3D Computer model class update

Olive Ridley Sea Turtle model (Sea Turtles are Julie's favorite animals)

textures still not right. but I've got a new project now so ill have to finish his skin later...

pretty much finished "th-th-th the cannon!" (DJ Cannon look what you've done to me...)

COD Halloween Bash!

The annual College of Design halloween BASH!!! each year is a different theme. this year was

"MasqueRAVE disco Bloodbath"

My last minute costume was a "RAVE Ninja!"

Here you can see the Rave Ninja quietly scouting out her surroundings...
Sam's studio mates costumes.. Sam is the Obama Terrorist (yes he's an Obama supporter)
Me and Sam
Me and my mentee Blade
Me and Korry!

ESPN Road Trip: NC State Special

Watch from 0:51 to 1:16 & 5:21 to 5:29

So there's an exclusive online show on ESPN called Road Trip that travels to different campuses on a big game day. They people from the show wanted to do a little piece about our free expression tunnel on campus film some art students painting the ESPN Road Trip logo... Saul Flores, Samuel Davis III and I got the chance to skip class Thursday afternoon and paint the logo for Road Trip crew while doin some lil comedy sketches... If you can't tell what hes saying at the end it's suposed to be like the chorus from that T.I. song whatever you like... Yeaaaah. lol
There was a lil part they filmed with just me and the host where he came up to our painting and tried to touch it and I got to act all mean and swat his hand away like "Ey! Dont touch!" but I guess they took that part out... :-(
Needless to say we had a BALL, and got a few cans of free paint in the process...

Here are some pictures too...

It wasnt the best but I'm really proud of it considering we only have like 2 hours!
Thanks guys!

IT'S A GIRL!! Baby Myyah

My best friend (tho I consider her my sister) Mari b.k.a. Alize gave birth to a beautiful healthy baby girl Wednesday night October 15th at 9:47pm. Myyah is about 5lbs 7oz and has a full head of hair as you can see in the picture above. Mari was lucky to go through less than 4 hours of labor while using no medication, shocking the doctors and nurses at UNC hospital.

Myyah is my third "niece" in the past year and some. The other two being Shanasia Wise's daughter Julissa and Toni Wright's daughter Kylan. Though soon I will have my first nephew. Toni is expecting baby Kameron in December!

More pictures soon to come of all my lil babies!

Video Share!!

Alicia Keys & Jack White - Another Way to Die
I love this song and video. A Keys looks beautiful... like a bond girl. notice they still havent had any FULL black girls be the sexy bond girl in a movie yet. but Hally and Alicia will do for now. its hard to find ladies prettier than them anyways...

"Personal Safety Torch" ID Project

Sorry I dont know how to make the pictures any bigger on this page. so just click them and they will get bigger in a new window.

Completed Friday Oct 3rd 2008. But I still have some work to do on it before I put it in my portfolio.

By the way a design portfolio is what gets me a job. It shows examples of my work and abilities as a designer. College grades are not a factor when employers are looking to higher a designer. That's why most design students try to go above and beyond what might get them an A on their projects. and its also why design school is so dang hard!

PackHowl Concert

This week was homecoming for NC State. WOLFPACK!!!! Woooo! GO PACK!!! (I love this school)... Unfortunately, this week was also crunch time for my Industrial Design project that I had been working on for about a month and some... So while the IRC and UAB and Student Gov had spent all this time planning awesome homecoming activities, in the end I really didnt get the chance to participate in any of it! which was a bummer. BUT since my project was due Friday afternoon, I did make plans to go to the Pack Howl concert at Reynolds featuring NERD and Common!! If you know me, you know that I love the Neptunes, Pharrell, NERD...the whole shebang, and Common's poetic genius and consciousness... So needless to say I was super stoked to celebrate finishing my project Friday by going to the concert.

