First some art, cuz you guys know how I feel about posting a bunch of feels with no art.

I’ve been wanting to write this blog entry for a long time, but I told myself that I wouldn’t until after I’d found a job. I knew my opinion on my current situation was severely biased and I wouldn’t be able to deliver the facts with a clear perspective. In fact, I was about to break my own rule and just write an update anyway, because I was tired and bitter and at my breaking point, when the seemingly impossible happened. I’m now employed, in the film industry, and as an artist. I’m doing what I’ve always wanted to do.

I’ve put this blog on hold because I’ve been dealing with a lot, and I think it’s about time I explained. Of course, the problem with waiting so long is that now I have to sum up over a year in a way that won’t put everyone to sleep.

So. 

Even now, almost two years out of Ringling, I still get e-mails and comments now and then from young people who want to go to art school—often Ringling—and are looking for guidance. I used to be an advocate of taking risks and doing what’s necessary to live your dreams, because that’s what I did. I gave up a very comfortable life, a job that I liked and that paid very well, to move down to Florida and earn a degree I didn’t really need, all because I wanted to. I was an anomaly in my family history. I remember my mom having to constantly defend me against her friends who just couldn’t understand why I wasn’t letting go of this “hobby.”

When I got to Ringling, the computer animation program had reached an all-time high in prestige. Students who graduated from the program were going on to companies like Disney, Pixar, DreamWorks, Sony, Nickelodeon, Blue Sky, Lucasfilm, Electronic Arts, Activision, and a bunch of other companies I can’t think of right now. Career Services boasted a 90% job placement rate within six months of graduating. If you went to Ringling, you were practically guaranteed a job.

And in some part, much of this remains true. In my class, a number of students had jobs lined up upon graduation. Moonbot had just opened its studio in Louisiana and took a handful (my old roommate and many of my friends are now up for an Academy Award). Pixar, Sony and DreamWorks snagged a few as well. Indeed, if you go art school, you may very well become one of these people.

The rest of you, however, will walk the path that I did.

I was not terribly worried that we were in a recession. I knew hiring wouldn’t be what it used to be, but I had had a good internship my junior year, I was a good student, and I was a competent artist. My senior thesis turned out decently. I was confident in the path I wanted to take: storyboarding. I knew it would be difficult, but it was by far my strongest area; everyone said so, and I knew it to be true. As a backup I applied for animation positions as well, but story was my goal.

I knew I was in trouble in April, when the recruiters were coming and I just wasn’t getting any interviews. I started off strong, interviewing with our first two recruiters, Nickelodeon and DreamWorks. It went downhill from there. I think the only other interviews I got were with Laika, Blue Sky (who had seriously considered me for their internship the previous year and were kind enough to speak with me again), and Sony (who I had interned with). That accounts for a handful of the recruiters we received that year.

We graduated, and with nowhere else to go, I went home to Maryland. I continued to apply. I compiled a long list of studios all over the US and sent out my work. I got maybe three responses, and no requests for further correspondence. In August, I fell on old skills and took a position with a publishing company because I had bills to pay. I tried to stick it out, but in February 2011 I left the company; aside from being mind-numbingly dull, it was a rather toxic environment where I was getting yelled at by clients on an almost daily basis.

And so, the hunt for art-related work continued. I kept reviewing the job boards online and applying for work I thought I’d be qualified for, and meanwhile I made a go of being a freelance artist. It didn’t go very well; partly because I had no clue what I was doing, partly because my heart wasn’t in it. I still had the itch for animation.

My friends were telling me to move out to Los Angeles… a message that was incredibly irritating, and I’ll get to the details of that in a bit. If I had the means of moving out to L.A., I would have by then. Besides, I wasn’t sure L.A. was my only option at that point. There are animation studios in New York, Canada, and Florida as well by then (Tradition Studios was getting off the ground). What if I could stay closer to home?

I had a lot of time on my hands at this point, and was doing a lot of thinking. I was just trying to figure out what I did wrong so I could fix it. I had a lot of questions that just didn’t have answers.

A lot of people would tell me it was the recession. I thought that might have some influence, but I didn’t believe it was the whole problem. Jobs were still getting posted. My friends were getting hired. By the spring, only a handful of us were still trying to find art positions or were unaccounted for.

More than anything, my confidence took a major blow. As I tried to puzzle out the things that needed fixing, I always came back to my work. To be clear, I never until that point thought of myself as a weak artist. I thought I was pretty good, in fact; not as good as some of the students in my class, certainly, but I was competent. I knew my way around Maya, and I was an even better traditional artist. But clearly, my work just wasn’t doing it for the recruiters or the art directors.

Maybe I should give up on storyboarding, I thought. It’s what I wanted to do, but it’s terribly competitive… of course, someone in my class had successfully been hired as a story artist before we even graduated, so I had a hard time believing it was just that there wasn’t enough opportunities for junior artists. I considered other areas. I’d already been applying for animation positions, but I added texturing, lighting, and CG generalist to the mix. Of course, my reels in those areas weren’t great. I’ll admit it now, that I never really cared for 3D. I knew it my first year at Ringling. Every summer I seriously considered leaving the program. I stuck with it because I’m stubborn.

Also the reason I was still even trying to make it in this industry. I was becoming very bitter by this point, and the thought of walking away all together was tempting. The animation industry clearly didn’t want me. Well, maybe I didn’t want it, either.

…But that itch is pretty powerful. It just took watching one animated movie, and I was hooked all over again. I couldn’t let it go.

A series of events led up to me deciding to finally make the plunge and move to L.A. It wasn’t an easy decision, and largely based on circumstance. A friend of mine was about to buy a condo out there and offered to rent out a room to me. I had some money in my savings. But the real deciding factor was that my senior thesis had recently won an award… and there was a cash prize of $5,000. That money was supposed to give me something to live on while I worked on my freelance career. Now, it was going to get me to L.A.

