Weekends at the Due

I just realized that its been a while since Ive put anything on my blog! The days are going by so quickly here at school. But never fear loyal followers, Ben is back with some stories! This weekend was kind of a typicle weekend for me. Jam packed with good times, bad times, random happenings, and little sleep.

My weekend started Thursday night, since I dont have class on Fridays. On Thursday nights, a group of my fraternity brothers and I like to go to the Neon Cactus, a HUGE bar off campus. Thursday nights at the Cactus are the thing to do, EVERYONE goes. Its cheap, five dollar cover charge with 25 cent beers. Plus, dancing! There is a ginormic dance floor in the center of the place, and it is always packed and sweaty and loud, and ultimately exhausting. So we got there and just hung out at a table and talked about nothing for a little while, then I got a call from Stacee, one of my really good friends, saying that her big sister was in town and they want to come over to the Cactus. Well, first of all, backstory on Stacee. She and I have known each other since like 5th grade, she lived in the next town over, Plymouth. I always had a huge crush on her all throughout elem, middle, and high school. We eventually dated in high school, on and off, for maybe a year or so. But now we are just really good friends. And her family is like my second family. But anyways, her 29 yr old sister, Holly, came up for the weekend from Virginia to hang out and also go to the football game. But we had a blast at the Cactus thursday. It was pretty much me dancing with these two beautiful blonde girls all night, I was the envy of the place, cant get any better than that. We eventually split, I went back to my house with my brothers, my uber-drunk friend unwillingly bought us pizza, and I eventually made it to bed at about 3am.

Woke up at noon on Friday. Thats the great thing about Fridays for me, I can sleep all day if I like. I didnt really do much all day Friday, played Xbox for a while, went to workout, just relaxed. Then Friday night rolls around. This was a very frustrating Friday night. My fraternity cohosted a party with Alpha Kappa Lambda, another frat, at their house. I went with AJ, we were there for about 15 min, it was lame, and we werent in the mood to party or be social at all for that matter. So we decided to go buy some cigars and smoke them. We went to a gas station, were standing in line to pay, and some drunk guy wanted to fight us for no reason. Seriously, no reasonat all, we said nothing to him, he just walked up to us and said, "Did I stutter? Now get the f*** outta my way!" I kind of just looked at him with a "wait, are you serious" look on my face. We just ignored him and left. We went back to the house, me and AJ and Nathan smoked on the roof and told stories. Nathan tells amazing stories. Him and a friend tried driving to the east coast on mopeds this summer......they made it to Ohio, his friend forgot a sleeping bag and got sick one night. While up on the roof, we saw three brothers walking back from the party, one of which was less walking and more leaning on the other two to stay up. All the while being followed closely by a police car. I thought for sure they were gonna get busted, but they made it into the house alright.

So I went downstairs to talk to the guys that came in, just wanting to see some drunken happenings. I was talking to the one that couldnt walk, he is one of the newer guys in the house. We were just having a good time, laughing and stuff, then he breaks out into tears. At first I thought it was pretty funny, but then realize that something was really wrong. He kept telling me that he needed to walk back to his apartment (2 miles away), I said that theres no way Im letting him, saying that he would definately get arrested, but he said that he wanted to get arrested. He was being very self destructive, he wanted to go back to his place and drink more, to get his mind off something. He wouldnt tell us what was wrong though. So for 2 hours I was keeping an eye on him, making sure he wouldnt leave, eventually wrestling him to the ground a couple of times to get him to stay. He was still crying the whole time. We eventually drove him back to his place, and had a little talk with him. Apparently, the girl he had been dating left the party with another guy and he was crushed. We tried comforting him, but he will obviously still be crushed for few days. When we left, we peered into his window for a few minutes to see if he went for the alcohol again. He didnt. I eventually got to bed at 4am.

So then 7am quickly rolls around. Time for breakfast club! Breakfast club is when you dress up in a costume and go to the bars before the football game. This was my first time going to breakfast club. I dressed up in my Kmart attire which I kept from when I worked there in high school. The crew I went with included Stacee, Holly, and Adam, my roomate. Adam was dressed as a pimp, Stacee and Holly were the Doublemint twins. We make it to the first bar at about 8:30am, Brothers Bar. It was pretty dead there, we each had a drink then went to the next bar, WhereElse. This place was happenin! Lots of people, dance floor, cheap screwdrivers. I had two screwdrivers while I was there. It was, again, a blast dancing with Stacee and Holly, and me and Adam were once again the envy of the bar. We left at about 10am, were giving free doublemint gum to random people on the way back, eventaully made it back to my room, then the girls left. I decided to make a third screwdriver. Now, Im a small guy, I hadnt eaten anything that morning, and the screwdrivers at WhereElse were almost double, each. On top of that, I got barely any sleep the night before. Needless to say, I closed my eyes at about 11am.......and missed the football game. I woke up at 3pm, not feeling well. Very dizzy. I spent the rest of the day laying around, trying to recover.