Monday: It's down to the last 5 days. Time is ticking. . . I try to plan out my time so I can get my project done on time and still get sleep and food, working out, watching TV or any other type of relaxing was out of question.
Tuesday: the grind begins... I am spending most of my time on the computer modeling so for entertainment I found a play list on IMeem of every song ever produced by the Neptune's or the features Pharrell...about 500 songs
Wednesday night: I had planned to be mostly done by Wed night but of course, everything has taken longer than expected. the good news is that I manage to get about 4-5 hours of sleep.
Thursday night: again I had prayed that things would go well and I would be done the night before my presentation. and I again, I fail... :-( Looks like me and a few other of my studio mates are in for an all-nighter in the Cyntiq room (a dark lil cubical with 6 tablet computers for drawing). the night is characterized by intense working, pizza, poky sticks, energy drinks, malt beverages and unstoppable sleep deprived giggling. lol. (BTW by now I had made it to like song #450 on the Neptunes playlist but stoped there so really focus)
Friday morning: ok now its really crunch time. its 10am, I have class at 12:25pm and Critique is at 1:30pm... the printers arent working... and I havent finished all my layouts... "theres not enough time!!" I start freaking out and go home real quick to calm down and clean up. It helps and I come back to finish and present my project calm and collected (though about an hour late and still very sleep deprived)
Friday afternoon: 5pm RELIEF! ! omgness. I was so happy to be done. I wanted to see the Homecoming parade at 6:30pm but decided that the concert is more important and I'd rather take a quick nap before so i can enjoy it more. 6pm...sleeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.......
Friday night: Pure Horror and DEVI STATION!!! I wake up from my short nap at 10pm! the concert started at 8:45pm.... I am on the brink of tears... after all week of looking forward to this concert and getting hyped up to see Pharrell, I almost sleep through the whole thing! It still hurts now just to think about it....
I rush to the concert. No time to change clothes and get cute, no time to shower, no time to eat... I just wanted to get there ASAP. When I arrive, its intermission and I find out that I have already missed NERD and that they were incredible.. which I really didnt want to hear at that time. One of my friends got to go up on stage with Pharrell. But I missed it. I missed everything!...except for Common.. which I was really happy about but at the same time beating myself up for sleeping through NERD...
Common preforms and is great! so sexy! so eloquent (but in a manly way) lol. and I get up front to show him my friend Daniel Harris's painting of him from a few years ago.
After the show, Dan gets us back stage so that we can meet Common and give him a copy of the painting he did.As you can see, I got to meet Common! and touch him, and yes, that is his arm around me. lol. I think he eyeing me when I first came in the room...dont be jealous! lol. Dan and I got to talk to him a little but he was kinda tired and sexy--i mean busy cause a lot of other ppl were waiting to see him too. He's a really chill dude tho and acted jus how I thought he would be.

So the lesson is: dont be sad because you slept through half the best concert of the year because in the end, you might get to meet Common!!! lol

Julie's going to New Orleans!

NC State has a program called Alternative Service Break (ASB). It started out as Alternative Spring Break. Basically the program gives students an opportunity to spend their vacation traveling to new places inside and outside the country but instead of parting, getting drunk and wasting money on finding things to do at the beach for a week, students are involved in a variety of different service projects that not only let students give back to the local communities but also engage with the local people and culture in ways that are more difficult for the average college tourist.

The past two years years I was blessed with the opportunity to travel to the Dominican Republic for spring break and volunteer with the Orphanage Outreach Program in Monte Christi. I wont try to fully describe my experiences from my two trips but I will say that they were two of the most incredible and life changing weeks I've ever had and that I cannot imagine givin up those experiences, memories, and friends I made on those two trips for anything else. (and yes, it was worth the money). If you have an opportunity to do and Alternative Service Break I would HIGHLY encourage it. and I GUARANTEE you will not regret it...

Anyways, this year I was chosen to travel with the Hurricane Katrina relief team to NEW ORLEANS!!!!! I originally wanted to go Belize with the Environmental service group but instead I'm finally going to travel inside the country for a change... It didnt make since to go everywhere in the world when I hadnt explored a lot of places inside the US yet. From what I have heard, New Orleans has so much unique culture that when you are there you dont feel like you are still in the US. I had to experience this for myself. And of course I am excited to serve the people of New Orleans who STILL (yes still) have not be able to fully rebuild their homes, schools, churches, ect... (while somehow the touristy french district is just fine)...
If you didnt know, Hurricane Katrina was the most financially and mortally devastating natural disaster in all of US History. Yet in my opinon, it has not been responded to as if it were...

To prepare for the trip, me and my other team members will meet once a month until spring break to plan and get to know each other.

updates on life

Shoes I just finished for my lil sister Taylor Tate. her birthday was the 12th. 

I spent way too much time on these instead of doing school work. But my lil clone was worth it!

Heres a cannon I made in my 3D game design class for the Queen Annes Revenge 3D model replica project

The roof on my house was leaking two weeks ago. we have a two story house and I live on the 1st floor yet somehow the roof leak came all the way down through the floor and onto my bed... and to top it off, I found out about the leak the night that hurricane Hanna was coming through.  and guess whose phone was off the WHOLE night AND the next day? yes thats right, my land lady's.  it took her 5 days to send someone over to patch up a simple hole on the roof. so while i waited for her to get her ish together i decided to make something to divert the water away from my bed, because I couldn't move it, and into a bucket on the floor next to my bed. This is what it looked like...lol

and then like a week later she had the nerve to call one of my room mates and yell at her AND her mother for not cutting the grass the day she wanted the grass cut... meanwhile she STILL hasnt fixed the two large holes in my and my roommates closets or hauled off the huge fridge on our back porch or extra cabinet in our dinning area which she said she would do over a MONTH ago...

ahh the joys of renting a house from a slum lord...

Photo.Conscious Photo Shoot event:

Modeling - Peace Love and Bull City Shirt - Bull City Clothing Inc.