And so, I moved to San Fernando Valley with pretty high hopes. Now that I was local, surely finding a job would be a piece of cake. A number of my friends moved out here before me and found jobs within three or four weeks. It’d take me a month, maybe six weeks tops. Within two weeks of arriving I had a story test for a TV animation studio!

And then I didn’t hear back. I called a few times, but the HR lady made it clear the directors weren’t jumping to grab me up.

So I continued the search. In desperation I applied for a company that publishes comics. Sure, I do like comics, and I didn’t mind taking a job outside the industry just to gain some stability. They interviewed me… and that’s when I discovered they specialized in porn comics.

Porn. Not my thing. Didn’t matter anyway because I didn’t hear back.

And so it went. Honestly, I was getting more response than I had while I was in Maryland. Studios were at least letting me know they’d received my work or weren’t looking. Cartoon Network even gave me feedback on my website when they e-mailed to confirm receipt of my submission. But I wasn’t getting any offers, and the money ran out pretty damn quick. I signed up for some temp agencies as well, but there never seemed to be any work that I was qualified for. I started just applying anywhere, including retail.

I even got turned down for an unpaid internship. What was I to do next? Offer to pay someone to let me work for them?

There are very few times in my life when I have regretted decisions I’ve made. The things I do, I often do without apology, even if the results are disastrous. I take responsibility for my mistakes and I learn from them.

This, though… I was wondering if I would have been better off not attending Ringling. I haven’t paid Sallie Mae in about a year… and they are not understanding about that sort of thing. My mom’s been paying my rent since October, and that’s absolutely painful to me. My family is not well off. We’re barely lower middle class. And my parents are retired. I went to Ringling with the understanding that I would take full responsibility for it. Even if I couldn’t help them financially, I could at least not be a burden on them. The only reason I’m not homeless and starving out here is because of my parents.

I was regretting moving out to L.A., too. I’d come out here to find a job… what was the point of being here if I couldn’t find one? In a place so big, not a single studio could find a use for me? Not a one felt my skills were worth their expense? That’s a pretty big pill to swallow.

I knew breaking into the film industry was hard… I just never imagined it’d be this hard. I’ve been out of Ringling for twenty months. I was on the verge of my one-year anniversary of unemployment. What were my options? I decided that if I didn’t have a job by April, I would move back to Maryland. Hopefully I’d have the money to do so by then. And what would I do with my life at that point? I didn’t really know. Part of me didn’t want to give up on animation, but the message I was receiving was loud and clear: I’m not ready. Even after three years of Ringling, I’m not ready. So I’d have to continue working, learning, and improving. But in the meantime, there was no point throwing so much money away by living out here.

That’s when I hit the “fuck this game” stage. I was tired of waiting on the animation industry to notice me. I turned my attention to starting a webcomic. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for years and always put off cuz I didn’t have the time. Now, I had nothing but time. And hopefully, it would give me a body of work that I could use in my portfolio. Rather than focusing on getting a job, I decided to focus on the things that make me happy.

A couple of weeks ago, I happened to see a listing for an art intern on Ringling’s career site. They were looking for someone close to Burbank. I live about 10 miles away. By now, I’ve become very selective of the listings I respond to. I was tired of rejection. Instead of looking at a description and thinking “well, maybe,” I’d look at it and think, “they’ll say no.” So I saw this one… and nearly didn’t apply. It was an internship, and they wanted college students.

But they also wanted someone in Burbank who could work full-time, and what student’s going to take a full-time internship in the middle of spring semester? And it was an art position, but it was kind of vague on the details. So I submitted. At the very least, if I got an interview I could learn more about what they needed.

Around the same time I found out about a production coordinator position at one of the big film companies out here. I got interviews for both. I was determined not to get my hopes up for either, but I knew my best shot was probably the production coordinator position. It was stable, with salary and benefits. They wanted a pretty long commitment, almost two years, but I could live with that, and it might be a way to segue into their art department.

While I was waiting to hear back, the other company called me back on Wednesday. They invited me to come back for a second interview the following day. I met with their creative team, we talked for an hour, and I headed home. I was just walking into Target to pick up some things when they called me and offered me the position. I started the very next day.

Ironically, I had just gone on a long and passionate rant on Twitter about unemployment earlier that day. But suddenly I had a job, and the company and the position are terrific. It’s surreal, almost impossible. I’m reminded of when I was interning at Sony, sitting at my station every day and thinking, “Is this really my life?”

Of course, I’m still poor. I’m not lying—I have maybe $100 to my name right now, and that’s cuz my mom made a deposit into my account last week. I can’t go out, buy clothes, or pay my bills. My student loans are scheduled for delinquency next month. This past week was the first time in years that I’ve had to wonder how I’m going to feed myself. And it’s gonna be like this for a while longer; it’s internship pay, and I won’t get my first paycheck until the end of February. I’ve been relying on my parents for help, but even that resource has taken a hit. After my first day at work, I called my mom to rave about how well my day went. And she said, “I can’t talk now, the ambulance is here.”

My mom was being rushed to the hospital. And so proceeded the worst night ever, with me being excited one minute and on the verge of tears the next. My friends would ask me how my day went and I couldn’t decide which news to lead in with. Immediately I was mentally preparing myself for the worst… and God, what would happen to my family then? It’s been one thing after another since I left Ringling. November of last year, my aunt died. This was my mom’s little sister—she lived two doors down from us. She was like a second mother to my siblings, nieces and nephew and I. Our families all spent the holidays together. And so, when she died, it kinda felt like our family was broken. I didn’t really talk about it, because it was a devastating time in our lives and I felt that was really no one else’s business but ours. But at the time, I was also kinda glad that I hadn’t gotten a job after Ringling. I spent most of the summer driving my aunt back and forth from her dialysis treatment, before she went for surgery that she never recovered from. And when she died, I felt a responsibility to be there for my mom. I thought that perhaps I wasn’t meant to be in L.A. after all, because I needed to be there for my family.

I asked my mom once if it helped her to have me close. She said, “It eases my mind knowing you’re not far away and struggling.” At the time, it kinda cemented things for me.

