Laurence Tomura

Friday, October 14th, involved a lecture from Principle Design Director Joe Hallock. From his experiences at working at Microsoft, he explained how design positions for most companies and firms will involve a spectrum of work that will consistently vary depending on the company one would choose to work as a designer for. Big companies have a lot of differing teams working on, and it’s imperative to understand everyone’s role and function in order to communicate effectively and deliver a satisfactory product for clientele.

Time management is a must-have skill for any and every trade, especially when there’s multiple people relying on others to produce something quality. Joe stressed the importance of setting time aside specifically for proactive work (future responsibilities), and reactive work (short-notice occurrences). When teamwork is necessary, everyone has to pull weight.

Assignment Writeup (300-400 words)

When relating this to personal goals, some of them are pretty simple to line up. Illustrative focus can be applicable to almost anything that’s visually involved. However, when it’s technologically involved, it’s daunting. In regards to design, illustrative positions are specific and executive. Experience is needed, and from what little skills I can transfer from conventional and traditional art mediums, it looks rough. Even with the education provided by the program.

The general applicability of technological knowledge is not without its benefits, with so much of our daily responsibilities and industrial foundations relying on the modernization of computing. The difficulty lies in my personal desires for career: manga. With it’s roots lying in tradition (and niche cultural hysteria), anime and manga is usually a solo act. On my first chapter for my passion project, “Blazer! Blazer!”, I worked with one other artist. Ever since chapter 1’s release on Line Webtoon, chapter 2’s development has been all me. From initial concepts, character design, story writing, background art, all the way down to the storyboards, pencils, inks and screen tones. Additionally, I’m trying to get a physical print edition put in retailers out of my apartment without outsourcing to a printing company. And with prior experiences in freelance illustration spanning from high school to the present (commissioned artwork for other creatives), I’ve gotten too used to the idea of being of my own boss when it comes to creative work. It’s fine if it’s fulfilling, but there is no semblance of income stability in freelance when you’re not an “influencer”. The other side of the spectrum, corporate work, has it’s own set of problems

Teamwork has never been an importance to the development of my comic series. There’s a pride, as well as a solace to working in isolation. It’s mostly a mix of workload efficiency, visual consistency and management of production that drives the preference towards individual work. It would be daft to assume that working as a graphic designer wouldn’t involve communicating with other teams and working with other people. But it’s unnerving how expected it is for us to fit into the uniformity. Nevertheless, I do agree to the core value of understanding different mediums to communicate with specific focuses to specific teams, as freelancing experience has hammered in the importance of the concept.

Communication is scary. To desire something isolating at this stage in my studentship is to also have this naive, grandiose idea that I am capable of being my own boss right outta graduation. But the workload that comes with the lack of communication or cooperative involvement is comforting. This perspective definitely seems like it’d be a great mindset for something in fine arts such as animation or a medium deeper into the illustrative side of things. Which would be great if logistically the value of the artwork created would consistently earn a financial return equivalent in value. The greater landscape of the job market and their pay ultimately feels entrapping. Why wouldn’t I fall in line and work my way up the chain? If it’s the best option numbers wise, why shouldn’t I sacrifice more of my creative energy towards the paycheck?

Admittedly, it’s an uneducated and immature way to look at the process. Especially when design in its very nature has rules. Maybe research would be ideal, for it’s more about studying how the limitations themselves can be a medium. Still, the idea of communicating is scary.

How personal does one have to be in this industry? Creative expression is a conversation that, for some of us, is easier than words. The trade-off being that in a fine arts education, its perfect for making silent artisans that are shooed away from the social norms. And it wouldn’t be as frustrating and cynical of a conclusion if someone early on in the journey had told me no matter what I do in life, I’ll need to learn how to talk with people. Professionalism is easy in writing. Not when I’m talking with someone.

I plan to make use of everything this program has to offer when applying to my passion: to become a manga artist. But realistically, it’s gonna have to be something illustrative. So long as I can draw for a job, there will be no complaints about learning some basic social studies.

Due to the unfamiliarity and active rejection of the concept of “recording the process”, the idea of a blog alone is crushing. However, a self-reminder that this is better than the day jobs is hopefully going to be engrained into my thick skull. If I can draw, I can probably learn code. If I can learn to code, I can start to understand the necessity of publishing anything other than what is necessary to the piece in front of me.

Nothing left for me now than to dive in.

On 10/7/2022, our New Media class started with a presentation by Paolo Tosolini and Tosolini Productions. Tosolini Productions is a media company in Bellevue Washington that specializes in storytelling in business media. Paolo told us the importance of prototyping, and how crucial it is to branch outwards and create projects that discover new ground whilst simultaneously enjoying that process of its creation.

Innovation is key to actively exploring what works and what doesn’t for the company, and a project that fails never “fails” per se. Paolo treats design like research, bringing a viewpoint that greatly differs from the outward characteristics of the fine arts approach; rather than collecting everything and finding pieces to use for an idea that hits you one day (like all the greats are said to have “done it” by the people who can’t define “composition”), Tosolini’s design model offers a greater point of learning from the failure and leaving prototype projects as a point of learning and even further innovation from the ideas brought to the table on the idea.

