Here is a very inspiring Quote

"In some aspect I am a Vietnamese boat person. Now maybe I haven't spent 7 days or 8 nights out at sea hiding from Tai pirates or surviving off of food rations. But in some essence I continue to embody myself as a boat person. Plunged, thrust, and seasick by the oscling wave of hardships. I always continue to anchor my determination of coming out of that storm of life alive..."

A quote

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xxBPZBeC5M

- life is always going to be lived through hardship. I want to use my parents history as a metaphor, and not necessarily something that "hardship" is measured to.

Its about time I articulate my thoughts for the Senior Project Proposal In writing.

I never gave much thought as to where I came from. Living in Canada for most of my life I was never attached to my cultural background, instead I mainly focus on who I am growing up here. As I search for ideas for my grad project I begin to ask myself questions like:

What do I want to say?
What comment can I make about the world around me?
What is my understanding of the world? (not much)

I'll start off with something simple like "who am I?" I think this has been used a hundred times and is a bit of a cliche topic but whatever... I have to start somewhere. I begin to draw upon my background for ideas and inspiration for stories I might want to share:

As a child the stories that my parents would share with me are their lived experiences in Vietnam. They would tell me stories of hardship and poverty growing up in their home country. Stories of life on the farm and hardship they would go through when they were my age. They would share the traumas that they went through during the Communist rule, the struggle, and the obstacle they had to face when they escaped their country in search for a better life. Often times I found these stories to be quite depressing as a child and wondered why they would tell me these things, nonetheless these stories would stick with me even if I did not give much thought to it. I understood these stories to be a reoccurring moral that my parents want me to carry throughout my life for example, "To appreciate what I have, and work hard to become something."

What does this mean to my gradproject? I've started researching into the history of the Vietnamese boat people because that's what my parents were. A lot of the information that I found were personal stories that other people shared having been apart of the history. The stories that I've read brought tears to me and they were more horrible and sad than what my parents told me.

Here is the site that I've visited: http://www.vietka.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xxBPZBeC5M


These stories touched me on a personal and emotional level even though my connection with this culture is faint and distant. It wasn't until recently that I looked back to what my parents told me, having to visualize these stories when I was a child and how I perceive these stories back then compared to now. For my grad project I would like to explore more into these personal stories. I'll start from the memories of my parents and also research into the history around it. My goal would be to construct a narrative and have a central protagonist inspired by these personal stories that function as morals. I aim to communicate a moral in my piece and explore a question as to why we tell our children stories similar to what my parents shared with me.

The Result of My Creative Exploration

This is the result of my creative exploration. It is composed of the much different experimentation that I have been doing throughout the beginning of this course starting from the particle test to the noise test. I really wanted to play with cell paintings so I did some background animation on cell. Part of this was because I was really inspired by Yuri Norstein’s work and how he made his puppet on cell and this has got me interested in making my puppets on cells. I was also inspired by Theodore Ushev’s technique of painting on paper which brought me to work with paint in animation for the first time. In my experimentation I was hoping to develop an interesting technique, or try out techniques that has been done before and put my own take into it. There have been some interesting results, the noise as an overlay seems to be working in a very interesting way and it contributes to the atmosphere that I was sort of going for. I am unsure if I want to incorporate the technique of painting in my grad project. The idea of incorporating “noise” as a stylistic element to my piece seems interesting and I would consider it for future use. 

What I wasn’t happy with are the character animation and the structure of my story. All these elements should be the top of my list and I feel with this piece that they were not really defined in some areas. Some of the scenes could use more character animation to show the intent of the spirit and its importance and the importance of the sleeping robot. The features of the creative exploration project I would like to continue with is cutout animation and compositing done on after effects. I would want to research Narrative structures that are found within cutout animation, researching more films that use the medium quite well such as works from Yuri Norstein and Anita Killi’s Shinna Mann. Right now I’m looking into narrative and character animation using the cutout technique. I want to find a design that would complement the limitation that is found within cutout animation. In my research I think I would start by reading short stories and see how these stories are structured. In reading these stories I would hope to develop what I want to say in my film. Because right now I have no Idea what I want to say yet. I still want to develop an aesthetic, this would include and drawing, or hand painting some textures that I could scan into the computer and use as a texture.