And so, sitting in my room on Thursday night, one eye on my Facebook messages and one on my phone, waiting for news from my sister… it brought all of that back. What would I do if mom died? How would I get back home? How on Earth were we going to deal with this?

Thankfully, she was sent home a few hours later. She’s not out of the woods, but she’s doing better at least, and there’s hope for a treatment.

So… the point of all this? This industry is fucking hard, man. It’s taken me nearly two years to get an art job. ONE job. My only income through the fall was from selling some bookmarks on Etsy. And the only reason I haven’t given up on this is because… I’m really too stubborn. Because no matter how bitter and resentful I become, all I have to do is watch an animated film and my resolve turns to jello. Because I wake up in the morning sometimes with some crazy dream in my head that makes me think, “That would make THE best story!” Because watching the Academy Awards is the highlight of my year. Because I’m almost 30 and still doodle in the corners of my notebooks. Because I am SO DAMN CLOSE.

Because if I don’t see my name in the credits of a film one day, I will never be able to live with myself.

That’s the kind of drive you need to make it in this industry. People ask me if they should attend Ringling. I get a lot of questions from older artists, artists closer to my age, who know they will have to make the same sacrifices I did in order to attend. It got to the point where I had a hard time telling them to do it—in fact, in a few cases I advised against it. The important thing to understand is that you can give up your job, move to Ringling, take out thousands of dollars in student loans, be in school for four or more years, and after all that still have no guarantee of a job. So honestly, it all comes down to passion. What’s in your heart. If you go down this road, that’s really the only thing you’ll have to rely on.

You guys. I have to apologize.

I’ve said time and again that I was going to be better about posting to this blog. I started up all these blog posts about story and just left them hanging, even though I promised a new post every coupla weeks. But, here we are.

I was going to whine in length about everything that’s been going on the last several months, but it’s a little too emo even for me. So suffice to say, right now I’m just trying to find a job. I think my problem is that this is perhaps the longest I’ve been unemployed since I was sixteen. I’m not used to being unemployed, broke, and in terrible, soul-crushing debt. I need to work on just saying eff it and relax. It’s not the end of the world (yet), and hell, this is the most free time I’ve had in years, so I might as well make use of it.

Hopefully in the near future I’ll be out of this funk and back to my usual ranty, arty self.

My latest dream (just this morning) was so bizarre that I not only wrote it down, but I tried my hand at some visual reproductions of the scenes. The whole sequence struck me as completely random and simultaneously hilarious, specifically because of an unexpected companion on Dream Me’s travels.

I don’t know what the point of this dream was, but I was in some sort of task force group thing with two other people. One I’m pretty sure was a girl, the other was a Ryan Reynolds look alike. We were in this organization thing for doing stuff? I seem to remember having to meet other members of this organization or something, and our team was new so people wanted to give us a hard time. The first bit was actually kinda cool if only I could remember it.

Anyway, after a task meeting, we were given these assignments. We three had to go into the city and take care of some duties, and then rendevous for one that we’d be performing together. So I go off to take care of my tasks. I took the bus into the city which only got me about halfway before traffic came to a halt. I abandoned the bus, deciding it’d be quicker to walk than to wait. And it was certainly quicker, only I got to my first destination and that’s when I remembered I was carrying this fricking huge plant stand. “Oh, right,” I thought, “What the hell was I supposed to do with this?”

So I call Ryan Reynolds for help. He tells me I was supposed to take it to Circuit City, and that will be a bit of an ordeal because I can’t just walk it right in, the back door will be locked, I have to wait there until someone walks out and then prop the door open yadda yadda, other things, anyway he’s willing to meet me there if I want. Besides all that I’m like well crap, I could have stopped at CC on my way here but I passed the stop ages ago. And I’m already at the second point, what am I supposed to do?

He doesn’t answer, he’s no help at all, the tool.

I check my watch and it’s only around 3 and… for some reason the first two tasks are time-sensitive and need to be done now, but the final important thing we all have to do together doesn’t have a time stamp on it. So I tell him all right I’ll go back, it should only take 20 minutes to get there. Okay cool, we hang up and I catch the next bus heading back the way I came.

For some idiotic reason I get off at the very next stop, like oh hey sure this is close enough. Only, this stop is inside a tunnel or under a huge bridge or something. I think I was concerned how long it would take to come out the other side, and I should be able to get to CC pretty quickly from this point. And it’s true, I probably could have, except the moment the bus passes I see some crackheads sitting on the other side of the road. I was just in the process of going to dig in my purse for something (probably money) when one woman immediately gets up and comes over to beg for money. I clutch my bag to me and I’m like nope sorry, no money at all, and I start walking. She walks with me.

Remember I’ve got a frickin’ plant stand with me. It’s iron painted green with circular glass plant holders and… why is this the crux of any plan?

Also I seem to recall having a dream about this woman previously in this sequence of dreams, so I remember her. And she was giving a talk about her life and trying to get off of drugs, of all things.

So meanwhile I’ve realized I’ve gotten off in the shadiest place ever conceived, and I make a mental note to never get off a bus in strange surroundings. Meanwhile, the lady seems to know I’m looking for a way out, and rather than letting me continue walking through the tunnel, she opens a door in the wall. “This way,” she says. I peer in while she’s holding the door. It’s this narrow hallway that goes down some stairs and continues on to a dead end. And milling about are three people shadier than this lady is, only they’re dudes, big ones.

And I could go in there, sure. But around this time I’m thinking, “You’re going to be mugged and gang-raped and left for dead before you leave this tunnel. It doesn’t help that you’re carrying around a fricking plant stand, either.”

While I’m having this mental debate the lady has moved on, and I have no clue if she’s being legit or just handing me gift-wrapped over to her muggy gang-rapey friends, or how else to get out of this tunnel alive (because honestly walking the length of the this dark, smelly tunnel by myself isn’t appealing either). So I go in, and I see that what I thought was a dead-end was actually a turn. And I follow it to another well-concealed turn, and up I go, and eventually it leads to the inside of a mall. And not a safe-looking mall, a seedy looking one like Security Square in Baltimore – in essence, not much better than the tunnel, but probably better lit and with more eye witnesses should I be shanked.