This model was coined by Paolo as “mashups”. When working on the AR/VR integrated products his studio usually focuses on, his results are culminations of the different mediums available on technologic platforms, such as video game engines, 3D environment scanning programs, the AR features available on IOS, and more.

In a beautiful way, it loops back around to the fine arts approach intrinsically with the “no mistakes; just happy accidents” ideology.

The prompt for this first project is to create a visual “mashup” of varying pieces of different mediums to create a cohesive representation of our time so far at Seattle Central College.

(To no fault or blame to the incredible staff, professors, and classmates I have met during my first two weeks in this school), I am simultaneously stressed and exhausted, yet driven and relieved. My introduction to this course was quitting two jobs over the summer, with working conditions including mold at our dumpsters due to public urination, barely making income to fund my personal projects related to art (let alone rent), and a crowded night at a boba place in Chinatown where the owner handed me a half made drink and screamed at me “MILK AND ICE!!!” Then a few days trying to navigate different social services with my mother for a late diagnosis of a developmental disorder (adult autistic spectrum disorder) and getting continuously inebriated. Doubt was really setting in on the greater existential purpose of my fine arts background, and resentment to the figures who never bothered to tell a naive Asian nerd with a low cumulative GPA that “passion” doesn’t pay for fucking food.

One desperate google search near the end of June showed me Seattle Central’s graphic design program. I bookmarked it and woke up hungover to start scrambling the portfolio needed for entrance. Once accepted, it was painstaking anxiety with the vague nature of information, and the lack of acceptance to Seattle Central College prior to my portfolio submission made things difficult to navigate. Two months of trying to find out if I was even able to come in for the first day of school with the lack of registration to school. Within the month of September, I processed through the cycles of grief, then sudden celebration at the confirmation of a real design education at Seattle Central. Nervous to ecstatic, back to nervous, then back to ecstatic. And now I’m here: inspired and tired.

Buddha be with me, that’s only the start of it all.

With my inability to explain any better about my predicament with technology and digital mediums, I abhorred the idea of having to learn any related to a computer other than drawing programs. The autism sort of to compute the logic of code, but the structure and format of how its done is overwhelming. Reading standardized forms are hard enough, so HTML is a whole other animal. It’s difficult to determine what I’m supposed to take with me technique and skill wise from conceptual visual arts. But similar to graphic novels and the serialized manga world, there is an understanding that there are standardized rules and expectations to meet in the world of free trade. Just wish some of this was on paper rather than atop the continued muck-raking we regard as an internet culture.

But that’s subjective. I’m in school for it now. Time to get my shit together.

First Medium: Painting

Took this photo after setting up an old macbook air I resuscitated after years of being out of commission. It was around this time things calmed down for my enrollment for the fall quarter, so I took a couple nights binging the classics. This will be the base foreground as I use the monitor as a subject.

This is a painting I churned out during the portfolio building process. I plan to place this on the monitor of the filtered photograph on Photoshop. It will be in contrast to the negative filter on the photo, but still saturated. It will either look nice or be garish to look at. As of currently, no clue which route it’s going.

TOdAaY (10/13/2022), I shall proceed to rush the rest of this project due to not coping to the workload of this course fast enough. Please hurl me into the sky like a clay pigeon and have a sharpshooter on standby.

“Cope” is a term used often as a meme in the context of someone being mad in a multiplayer, player vs player game. When someone is angry at you in the game, you tell them to cope. What a weird apathetic society we live in, in which mocking someone to cope with stress is a societal norm. Enforced heavily enough to regress back to the cruel idea of “laughing at the fool”. You ever sit to think about the continued cynicism that compels collective society to actively make a joke out of people who aren’t able to understand why they don’t into the standard quo of-

I’m doing it again.

Now that we have a foreground/background (photo), subject (painting), and the “COPE?” (lettering/drawing), time to mash. Originally, I was intending to set aside time to put everything together on Photoshop to help better learn the program. However, due to crippling time management skills that will eventually see me in a back alley dice game gambling for my fingers, I am going to use my native drawing setup, the illustration software Medibang Paint pro and Wacom tablet.

In conclusion, the introduction into the vocational program experience has been as rewarding as it is taxing. I was less focused on the final result and prioritized other classes instead as the blog went to the back of my mind. Three weeks in and already I’ve needed to cram at least 3 projects, not including this one. The student body is populated with highly unique individuals with the common goal of surviving the courses and their knowledge, but I still find myself lost in the masses. Navigating the maze that is social interaction with the guise of a normal person that knows how to interweave slang seamlessly into conversation is hell. So many personalities, so many collective ideas that can lead to beautiful cooperation. And yet still, in the end I always find better solace alone. Coping.

I see a therapist and regularly do get treatment. If this is an indication to anything, it’s that I need to get myself organized.

Not sure how this’ll be graded in the end, but at least I’m now familiar with the blog format and the recording of the process.

this thing is way too long, isnt it?