Good News For People Who Like Bad News

...I didn't get in.

I guess, despite my love and talent for drawing, I don't quite have what they're looking for. There's more formal, academic, official progress to make. I've been able to grant any requests for drawings my whole life, but I need to push myself. Nothing's stopping me yet. I can try again next April, and I'm planning on it.

But being rejected twice now does change things. It chips away at my credibility as a future animator. Even though I have some big fans of my drawings, I'm just kind of a shmo until it actually gets me somewhere. So far I'm just a guy who likes to draw cartoons to entertain himself and occasionally his friends. It's like I'm not legitimate yet.

Man, all this just makes me look like a wannabe. Oh well. Whatever I look like to the outside world, I'm sticking to what I learned from PBS Kids and I'm following my dream. However pathetic it appears to my programmed-to-be-cynical, coming-of-age peers. (I make it sound like I face a lot of resistance, but so far I've had nothing but support from my friends.)

Until April, I don't have much else to do other than to just draw a lot. I think I've exhausted BYU's supply of resources available to me as a pre-animation major. So I'll meet with some of the heads of the department and get some coaching. Other than that, I'm on my own. :S

P.S.: Also, after being rejected twice, it calls for at least thinking about plan B. Lots of ideas are swirling around in my head, most of them exciting and all of them scary. They can all be filed under two categories: 1) get into something else that I like/that I'm good at, or 2) get into the animation program at another school.

(by the way...)

By the way, there's a lot more in my sketchbook to show off too. But the sketchbook is a part of the animation portfolio that is currently in the possession of the BYU animation department. So we'll have to hang on for a little while longer.

The Ones That Made The Cut

Last Friday was the big day. Here are the ten figure drawings that I turned in. (They were on 18"x24" paper, so they were too big to scan. The next best thing was to take pictures of them with my digital camera, but they don't look that great...pretend that the lighting is more uniform.)

So now, I just wait a couple of weeks until I hear from the animation department.

My portfolio is a lot neater and more professional this time around. I'm way more proud of it. I'm thinking that if I was close enough in April that they asked me to try again, this should be enough to push me past 'good enough.' The factor that could work against me though is that the competition is different. I'll be up against possibly 12 other students who were asked to reapply, plus transfer students from other schools. And this is for eight spots in the program.

Everybody, cross your fingers.