Fictions to Filming

College for Creative Studies – An Art in Four Movements

The Freshman Confusion

I came to art school at a personally transformative time that really shaped how I considered friends, career, and the world around me far more carefully. I started out having graduated high school and taken a wonderful European trip, to walk right into art school. At this time I was under the impression that anything that was considered illustration, graphic styled work for product and film and print would be I would spend my life, calm, happy, and unknown. just making income and enjoying the day to day. Things would be simpler if that had stayed the case, but then there would be no need for the blog.

As time went on I watched as more friends I had were in animation, game, film. I was dyingly interested in what they were doing and learning. Who knew you could take a class about creating stories! I was just out of my mind excited. Around that time my mom started telling me to switch majors, I liked my animation elective from the first semester, she couldn’t understand why I just wouldn’t do that. But then The Hobbit came out. For some reason, in my head, I didn’t realize how real a job in the film industry or animation industry was if you really wanted it, and went for it. my parents remember that night fondly, walking through the snow as I chattered and gushed over everything I could suddenly see in the film that they just couldn’t. I called it “Seeing the man behind the curtain” because that was the first time I realized how to pay attention to everything behind the film, not just the film itself. It was a freeing and life-changing view that I am forever grateful and nearly cry with happiness when I see a film that quietly turns the curtain invisible and I am as transported as any other view might be.

The second semester came and I did as mom had already predicted (mom does know best, I have walked into this many times), and I began in the classes that I had longed for all the previous semester. I did well, and I excelled enough that they kept me in the program and I did more animation and started looking at animators and trying to understand what on earth I’d fit in this new industry from illustration.

A Sophomore that knows absolute Jack

At this time, I got really lost, cause I was trying to understand where I fit in this new major, where there were so many choices and so many interesting people. Things to do and things to not do, what did you do more of and what did you do less of? I drew. I still drew really well for the rest of the film and video students even though yes this was art school. Everyone at that time was looking for what they were good at, what made them unique, what made them stand out amoung the throng of us snapping and biting for a job. At separate times that year, I declared myself an animator, a 3D modeler, a texture artist, and then a project pitcher. None of these panned out and after a three month class of each I had learned my lessons and took my failings with grace as I moved onto the next things on my list.

Junior Incite was exactly what I was looking for

So there we were, only a year from completion and no one had had an internship or real industry job, we all had the dreams and the desires but nothing seemed to be working the way the panels said it would. The year before we cultivated a story, an idea. Our junior year project, make a film. I was in animation so an animated one was on the roster of things needed. So I drew, and I drew, and I thought and I planned. I was elbow deep in research and interesting idea, scheduling, and planning until I came up with my film Touché. A small piece concerning that idea that not all stepmothers are actually evil (To the point which I call her mom every day and always miss her very much).

During this time I discovered… storyboards… It was true I had done them before but it was not until much farther along in my process did I realize that it was in fact simply a job. It was someone’s job to know too much and put it down on paper the way it needed to be. This fascinated me. It was too much, it was so much I didn’t know, and even though I know more now that I ever thought possible about the approach and understanding of professional storyboarding, I feel there is still so much more to learn and understand. Anyway, back to a little film. I spent meticulous hours perfecting storyboards because I realize that in having that, my film could be animated smoothly across them and be finished with higher quality and within the time limit that my teachers had asked me for. I was a slave to the work for the entire year and at the end of it, realized that my heart wasn’t in animation and I could care less about it. Storyboards where were I wanted to be.

This ties in the introduction of sharing stories nearest and dearest to my heart that I showed to my best friends and then helped me move forward with stories and idea and conceptualizations that brought me further than I ever could have gone on my own. there suddenly I was looking down the barrel of a senior pitch to the head of my department and I had spent months creating something fun and interesting to me that I looked forward to showing as a crowning achievement.

Senior Year – Chaos and Confusion like normal

I walked into my thesis project pitch with only a day’s preparation. I had planned this whole long an atrocious summer over trying to figure out what my thesis would be and why i would have to animate if I didn’t acer about it until had talked to my friend Jen the day before. “I’m doing boards.” That’s all it took. My film was out the window and i was writing script and planning them out, figuring out how to construct them, deciding on how best to approach. The head of the department was impressed and knew no way to help me but my Thesis was finally a go.

As months progressed I didn’t know where i was, animation or live action. Jobs are in animation, but the love of film was strong. I teetered for most of my first semester making concept art and color pallets, fussing around with scripts and models as I attempted to understand what, in fact, I had put myself up to. No one knew how to help. As November rolled over I went to the next CTN convention (Which i do not entirely recommend) and by the time I got home, I was a mess of tears and determination

for several weeks straight all I did was boards. I picked up book after book looking for answers, researched every image reference that was available to me and all I wanted to do was make, make, make, get them done the way I wanted. I was a furious machine working straight through christmas break as I went home to see family and spun directly into the end of my final year. There was suddenly nothing more terrifying than to see hard work and toil come to fruition. I was climbing, and growing and as soon as I had that degree i realized that my education had only just really begun.