So I step out, and head for the first escalators I see. These happen to be inside this huge Thai wedding store (Thai wedding? Is this even a thing?). I hit the escalators with my plant stand, sure that now I’ve found a way out and I’m not gonna get assaulted after all…

And I wake up.

Clearly, the dream inspired a number of questions. What is the meaning of the plant stand? Should I take significance from its presence, or from its lack of plants? How did I get the bloody thing onto a bus… twice?

And exactly which of us is the main character, here?

Okay well new items first.

If you will be at Otakon at the end of this month, I will also be at Otakon and you should come visit me in Artist Alley. My friends Alice Meichi Li and Jennifer Zyren Smith will also be there! According to the Artist Alley map I should be either at booth B08 or B09 (Alice and I will be together). Man, the last time I was at a con I’d just graduated from my first college. It’s been years. I can’t wait to see how Otakon has changed!

You might be on Twitter. You might be on Tumblr. If so, you might like to follow me just use those handy dandy buttons over on the right over the search bar to find me.

Also also, my website got a facelift care of my amazingly talented and wonderful friend Sarah – who recently began her online comic Rumbirds! She also co-hosts a podcast that’s all about music and theatre and movies and Youtube and coning?? (what the what?) and other fun things. Her cohost Timmy is good people – he introduced me to Happle Tea, and anyone who turns me onto awesome webcomics is A-OK in my book.

Some things are afoot that I don’t want to discuss right now, but rest assured I’m keeping busy, and when opportunity allows, you’ll definitely be hearing about them.

Now that I’m actively pursuing art as a career, it seems that most everyone I meet has artistic aspirations. I was just making a late-night run to the grocery store, and I got into a conversation with the cashier. He asked me what I did for a living. I told him that I was an artist. He got a knowing look, and confided that he used to take drawing classes.

Just this past weekend, I reconnected with a cousin I haven’t talked to in years, and I was surprised to learn that she was interested in art as well. She’s considering going back to school so she can enter the health sector, but she confided that it’s not where her heart is. She’d rather be taking art classes.

Back before I enrolled at Ringling, I didn’t know half the stuff about the world of art that I know now. At the time, I was trying to get myself out of the world of marketing, and being an artist seemed like an all or nothing sort of thing. Granted, I’m happy with my choice, but I understand a lot better now that it’s not the only choice. So many people give up on art to be practical, to focus on school and having a well-paying job and taking care of the family, and lament the missed opportunity to pursue their passion. But… why is it all or nothing? Why not do both? The truth is, being a professional artist isn’t for everyone. It can be just as demanding and thankless as any other job, depending on your role and where you work.

But for every professional artist I know, I know someone else who just does their art on the side – I hesitate to call it a hobby because sometimes it transcends that. Maybe they take classes, or paint in the mornings, or run their freelance photography business on the weekends. Or they’re like a number of illustrators I follow and work on webcomics, graphic novels, and other projects in their free time. I’m most familiar with these type of artists because I read a lot of webcomics – artists like Sarah Ellerton and Tracy Butler. Now, I’ll grant you, Tracy’s day job is art-related, but it’s still a day job. Lackadaisy Cats is something she does entirely in her spare time.

…Of course, this post doesn’t address the very important issue of time management. Anyone working a nine to five job knows how hard it is to come home from work after a grueling day of office politics, fighting traffic, running errands and taking care of home responsibilities, and then convince yourself to stay upright for a few more hours and do some art. But… it can be done. Bottom line is, you don’t have to remove art from your life. It can fill as much or as little of your time as you’d like… and if you’re really passionate about it, I think a little time is preferable to none at all.

Speaking of art, here’s a sneak peek at some new stuff I’ll have with me at Otakon (yes, I’m totally into A Song of Ice and Fire right now).

Oh boy. I am waaaaaay behind on my story posts! I’ve been caught up with a few writing projects, and with so much writing on my plate already, the thought of writing about writing was a little overwhelming. Hopefully next week is lighter and I can get back on track!

In the meantime, here’s a painting for Illustration Friday. I’ve never done IF before, and it took me a while to come up with an idea for the theme “bottled.” What do I think of when I think of bottles? …Bonsai kitties, apparently.

Betsy was kind enough to contribute the next topic in our story series.

Discerning between what is necessary exposition and what is fluff. Basically, how to get the story moving quickly.

Michael presented a similar topic – knowing whether or not parts in the story are helping to forward the plot – so I’m going to address them in the same post.

The key thing here is to understand that everything that appears or happens in your story needs to have a reason. It can’t be an arbitrary choice. “Oh, I just threw that in because it’s cool.”

It’s perfectly fine for that cool thing to exist in your story if it has a reason for existing.

In truth, the answer to this one is pretty easy. If it has a purpose, then it’s necessary. But I know it can be difficult to discern what has purpose and what doesn’t. This is why I started this series by talking about story problems and solutions. It helps to have the foundation in place before you start laying in the bricks.

To determine whether an element is necessary or whether you can do without it, ask yourself these questions:

1. Is this crucial to establishing the character(s)?
2. Is this new information, or is it repeated somewhere else?
3. Is the information delivered in the most efficient way possible?
4. Does the scene help set a particular mood?
5. Is it crucial to the development of the character(s)?
6. Will the audience understand what’s going on if I remove this element?

At times, the problem isn’t even that a part of the story is unnecessary, but that it occurs in the wrong place, or moves too slowly. Is there a way to change the delivery of this information to help propel the story rather than hinder it?

Michael inquired about this topic in relation to a story he’s working on. Without giving the story away, I’m just going to quote the significant bit:

It opens with the main kid getting upset about losing a video game. He then breaks the game out of rage … I was wondering how necessary developing this character is to the overall story or if I should just do it with dialogue later on.

