Masquerade

Well, after months of racking my brain trying to figure out how to get my other two films up on the web I've finally been able to piece my Sophmore CalArts film back together and upload it to YouTube.



I really must thank my friend and coworker Nicolette Davenport for being kind enough to reburn the disc's from my freshman and sophmore films on her mac. Retardedly I had chosen this option called "session" burning and my pc would only read one of the multiple sessions on each disc. So much of the information I needed to reoutput my films was trapped on the original discs. I really could not have done it with out her and I'm very, very greatful. :)

Anyway. This film was a super personal one. Since I didn't grow up in the LA area my dreams and ambitions to become and animator, and the quirky personality traits I had due to that dream, we're kind of looked down upon when I was growing up. Shortly before my graduation from high school I'd started following the path of the "dark side" and kind of became a sudo-goth, which if we look at todays terminology just basically means I was Emo before there was a word for Emo.

Masquerade was supposed to be about all the pain I felt growing up as a teenager an how my first summer at CSSSA (California State Summer School of the Arts) made me feel like I was going to join other people like me. I was lucky enough to go there for two years and it was so refreshing to know that there were other people like me out in the world. It gave me something to look forward too, even though it was only for a brief time. When I got to CalArts for college, having not been around other animators (well, except for Potatofarmgirl) for nearly 5 years I was overjoyed to be back around others of "my kind" and decided to make a film about it.

Sadly no one cares about personal films in college, especially Character Animation. The more personal the film, and the more "realistic", the less people notice it and push it off to the side as an "art film".

Now, don't get me wrong, I admit that there's TONS of things wrong with this film.
For starters my dumb ass didn't bother to take a story class that year. Imageine that, only a sophmore and I thought that I didn't need anymore story instruction. I was a moron. Secondly, anyone that tried to tell me to change my film, or to make it funny, I'd shoot down and tell them that they just didn't understand what I was trying for. Basically that year I was an arrogant prick and very pig headded so I missed a TON of really great learning opportunites all due to pride.

Quite honestly, this film is truly one huge flop. But now I don't mind looking back at it, because it teaches me a lesson everytime I do. And that lesson is this. I will NEVER know everything and the instant I think I do, or start acting like I do, I'm only going to lead myself to self distruction.