A few years back when I was in Graphic Design School I never felt like I really fit in. To be dead honest, I found no interest in the subjects that were given. I was there for a student loan, so I could spend it on video games, movies and action figures (the girls love me). Due to the meticulous and tediousness of the medium, when Animation came along during my second year I wasn't going to take it seriously. Lo and behold, animating was actually easier than I thought. I was use to sitting in front of a computer and moving my hands, so spending a lot of time smoothening out fluid movement and anticipation made several hours feel like a breeze.
By the time I had graduated I wasn't ready to move onto a job like everybody else who seems to thrust themselves into immediately. I still had a lot to learn in terms of animating. My degree project was not good enough. Sure, I could go get a job designing layouts for web pages and business reports... but who would want to compensate for that...
I tried going for another school year after being told that doing post-graduate meant no classes other than for thesis writing and our thesis project. They were wrong. We had a bunch of classes. Fast forward to six months and we still hadn't started either one, we had spent it all just sitting around talking about this shit. You know what they say, 'show don't tell', and I had nothing to convince anybody that my animation needed the utmost initiative and attention above anyone and anything else.
So I left.
Realizing that Batman versus The Terminator was just some geekboy fantasy, I dropped it. I thought maybe instead I should just make a portfolio of illustrations, and work a job on the side. So I went to Work & Income and got a job stuffing pillows with humus (the kind that soaks up petrol, ala the gulf of mexico). Each night I'd come home with my mind and body immobile. I didn't give a fuck about reaching my goals. You can't when creativity is a bullshit, petty concept in comparison to manual labor. The people there scared me. Deadbeat elders who were god damned miserable and boring as hell. The people who were my age could only talk about 'pussy', call women 'sluts', and feel insecure enough to continuously talk about all the times they got drunk and laid. All high self image and low achievement with nothing to prove. I'm not impressed.
I left after two days, and was frightened into resurrecting Batman versus The Terminator. My father told me that somebody at his work was offering me a job to lift shit somewhere or something (I'm extraordinarily flattered by people who think I'm Muscle Man 5000... but I'm as thin and weak as a twig - so stop fucking offering me jobs where I'm yelled at to lift heavy solid objects!), but I declined and mentioned this project. He scowled, "... well, it's your decision".
Aaaand it's been my decision ever since.
So to sum up;
- I've never left home.
- Have talked to hardly anybody anymore.
- Am making no money.
- Don't go out.
- Two dogs dead.
- Two new dogs.
- Haven't shaved or had a haircut.
- Only halfway through this.
The more I get better at animating the more ambitious I become and in-turn - more work. So those who bitch and cry about how there needs to be a faster way to animate, I'll say this; Stop using animating programs that work on a timeline (Flash). Learn to animate with frames, that way your animation won't look so adequate. Try to draw an entire environment, and animate that environment frame-by-frame. Do what I'm doing, and then try and conduct how I should go about things. I dare you. I'm not taking shortcuts because I want to actually teach myself the fundamentals. How I'm animating is essentially traditional animation but drawn entirely with a mouse and keyboard. Complain to me once it's actually finished, how about that?
If stuff like this and this (which actually have budgets, a studio and manpower) can get attention, then I don't see why mine can't.
I'll be brutally honest, though. I don't think mine will get much, if any. I've uploaded stuff in the past before, and nobody gave a shit about them so I don't see why they're all of a sudden going to with this.
*sigh*
Here I go again, talking to myself.
PS: A buddy I've known online for a few years, whom I had no idea was a musician, has made the soundtrack for the project. Check'em out via the playlist to the left of this page, tracks 4 through 12.