And on top of all this, my roomates ex-girlfriend is up for the weekend. Im not fond of her, she makes my skin crawl. I feel like I have to clean everything she touches. Im afraid to leave them alone in my room for fear that I will have to burn my couch after what they do. So, Im really not happy about this, and they obviously know that. Once again, Im not one to sugarcoat my thoughts.

Alright, its after 2am now, time to finish the day. Sunday....studying, I have an exam Monday. And church, woot! I love my church down here. kbye.

Mohawk No More

Its true, tonight I shaved the mohawk off, my head is now buzzed. I was going to wait until the weekend to do it, but I am a very impatient person, so I spontaneously did it tonight. Im already wishing I didnt do it though. I miss the mohawk already and its only been like a half hour. Oh well, itll grow back. I just have to wait a little while. One thing I noticed was how thin my hair is now. Im not looking forward to being bald. One of my fears, losing my hair. Im off to bed.

Brokenhearted for No Reason

Im feeling a little melancholy tonight. I was having a pretty decent day, pretty average day in terms of emotion up until a couple hours ago.

There is a girl in one of my classes who just takes my breath away when I see her. This doesnt happen to me too often. I see pretty girls every day here at Purdue, pretty girls who, for the most part, know that they are pretty.....which in part makes them ugly to me. Pretty girls who are pretty because they wear just the right amount of makeup, dye thier hair just the right color, and thier skirt is just short enough. But this girl in my class has a humble, natural beauty to her. And most of the time, I feel like I cant take my eyes off her, and I catch myself glancing over at her about 85 times during class period, which Im sure everyone has noticed. She is absolutely gorgeous, shes got beautiful wavey brown hair, big brown eyes, slender waist with long legs, and the perfect smile. She gives me a feeling that I havent felt since high school when I would see my crush that I never acted on. I guess you could say I have a crush on her. I havent really had a crush in a long time. Its nice to feel these feelings again. Ive talked to her a couple of times, she is usually sitting on the other side of the room with her back to me, so every once in a while I look for a reason to go over there and small talk. This class isnt like the normal classroom setting, its an art class where we are free to wander, where we work on our own during the 3 hour class period.

But, alas, she has a boyfriend. She is not available. I will never be with her, at least not anytime in the near future. My heart sank when I found this out. The feeling is similar to that of having a pet die or something. Maybe that is a little blown out of proportion, but I think you get my drift. So, tonight, I feel a little melancholy.

Tuesday Night Happenings

Tonight, again, I went to Greek IV. I touched up on what it was two posts ago. Again, it is like a church service for greeks on campus. But tonight was a little different for me. I wasnt just a spectator tonight, I was actually part of the band! It was great!

Ever since I have become greek, I have been going to Greek IV off and on.....more off than on though. There are a few things that I really dont enjoy about this service. Im not just being pesimistic here, I mean, I think that its great that a group of greeks are getting together every week to worship our Lord. But, I feel like there are some holes that need to be filled. First of all, I love worship. I love singing and closing my eyes and feeling the words and music and giving this beauty back to God. But at Greek IV, worship is awkward. It seems like the band doesnt practice together, they arent sure when to come in, get the words wrong often......its awkward for all of us. Secondly, something that really really bugs me, it seems that the people that come, and who run it, are there for the wrong reasons. I feel like some of the people are really fake, just putting on thier Christian face. When they talk to you it seems that they could really care less about you, they just want to show you how good of a Christian they are by coming to church. Thirdly, something that really really REALLY bugs me.......they shift thier attention away from God. They are more concerned with numbers. During discussion, it seems that they would rather discuss how to talk to our greek brothers or sisters about Christianity, and how to get them to come to Greek IV more than they discuss God! Church service isnt suppose to be about numbers, its about giving and worshipping our Lord! And then, I sometimes get the feeling it is more of a therapy session than a church service, we talk about how we can improve ourselves through Christ. I mean, everyone wants to change, and change for the better, but shouldnt we focus more on how to improve the world, improve Gods kingdom?