Character development is always necessary. If your scene is giving us vital information about a character, it’s a keeper. But we don’t need to know every detail of a character, just the important ones. In this case, the scene is telling us that the kid is spoiled (and possibly that he has aggression issues). Do we need to know that the boy is spoiled? How does it come into play later?

You do have the choice of doing this through actions or through dialogue. They always say “show, don’t tell,” and personally I always hear this and think WTF does that mean?? Seriously, I have to shut down all my electronics, go sit in a dark corner, and really puzzle my way through this concept in solitude. I mean, how do you know when you’re “showing” and when you’re “telling?” Certainly, having the boy’s mom tell another character, “My little Richard is rather spoiled,” would be “telling.” But dialogue can be used quite cleverly to establish character. Take the movie Anna Karenina. The titular character doesn’t show up until nearly ten minutes into the film. We’re introduced to her through dialogue.

Another example I love is Ocean’s Eleven (I just caught a bit of it on the TV so it’s fresh in my mind). This movie has some of the best banter I’ve ever seen… and the best part about it is how the banter helps establish each character. Watch the scene between Danny Ocean and Tess in the restaurant. Now that’s dialogue that “shows.”

You want your story to be lean, but you don’t want it to be too lean. You don’t need to cut away all the fat – a little bit of fat is good. If your story moves too fast or is too intense, it wears the audience out, and you’ll lose them. Your story needs to breathe now and then.

And sometimes, the fat is just plain fun. This is especially true in comedy. Take a look at Jason Figliozzi’s Snack Attack.

The beginning is kind of slow, huh? Not a whole lot is going on. But what is going on is important. For one, the opening frames give us plenty of time to appreciate the caveman’s situation. He lives in a barren desert. This setting is not arbitrary. The empty desert efficiently gives us a lot of information about the caveman’s predicament.

Then we have that moment where the caveman is digging around in a little skull. This is important character building. We learn 1) our caveman is hungry (see why that barren desert is so important?), and 2) he’s a liiiittle bit dumb. Over the next two minutes, we get to see just how dumb this guy really is.

Now, my favorite part of this film is from 2:20 to 2:30. I die every single time I see it. When I think of “fat,” I think of that moment. But it’s good fat! It’s a hilarious, well-timed beat, and, just as significant, it’s communicating important information. After all that struggle, the caveman is finally getting what he wants. He’s taking time to savor the moment, and we savor the moment along with him.

You want to leave a little bit of fat, and you also want to be sure you’re not cutting into the muscle. As you’re looking for fluff to get rid of, be sure what you think is fluff isn’t actually essential to the story. Does it have a reason for existing? If the scene is down time you’re afraid of losing because the story’s moving too fast, well, even those moments can be given meaning.

Start at the beginning. And when you come to the end… stop.

One final tidbit. Betsy’s question asks specifically how to get the story moving quickly. The quickest way to do that is to start where the true story begins. Now, you definitely need to set up the story, but you don’t want to spend a great deal of time on setup. Consider this. Your story is a significant moment in time. Your character’s particular circumstances, occurring in a certain location and a certain time, have created an extraordinary moment that your character has never before experienced and may never experience again. You don’t need to start the story the night before everything changes. That’s backstory. You don’t have time for that, and frankly, we don’t really care. It’s the moment all the crap hits the fan that we really want to see.

Where does the inciting incident of your story come in? It should be roughly at the 10% or 15% mark. If it’s halfway into the story, then you’ve got a bit of trimming to do.

I’ve got a juicy topic for next time: tying events together. Stay tuned!

Ocean’s Eleven image from imdb.com.

Story Charts
Before you begin, it helps to read the how to. I jumped into the movie analyses without looking at the how to first and it blew my mind. So I went back, educated myself, and started over, and it blew my mind again. I love charts, so this site is right up my ally.

Also you Ringling kids, the Storytelling class has a blog. I never took this class, but if you’re really interested in story, it’s worth considering. I took the Creative Writing class, which I highly recommend (unless you’re not a very strong writer… in which case, I still recommend it).

In case you haven’t seen it…

I’m probably gonna lose my credibility as an art school grad and… person, but I’ll say it anyway.

I don’t think sequels are all that bad.

Y’know what? I like The Rescuers Down Under. I like The Lost World. I like Addams Family Values.

…And Disney’s sequels haven’t been all bad, either. Lion King II: Simba’s Pride? 101 Dalmatians II: Patch’s London Adventure? Yeah, I’ll watch those.

…And I have Bambi II on DVD. Shut up.

I also own Madagascar 2. I like to think of the first Madagascar as backstory for the awesomeness that is the sequel.

Okay, I get the notion that some of these studios are going overboard with the neverending franchises. Pirates of the Caribbean. Shrek. It seems that the big studios aren’t interested in a film concept unless they can turn it into a franchise.

Is that so bad?

It’s like television. We buy into the notion of ongoing stories with television. Hell, it’s okay with books and comics too. So why not movies? I think the notion’s pretty cool, if done well. And yeah, sometimes the sequels don’t turn out too great. Hey, not every stand-alone film turns out too great.

I don’t see anyone complaining about Christopher Nolan’s Batman series. Or the Avengers. Yeah, those are comic books, we kind of expect sequels. But can’t original concepts achieve the same heights? Honestly, I like returning to a world I love, learning more about the characters and meeting new ones. I don’t see why every movie has to be a one-shot deal.

…If it looks like my rant kinda comes to an abrupt end right there, it’s because I had a concluding sentence but then promptly forgot it and couldn’t come up with a replacement. So you get this explanation instead.

…Well okay, maybe another link.

[UPDATE] Betsy made a very good point in a comment below, so I’m copying it here:

The reason that a lot of films work as sequels is because they are telling the story of a different character than in the first. Madagascar I is more about Marty. Madagascar II is more about Alex. The Lion King I is about Simba. The Lion King II is about his daughter, Kiara. Toy Story I: Buzz. Toy Story II: Woody. Etc. etc. etc.

The end.

The ending is arguably the most important part of the story. In fact, I think this and the problem are tied for the spot of most important.

