Tag Archive | school

Break for Anime?

Oct14

This is a great time for writing, for escaping it all. And I have escapes from my escapes.

Right now, I’m penning an anime series alongside a last rewrite of a live-action feature film. But it took foreeeeeeever to get started writing it, because I didn’t really know how to structure one. I wasn’t too sure what the needed elements might be… but… funny thing… I forgot I started as an animator. I went the flip book, animation focus in high school, major in college route, before falling in love with live action filmmaking and betraying animation (my first love lol).

So I do have some idea how to create dynamic scenes. And I’ve been working on storytelling for so long now – I hope I know how to tell a good one by now.

But you know what the most surprising thing is so far? It’s fun!

It’s not the primary genre I work in, so I feel like I have alot of room to play and mess up. Do whatever.

Let it be great, or not.

Be free…

______________________________________________________________________________________

Animation via Wattpad.com (𝑀𝐸𝒮 𝒯É𝒩È𝐵𝑅𝐸𝒮)

Death and the Lifeline…

Apr26

Friday was my mother’s birthday. She would have been 82.

I’m still gutted and can’t breath properly when I think about her death.

But some days, I’m present to loving her more now than ever. Because I see her efforts as a mom, how she tried to raise these people who would be prepared for the world in certain ways, and always value, even protect one another as a tribe-band-siblings. And more and more, to her heart as a woman, her reach and passion for the world around her, in the absence of that trait, anywhere.

Then I’m gutted again, for the void of that. Seeing in the most profound way, how indispensable people truly are.

(A lesson I don’t think anyone truly gets, till a loved one who they are engaged with dies.)

But, I’ve been moving forward.

I moved out of New York. Went back to school. Been trying my hand at online dating off and on (the pits still).

Made my first short in years, in a directing class.

A simple assignment, 3 shots edited to sounds not from the shoot.

I felt like I had just gotten out of bed, pulled the cover back on my life.

Found the fire in the embers.

Cause Love.

May28

 

There are so many stereotypes about Africans. We are too busy warring, or fighting poverty, or navigating brutal traditional customs, for love. This is the narrative most of the world is running about us.

Up close though, Africans and East Indians are the most romantic of peoples I’ve encountered. With the French being a close third.

If anything, I don’t find Americans terribly so. Maybe in small pockets.

And mostly because there is so much competing distraction in this culture, so much available to those dating, by way of exposure.

But all that exposure devalues the very thing we talk about as so special.

In fact I think if we all tell the truth, we will admit how transactional friendship, love, and sex, is here. It must bring perks and tricks with it, to deserve our time.

I posted this video because this couple’s love is rich, pure, and honest. Almost naive because it lacks the bankrupt positioning of a transactional edge, which is there in “nearly” every American based relationship I know.

Theirs is pure enjoyment and appreciation of one another.

And, it’s very moving!

A Return To Where I Started?

Apr20

When I was a teen, I became fascinated with American comics, so I began drawing them. I drew every type of story I wanted to see, and friends becoming intrigued started asking me for them. So I began promising friends who asked, a story of their own. It was a great little time.

Then this trend hit my school, with classmates becoming fascinated with what I was drawing during boring times in class. People would ask me to see, and I would oblige. Then that became requests.

Fore you know it, I was the resident storyteller. Taking requests and fulfilling excited demands to see my latest in class.

I became a little bit of an interruption. I would obey suggestions to put away my side activity, but the attention proved intoxicating enough to bring the comics back out. Also at that time, I had an increasing interest in boys and … well… things we were all becoming interested in at 13/14. So my comics began to reflect that pre-occupation.

But this gave rise to very involved discussions which my classmates now engaged in, not-so-secretly, as they passed the comics around. Then one day, said teacher decided she had had enough, and interrupted us, investigating where all the comics were, and rounding them up.

To my horror.

And now, I was officially a ‘trouble maker.’

But the rounding up wasn’t even the worse part in my mind, the worst part was what I depicted being seen by the adults in my life. That teacher then decided to take the comics to the principal, who then decided to discuss the content with me, then bring my parents into a conference. All very surreal for a 13 year old.

Well I lived, obviously. But that was the end of that.

I continued to cartoon, but I went into hiding with them. Drawing my stories just for me now. And soon, I grew a new fascination – movies. In fact an obsession, so I then aimed to combine cartooning with movies, and began drawing what I wanted to see in a movie, in cartoon form. Later that decision grew into an interest in animation, which I then went to college for. Til I began encountering the “live action” filmmakers.

I was as in awe of them, as much as movies, and soon I wanted to see what that world was made of. Make “live action movies.” But I had more of an art background, so I didn’t think I could really do it. Conveniently, I began becoming annoyed at the meticulous nature of cell animation.

Then at the height of my annoyance I left the animation coursework in the film production program, for “live action.” The head of my department easily switched my major. So soon, all my former training in drawing, painting, illustration and cartooning, took a back seat, then, fell by the way side.

Fast forward…to now. Recently, I’ve been looking at the visual elements of a story I am conceiving. Looking at how I could build this across platforms.

Then this happened…

…causing me to revisit a format for the story, I’d been resisting.

Animation can be beautiful can’t it? Anyway, I will attempt to write a feature animation, co-design an accompanying graphic novel, develop an app with video game and character pages. And I’ve started.