So last week, after the service, I walked up to the stage and asked them if they needed any help with the band. I told them that I play guitar and can sing, they said that they actually needed a couple of new guitarrists, so I said I would be there early next week with a guitar and warm up with them. Turns out that this week they were crazy short on people.....there were two other guys and me in the band. So I warmed up with them about a half hour before service, and Andy asked if I felt comfortable playing tonight, of course I said yes, and that was that. It was kind of tough though since I had never played the songs before and had about a half hour to learn three songs, but I managed.

Im going to play it low key for a few weeks, but I think that I would be able to change a few things, at least, thats what Im hoping. If you have ever met me, I am pretty blunt about my concerns (Todds driving haha), so I dont think that I should have a problem expressing my concerns to the people that run Greek IV. I just hope Im doing the right thing here. And hopefully they are open to my suggestions and dont get angry. Plus I have a little bit of experience with worship bands, so maybe I could get the band organized and we could rock out in style. I hope Im not in over my head. But I guess its really not up to me.....

To end, this has absolutely nothing to do with what I was talking about, but Jane sent me a picture that she had taken that was in reference to a Renoir painting. I saved it and played with it in Photoshop for a while to try to make it look like an actual painting that looks like it couldve been done by Renoir, and this is what I came up with. Im pretty proud of it.

More Art Stuff

Well, Ive decided to post some more artwork that I have done in the past couple of years, most of which were done here at Purdue. These are actually some of my favorites that are included in my portfolio....the same portfilio that didn't get me into the Industrial Design program. I apologize again for slacking on the blog too, Ive been busy here at school, mostly socially, but when I do get free time I would rather read or play guitar or something. But Ill try to get back into the swing of things on the blog. So here we go, artwork!! Lets get excited!!

The picture of the girl is one I did back in high school. She was a girl that I liked at the time (then later on dated), but I never gave it to her....and Im actually glad I didnt, because I would no longer have it. The pictures of the cars were done my freshman year of college. I used to watch Overhaulin' a lot and watching Chip Foose create these drawings for show really inspired me, so I tried it out myself using pen and some acrylic paint laying around. They could be better, this was before I had any formal training on shadow and reflections and all that jazz. (Oh, and I believe that if you click on the pic, it will enlarge it) This was one of my favorite classes that I have taken in college, Intro to Drawing. We used nothing but graphite and charcoal. I love making charcoal drawings. In the first drawing, we had to draw something with texture, so I crumpled up a picture of Jesus, ripped the edges, flattened it back out, and drew what I saw. The next two were interesting to do, we had to cover the whole sheet of paper in charcoal, make it completely black, then use an eraser to make the highlights. I think that it is actually easier than drawing with charcoal. The middle picture is my face. We used a photocopy machine, put our faces up to it, printed, then recreated our print. The third is a vase on a vase stand. (not sure why this is underlined)

These pictures are from the very first art class I took in college. Intro to Design I think? It was fun to create these random pictures.

This is a fruit holder that I had to design and make in one of my ID classes. This was such a pain-in-the-butt project. It was called the Joinery project, and we had to make 3 or more equal pieces that connect together, without glue, to make a fruit holder. It was tough just to come up with an idea, let alone make it. I basically accidentally stumbled upon this design, just started putting pieces together and this is what I got.

This is a stool. Its made out of sheet metal and steel rods. Very sharp sheet metal. I cut myself several times making this one. This stool also took me forever to design, I probably drew a hundred different designs before I finished with this one. I was trying to make the whole thing out of one piece of sheet metal, and the design could be done that way, but my piece of sheet metal was about 2 inches too narrow.

Ok, you could call me a cheater for these drawings. I was looking at other peoples sketches when I drew these. I was just trying to get an idea of using different techniques of sketching, trying to figure out how they do it. So they arent really originals. But they look so good!!

These are some sketches for the Opus Design Competition. We had to come up with an inovative design for sunglasses. But we couldnt just design a pair of sunglasses, they had to have other functions as well. Retarded.....I know. Why cant they just serve one function......to keep the sun out of my freakin eyes. I ended up designing a pair that had little wipers on them in case it rained or someone spit on you or something. But they did look really cool.