The ending defines your mood when the story is over. It defines the emotional journey throughout the entire piece.

The ending tells you how to feel.

It is your proof of concept. It is your concept, restated. It is the whole reason for the story.

The ending is the moral.

Yes, your story should have a moral. Your story has to have a moral, or else, why write the story at all? The moral can be described as your story’s concept statement. The beginning of the story asks a question. The middle of the story sets out to answer that question. The end is the point where the story turns to the audience and says, “See what I mean?”

You’ve got your problem. I assume by now you’ve got at least the very basic of idea of what character(s) are going to set out and solve this problem. Now’s the point to decide what your characters are going to learn at the end of the story. (This is also a stepping stone to developing your character.)

Ironically, the problem and the ending are the points I struggle with most. When I begin a story, I tend to start with an over-arching concept. To borrow examples from my school days: a baker witnesses something in his kitchen disappear, or a little girl and a little zombie become friends. I know what the problems and the endings to both those stories are now, but when I first conceived them, tying down those details was difficult. I couldn’t commit. I didn’t know if I wanted the baker to be happy or sad at the end. I knew I wanted the zombie and girl to be friends, but I didn’t know how to get to that point.

These are also two areas where I like to complicate things. I’m all about complex stories, so from the very start, I’m thinking in terms of mood and themes and symbolism and seemingly random elements that interconnect like a web of emotionally charged awesomeness full of wit and meaning. But I can never come up with any of that stuff, and after I recover from the mental collapse brought on by the very attempt and I take a step back to analyze the situation, it always boils down to not having a clear problem or a clear ending.

Think of it like map. Your starting point is A. Your ending point is E. At the moment, there are no obstacles. Our path is a direct line.

Now, when we begin to build the middle, that’s when obstacles will be thrown in, and that direct line might become a zigzagging mess. But for now, we’re going to start with the path of least resistance.

Your ending doesn’t have to be complex. You just need a general idea of where the story’s going. I’m going to turn to The Simpsons for help on this one. I watched two episodes recently. Two Bad Neighbors and Lisa the Iconoclast.

In Two Bad Neighbors, former president George Bush moves in across the street from the Simpsons. The episode quickly throws us into the problem. The Simpsons and the Bushes (primarily Homer and George) don’t get along. There’s a feud between the families. The question presented could be, “Can George Bush survive as Homer Simpson’s neighbor?” In the end, Homer wins the feud and the Bushes move out. The question is answered: no, he cannot.

Oh yes, there’s definitely more to it. There are a lot of fun hijinks, and a lot of parallels illustrated by how Homer and George both relate to their various neighbors. What made old-school Simpsons so great was how it built layers of complexity in a half-hour show. But in order to develop the fun stuff, you need to know where your story’s going. In the development of this episode, it’s conceivable that the writing team entertained a lot of endings – but they probably knew that, at the end of the episode, some level of normalcy must be returned to the Simpsons’ lives (this is a common format in sitcoms). That meant the Bush family would have to leave Evergreen Terrace. With the ending locked down, writing the rest of the story only becomes a matter of figuring out why George and Barb leave.

Now, Lisa the Iconoclast was an interesting scenario, and the episode itself is a great example of several different elements: significant setting, building tension, the importance of reaction, interconnecting subplots, and theme. Here we have an emotionally-charged situation. On the eve of Springfield’s big celebration of their founder, Jebediah Springfield, Lisa Simpson discovers that Jebediah was a murderous fraud. But when she tries to reveal the truth to her town, no one believes her.

There are a lot of things at stake for Lisa. Because Lisa is a moral and honest character, she feels obligated to tell the truth. She has her pride to defend, as well as the pride of her father, the only one in town willing to support her. We become emotionally invested as well. We know Lisa’s telling the truth, and we see how pained she is when her peers and role models turn on her. We see her resolve being broken when her father, who supports her unconditionally, is punished for his faith. We have to see her succeed. If she can’t prove the truth, it will change her very character. In the town’s eyes, she will be a liar. In our eyes, she will be a failure.

And yet, at the end, Lisa chooses to preserve the lie.

That’s a very interesting choice. Why not have Lisa reveal the truth? That’s what she, and we, want. Well remember, this is a sitcom. At the end, everything must return to normal. We can’t have Jebediah being discredited as the town’s founder. In the end, the secret must not be revealed. But the creators find a way to turn this moment into a victory, anyway. Moreover, the ending justifies the episode’s larger theme.

It is a “Do the Right Thing” story, and through Lisa’s journey, we understand why lying was the right thing. Also note how Lisa’s solution is drastically different from what she wanted at the start. This is a character arc. Lisa changes throughout the story. What she wants at the end is not what she wanted at the beginning. I’ll discuss this episode in depth in another post.

The point being, knowing your starting point and knowing your end point are the first steps to plotting your journey. Once we know how a story will end, then we can determine how it will begin. We can determine who our characters are and how they will change over the course of the story. We can determine what roadblocks must be thrown in during the characters’ journey, how the conflict builds, what symbols appear that guide the characters and us on the way, and how our hero discovers the information that will ultimately lead him/her to solving the problem. The story is a journey, and the end must be different from the beginning. By the end, everything is changed. Now we can go back and add in the details of how and why we are led to this change.

So, how does your story end? Does the guy get the girl? Does the heroine defeat her nemesis? Will everyone live happily ever after? Does you bumbling hero end up in an even bigger mess than before? Maybe the hero learns his lesson too late? Or maybe the lesson flies right over her head and she goes right back to doing things the same way as before?

Simpsons images from TV Goat and bobbysketch.

A disclaimer: I am no way an expert on any of this. I am a student of art, just like you. But I also like to hear (or read) myself talk, so here we are. These are my thoughts, and I’m always looking for other insights and resources. If you have your own observations to make, or resources to share, then please, by all means! That’s what that handy comment link’s for.

Let’s Start at the Beginning

Story’s hard. You don’t think so when you first sit down to create one, but it is.

