BogusRed's Sketchblog

Random musings from the PaperDemon admin.

Well, I finally did it. I completed the BFA Illustration program at San Jose State. I'm so happy to finally be done with school.

I do very much hate school, not because I hate learning but because I just hate the environment. I like learning on my own. I get curious about some technology and explore it and it ends up leading me to something else that's great and my knowledge grows. At school you're set to a predefined curriculum and its not always something you are interested. My motivation for learning something is based on a preexisting interest in the subject and having some sort of project that requires that knowledge in order to complete that project. I'm a very project oriented person. Though occasionally I'll get a really great teacher that gets me excited about school.

Reflecting back on my time in college, I often beat myself up inside for spending so much time on the computer working on PaperDemon.com rather than on my art homework. Had I been more dedicated to art, I think I could have become one of the top artists in the class. But my heart was elsewhere, with web development and design. But now I think it was actually a good thing I spent so much time on PaperDemon. Had I not been spending my time there, I would not have gotten the experience and skills necessary to get a job right out of college doing web stuff.

A couple years ago I had a feeling I might go in the web dev direction but I kept telling myself that if I did go that route it would be like I was selling out. Like I gave up art and took the easier route. I know pursuing the illustration direction would have been much harder for me but I no longer feel like I gave up. I feel more like my animation projects are something I can work on in my spare time, rather than doing it as a career. But who knows where I'll end up in the future.

So what am I going to do to celebrate my graduation? I'm going to Disneyland! Mike and I are heading down there next Saturday. We'll be there for three nights and I'll finally get to meet EvilBunnySlippers in person since she'll be meeting us there. I can't wait. It's going to be so much fun. We are even going to eat breakfast with Goofy!

One thing that's been a bit depressing lately is the traffic flow to PaperDemon. At about this time last year, PD was receiving roughly 30,000 unique hits a month. Now it's HALF that! A few friends suggested the decline in traffic was due to the fact that no new episodes have been released for Zarbon's Masterpiece Theater lately. So with that in mind, I've decided that I'll get the next episode done by the end of next week.

Since my last blog post, I have released the new site design for PaperDemon.com. It has been well received. I'm really glad people like it because I worked really hard on it. I think I probably put more time into this site design than into previous designs for PD. I still have some more work to do on it. I'll be introducing more design elements to header tags and such that have little leafy frills that mimic the design. Another big change was that I changed the format from a fixed width of 770 pixels to a liquid/adjustable layout. This makes browsing much more enjoyable for those with wider monitors, while still being usable for those with 800x600 resolution monitors.

Now that I'm done with school, I can focus more on my personal projects. I'll probably flip back and forth between animation projects and PD.

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