I Just Dont Understand

So I was listening to a song on my ipod the other day, actually it was while I was driving home from Purdue. The song was entitled The Letter by the band Acceptance, and there is a line in the chorus that says "..and its bringing us together.....forever." I started thinking about the word forever, and I just couldnt wrap my mind around it! Forever. That means infinate. That, my friend, I imagine, is a very long time. But think about this: infinate means that there is no beginning or end. Its just....infinate, it goes on and on and on. Our lives will go on and on and on. What does that look like? I think that the reason I cant wrap my mind around this idea of no beginning or end is because everything in our lives has a beginning and an end. We are born (the beginning), then life ends (.....the end, of course). We start a job....then we quit or retire. We start a project...then finish it. Everything has a starting and stopping point. But, according to God, our lives will go on forever with Him...if you so choose. I picture THIS life as being a blink compared to what life is ahead of us. That is impossible for me to imagine.

Tonight I went to Greek IV, which is kind of like church for greeks (no, not geeks, greeks). We watched this amazing video of some guy (Giglio was his name) giving a sort of sermon to a group of people at a concert. He started out talking about how big the universe is. He was throwing out all of these figures on the number of galaxies there are, the size of this star compared to this planet compared to this star, how many Earths fit into this star or how many light years away this galaxy is.....basically telling everyone how ginormic the universe is. Now, I love to star gaze, and I often wonder while Im laying there underneath the stars, just why the universe is so big, I lay there trying to understand the distances involved.....and I cant. So I could relate to what he was talking about. Then, just as I felt as tiny and worthless as a flea, he started talking about how special human beings are. How we are simply made from one tiny cell combining with another. Again, he was throwing out figures on how small these cells are, how long and complex a strand of DNA is, how many years it would take to read our 'code' (it was like 96 yrs), just more information about how amazingly complex things are, and how fragile and special we really are. Basically, all of this information made my head want to explode. I was actually feeling a little queezy after hearing all of that information.

But wait, he wasnt done yet. Then he started talking about laminin. Now Im sure you all know what laminin is right? Ok, I didnt know either. Laminin is a protien that holds together every single cell in your body. I suppose without laminin, we would just fall apart. Its our glue. But the interesting thing about laminin is what it looks like. Well, the pictures are posted below. If you want the link to watch the video yourself, here is the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1EAmfOu9lE It is kind of long, there are like 4 parts to it on youtube, but it is absolutely amazing. My summary is no where near as impacting as his message.

I do have a point to all of this though. I think that we arent meant to understand these distances or figures or complexities. If we knew a tenth of what God knows, if we knew a tenth of the truth, our tiny little peanut heads would explode. This summer while I was in Vermont, a group of us went outside during the night and laid in the middle of the dirt road, flat on our backs, and just stared at the stars. Again, as I lay there, I was trying to relate to the distances and size of the universe, and was trying to figure out the truth. So, I asked Jim why he thought God made the universe so big? Hoping to get a clever and complex response, I recieved the simple response,"just to show how big He is." I thought about it for a while, and I think that he is absolutely right. God is bigger than the biggest star in the universe, further than the furthest galaxie, brighter than the brightest light......and yet smaller than the smallest cell in the body. He is......I cant even think of a word to describe Him! Every word I think of will fall short of what Im trying to say. And with all of His hugeness and mightyness, he is still our friend. He still wants us.......just us. Astounding. Watch the video.

Great Movies

I would like to take some time out of busy schedule to recommend some great movies that I have seen over the years. I am a big movie fan, although sometimes it is hard to find time to watch them. Last year I used to watch a bunch online, some that I have heard were good, but didnt want to spend the money to find out if they were. Alright, so lets get started.

Fight Club. Now, if you have never seen this movie before, it is not really what you would expect. Before I saw it, I thought it would just be some stupid, full-on Hollywood-style film about a bunch of guys fighting. But it is so much more than that. Its actually has a message, one that you would not expect from the title. It also has a twist at the end, but I wont spoil if you havent seen it. But if you watch it once, you have to watch it a second time to get it all. I have seen the movie at least 20 times, and I still enjoy seeing it, and I still find things that I have never seen before.

Amelie. Now for some reason this movie reminds me of Fight Club, although they are completely different. I think its because everything is green, just like it seems in Fight Club. Anyways, this is a French movie that I discovered a while back, the whole movie is in French so you have to pretty much read the movie in English. But this is another awesomely great movie! Its very artsy, in a sense that every scene is green and red, and all of the characters are very unique and lovable. And this one, again, will have to be seen a second or third time to catch on to certian things. I have seen it so many times now that I dont even need the subtitles, I just remember what theyre saying. (By the way, I am completely in love with Amelie, the character)

Pans Labyrinth. This is not a kids movie, not at all. When I first started watching it I thought it was a kids movie, but in actuality, it is pretty messed up. This is also a foriegn film, it is all in Spanish. But nonetheless, it is a great, great movie!

