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.

The Adventures of Cosmo the Cougar

This was our final assignment. It was a frustrating process (so frustrating that at one point I gave up and did an entirely different - and lame - cartoon), and there are still some flaws to be corrected (the burrito seems to float instead of fall)...but it still makes me laugh.

Walking Cycle

The first thing I ever drew that was alive!

Flour Sack

The next level up from a bouncing ball. It still squashes and stretches, but it also anticipates and arcs and follows through...and has a bit more personality.

Ball Bounce

This was my first assignment in Introduction to Animation. It's a little dark, but I promise, it's there. You may have to adjust the settings on your computer monitor.

Approaching Crunch Time

Round 2 of "J.J. Tries To Get Into The BYU Animation Program" is looking promising. I feel like I'm more ready, and even more serious about it than I was in April. It's like I'm doing it for real this time. It excites me more than it racks my nerves. (I just hope that all means something.)

My sketchbook now shows great improvement. Since April I've been virtually 100% exclusive in only drawing from real life, from what surrounds me. There was a bit of a critical/self-realization phase, something akin to asking myself at every turn in a Chandler Bing voice, "Do I even know how to draw?" I didn't let that self-deprecation last for long (as it easily and usually does). Instead I just entered another realm of drawing.

I no longer doodled characters that only exist in my mind, or laid down a haphazard array of lines that somehow met the non-premeditated goal of becoming something recognizable. I paid more attention to the forms, lines and shapes in reality. It was like bringing to light something I had always known. I mean, I always knew that Popeye's arms were anatomically backwards. I always had an idea of what the human body looks like. I guess it's just that most of my life, I skipped the academics and went straight for the cartoons. Since working on my animation portfolio more since April, I've taken a step back to actually study drawing. I guess having drawn since I was born has its backfire potential.

Figure drawings are mostly the best of times as opposed to the worst of times. Sometimes I wonder how some of my drawings ended up so bad. But usually the more academic training, forcing myself to slow down and to not finish a drawing as fast as humanly possible, and better tools and equipment have already caused a drastic turnaround in my figure drawing collection. By the time I apply to the animation program in August, I should have all new, more professional drawings that will at least be decent and respectable.

The actual animations that I made in my Introduction to Animation class won't undergo any changes. Not that they're perfect, but they do illustrate the animation techniques that I learned and they are well-done. Plus, I don't have the same access to the animation lab anymore. (Hey, I wonder if I can put those cartoons on this blog...)

The written portion of my portfolio - wherein I describe myself and my animation goals, give five story ideas, and list ten of my recent media influences - is almost updated. When I applied in April, I didn't have much as far as media influences go because I had only been back from my mission for four months. But since April I've been able to read other books besides The Book of Mormon, instead of my top ten list consisting almost entirely of movies.

Here is the current top 10 (in no particular order):
1. Wall-E
2. Ratatouille
3. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
4. The Odyssey
5. The Star Wars movies
6. Vertigo
7. National Treasure and National Treasure II
8. The Lord of the Rings movies
9. Walter Rane paintings
10. The Book of Mormon

And I'm giving my story ideas list a makeover. In my list back in April, I was really struggling to come up with stuff. Example: one of my five ideas was a Catcher in the Rye movie, which would be a dream of mine, but a) probably not a good candidate for an animated film, and b) I am most certainly not the first person to come up with the idea (there is most likely already a Hollywood team that is ready to pounce on the film rights once J.D. Salinger is gone). I've got a couple simpler ideas instead. I'm still trying to think of a fifth story idea...so far I'm brainstorming something Argentine.

Wow, I didn't know I had so much to say. Any of you who aren't really in the know when it comes to animation or drawing, I probably just gave you a bunch of unnecessary details. And for any of you who are into animation or drawing, I probably just bored you to tears and elicited under-the-breath comments of "Pfft...amateur."

Anyway, borrowing from Disney's Robin Hood, it's July 18th, and all's well.

The "Campaign Fever" Edition

So I finally figured out that if I scan my sketchbook as .jpeg instead of .pdf, I actually know how to edit it. Here come some sketches from way back in the day that I was applying for the animation program the first time. I like the swoopy lines, angles, and foreshortening of the arm he's using to drape himself. This was practice for a political cartoon for The Daily Universe. I had been gone for two years, so I had a lot of political catching up to do. You can tell how old this is because Rudy Giuliani is still in the running.

Speaking of political campaigns... This is the dynamic duo of Chayse and McKell Myers. Chayse is a friend from the mission in Argentina, and was also my roommate during winter semester. He ran for BYUSA president with his sister McKell as his running mate. The campaign didn't last for more than one election day, but it was still fun while it lasted. These are the guys I home taught at University Villa. And this guy was in the elder's quorum presidency.A couple people sitting near me one day in the front foyer of the Joseph Smith Building. The guy wasn't really that angry...but he did have red hair. And you all know what that means...Every Jamba Juice employee.If I remember correctly, these were people on the lawn between the HFAC and the Wilkinson Center one fine almost-spring day.I'm not sure where this came from. It's a lot like me on mail day during my mission. Except I never had a sofa. And I always wore shoes. And I wasn't a girl.

Mop Top

My plan was to upload my good sketches in chronological order, but I liked this one so much that it jumped ahead:This is a girl in my figure drawing class who is in the animation program. She has the sweetest mop of hair on her head and I decided I just had to draw it. So when I had drawn all I could of the girl who was actually hired to model for us that day, I took out my sketchbook and put this down on paper.

Little does she know that I was drawing her from across the room...