Anxiety, overcome by Grace.

Hwangjay

Thank you for the guitar pick.

Swollen Gorilla Fingers

So, today I finally decided to teach myself how to play the guitar. This may not seem like a big deal to most people, but for someone whose only musical background was playing the rugrats theme on the piano as a kid, it's pretty tough. I picked up my sister's old yamaha and googled "how to play the guitar" after a good 2 ours of reading tutorials and having the guitar strings dig into my soft, fragile artistic hands... I remembered why I quit when I was in middle school-

So I told that little whiney fat kid inside of me to shutup, and kept playing. I'm now 3 hours into learning how to play the guitar. Thanks to about.guitar.com I now fully understand how to play a "G, C, & D" chords. I have a long way to go though.. the sounds that come out of my guitar remind me of the velociraptors from jurassic park.

Flabbergasted.

___

Into my second week of break... and I am REALLY tempted to download Ragnarok Online and start playing all over again; this game consumed most of my time in high school. I know that if I start up again I won't leave my room for a good 3 months, so instead I decided to draw whatever monsters I could remember from the game. That pink ball is called a poring, it eats apples. That giant toucan/chicken hybrid is called a peco-peco, and the nerd that remembers all of their names and what they look like is me.

my current favorite word.

flabbergasted = blubber, fat, gas, flubber -> great movie. Robin Williams, Robin Hood. I want to watch that movie.

does anyone want to play Ragnarok Online with me? help me.

Viscom 4.

These are sketches from my Visual Communications 4 class this term, each week we would go to different locations to sketch on-site. Our instructor Norm Schureman taught us to break down everything we sketch into primitive shapes, to see how each object would be constructed. He's one of the main reasons I was so set on attending Art Center. He really taught me to enjoy and love sketching, I feel so blessed to have had him this term. Thanks for everything Norm, rest in peace.

____

Viscom 3.

These are pieces from my Viscom 3 class, this class focuses on indicating different materials in color in both analog and photoshop, I'll update this as much as possible (:

_________________________________________________________

experimenting with different brush techniques.

hybrid animals.. not my specialty, i just added horns and wings to everything.

didn't realize you could rotate the canvas, hence the horrible line quality.

finally got to use a wacom tablet! experimental sketching day #1.

Purple heart, and gray ash wood renderings.

Concrete renderings.

Product with both wood and concrete.

My scooter, transformed with 3 types of wood and concrete.

2nd term, complete.

Crazy intense term, I gotta say I learned more in these past two terms than i ever have in my pursuit of art and design. I am very thankful for my classmates, the only reason i got through the term in one piece... the fact that i'm moving onto 3rd term hasn't even began to sink in yet.

but we're moving on. (: snaps.

__________________________________________________

these pics are of my Design Process 2 final, my dog house - Hachiko.

Inspired by the story of Hachiko, a akita that walks his owner to the train station everyday for work, then returns to that same spot when his owner returns from work. One day the owner passes away while working, not knowing this Hachiko waits for him at that train station; he continues to wait for the remainder of his life, waiting for his owner to return.

I designed this shelter for the shiba-inu a relative of the akita, but much smaller. This house is designed to bring the shiba out of the countryside where it is primarily raised and giving him a home in modern day tokyo apartments. The house is inspired by traditional japanese architecture and the meaning behind those works of art.

The circular entrance is inspired by the circular portals in japanese homes which look out towards something of significance (a family members grave) in this case the owner of the shiba.

Elevated floors, much like the traditional japanese homes, a roof inspired by japanese bridges with those extreme arches, and the side windows based on the the shoji (sliding doors).

All these elements combine to bring the shiba - inu a warm and open home in which he can grow in, and hopefully draw him closer to his family.

it is done. hallelujah.

-Thomas Kong

____________________________________________________

utilizing flat-pak design this house is totally collapsible,

and is assembled without the use of screws, nails, or glue.