Spring Cleaning 2019 Updates

[Lizica]

I tentatively finished Montage this week! "Tentatively" because I still want to double-check a few things. But, essentially done! \ o /
I kept working on Soft Glow, as well, and I giggled maniacally a few times, so that's coming along. x3

...And the Bonsai Awards quest has a Reprise. Their bonsai show went well, and they liked my paintings (hooray!), but the People's Choice award was a tie, so they've requested a second one! ((Due to his accent over the phone, at first I thought he said "it was attacked" instead of "it was a tie," which was a bizarre and funny mental image until I realized.)) Anyway, unfortunately, the People's Choice one was the plum branch painting, the one that I invariably mess up more than any of the other ones, sooo I have accumulated seven more rejects while I try to get my groove back. x'D Soon, though! ^^ My muse is very upset because it wanted me to keep working on the Magical Girl drawing and Soft Glow, but at least it's only the plum branch and not the bonsai forest that has to be duplicated. x'D;

[Killix]

I can't seem to get Shell Belle's head off. I've tried soaking the entire pony in boiling water, but it just doesn't budge. I'm at a bit of a standstill with this custom now. XD But at least I've been trying.

[Liou]

The Great Paper Sorting is: complete!
I'm sure more little nests of papers will turn up one way or another for Minor Paper Sortings, and didn't get rid of as much as I hoped - even though I didn't start out with that much.
But this was the Great Paper Sorting, in which I dealt with the big boxes of old things and accomplished my goals of having my actually important papers within reach, and setting up my next Great Paper Sorting to be easier.
I ended up completely emptying two of my archive boxes and freeing up half of a crate with wiggle room for the next lesser sorting. Also performed a Big Clen in the corners that are usually unreachable, on top of the usual cleaning.

[Twillie]

Looking back on my projects list, I'm happy to say that a number of items are actually pretty close to completion =o Though of course that's partly because just a number of them were timely anyway, so it just happens to be close to their deadlines.

Video presentation is almost done- gonna actually spend today making last minute changes and then letting it render into a playable video. My soul will feel a lot better once I don't have to worry about this anymore.

Book project will be done by this Tuesday, then I have whatever our last project in that class is.

Last team meeting will be this Tuesday as well, which is more or less figured out. Just gotta do it now.

That team event will also be this Friday, I just need to gather food and advertise it.

Haven't had much time to plan for my next Blossoms arc, but thanks to some recent (and unexpected =o) fanmail, I've at least been motivated! I'm hoping the rest of this semester can go by quickly so I can stop worrying about all my school stuff for once and get to these creative projects.

[June Scarlet]

Magical Girl is done and submitted. Starla27 is submitted to the upcoming BC contest this Friday, and I've made the preview thread on the art board. Already have had some people stop by, hopefully they're reading the comic I posted along with it. Work starts when the contest starts, so I'm going to have trouble grabbing all those first minute votes, but that's okay. It's more about advertising Ink: Inversion anyway.

The pet rat presentation is coming along nicely. I've filled out all the information, and found a video for it, so now it's just formatting and proofreading and stuff like that. Which is good, because it's due on the 30th. The Lettering project is coming along more slowly; I'm not used to working in Illustrator. But I have more time for that one anyway.

Replied to an email from a recruiter. To say that I'm not available for another month, so this job that wants to hire within a couple weeks won't work out, but still, it's something. The campus job fair is coming up as well, on May 3rd, so I should start preparing for that.

Upcoming Week:
Rat Presentation
Lettering Project
Starla27's BC entry
Choose a project from the art list as a break from the lettering project
Job Fair

[Gelquie]

So, uh... the reason you didn't see an update last Sunday is because on Wednesday of last week, I found that my power cord for my computer became, uh. Faulty. To the point where I didn't feel safe using it anymore. ='D I was able to keep up on a few things via phone, but in the meantime I put a lot of things on hold.

As you can tell now, I have a new laptop now (I wanted to replace my old laptop anyway), and am still working on it, but it's done. And thus, I am updating now.

...So, uh, that was the other piece of tech I was looking into buying, which I was gonna save for later after the semester and when I felt a bit more financially secure about it, but, well, one needs a laptop. ='D What I'm saying here is, by complete accident of fate, task H4: Pick out new tech to buy is, officially this time, done!

Also, I did that car appointment, so that's done.

And while searching for a book for research, I found some old stuff that I ended up rearranging into something that made more sense, so I did do a bit of surface tidying. I need to do way more, though. During my laptop-less time, I kind of dove into work and such.

My class presentation is next week, and in my mind, I've started it. I have a mental outline and a sheet of paper on which I've jotted down ideas, and a case study to work from. I'll likely be focused on that and working on my laptop stuff for the next week.

