8 Critical Life Lessons No One Tells you in Film & Art School

It’s somewhere we have all been, or are about to face. Art school is long over and your hunt for your first big gig has officially started. It’s scary, its aggressive, and sometimes, it is just too much to handle. The struggle for all of us 20-somethings trying to find our niche in the working world, no matter what your area is, is challenging. For artists however, especially for those wanting to get into the entertainment industry, the struggle is too real.

You aren’t alone, my fellow 20 something. I’m going through it too. While we can’t change our circumstances, there are things that we can take away from this process and leave advice for one another as well as for those about to graduate. There are some very, very big things our schools didn’t prepare us for that I’ve started to learn from those I’ve met in the industry. As tough as it is to face some of them, I think it’s time to take a good hard look at them and learn from them. (Read on)

I’m Graduating, with an Interest in…Everything?!

If you asked me four years ago what I would be doing on this day at this very moment, I would have told you that I would be taking my senior portraits in my over-sized cap and gown, degree in hand, ready to take on the advertising world with my super awesome graphic design poster making skills. Boy was I wrong about that life goal.

As I finish designs for my very last undergraduate course on the week before graduation, I am reminded just how quickly my dreams and life goals have changed in the course of the two years since I decided to drop everything I knew and switch my major to animation at the film school.  I’m never really one for coming up with deep, insightful, life-changing advice, but my mind has begun racing with all of the uncertainty and hopes that new college graduates face. While most strangers spend their energy inquiring what I am going to do after graduation, I spend just as much time telling them the truth.

Like most college graduates, I have no idea what I will be doing tomorrow. What I do know is that I want to do absolutely everything…and that is the problem.

“Pantomime”, my CG animated thesis film, is complete. Now what?

Paper or Photoshop? Why not both!?

It’s the eve of finals week, which in a college student’s perspective means that for the past three weeks I have slept an average of 2-3 hours every day, helped to continue to progression of the carpal tunnel symptoms in my right hand, have exhausted my eyes so much that my roommates go back and forth in thinking either I am constantly crying my eyes out or am on some form of drug, and have made the living room couch my new makeshift bed, and of course; there is Starbucks.

It was here that I was “studying” with a few of my friends who are in the business school. While they were actually studying, I was across the table from them blankly staring off into space with my pencil in my hand and my last two pages of sketchbook, desperately trying to come up with a concept for my last Maya animation short of the semester. The minute the ideas started to flow, I sketched rapidly and quickly and before I knew it, my two pages were gone. So I had no choice but to switch to Starbucks napkins, though luckily the barista kept seeing me get up and grabbing one or two more and felt so bad for the crazy girl in the corner that he brought me some Starbucks paper bags to draw on.

Apparently looking like a ridiculous fool, one of my friends finally chimed in with a helpful suggestion. “Melissa, why don’t you just draw all of that on Photoshop? It would save you a ton of time and you wouldn’t be wasting paper!”

I thought about it, that much was true. If you could draw with a tablet well it would save time. But is that really how it should be done? Should all brainstorming be done on the computer? Or is there something more meaningful and necessary that paper can bring you that Photoshop layers can’t?

A Degree in Animation is a Degree in Absolutely Everything

To be honest, when I first found out about the Digital Arts program at my university, I thought it might have been just all fun and games in a really laid back industry. After all, how could the entertainment industry truly be difficult? All you are doing is making things that make people happy! In some respects, I was right; animation is indeed fun. Though, for the most part, I was dead wrong.

I find that when I tell people I am in school studying animation they have one of two reactions; either they react like my Fantasyland attractions trainers at work last week with a shocked and excited look and start yelling out a thousand questions about animation with a, “Wow! Oh wow! How cool! You can draw then? Do you want to work at the studios??” or they react like most people at my school when they see me wandering around on main campus with my animation table. They think it’s useless and pointless and the easy way out (and I’ve been blatantly been told by a random girl I should major in something ‘practical’ like business).

Last week famous Disney producer, Don Hahn (who produced such films like Beauty and the Beast, Who Framed Rogger Rabbit?, and The Lion King) came to our school to speak. He brought up an interesting point that I can’t really stop thinking about. He said that animation, in its entirety, is the highest form of art. It’s the culmination of every aspect of being human.

What makes the Classics, classic?

I was called a high school drop out whose only real job would amount to pushing strollers, I’ve evacuated Roger Rabbit’s Cartoon Spin at least four times a week, I got into four light saber fights with young jedis with my guest control wandand somehow lost every time, I taught a young Pirate how to conduct the fireworks, I was forced into a guest’s family picture just because I had their same last name and it made their day, I took a scared little girl who was too afraid to ride the rollercoaster and made her an honorary Cast Member for a day and taught her how to group people onto numbers  (which she did a far greater job than me), I danced (rather poorly) to all the parts of Fantasmic! for three weeks straight even though guests laughed at me, I gave the answer to “Where is the closest restroom?” and “What time are the 9:30 fireworks?” at least a hundred times, and I gave a little Cinderella and her family new hope when I unknowingly gave the newly diagnosed cancer stricken girl a glass slipper while she was waiting in line only to be given the biggest hug of my life from her grateful mom, and I went home and cried because I felt that for once I was in the right place at the right time.

