My First Internship

Sorry I have been slacking a bit, but I have been quite busy this past week. I am back in Chicago, THANK GOODNESS! I love my family and my hometown, but I can only take so much of the middle of nowhere. I started my internship this week at the National Multiple Sclerosis Society - Greater Illinois Chapter as a Web and Graphics Intern downtown.


NMSS Public Service Announcement

Though I am only in my first week, I enjoy the people I work with and love working for something that means something to me, though the experience is quite the perk too! I have my own little cubicle as well; it's neat to actually see what I will be able to participate in when I finish my graduate degree. I don't know what I was expecting on my first day, but we had a meeting and I was tossed into an assignment right away working towards transition of their web site and doing revisions of certain pages. They have been keeping me busy, but I love it! I would rather be busy at work and applying my skills than running around and getting coffee and lunch for co-workers.

It's been great so far, can't complain at all! Hopefully I will be able to balance work and classes. I have done it before in undergrad with 20 credits and 2 jobs at the same time, so it looks bright ahead! Stay posted!

Adam Brandejs

Adam Brandejs is a recent graduate from the Ontario College of Art and Design and is already an award winning artist. Brandejs does everything from traditional and animated sculpture to graphics who works in multiple fields and media including physical and virtual sculpture, web development, and electronics design. At just 26, that is incredibly impressive. Most of his artwork has some medical basis around it from his GenPets installation, animatronic flesh shoe, to his special effects and prosthetics (one of them in a music video here). Adam has his own website which is different in the way that he explains his process. It is a fresh look and idea that makes him feel more approachable and real. Take a look!

A Fantastic Start to the New Year

Hello 2009! Looking forward to a new year with more life to enjoy and so far, it has been good. I spent the night with my boyfriend, Dan, and I couldn't have asked for more. This was the second New Years we have spent together, but this one topped the last. Though we did have our tough times, it has been good since we have started dating again a little more than a month ago. Prior to our break-up, we dated for almost a year. Nonetheless, we started where we left off but stronger than before.

Though he did hurt me previously, I am able to look past that and see the good person that he truly is and will (hopefully) continue to be. However, sometimes others cannot see that. It may just take some time, but I am willing to work for that and I hope he is too. I'm looking forward to being with him for some time...... though we may irritate the heck out of each other occasionally! We have been hanging out quite a bit during break, so it may be difficult at first to get used to not seeing each other as much, it will work out though!

Photo courtesy of Colorcubic, a worth-seeing design company blog http://colorcubic.com/blog/category/illustrations/

Skull A Day

Well it's New Year's Eve everyone and I hope everyone will have a fantastic time tonight and be safe and stick true to those New Year's Resolutions. I am heading to Green Bay tonight to celebrate and see some people that I worked with before moving to Chicago... as well as spending another New Year's with someone that I am pretty much infatuated with. :D Don't worry, I will let you know how it goes!

One of my New Year's Resolutions (other than the typical ones) is to do more research in the fields of biomedical visualization, illustration, etc (however you want to describe it) and graphic design. With that, I present an awesome blog Skull A Day. If you haven't seen this one yet, take a look! Though most skulls are not anatomically correct, it is great to see what people can do with typical objects to make or see a skull. It definitely gives me some creative inspiration, hope it can do the same for you!

Happy New Years once again!

Words to Live By

I have finally had enough time to finally read something other than anatomy texts and scientific papers and I finally finished a very inspiring book. The Last Lecture is a memoir by Randy Pausch, a virtual reality and computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University. Pausch was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, a cancer without a cure and kills quickly. Randy died on July 25th, 2008 and left his words of wisdom to his children in the form of a book. His words are ones to live by and I recommend this book to everyone. One of the chapters at the end hit me directly, as some college grads and others think that they are better than what they are given whether it be jobs, classes, etc. The excerpt may be long, but it's worth reading to the end.

51 No Job Is Beneath You

It's been well-documented that there is a growing sense of entitlement among young people today. I have certainly seen that in my classrooms.

So many graduating seniors have this notion that they should be hired because of their creative brilliance. Too many are unhappy with the idea of starting at the bottom.
My advice has always been: "You ought to be thrilled you got a job in the mailroom. And when you get there, here's what you do: Be really great at sorting mail."

No one wants to hear someone say: "I'm not good at sorting mail because the job is beneath me." No job should be beneath us. And if you can't (or won't) sort mail, where is your proof that you can do anything?

After our ETC students were hired by companies for internships or first jobs, we'd often ask the firms to give us feedback on how they were doing. Their bosses almost never had anything negative to say about their abilities or their technical chops. But when we did get negative feedback, is was almost always about how the new employees were too big for their britches. Or that they were already eyeing the corner offices.

When I was fifteen, I worked at an orchard hoeing strawberries, and most of my coworkers were day laborers. A couple of teachers worked there, too, earning a little extra cash for the summer. I made a comment to my dad about the job being beneath those teachers. (I guess I was implying that the job was beneath me, too.) My dad gave me a tongue-lashing of a lifetime. He believed manual labor was beneath no one. He said he'd prefer that I worked hard and became the best ditch-digger in the world rather than coasting along as a self-impressed elitist behind a desk.