I've been researching and reading more science stuff all the time for the sake of my research, so that's making steady, fractal-shaped progress.

I actually did a lot of IRL stuff. Maybe I should take computer breaks more often. Though, having a phone with me helped so I didn't have to choose between wasting my day at home on a laptop or being out and completely cut off from communication. So that's a nice change that kind of helped me have the feeling that I have a safety net.

If I don't make significant progress before Sunday, I'll probably hold off another update until the week after. We'll see! But I'm still on this.

[June Scarlet]

Pet Rat Presentation is over! I think it went pretty well, and if it didn't, then I only have to suffer in class as that weird girl with pet rats for only a couple of week until the semester is over. Hopefully, though, I've shown people that pet rats really are sweet and not that bad.

Got an email from a recruiter on Monday about a job nearby. I replied to them; still waiting to hear back. Job Fair is tomorrow. I've already printed out some resumes for that.

Advertising for Starla27's BC entry is going slowly, just because I hadn't had time for it. I've been keeping my own thread bumped, but not reaching out to other threads. I did get a fanart though, which is great! Kougra_Adoptables here: www.neopets.com/~Mathew_Cavus#fan

I've gotten some good progress on my lettering project. It's due a week from today. I found a brush that actually considers tablet sensitivity, which is great. Also discovered that Illustrator has a pattern creation function, which could be useful in the future.

And finally, I got six new signatures for my Neopets. You can see them here: ntwriters.proboards.com/post/2719863/thread

Upcoming Week:
Job Fair
Lettering Project
Keep going on signatures while inspired
Additional project from the list

[Lizica]

I skipped the update last week not because I didn't do anything, but because I was having one of those "augh, posting anything makes me anxious" moods. x'D Sooo, two week update.

I did finish and mail the Bonsai Award Reprise! I was pretty worried for awhile there, because I used a regular flimsy greeting card envelope instead of a priority mail envelope where the post office employee could stamp it with "DO NOT BEND" all over--but since I received a check from the bonsai society this past week, I'm guessing that the award did indeed get there safely in one piece. xD Woooo~

And I totally added the Magical Girl drawing to my projects list for the sole purpose of crossing it off. =D Do I get Spring Cleaning Points?

While I was in a Town mood, I went ahead and did the pencil drawing Bulldozed, too.

And yesterday I got to set up =DDDDD. (...Which in retrospect was a very confusing project title, but y'know what, it is =DDDDD.)

Then I also added more stuff to my to do list, because to do lists are rolling and endless. XD

[Twillie]

Took a look at my list, and a lot of school assignments I'm able to cross off. Or at least, partially. A lot of the assignments are two-parters, coming with both a presentation and final paper. Presentations I'm almost done with (one left, hnggg), and a couple papers left. Hopefully I can get those crossed off either today or tomorrow, since I'm gonna be basically MIA from school between Sunday and Tuesday with a national competition to attend.

I also added some new list items and heading "Cleaning." Next week is my last week of classes, so move out will be coming up soon. I want to slowly go through all my stuff and start moving things to my car, that way I'm not hauling everything at once on the last day.

[Gelquie]

Ohright, Sunday.

So, yeah, a lot did get done. And a lot of trouble happened. But let's just talk about what I did cross off.

So, my semester is over, my class is over, and thus, my project for that class is over! (Technically; I'll get to that.) So C2 is done. And while I never did create that study guide, I did fill out my notes in a way that makes more sense. (Pro tip: Put page numbers on your notes. I wanted to do a table of contents as well, that just didn't happen. But I did it during one class before and it worked really well for me.)
So the entire section for Class is done!

But here's the thing. I wanted to relate my class project to my research as a sort of practice run for identifying things I needed. But I never got that far in my project. I still want to do it, though, especially while it's still on my mind. So I've added R8 - Further examine class project.

I've been feeling pretty "ugh" today, but I still wanted to do something. So I decided to do something that doesn't require a lot of brainpower or stress, and I went through my clothes to recycle. (It helped that the amount of clothes I have was overwhelming me anyway, so it just made sense.)
And I actually managed to get through it all in less than an hour? I think it helps that I go through clothes anyway every once in a while.
I got rid of a bunch of pants, a couple shirts, and some other things that were just taking up space. There were a few question-mark items that I'm keeping for now. There were few of them anyway. A couple of "just in case ones". But I tried to ensure that it was actually necessary first.
I have them bagged and ready to be dropped off somewhere, so I just need to do that. But I'll probably get to it sometime this week just to get it out of my apartment. So consider half the task--H2 Clothing Sorting and Recycling--crossed off!
I still need to re-sort my remaining items, since I think I can consolidate space. I just haven't done it yet.

H6: Find New Apartment is back on the list because uuuuugh. But also, I found a way to get out of it without losing my deposit. I just need to go through that whole process. ...Ugh. But even more ugh is staying in a place that literally harms my health.