Needless to say, it was a crazy six months and a tiring summer at Disneyland, but I love my new job more than anything. And these past sixth months have been life changing and eye opening for me. I not only learned how to deal with people from all walks of life, or what I learned about myself, but I also  learned a lot more about Walt Disney and the company, the magic, and legacy he left behind.

Artists: The world’s greatest export

When I was a junior in high school, I wasn’t afraid of the future. I wasn’t surprised that I was nearly half way done with my required four years of “secondary education”, nor was I sad to be almost done with the whirlwind drama that was high school. In fact, during that in-between summer I was excited, anxious even, to finally get to leave that school and move on into my higher education at a college. It’s funny how things change. Now here I am, sitting in an apartment on an empty college campus on what is summer vacation for most students, and fearing the fact that I am now a junior. I am desperately trying to grasp the idea that I am exactly half way through college. I feel like I’m not ready for what comes after graduation; the job search, the probable rejections, and the race to make a living. And I still fear that I don’t know enough to even be considered a junior. It’s terrifying.

For me, this summer is going to be all about change. I have a new job at the happiest place on earth that I work nearly every day of the week, I’m meeting new people, I’m challenging my patience and improving my interpersonal skills, and I’m finding myself alone for the first time in my life. Though, despite all of these exciting changes and new experiences, I am still here in limbo. I know that in the next three months, while I may be having the time of my life, I am growing closer and closer to the reality that I am nearly done with schooling. And with that comes the reality of what majoring in Digital Arts truly means.

Design, Story, and Animation: The Walt Disney Archive Series

I suppose to the kind employees at my local Barnes and Noble, I might be a creepy loner with nothing better to do during the middle of the week except wander around the cases of books that I can never afford on my meager college budget. It is sad but true, but while nearly everyone else parties it up on the weekend at my school, I often find myself in my dorm room in front of a blank sketch book and tearing myself apart when I can’t think of what to draw. It’s at that point that I always find myself behind the wheel of my car and driving down the long stretch of road to our beautiful bookstore. And in all honesty, this happens nearly every other week.

You see, I am having a secret affair in the back of the bookstore. It’s with the Film and Television section. It is here that I will sit on the ground and marvel at the creativity and the sheer passion of the artists whose work grace the pages of the art and visual development books for all of our favorite films. And it was in this location that I discovered the series of art books that have inspired and changed my life in ways I didn’t think possible.

Creating the magic, one storyboard panel at a time.

There is always a battle going on in every field of study of who has the most important job. Like in any field, the film and entertainment industry is no exception. For the longest time, I really thought the only people that were part of a film were the actors (if they looked good) and the director (if there were pictures of them behind the camera). As time has gone on however, I have learned that this is not the case. There are hundreds of individuals who are part of the film making process, be it craft services, 1^st AD, Casting Director, Gaffer, Key Grip or the Best Boy. They are the unseen heroes that help make the films, television shows, shorts, and commercials that we have come to know and love a reality. I really want to help shed some light into one such position that I have found most intriguing yet is hardly ever mentioned in the production of animated and live action films. A job which merges my two greatest loves, art and story.

Its a job that lies within the heart of the film, where both a passion for art and an immense love for storytelling collide. Meet the storyboard artist; an individual with a job so important that he has the ability to make or break a film.

When one door closes, Disney animators just draw a new one.

I think it’s pretty safe to say that when Disney announced that they would be closing the books on their classic Princess films you could literally hear the sounds of small sections of people’s hears snapping off. Well fairytale lovers, don’t weep just yet! Though our princesses are not quite back, 2D animation just might be. Only this time, our heroine isn’t even “beauty” at all. In fact, she is actually a beast.

AWN…the mothership for all animation geeks.

So I’m going to be very blunt when I come out and say this, but I feel like the elephant in the room should probably be addressed. I am a nerd. It’s as simple as that. I wouldn’t be surprised either, because who in their right mind would ever want to write about the stuff I do unless you are an animation-loving, font-analyzing, program-talking, Disney geek like I am? And who in the world gets so ridiculously excited every time they see something on a website with the words “digital arts” or “animation”?

Prepare to be surprised again because I am not the only alien visiting Earth from my little planet…there are others. LOTS of others. And one by one we are floating down from space armed with our animation light boxes, pencils, and fancy software programs to begin our planet by planet quest for global domination!