I went back into that strawberry field and I still didn't like the job. But I had heard my dad's words. I watched my attitude and hoed a little harder.

Paush, Randy 2008. "The Last Lecture" pp 168-9.

Anatomy of an Angel

Merry Christmas everyone! Hope today all were blessed with love and family. Christmas was great for me, I was given an external hard drive which will be helpful for storing my artwork and my family got a kick out of the chocolate d'anatomie that I gifted. All in all a good day. To celebrate this Christmas day I present to you Damien Hirst's "Anatomy of an Angel" (see a more detailed image here). I have heard of Damien Hirst as the wealthiest conceptual European artist to still be alive, as well as his diamond encrusted, platinum skull (take a look how it was created!) and shark in formeldehyde (with quite a name for its title), but not for sculpture like this. It is argued that he is not what people usually consider an "artist", since he did not formally do the work himself, but had others do it for him by following his vision. Whatever you decide, the work is intriguing to me because of my medical and scientific background because of the relevance in anatomy, preservation, death, and biology. He even has some anatomical models that "he" had done as well! Check out a slide show of some of Damien Hirst's work here.

Photo: Courtesy of DayLife http://www.daylife.com/photo/05Ymdlc5a5bfH

2 Medical Visualization Companies to Take a Look At

I'm going to probably regret saying this in less than a month, but at least during graduate school, I have something to keep me busy. I would be out and about a little more, but this snow is driving me crazy! Plus, my hometown is in the middle of nowhere so I have to drive at least a half hour to get anywhere.....no easy public transportation for me now! I should be working on one of my friend's logo he wants me to do for him, but it's Christmas Eve, that's my excuse. However, I have been doing lots of research on medical illustration and the field and people involved in it, so I think that will help me out; it has been keeping me busy at least. I found two websites to present here. One is Alexander and Turner and the other one is Fairman Studios.

Alexander & Turner is a duo medical illustration team located in Grayton Beach, Florida. Though their portfolios and emphases are very different, both have an incredibly solid and reputable client list.

Fairman Studios is the biological and medical illustration and animation portfolio site for Jennifer Fairman. She graduated from the John's Hopkins program for medical illustration and teaches there now as well. Her work has a very delicate and detail-oriented style and is seen in all of her work.

Well I should help for our annual Christmas Eve dinner! Yay for cornish hens, grasshopper drinks, and family!

This Guy is AMAZING!

I was tooling around the internet looking for graphic designers, photoshop tutorials, and whatnot (I tend to do a lot of tooling around since I don't have that much to do during break) and I found this designer. His name is Chris Haines and he can do some pretty cool things with Illustrator and Photoshop! I better watch to some more tutorials.... my stuff is so basic compared to his! Check out more of his stuff on the Behance Network. It's nice that he uses some anatomy in his work as well!

All I Want for Christmas....

Is my two front teeth from Bubba Gum! I was tooling around the internet yesterday to find some silly Holiday-related things and I found and interestingly wonderful stocking stuffer. They are candy teeth, and they don't look like the beautiful ones that come from braces when you were 12 years old. But if you want to reminisce of the good time when you were little with crooked teeth, this sweet thing is for you! Click the link here to see where to get them!

I Almost Died During Christmas Break....

Well okay, here's the story. My Mom wanted me to paint a few places in our house including the ceiling of a few rooms during the break since I didn't quite have a job. You know, no big deal, I can paint a flat color no problem. Needless to say, I started with the ceiling since we didn't have to discuss colors. Too bad I didn't think about the trouble I would encounter with my mere 5' 2" frame.

I was in the process of cleaning the ceiling.... no problem, and then I started taping. I started and I couldn't get right up to corner so I had to use the tallest chair that we had.... too bad it was a swivel chair. I was fine for sometime, but the thing is with taping you have to continue with a long piece of tape; it will look better that way. So in the process of trying to hop to another chair, I crashed. Yup, just crashed. Crashed on my parents little snowman Christmas tree that I thought I moved far enough away. At least it was fake so I just messed up the branches of the tree. However, there were some glass ornaments which of course I broke and of course fell on and of course cut myself with. It's not even the problem I cut myself, it's the place. RIGHT ACROSS MY WRIST! Seriously, not only am I sore, bloody, broke some ornaments, and ticked off at myself, but now I look like a cutter. Awesome. I just hope it heals with no scars, seriously, who is going to believe this story?

Well after a bit, I went to taping again, but I left the hard-to-reach parts to my taller family members. So I was done for the day, with painting to do tomorrow. I received my brother's gift in the mail from my online shopping, just to open in and find out it has a tear in it, AWESOME. I also check out my loan account and there is STILL money in there. I. HATE. LOANS!!!!!!!

Tomorrow should be a better day, we will see with the painting.....

Also, I found this little illustration on Flickr, don't know who did it, but I thought it was appropriate.