Aug 28th 08 - First week of school

So I moved into my house and almost have all my classes worked out.
I still need to bring the bookshelf i have at my house and put it in my room but its too tall to put under my mantle so im gonna have to cut off the top shelf. I made some shelves for the bathroom and tried to make shelves for the closet but they didnt work out too well. Last weekend I brought Donatello my baby turtle to my house but I feel like he's miserable cause his tank is way too small for him. (pictures to come soon)

I have been feeling a lil homesick. which is weird because I was never homesick when I came to school the past 3 years. usually I'm relieved. lol

I have been running 1-2 miles everyday for a week now. except on Monday. I felt sick so i didnt run. and I started doing abs last night

The classes I'm taking are Junior Industrial Design Studio, Advanced Digital Modeling, 3D Game Design, Educational Psych and Intro to Biology.
Biology is boring. of course my design classes are good. though the two computer classes are hard to pay attention in cause i have to sit in a dark warm room for over an hour at a time. Educational Psych is interesting. I like reading the book for the class but the online vista homework system is really confusing.
Then in studio we just started our first project. we have to choose between designing a product for cramped living, bicycle commuters, or a small emergency device. I will probably do cramped living or the emergency device.



Olympics were great. I really love the Olympics. I'm pretty sure I'm going to do a paining of Usain Bolt's "bolt pose" cause when I watched him and how he expressed himself on the track I felt like I was whitnessing history... it was a special moment for me. and id love to have a poster of him in my room. I wish there was a female athlete like him...

I'm really not feeling this blogging thing. soo if you reading this let me know.

a few days at R&R

welcome to R&R Customs!




this is the main wall of the store with all the sample shirts.
















this is my airbrush station in the back of the store








This is what a typical few days at R&R is like for me and some examples of the stuff I paint.


cartoons are some of the easier things i do at the store. takes me about 30 mins



















Atlas passed away last week. I painted 3 portraits for his friends. These are two of them. each one takes between 1-3 hours.
























































Drum stick bag for a young boy












its plies baby!
















Trucker hat














Greek stuff! takes about 30 mins




































A family came in and wanted me to personalize their sons first guitar. It took me longer than I wanted but it came out nice. I was happy with it.























Thats all for now!

ready for school

I am ready for school. I know it sounds crazy. but its true. school starts in 4 days and some how i feel like i am back in my workaholic mode. I'm ready to make moves! hopefully this energy will last the whole semester... if its any indication, this summer ive been on and off... so i donno...well see...but i guess you cant always be at your A game all the time anyways right.

I am still kinda nervous about my new housing situation. I was laying in bed last night and realized that I have never had a bedroom on the ground floor. and on top of that my bed is gonna be near two windows facing the road. soo thats kinda scary. and then i was like, ground floor probably means more bugs and stuff too... i'm scared about being safe too... cause there aint no campus police around my house! my bro said that the area right around universities get neglected by cops sometimes bc its like on the edge of two jurisdictions. ugh..

Art In The City and Art Life Style Shows

sorry this is kinda late to talk about it but better late then never right...

so this summer I have met new people in the local art world, two of which are Derick Benetez Bryant and Ayinde Kwaku Purell. (http://benetez3.com and http://ayinde.artistportfolio.net respectively)

Benetez invited me to display my work with him at the Art In The City show at the Metro Cafe July 12th 2008. along with me and Benetez was the music inspired artist Jeffery McCauley of the DC area. Each of us painted a model/waitress/bartender.
^setting up for the show
^2 of the body art models who loved my flamenco painting. especially Liz (left) whom I painted and is a dancer herself.



2 weeks later Ayinde invited me to be a part of his Art Life Style Tour at the 202 Lounge July 25th 2008. two other artists were featured in the show and Ayinde also painted 2 models with body art.


^Imhotep Hester (Bull City Clothing) and I (Photos by Peter Brooks)
^Ayinde and I poseing for a The Real NC (Photos by Peter Brooks)

new hair do and painting progress

um ok so i cut my hair a few days ago. i kinda like it. but it gets poofy and looks HORRIBLE sometimes. so i have to put it in a pony tail but then the sides dont reach so they hang down. if u see me in person thats how youll most likley see me. but it does feel reallllllllly good to have less hair. i think ill grow it out jus a lil more but keep it buzzed short in the back. anyways heres pictures.

oh ya and Toni told me shes gonna have a baby BOY. so Kylan is gonna have a lil brother.
I moved a lot of my stuff to raleigh this morn. and worked on my painting tonight. heres a picture of what it looks like right now. the stuff at the top is masking film that i folded back to show the painting.
I'm pretty excited about this painting. I went through a phase when i was in doubt about how successful this project will be (and I still have doubt about it being as moving as my ghana window kids painting) but when i look at the progress ive made so far it makes me pretty darn happy inside. its weird how i look at the painting and i have a hard time comprehending that i painted it. I'm constantly surprising myself (uh oh, might be a self esteem problem somewhere in there...) I still have a LONG way to go to being a great artist though. I know my work is good but honestly I think I'm just lucky. I havent really worked very hard at trying to get better and learning new techniques like i should. but thats what schools for!!!

Song I been groovin to a lot: Jill Scott - The Fact Is (I need you)