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Interest meme, installment #2
While hotmail was eating my lj notifications and before I switched my lj email to my yahoo addy, one of my lurker friends posted her selection of the interest meme, too. I just noticed her comment reply a few days ago, when I visited her journal on a whim. T.T I'll be adding her interest list to the one given to me by Selene-chan!
This time, it's all about one of my true loves!
Animation - I grew up viewing animation as art, rather than entertainment. I have no doubt as to why. I was a kid in the 80s and early 90s, so I watched classic Disney (Snow White, Pinnocchio, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, etc) and the new Golden Age of Disney animated films (Little Mermaid, Lion King, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, etc). my parents would marvel at scenes in these movies, and express their wonder at how the movement was drawn by hand. I have a great deal of respect for my parents' opinion, so of course marveled at the films, too. We also had the Disney Channel for a very long time. And in the days before DVDs and their bonus features, the only making-of specials you could find for Disney films were on the Disney channel. I watched them all in complete rapture, as well as the specials for the older Disney films, which were made for theater shorts and the old Walt Disney Presents tv show from the 50s. Animation absolutely fascinated me. How could a person make such life-like movement with only pencil and paper? How did could they make something look and behave so real with a bunch of drawings???As I grew older, I learned that not all animation is created equal. I didn't care for most Looney Tunes shorts (meaning the normal 7 minute cartoon originally made for theaters), I preferred the more emotionally-driven Disney shorts and movies. The cartoons I saw on TV every day after school and on Saturday morning...with one or two exceptions...the artwork sucked. Oh sure, I enjoyed Gi Joe and She-Ra, but well drawn they were not. I also noticed that some films, like the Care Bears movies, looked cheap and weird. I soon realized they were animated in Japan. It pains me to admit it, but I quickly equated Japan with cheap and bad animation. I would refuse to watch anything if I realized it wasn't animated in the US. *sighs*
I profoundly wanted to work for Disney, even though I professed that I wasn't a good enough artist to be a real animator. I just wanted to paint cells, like I saw on the classic Disney movie specials. Imagine my despair when I learned The Little Mermaid was the last Disney feature to be made using cells!! But I still wanted to work for Disney and help them make movies very very much.
Then in fall '95, I went online for the first time to chat. Half a year later, someone suggested I try the cartoon "Sailormoon". I had nothing else to do, so I began to watch. I was completely disgusted with the cheap art and dorky story, but I kept watching due to the enthusiasm of the fan who had told me about it online. Three days later when Jedaite died and stayed dead, I was fascinated. One week later when my by-then fave character, Nephrite sacrificed himself to save a girl, I was emotionally devastated and began recording every epsidoe.
The idea that a tv series could tell a continuous story, rather than be a bunch of stand-alone comedy epdisodes, was completely fascinating. Each ep was like a chapter in a book, leading up to a definite climax and ending! How marvelous! I didn't know animation could be used like this! And the dead characters--they stayed dead! In a kids show!!! THIS IS AWESOME!!!!!
A few months later, I found VHS fansubs of Fushigi Yuugi and my mind was blown away again. Such pretty men!! And omg--a gay boy!!!! =O You can't find that in American animation!!! FY starts out fun and adventurous, but quickly turns dark and very very serious. Of course, the comedy remains to lighten the mood, but still.
And then, I found Escaflowne. Esca had a huge impact on me because it was so very very dark. It had less humor than FY, and a smaller cast. The female lead wasn't the stereotypical shoujo heroine I was already becoming
I sincerely wanted to become an animator, but I didn't have the slightest clue how to find a good school for it. I have no doubts my complete and utter lack of self-esteem severely limited my life at this time. I was afraid to even walk inside a bookstore and look for an issue of "Animation Magazine". No way would I be able to call up art schools and ask about animation programs. Talk with my art teacher about a career in animation?? Ha! But that last one was more for my teacher's personality. She didn't have much respect for me...but that's for another entry. Anyway, I was a complete and utter coward with no faith in herself, so I missed out on making my life what I wanted it to be. Two years passed and I somehow ended up at that school in AZ to study computer graphics.
Remember I didn't have much faith in my animation ability?? I thought maybe CGI would be for me. You don't have to draw well to make a computer model move, right??? Well, our first class was the basics of 2D animation, to give us a handle on how to make movement from scratch. And I loved it. I completely resented our CGI classes, and always talked about them as being "chained to a computer". I wanted to draw my animation, not move a stupid 3D model around inside a virtual environment. Let me draw, damn it!!
But again, because of my cowardly self, I did not really push the matter, and stuck out my classes. So I have an associate's degree in animation from that place. I had no portfolio worthy to show to employers, Disney had just shut down their 2D departments thanks to Pixar's success and the resulting 3D fad. The real kicker was that I had encountered so much anime-hate at my art school that I was afraid to draw in that style. (Another story for a different post.) I had no confidence to shop myself around. The Flash internet boom was ending, so I missed that boat. Ultimately, I ended up back at home. Miserable and full of longing.
I worked on my animation here in my limited spare time, tried to jump on the Flash bandwagon anyway and was completely ignored. I became very depressed, found a day job at Blockbuster, and fiddled with ideas for my new animation feature film. It was going to be 2D, CGI could go to hell as far as I was concerned. Anime was my escape, the proof that good stories could still be told with hand-drawn artwork! I made sure to watch the final run of Disney 2D theatrical films. (I loved Treasure Planet, I don't care what anyone else says about it. It thought it was awesome.)
Amazingly I found my current job letting manga, which started the process of improving my self-esteem and outlook on life. it was soon after this that I realized something. I really am not that great of an animator. I can see the motion in my head, but I can't get it out onto paper. What I AM good at is telling stories. I'd been writing for years and years. I do want to tell stories in a visual medium, even if I don't have the talent to animate them myself. I had been working for Viz for a few months, and it occurerd to me that maybe drawing a manga was the way to go. I'm not very good at portraying real movment, but the actual story writing and drawing of still shots?? You bet your ass.
I'm still considering turning my animated film from a film into a manga. But I dearly love hand-drawn animation. I doubt it will ever fade. Disney barely provides any of it these days, Nickelodeon does a little better (Avatar and Danny Phantom FTW), and of course anime is still the dominant presence. As much as I resent CGI for killing Disney's incredible traditional animation department, I do enjoy a well-written CGI film.
In the end, for me, animation is an art form. I love animation that lives up to this potential--especially if it's hand-drawn. And I'm so sapped from writing out all the above that I don't have anything left for the conclusion.
ETA: of all the interests I'll be babbling about in this meme, animation is probably the one most important to me. I admit I'm kind of crushed that no one on my flist has a comment for it. T.T Woe....