So, with my semester over, I realized that I kind of need to re-evaluate my schedule and to-do list. It was all kind of written with my semester in mind, and for my research, with a particular course of action in mind that's not entirely applicable anymore. So I realize there's still a lot more that I can actually get to now. So I may do that over time. But it may take me a while to realize everything I want to put there, so that's TBD.

I did add a new section to my list. It only has one item so far, but there'll be more as I learn more. The one item is the most pertinent thing I can do right now anyway. That's gonna be a thing over the next few months, and will last past spring cleaning, but I can at least use the list to encourage me to make progress on it.

And that's all I have! ...Ha, "all." As if it was that little of things to do. No, it was a lot.
And I probably won't get much else done today. We'll see about the rest of the week, though. There's still a few pertinent things I need to do in the next 2 weeks, alas.

EDIT: Okay, I ended up sorting some clothes after all. Alas, I wasn't quite able to get everything in the two boxes to fit in one box, but it was close!

The real question is figuring out how to sort all my coats and outdoor gear into something a bit better consolidated and organized than... a bag. A literal, big bag. It's really not efficient. So I need to figure that out. (It's just that outdoor gear is really big, so that can be hard.)

[Killix]

I am slowly but surely decapitating this pony. Gotta go slow 'cause of boiling water and avoiding tearing the neck, but it's working. 8D

[June Scarlet]

Job Fair went well. Got a professional photograph, my resume critiqued, and a good lead on a possible internship that leads into a job. Also got in contact with a company I saw at the last job fair, asking how long it takes to hear back. She took my name and number, and called me back; turns out they never got my application. Their websystem was pretty buggy, so I guess that's why. So I have to reapply to them, though at least I've saved my application, so I just have to paste everything back in.

Lettering project is done pending critique this evening. But it should be pretty good to go. I was really surprised, because all along I've shown my professor my progress, and he was like, "More, do more!" and this last class, he was finally like, "do this one small tweak and you're good." I guess all that work paid off! I'm looking forward to seeing what the rest of the class did. Also, turns out there's 137 layers to this Illustrator file, including the sublayers. Just wow.

Signatures project is almost complete! I've drawn and scanned in the rest of them, now I just need to do the computer side stuff, like cropping and resizing and uploading. I'm very excited to share some of the upcoming signatures, there's some interesting stories behind some of them, especially Storyweaver's.

Speaking of Storyweaver, I decided on what story she should tell, and who she should tell it to. Now I need to decide if I should make a comic series or short story.

Upcoming Week:
Study for Finals
Reapply to job
Submit Lettering Project
Finish Signatures
Storyweaver Story

[Lizica]

Finally sent off the form to renew my passport today. The lady at the post office was super nice and helpful. (And when I gloomily said that the photo I'd brought in looked like a mugshot because I wasn't allowed to wear my glasses, she assured me that, nah, "they all look like that." xDD So I feel better.)

I also made a bunch more sketches and layouts for Finish Logo, and emailed the designs to my friend to see what she chooses or suggests.

And I went back to working on Soft Glow again. It occurs to me after working on it for so long that no one, literally no one, would blame me or even notice if I just did a plain blue background. xD It's kind of a pretty minimalist design that way. But HEY, I've come this far, can't turn back now, I've finally reached the fun part where I get to make it up as I go. xD

[Twillie]

With my last presentation today, just about all of my school assignments are now crossed off \o/ All I have left is an art project to finish up, plus a couple tests that shouldn't be a huge deal. Ahhhhh it feels so good to have this semester just about done xD

Biggest priority now will be to clean my room up and start packing, so I'll probably start on that tomorrow!

[Gelquie]

Look who forgot to update!

So... R7 Big Meeting is postponed because... Scheduling. It's because scheduling. Just a huge mass of branches of scheduling that's leaving me no clear route. That kind of scheduling. So. Postponed until further notice.

By the way, I dropped off the clothes mentioned in the previous update for donation, so that's done! I actually found one more to donate, which I might do later if I remember.

Apartment searching was... attempted. Anxiety got in the way a lot, so I've hesitated on actually calling places. But at least I found out one reason I was hesitating. I did contact a place, and that's been going on, but I don't know if it'll actually pan out. And now it's time for a brief trip, so that may have to be postponed too.
(But! I did contact the one place! Progress! \ o / )

...Aaaand that's all I got. ='D

(I did make some progress on research, but not as much as I'd like. I'll see how that goes from what I can do during the trip. Or maybe I'll just end up taking a break for that time. Who knows?)

(But. At the very least, I should have lots of time to read my script now. And maybe I can still make out of town calls for things. And I have appointments to keep. As for everything else, well, we'll see how much I get done.)