Documentation: Research in Progress

4/1/2024

Progress: I have been digging deep into my personal history so that I can properly create an autobiographical capstone project. For better assessment, I expanded my film analysis to 6 movies, and for each movie, I talked about myself, my history, and events that I coorelated with these films. I started on paper and am digitizing it presently. I am digging in as far as I can to have specific events, emotions and actions from myself and only myself, not making it about the films themselves. In addition, I have been practicing some animation techniques which I will find a way to post here (because sometimes Wix doesn't like my gifs and videos!). I am having a way better time reflecting on myself.

Personal experiences (A developing list)--

• I am talking about my experiences with being bullied by other kids my age, which made my concept of connecting with other people very difficult.

• I am talking about my experiences with developing a strong moral compass, and dealing with the effects of that--People expected me to be a leader because of my awareness, and I had high expectations of myself in turn because of that.

• I am talking about a friend that I had in elementary school who taught me how to embrace myself regardless of how other people feel about it

  • We explored our creative sides together, imaginary lands and friends, and transported ourselves somewhere else, away from the other kids

• I am talking about how adults in my life expected a lot out of me, because I asked a lot of questions and tended to be a caretaker/helper of the people around me.

  • I learned to prioritize maturity over all else, so I often found myself denying "childish" things, and trying to be above that. My elementary school friend helped a little bit in bringing me back out of my shell.

• The diagnosis of my physical disability brought me back a few years developmentally. I was about 16 at the time, and I learned that I had a muscle disease that kept me from doing many activities--it was hard for me to stand up out of chairs, and if I were to fall on the ground, I would not be able to get up without someone else picking me up. This threw me for a huge loop. I had no choice but to ignore my disease while I started college, and I never fully dealt with it, which lead to me trying to find a new life and world to escape into--a world where I don't have to worry about if a toilet is too short for me to sit on, or the length I would need to walk to get somewhere and if I am able to do things or not. I regressed a lot into a younger state of mind, and sort of stayed there. I found many safe spaces for myself, mostly in a virtual space

• "Wildernest"--A physical safe space that I can't go to anymore--One of my original escapes, my personal Terabithia. Wildernest is a cabin up in Estes Park that my great grandmother owned when I was a kid. The cabin had a vast front yard that was covered in rocks and giant trees. Whenever we would make the trip up there, I would spend hours on end just hanging out amongst the trees and rocks, getting away from the world and "imagining." I would call this area my thinking rocks. The cabin itself also were my safe space, as it was a safe room that I could call my own, however I didn't have much but a backpack for my weekend trip. I would only need a sketchbook or notebook, my little blankie and a stuffed animal to get accustomed to my surroundings and feel safe there. No bullies, no pressures, I could just exist up there in a sort of meditative state, playing and escaping into a personal reality.

Here is a Spider Diagram connecting myself to the movies I watched as a child (Click here)

Practice animations--Below are a couple small animations that I have created while practicing and figuring out what aesthetics and staging I need to utilize in my final project.

The above animation is of a soot sprite, inspired by My Neighbor Totoro and Spirited Away. I was experimenting with motion and shape in this one, to understand better how objects actually move visually.

This animation is of a feminine face mouthing some words. The words are actually "Embrace Enigma," however I believe in order for people to understand that I would need to do a voice over for it. To animate the mouth I filmed a reference of myself saying the words and looked for changes throughout the frames while drawing it out frame by frame.

This animation is sort of static, because I wanted to play with and practice reflections. I took some inspiration from Bridge to Terabithia, in which there's a scene that Leslie reads out her report, a story about scuba diving.

I wanted to see what it would be like to combine video and animation, so I used a video that I took of my dog, Ripley, to practice. There is a little "blob" character hiding behind Ripley, on the right side of the screen, and you only see them for a moment. This was an attempt to animate similarly to "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" in technique.

This is the last of my practice animations. I was combining a lot of what I learned from past animations: Speaking, movement, and interaction with environment. I used a static image as the background, and brought back the blob character. Since I haven't had time to do any voice overs, I instead animated the sentence as it was being spoken.