The hardest part of creating a story, or an essay, or a work of art, or hell, this blog entry – is starting. It’s that moment when you’re staring at a blank sheet of paper, or a blank screen. You have nothing. And somehow, out of that nothing, you have to create a message. You have to create characters, a world, a conflict. And somehow, dammit, it’s all got to make sense. That’s a pretty daunting task when all you’ve got in front of you is a useless sheet of paper.

So, how do you begin?

The first place you need to start – whether you’re writing a short story, a novel, a play, or in the case of animation students, a short film – is with a problem.

You might already have a sense of what you want to accomplish with your story. Maybe you’ve got a great character concept you just HAVE to use. Maybe you’ve been squirreling away lots of reference images of environments. Maybe you woke up with visions of some epic journey that culminates in an even more epic battle. Perhaps you know just how your story’s going to begin, or just how it’s going to end.

That’s all well and good. But why? Who is this awesome character, and what makes him awesome? That’s a nice environment, but what’s going to happen there? Where is this journey going to lead your characters… and why do they have to journey in the first place?

I gotta tell ya, when I first started writing this entry, I thought conflict was the solution. That’s part of the solution, but before you can even have conflict, your character needs to have a problem.

Your story is a question. Through the course of telling the story, you’re going to answer that question. You’re going to solve that problem – for the character, for the audience, and for yourself.

This was a piece of concept art drawn up for one of the films I pitched at Ringling,
depicting the main problem. I didn’t even have to talk about the story.
The class saw this and got it right away.

I’ve read and heard a ton of different methodologies when it comes to story creation. I’ve read books on writing novels, short stories, and screenplays. And I’ve noticed something funny. All of these resources say pretty much the exact same thing. They all describe story in nearly the same terms, give or take a few hundred (or thousand) words.

I think my favorite description of a story is the one I heard from one of my past instructors – partly because it’s true, and partly because it’s so bloody simple.

A story is when a character wants something and has trouble getting it.

There. Doesn’t sound so hard now, does it? And it applies to pretty much every story. It applies very well to film, because due to the nature of film, a story must be told in its leanest, most efficient form. There’s no room for fluff. You’ve got to get to the point and get to it fast, or the audience is going to miss it.

Practical Application

Think about the film you saw most recently. I just gave Aladdin a watch – it’s probably my favorite Disney film. Aladdin is full of the right balance of appealing characters, comedy, exciting chase scenes, magic, devious villains, catchy music, and romance. But it’s the main character’s journey that ties it all together and makes it work. He’s got a problem he’s trying to fix. Throughout the course of the movie, we never lose sight of the problem.

Aladdin wants to get the girl.

That’s the whole reason for the story. That’s the reason for the genie, the impressive show of magic, the beautiful nighttime carpet ride, and ultimately, it’s the reason Aladdin goes up against the villain in the end. Sure, there are a number of subplots that show up along the way. The Genie wants Aladdin to free him. Jafar wants to take over the kingdom. In the end, Aladdin not only has to save Jasmine, but the entire kingdom.

But if he didn’t fall in love with Jasmine in the market that one day, none of the rest would have happened. Everyone would have gone about their lives, and there would have been no story.

And as you can see, it’s this one problem that gives rise to the conflict. Aladdin wants the girl. He has trouble getting her. So, what’s the trouble? That’s our conflict. Aladdin’s in a race to the finish line, and all of a sudden a bunch of hurdles are thrown onto the track.

1. The big one is social propriety. Aladdin is a commoner. Jasmine is royalty. Society won’t allow them to be together. He needs a way to get around centuries of tradition.

2. Jafar is the next big conflict. Just like our hero, he has a problem. He’s just a vizier, but he wants to be sultan. When Prince Ali shows up, it throws a wrench into Jafar’s plans. He can’t have Jasmine falling in love and marrying Prince Ali, because then Ali will become sultan and not Jafar. (And note just how Aladdin’s quest for love mirrors Jafar’s quest for power.)

3. Next, we have the Genie. Aladdin makes a deal with him: give him two wishes, and with the third, Aladdin will set the Genie free. That’s not a conflict, until Aladdin realizes he needs the Genie in order to keep being Prince Ali. Suddenly, he has a choice to make: give up the girl, or give up his friendship with the Genie.

This format works whether the movie is two minutes long or two hours. Let’s look at one of the Ringling Computer Animation films from 2010: Til the Cows Come Home by Megan Deane.

The problem is so direct you could hit yourself in the head with it. The herder needs to return the cow to its pen.

Just as direct is the conflict. The cow doesn’t want to go. Because it’s a two-minute film, we don’t need a whole lot of subplots like we have with Aladdin. This one conflict is enough. The story is all about how the herder overcomes the cow’s stubbornness and gets it into the pen.

So, how do you begin a story? Start with a problem. Then go from there.

KISS It

A final point. Kiss. Yeah, that’s right, I’m going there.

Keep It Simple Stupid.

When you’ve got a certain allotment of time to fill, it’s easy to get caught up in details. Especially if you’re crafting a story that you want to fulfill all these intangible feats, like comedy, emotional depth, and meaning.

Forget all that stuff for a moment. You don’t even have a story yet, now’s not a time to go being witty. When you focus on the details, you lose sight of your mission. You get lost, and the craft of storytelling becomes overwhelming. Take a step back. Focus on the picture as a whole. One story. You need one conflict. One problem. One solution.

One sentence.

Ideally, you should be able to communicate your story with one sentence. And not a run-on sentence. That’s cheating. It should be one concise, clear sentence.

In movie terms, this is called a logline. I’m going to borrow from Blake Snyder’s book Save the Cat! here. It has a nice little section on loglines. (Bonus points if you can guess the movies!)

“A newly married couple must spend Christmas Day at each of their four divorced parent’s homes.”

“A just-hired employee goes on a company weekend and soon discovers someone’s trying to kill him.”

“A cop comes to L.A. to visit his estranged wife and her office building is taken over by terrorists.”

