Character Animation, BFA1– that’s me!!

or Character Animatio, whatever Animatio is; I blame my own bad photography for that one.

After spending the night in a 1-star hotel at Valencia with a leaky tub, a cracked mirror (you had five eyes if you looked into it just right), and a room that smelled like refrigerator (and rightly so), a groggy morning was soon brightened when I walked the steps up to the main CalArts building. A large, colorful sign overhead said “Welcome to CalArts!!!”– what a bright greeting!

Going inside, they had fluffy blueberry muffins and several hundred chairs set out in the main gallery. Sitting relatively close to the front, I set eyes upon an Indonesian Gamelan– for those who haven’t taken Ellen’s awesome World Music class, Indonesian music is played in a sort of bell, gong, drum and flute band, composed of a set of instruments that forms a gamelan. The sound is truly unique, creating a sort of back-and-forth constant ringing, clashing and droning with sporadic changes in energy levels. (Most of the audience was probably thinking– is this some sort of strange cult initiation? Why are they hitting all those brassy pots with golden hammers?!) They serenaded us for half an hour, and then the president spoke, raising awareness about CalArts reaching into a global network of arts. And then away I was ushered to the Bijou theatre with fellow Film/Video students, where we watched films from the Character Animation, Experimental Animation, Directing and Film/Video departments. There was some funny cartoon material, some intriguing hands, grumpy writers, bad table manners, a goat and a boat and some sumo wrestling. (Such diversity!) Then we met up with our parents in a Q&A session, where we picked the brains of faculty and current students, and were eventually sent off to lunch. After chowing down and meeting some other Character Animation majors, we headed up to the portfolio room (they have a whole room dedicated specifically to portfolios), where I was quite pleased to see that mine was in perfect shape– no mangled pages or bashed corners, and a large yellow packet with my sketchbooks. (I can only imagine what happened to the large UPS box I dropped everything off in… and all that bubblewrap! There was enough bubblewrap in there to keep any kid happy for an entire month). A tour of the dorms concluded the visit, and the smiling faces, enthusiastic personalities and amazing atmosphere buzzing with creativity left quite a positive mark to last through the summer, until I start in September, when I will work, work, work, work and WORK!!!! The first semester is going to be dedicated to learning to animate, then the second  semester I’ll be putting all my free time into my first film, which will likely be about a minute long.

Yay!!! So much excitement! So many happy kids! So many proud parents! And so, so many portfolios and sketchbooks. And the next 4 months are probably going to be the most laid-back for the next 10 years or so (as I’ll probably end up doing internships during the summers. Wow… weeeiiiirrd!!!!!!)

And now… SKETCHBOOK UPDATE!!!! 😀