300. This is another artsy film that I really like. Everything about this film screams art. It seems like every still frame could be a brilliant piece of photography. The story is awesome too. Its just a well put together film, and Im still wondering how they shot it.

Blow. This movie portrays the true story of one of the biggest drug lords in history, showing his life as a kid, his ups and downs, and even where he is now. Excellent, but often sad, movie.

Pulp Fiction. I love Quinton Tarantino films. This one is just one of my favorites made by him. I love how the whole movie is like 6 random scenes, in different chronological orders, dragged out seemingly forever, then are eventually tied together. The Kill Bill series is also great.

Well, Im getting pretty tired now, its nearly 1am, so Ill just list a few honorable mentions to this list that are also really great movies that you should all go out and see:

Life is Beautiful (or La Vita e Bella-its foriegn)

Momento

American Psycho

Snatch

Requiem for a Dream

American History X

Leon: The Professional

Garden State (This one is probably in my top 5 of all time)

Finding Neverland

Trainspotting

Big Fish

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Thats all I can think of for now, bye.

My Story

Well, I have been putting this off for a while now. Im not really sure why, just didnt want to put the effort in or something. I get lazy from time to time (most of the time), and always seem to put things off forever. I actually had half a post done before I quit and started with this one.

But anyways, I know that I talk a lot about God and being a Christian, but I just wanted to have a chance to explain why I think about these things, why and how I became a Christian. I wasnt always a Christian, a true Christian. Yeah, back in the day if I were filling out a census or something, I would have marked Christian under the religion part. But I wouldnt have understood what it meant to be a Christian.

So it all started when I was about 4 years old. My family and I had started attending the Church of God in Bremen, and I vividly recall (and my mom would probably agree) the very first Sunday we went, the pastor came up to my family to introduce himself, and I believe the first thing I said to him was, "You're fat." Bad start. So for the next several years we attended that church....and I absolutely hated it. Well, not at first. I actually didnt really care at first, I wasnt sure what was going on, but I just thought it was boring. But later on though, I remember nearly every Sunday morning begging my mom to let me stay home, maybe even faking a sickness here and there. I couldnt stand waking up so early, greeting people I dont like, listening to the hymns, hearing stories about Jesus, and having no idea what they were about. The best part about Sunday morning church was getting to go home. And then, for a while, I had to go to Wednesday night youth group, and I hated that too. So, after a few too many years, we suddenly all stopped going. Im not really sure when or why this occurred, but I was glad that it did.

Now, as a child I was never really a bad kid. Although my nickname, given to me by my mom, was Devil-child, but thats just because I was loud and liked to break things. But I was usually pretty obedient in school, never got in serious trouble, never got a detention, got good grades, so its not like I was a wild child or anything.

So lets fast forward to my junior year of high school. There was a new kid at our school. Now you might be thinking,"big deal, there are hundreds of new kids to every school." But you have to remember that this is Bremen, where everybody knows everything about everyone, and gossip gets around. So we got this new kid, and for the longest time, I did not know what his name was, so I called him "New Kid", even when he wasnt even that new anymore. But eventually, I figured out his name, Dustin (my best friend in high school, Andy, I dont think he ever figured out his name, he always called him Travis for some reason). Dustin was this tall, super skinny, pale, red-haired kid with a very unique laugh. He was friendly, but I personally thought he was annoying at first. But eventually, not sure when or how this happened, we became friends. Actually, we became pretty good friends. We used to go to volleyball games together, basketball games, movies, whatever. We hung out quite a bit. And then he wanted me to start going to youth group with him at Community Gospel Church. I was a little hesitant about this, seeing as I strongly disliked church and all. So the first several times he asked, I turned him down. But then he kept asking, so I gave in and went one Wednesday night. And I really enjoyed it. So I went the next week. And the next. Then I started going Sunday nights also. It was fun to hang out with my friends and meet new people my age from other schools at this youth group, but I still felt awkward at the "churchy" parts of it, but it was tolerable.

