Radio Silence

While packing to go home for the holidays I left one very important thing back in Michigan; The Speed Racer glasses case which contains my ultra fine black sharpies (for inking) and my flash drive which also has all my photos on it so no new posts until after the New Year, so later!

While I Was Out Part 3: Three Day Project at the Nahant Marsh

Towards the end of CTI all the teams had a short three day project so that the teams can get a feel for the kind of work they'd be doing throughout the year. This was the first time that any of the teams spent time off campus and the first time we really got to find out what it means to be a team. My teams project was at the
Nahant Marsh where we were helping to create a path down to their board walk that was more wheelchair assessable.We had a good time there, and we had a cool sponsor. We also declared a very affectionate turtle named Bobby (seen here) as our official team mascot. We also started our Spike tradition of going to a local China Buffet for dinner. (because they're everywhere.)

Intermission 2: The Drama of the NCCC Yearbook Cover

So every NCCC class has a yearbook profiling all the teams and their projects, and our class is no exception. There was a contest to determine who would get to design the cover of the yearbook and seeing as I was the only one who expressed interest I won by default. So I worked on my design, and worked, and worked, because as all artists know stuff like this takes a long time and in addition to all of the other Ameristuff we have to do you don't get that kind of time too often. So after about a little over a month of working on it, I finally submitted my original design (top left) only to find out a week later that staff decided against using my cover for various reasons, which included and not limited to, fear that the person on the cover was suppose to be me and that the person on the cover was not in full uniform. So taking this with a grain of salt I was given the opportunity to do a new cover, (seeing how they still needed one and I was the only one who actually did one.) and submitted the second image you see here which was approved.
There are different things I like about each cover more but ultimately I still like my original cover more, just because I feel like I had a really cool concept going with it visually and I got to showcase all the teams and their work better (because of limited space I could not include as many photos on the second design.) not to mention I spent a lot more time on it, where as the second cover was a picture I drew earlier in the year that I repurposed because I had not the time nor energy to start from scratch. What also really sucked about the whole situation, was the idea that they thought I was drawing myself with the original cover, when in actuality, I was trying to go for an indistinct person because the idea I was trying to get across was the an NCCC Corps member can be anyone and can come from anywhere so to get the exact opposite impression is really unfortunate and speaks on my ability to convey my thoughts using images. My original cover will still be featured in the yearbook in full color, it just won't be the cover. Basically what I'm taking from this experience (and this is the most positive spin I've been able to put on this thing.) is that when I enter the field of art professionally I'm going to have to get used to people I'm working for on commissions or other things to not want the same thing I necessarily want and be ready to adapt to their demands and expectations.

Intermission: Portrait of a Sleepy Hipster

A break from my Ameristory for something a little more current. This is just a quick sketch I did during work last Saturday when I had some down time. The random people heads didn't turn out well but I really like my yawning scene chick. One of my favorite parts of doing character designs are the costumes and I really love drawing hipster clothes for whatever reason.

While I Was Out Part 2: CTI Continued

Moving right along with my merry little story, after that community meeting I then joined the rest of the Corps in a little something called CTI (Corps Training Institute)One thing you'll learn about the government while working for them is that they love their cute little acronyms, I swear I almost needed flash cards to remember what all of them stood for. CTI is the 5 weeks of training that all Corps members go through before they're sent out into the field to save the world. Through out CTI we took all sorts of classes and trainings in shelter management, paperwork stuff, using power tools, and a LOT
of team building stuff. One of these team building exercises was the ropes course. Sure working together to solve rope based obstacles sounds very summer campy (teehee, it's a pun because I mean campy as in camp like but I also mean cheesey) but it was actually a lot of fun. This is a picture of my team lifting me through the spider web. I have also been keeping up with my art during CTI of course. Here's a character sketch I did for an idea I had for a comic about a Catholic High School Cheerleader who gets pregnant by means of Immaculate Conception. This is a picture of her cool hipster aunt.

While I Was Out Part 1: CTI in Vinton Iowa.

It was a dark day May 10th when I left Cleveland, (It was dark mostly because I left at 4 in the morning.) and it took me two sardine can airplanes to get me from Cleveland to Chicago and then finally to good old Vinton Iowa, a small gem in a sea of corn. I was picked up from the small airport by the support team leader Joy Whitt, who I would get to know better at a later time. When we arrived at Campus (The Iowa Braille and Sight Saving School.) there was already an all Corps community

meeting in progress led by, of all teams, the one I had been assigned to! You see, the day I arrived on campus was 5 days later than the majority of the Corps. Class 16A officially started on May 5th and I got the phone call telling me I got in, asking me if I can arrive by the 5th on the May 2nd. (I know right, thanks for the heads up.) Not just that but I had my then Girlfriend's prom to go to and there was already some drama there so I didn't want to make things any more miserable for her. So I got approved to come in later. I basicly went straight from the airport to the community meeting and got to sit on stage in front of the whole Corps with the team who I only just then met. Oh but it gets better, this was also before I knew that it just so happened that on my team there was another Avery and a Girl named Bailey (not Bailie like my name.) and they were starting the meeting, so when I heard our team leader call up "Avery Bailey" I was dumbfounded, luckly one of my teammates stopped me from standing up and making an ass of myself. So after that community meeting I got all my uniform items and went to that day's traings with the team and settled in and such. This picture is of part of the team from the Van inspection training in when it started to rain.

Before I Was Out...

So right before I found out I got accepted into AmeriCorps I was starting a mini comic for some of my friends from high school called the Vaginal Avengers. The story behind this was when I was a junior in high school my cool senior friends asked me to draw a comic of them as Slutty Super Heroes. From Left to Right you've got the Chasity Champion, The Canyon, and The Exotic Enchantress, and then the villians from top to bottom the Homo-Homewrecker and the Dike-a-saurus. Sadly enough the day I started it was the day before I got confirmation that I was leaving for AmeriCorps so I haven't really had the time to work on it since then.

I'm Not Dead! (promise!)

So it's been several months since my last posting, (sorry!) I kinda stopped after I joined AmeriCorps NCCC (B.T.W I joined AmeriCorps NCCC!) and I figured no one really reads this anyway so who's gonna miss out. Recently however I've started to read my friend's blog about our elementary school comic wars and then catching up on Tim Fish's blog about his life as a comic creator so I got re-motivated. So the next couple of posts I'll spend catching everyone up on where I've been since I've joined AmeriCorps with my art and my life and cool shit like that. In the mean time here's me doing my best Professor X from Kirby's classic run.