Note that the conflict is inherent in each of these loglines. Why is spending Christmas Day at four different homes a problem for this couple? Nevermind it’s hard enough getting to four different houses in one day. But the reason they have so many stops to make is because their parents are divorced. This couple is starting off their lifelong commitment to each other… by spending their holiday with four people who couldn’t make it work. On a day that’s all about family. (When the movie was produced the newlywed angle was taken out, instead it was a boyfriend and girlfriend who later had to consider their commitment to one another.)

Same with the other two. Someone’s trying to kill the new employee. Terrorists have taken over the building. No need to hunt for the conflict, it’s right there.

Let’s go back to our example short film of the day. Maybe: “It’s the end of the day, but before a herder can go home, he must get a stubborn cow into its pen.” Short and sweet. We know the problem, and we know the conflict.

Can you describe your story in one sentence? If not, it might be too complicated.

–

Is this post helpful? Do you have other insight to offer? Do you have questions? Please comment! I’ll be posting more on this topic in the coming days, so keep an eye out.

Aladdin images from The Disney Wiki and Fanpop.

Next, a general announcement: I changed the permalinks on my blog. If anyone’s linking to specific entries, your old links should work as far as I know, but you might want to change them in any case.

Okay, now for the real entry!

Ah, let me tell you guys. The last eight months have been quite the roller coaster ride. A slow, boring, yet disproportionately frightening roller coaster ride. Not too many twists, turns or stomach-flipping plummets, but plenty of screams and the silent fear of falling or losing limbs.

In fact, the only real surprise on this ride that warrants a few screams of terror happened last week. I quit my job. I’ve got two weeks left, but it’s a sure thing, now. Next Thursday is my last day.

But really, the most surprising (and amusing) part of all this is just how freaked out my sister seems to be. Last week when I told her I was going to quit, she told me “no, you’re not.” The next day when I told her I handed in my two weeks’ notice, she didn’t believe me. Just now I was e-mailing her about some ideas I have for the next few months—ideas that have nothing to do with my job, FYI—and she replies back, “Did you decide not to quit your job?”

Whoa, sis, calm down. You’re not allowed to be more freaked out about this than I am.

…Am I freaked out? A little. Perhaps a lot (those that know me well are aware that my emotional range is somewhere between inanimate object and Ben Stein). You’re supposed to have a job. That’s what adulthood is. More than any other thing that might present itself in your life, you’re always always supposed to have a job. And now… I don’t have one. Yeah, I’m still trying to wrap my head around it.

I’m mostly freaked out that I had a plan… and it backfired. I’m not used to that. I’m all for spontaneity (within reason), but I’m a planner at heart. I like a good plan. I decide what I want to do, I figure out how I’m going to do it, then I do it, and then it’s DONE. End of story. It’s a skill I honed as a public relations student at my last school. I live by the code of R.P.I.E. 1. Research. 2. Plan. 3. Implement. 4. Evaluate.

My life was all going according to plan. Hood, and my life after Hood, were actually Plan B. Seeing that Plan B had worked successfully, it was time to go back to Plan A. 1. Research art schools. 2. Get accepted to art school. 3. Graduate from art school. 4. Get art job (the quality of the job serves to evaluate the success of the plan, you see).

That’s just what I did. I went to a kick-ass art school. I learned some kick-ass skills. I got a kick-ass internship. I made a kick-ass film and got a kick-ass degree. The next step was to get a kick-ass job.

That’s where my plan started to break down. No one was hiring me. No one was even calling me back. What was happening to my plan? I panicked. I needed a job—that was the next step in the plan. That was the whole point of the plan. I couldn’t not have the job. So, I got a not-so-kick-ass job while I took time to evaluate and figure out a new plan.

I like a good plan. I apply the rules to pretty much every aspect of my life. I want to go see a movie. 1. Research movies. 2. Plan a day, time, friends, and transportation to see movie. 3. See the movie. 4. Discuss movie with friends afterward. Works so well, doesn’t it?

But every now and then, I find that a plan isn’t the answer. It’s too constraining. It needs to be revised midway through, or scrapped altogether. 1. Research movies. 2. Plan a day, time, friends, and transportation to see movie. 3. Friend or friends can’t make it… but friend’s friends want to come instead. 4. Our second car is in the shop, can we fit eight people in one car? 5. Why are we going on a Thursday? Let’s go on Friday. 6. No let’s go to the theater downtown, it has stadium seats. 7. That movie’s got an 8% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, let’s see this movie instead. 8. Cry a lot, then throw the plan out and hope for the best.

In cases like these, as I’m revising and revising a plan to make it work, I find that my priorities might change. What I wanted at the start isn’t always what I want by the end. “Wow, that movie got an 8% rating?? Well… I still kinda want to see it (I love a good bad movie), but sure, let’s go see the other movie instead.” Sometimes, I’m very disappointed when a plan fails. Other times… the change turned out to be for the better.

And still other times, I have to throw out the plan and construct an entirely new one. Untested. Unsafe. Sometimes no plan is going to work, and I’m just going to have to plow forward without one. That’s even scarier.

The bottom line is that the plan—the plan for my life—as it was, was not working. Even worse, it was making me unhappy. I’m sure I’ve felt more miserable at some point in my life (I can think of a few periods at Ringling off the top of my head). But in the last few weeks, it’s been hard to remember a time I was more miserable than this.

And that’s when I remembered the reason for all the planning. It’s because I don’t want to be miserable anymore. I’ve got misery down to an art. It’s old hat. It’s boring, and I really don’t need any more of it. Let’s try something new and exciting. Let’s try happiness. I want to wake up every single day with the energy, determination, and cheer to face whatever comes at me. That’s why I went to Ringling: so that I never have to choose misery over happiness ever again.

And so, what’s next? Well, I’m going to take a gamble. The old plan was making me miserable. So, I’m going to go with a new plan. It’s untried, untested… by me, at least. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever done before. I don’t know where I’m going to end up.

Am I freaked out? A little (or a lot). But it’s okay. If the plan doesn’t work… I can always revise it. Or scrap it. Or just come up with a new one.