended up at Bigfoot Lounge.

As we were leaving Fatburger I went to the car as Gabe went to the bathroom. While I was waiting in the car I noticed something near the windshield wiper arm. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. As I got out of the car it was infact what I thought it was, a Crawdad. I looked around to see if anyone was watching me because WTF was it doing there. When Gabe out I said look whats on the cowl. He had the same reaction as he looked around to see if someone was messing with us. Anyways he returned the favor and put the guy on the car next to us before we left.





Sunday was another lazy day. I made chorizo and eggs for breakfast before I took a long nap. That was pretty much my day. One week left of break and lots to do.

Random Photos.


Best FB status update of the week goes to Stefan Bucher.


Break...


You know the feeling you get when you see an ex girl friend who is doing better without you. It's like that but worst when it's your old car. Somewhere in Colorado doing better without me.


Blurry lolo