The Missing Voice

Hey everyone [who reads my blog posts thank you for doing so I am eternally grateful]!

As you can tell, I finally have my Senior Research Project (SRP) Proposal up! It'll be to the left, right beneath my About Me. So feel free to take a gander at that if you so desire.

But what have I been up to?

Well, today was an exploration of the lost voice concept.

And I made a video. Because yah know. Voices.

Here are the drawings that are used in the video, in case anyone was wondering about that:

And, of course, for your dose of shorts, I present to you Dodudindon, a short made by students at Gobelins, a renowned school for art and animation in France (the short is a teeny bit risqué, but adorable nonetheless): 

And then Omelette, one of my all-time favorites, made by Madeline Sharafian, a student at CalArts:

I also wanted to share two articles I read last week but forgot to mention, which are tips for writing from Joss Whedon and some rules of storytelling from Pixar. They're both quick(ish) interesting reads, whether you're a storyteller or not (but, really, aren't we all?). 

And, lastly, a video of the creators of South Park crashing a "Storytelling Strategies" class at NYU that I was recommended to watch by my mentors. The main takeaway is that when storytelling, don't go "this happened and then this happened and then this happened and then this happened"; approach it more as a cause and effect scenario (like how things happen in real life! whoa), where "this happens, which causes that to happen, but then this happens, ergo this happens."

Pencils and Passages

Yay animation books!

Hey everyone! Remember when I said I'd hit the library last post? Well, I sure did, and found these two delicious reads. I've started reading Animation: From Script to Screen, and I've actually been really into it, which is cool. (You know how you're always afraid whether a book is going to hook you, no matter how many books you've read and been hooked by? Yes? No? Maybe? What? It's just me? Oh. Okay.)

I also got back answers for my interview questions from Rob Porter, head of story at DreamWorks, and his answers were so thorough and so nice. I cannot thank these professionals enough for taking the time to impart their knowledge and experience.

This week I've also started clearing my desk (table?) to make a proper workspace. So here's a "before" picture, and hopefully soon enough we'll have an "after".

I've actually never watched Perks of Being a Wallflower and I'm not sure why I have the poster...

Messy, right? Don't worry. I'll fix it. Soon we can all put looking at this horrendous sight behind us.
(Side note, the reason I have so many things on the wall is because when I don't know what to do with something oftentimes I have the habit of just grabbing some tape and sticking it up there.)

And this week I started making some drawings to get a feel for my concepts!

Needless to say, the dude's frustrated.

Like... really frustrated. And it's kinda funny. 

Other people's pain ha humor LET'S MOVE ONto international traveling cat: 

So the international traveling cat idea turned into more of an international cats type of thing, heavily playing off of stereotypes associated with the countries. Which was, let me tell you, super fun to draw. But I should probably tone it down with the stereotypes.

I'm still working on the other concepts, and even furthering these, but any suggestions are welcome, as always!

In the meantime, a few really shwankin' videos (at least, I think they are):

Here's one by Blu, an artist who does amazing work using stop motion and mainly graffiti/painting on walls. WARNING: his work often features body horror (this one not as much... but just in case you were gonna check out his other work), and this one deals with some violent themes like the world exploding and people being shot, especially at the end (it's not scary or anything, it just might be a teeny bit disturbing at times):

Here's another cool and cute one that combines stop motion with drawings: 

Another stop motion, with office supplies: 

A cute short that just really makes me happy: 

A cute one by Glen Keane:

This is a cool thing about pitching scenes at Pixar (a bit on the longer side):

A video that I'm fond of about Edgar Wright and visual comedy in filmmaking (and in general, really):

Things that get me excited: 

A cute lil French animation: 

Now, I could go on, for a really long time, but I should probably save some shorts for future posts.  

Merci for reading/watching and I hope you're having a good day!

Brainstorming

Hello everyone!

Sorry for the delay with this first week. But here we are.

This week was a fairly mundane one, and I'm sure the next few will be a bit more exciting. Though this week was integral nonetheless.

Why?

Brainstorming.

How did I do that?

By writing out 100 ideas.

Now, these ideas weren't all full-fledged "ideas," per se. Writing out that much stuff is just a way of getting the brain going, and I did get a fair amount of gems out of it, which is good. Of course, some "ideas" consisted of stuff like the following:

• beeEEes/??/?/???Ees?
• office musical
• maybe…. i could like… satire? satire. 
• a nude person. is walking. but then people slowly give them clothes. and at the end of it they look fabulous woo 
• lesbians maybe
• posh animals and their houses: a documentary
• what happens in the museum… stays in the museum
• an animation of me animating ohoho
• dancing superhero lady 

...and, as you imagine, I could go on. I might've also been a teeny bit tired when writing the list. However, once I narrowed it down, I found myself with these: 

• exploration of television tropes
• the life of a pathological liar
• someone is holding onto another person's leg and won't let go no matter what
• someone loses their voice, and in this world, voices are floating orbs, so they try to find their voice but they keep ingesting the wrong orbs
• someone keeps gambling and betting more and more ridiculous things until it escalates to a point where the whole thing blows up in their face (metaphorically or literally)
• idea of animator/third party controlling or interacting with the character
• a chase scene—shenanigans ensue
• contagious dancing
• international traveling cat

Some of them still sound pretty silly, right? But they can all be developed into wholesome ideas given time (which I have!). The next two weeks are going to be devoted to picking an idea and creating a rough storyboard for it. Picking an idea will involve sketching and drawing concepts for characters and setting to get a feel for each story, though, which is exciting, so that'll be coming up. 

This week was also an adventure in interviewing! With Peter Hannan's help, I was connected with Dan Povenmire (co-creator of Phineas and Ferb), Nick Jennings (art director for Adventure Time, for which he recently won an Emmy), Rob Porter (head of story at DreamWorks), and Carol Wyatt (a background painter for many shows on Nick and more), and I got to send them a few questions about the industry through email. I've heard back from Mr. Povenmire already, and look forward to reading the others' replies. I'm so freaking excited, guys; you have no idea. 

The last thing I did this week was look up animation books that I could use as resources. I had about ten sitting in my amazon cart before I realized I should probably hit the library and see if there are any there before spending any money. So we'll see if that works out. 

Thanks for reading and have a lovely day!

(sorry again for the delay with this post!)

Hey There!

Daria here.

Who is this "Daria"?

What the heck is she doing?

Does she like pizza?

These are the questions that I am here to answer for you today.

1. Who is this "Daria"?

Daria is a creature of the species Homo Sapiens, a polyglot, a sister, a daughter, a friend, a hot-chocolate-lover. But, most importantly for our purposes, she is a senior at Basis Scottsdale planning on going into Animation—more specifically, Character Animation.

2. What the heck is she doing?

Right now she's typing. But she's going to be using this blog to document her Senior Research Project ("What's that?") Glad you asked! The Senior Research Project is a program that her school offers, in which students take the last trimester off to research a topic of their choice. Daria has chosen to research animation and animated pieces, focusing on the process especially, what makes them successful, and how they are made, by making her own animation. She will be working with Peter Hannan, creator of CatDog, and Dru Hardy, the 2D art teacher at Basis Scottsdale, as mentors in this endeavor, while also researching much on her own from February to the end of the school year.

3. Does she like pizza?

Yes. Yes she does.

All jokes aside, thank you for visiting the blog; the journey ahead is going to be a great one, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!