Then one night during my senior year, actually I believe it was a Wednesday night after youth group, I was up in my sisters room on her computer chatting away with girls and whatnot when my sister came in and said that there was an accident and a high schooler from Bremen was killed in it. As you can guess, it was Dustin. At first, I didnt really believe it. I figured that it had to be someone else, and I kind of just let it go that night, didnt think much of it. But when I got to school the next day, it sank in. I had learned the truth, and was still in shock. All day, the whole school did nothing but think of Dustin. He had crossed the center line on a straight, flat road and hit a car head-on while he was coming home from work. No one really knows why he crossed the center line though.

So a few days later, I had attended his funeral. During the viewing, when everyone visited with his parents, I remember standing in the insanely long line saying to myself, Im not going to cry. But the second I got up there and started talking to his parents, I just broke down. Also, I remember perfectly, sitting there listening to the pastor give his respects to Dustin, talking about his life and talking about all of the Bible verses he had highlighted in his personal Bible. Now I had known Dustin for over a year by now, and we were pretty close, he had told me things about his rough past, how he had changed over the years, some really personal things. And I remember sitting there at his funeral thinking,"man, this kid had it together, and all because of Christ." So, as the pastor went on talking, I bowed my head and said a little prayer, something really short, just telling God that I was ready. Ready for Him to move in on my life. Wow, I am kind of tearing up typing this, just because I am so happy that I had made that decision.

Having a close friend, my own age, die in a car accident had made me realize that we are just here....then we're gone. Just like that. Living....then not living, in a split second. Any given second. It scared me. It made me realize that it couldve be me. It couldve been me in a casket at 18. And what would I have to say for my life at that age? Nothing. I'd be burning.

So there you have, thats my story.

Crazy Lazy

Its been pretty wierd coming back to Purdue. I havent really done much at all this week, just been crazy lazy, playing a lot of video games, surfing the Web on our HIGHSPEED INTERNET, which is awesome since I had to suffer with Dial-up all summer. Its also hard to adjust being around so many people again. I have been by myself most of the summer and would only see like five people all day, then I come back to school and there are thousands of people everywhere I go! And then I live in the fraternity so it seems like I cant go anywhere to be alone. True antisocial right here. But its only been a couple of days, so I will just have to get back into the groove of being social. I do like hearing about what people did all summer. Some went to California, some to Texas, some had internships, some worked 12 hour night shifts. So its fun to hear thier stories. And its cool to see how some people have changed. Shorter hair, new car, gained weight, lost weight, or maybe even thier attitude has changed. Its also funny to see all of the new freshman. They are like a bunch of little tourists trying to fit in, but are obviously tourists. Those poor souls.

But anyways, Im still trying to adjust to the transition from home to school. And Im definately not ready for classes to start.

Industrial Design

These here are some of the projects I did spring semester of last year when I was in the Industrial Design program. I started in this program during my freshman year, which was actually my second major, my first being Engineering. Its funny how my progression of course of study has transformed from Engineering to Industrial Design (which is part engineering, part drawing), then to Fine Arts (which is all drawing and art). Hopefully this one will stick.

The first product is a shower system that I designed for the Interzinc Design Competition. We had to design a water dispensing object made out of zinc.....thats all of the requirements. It was pretty broad. So I came up with this little thinger. I got the idea from a lamp that I discovered while researching different forms, a lamp that surrounds the person, which is also in the shape of an arc. So I applied it to a shower. Its made of three different parts, and even rotates! Wow! This product is actually going to be published in a book comparing American design to Chinese design, or so Im told. The shower and side glass and floor were made in a 3D program called Rhino, which is sort of like AutoCadd. Then it was rendered in Alias, which just applies materials to the 3D shapes. Then the girl is actually one of my friends at Purdue, I just took a picture of her then outlined it in Photoshop, where the rest of the project was done.

The second one is one of my favorite products that I designed just because I like Apple products. Its called the Apple iBall and its a digital camcorder. This was one of the most difficult projects of my college career just because it took many many many hours to create all three orthographic views in Photoshop. Yep, I had to start from scratch and make a realistic 3d looking camcorder. Pain...in....the...butt. But it turned out pretty good. Then the perspective views I drew by hand and rendered them with markers, which also turned out great, considering we had never used marker on any other project.

And the last one is a coatrack. I thought it looked pretty cool but my teachers werent too fond of it. The project was a design competition that required us to design a product with aluminum extrusion as its process of being built. Apperently a coatrack isnt a very inivative or creative way to use the process of aluminum extrusion. But I still think it looks cool. And dont ask me why I named it SoBold. Because I just dont know. This was also made in Rhino, Alias, and Photoshop.

Oh by the way, dont steal my ideas. K thanks. Ugh, Im going to bed now.