Wrappin' it up.

Well folks, it's been fun. . . I suppose. This is my final post, and I'm running out of ideas. I could end with something fantastic like posing some existential question but eh - better not. 

Maybe I will try to sum up what I got from the class.  

                                  I learned that there are actually animated documentaries. 

There is something special about filming people's reaction to music. 

It's important as a DMA major to have a sense of wonder about the world and an insatiable curiosity to discover and try new things within the field. 

Maybe we should be more concerned with what we do need to show children about life, than what we don't need to show them. 

Jemimah and Leeper will probably never agree on anything. (ft. Jemima's picture from one of her recent posts). 

This exists.

I was also introduced to some amazing animators I had never known existed such as Frederick Back and Caroline Leaf. 

And there are some other things, such as Fridge and Sour Death Balls but I think I will end there. It was quite the class and I really enjoyed it. There were a lot of interesting discussions such as post modernism and feminism and everything in-between. 

Ok. That's all. I bid you all a fond farewell. 

Arthur Christmas

I have been inspired by Jonathan to do a post about Arthur Christmas. So here it is. Apparently not many people know this movie exists so I am here to promote it. Seriously it's just really fantastic. It came out in 2011 and was nominated for several awards. As an animation major I could be biased because of how beautifully the film was made, but it's not only lovely but hilarious. I'm not going to spoil it by explaining the story line - just watch it.

However I will tell you that Grandsanta is probably my favorite part of the film. He's voiced by Bill Nighy and is a great character. If you haven't seen Arthur Christmas and you are looking for something new to watch over Christmas break you oughta give it a look-see. Ok, that's all.

Youtube as a memory safe

So I'm not sure what made me think of it but I randomly decided to look up my older sister's Youtube channel.  Most of the vids were from 2008 and 2009 so it was kind of hilarious watching them all again and seeing how young we were.

It got me thinking about how Youtube can kind of be like a memory safe. Granted there are other ways to save and keep your videos but youtube is accessible from any device as long as you have internet. I found it intriguing that our channel was still there just as we'd left it like six or seven years ago.

I know that's not the main reason for Youtube videos; far from it. But I thought it was kind of neat to stop and think that it stores all these videos and there's like a whole history of them. So below I've posted a video by Olan Roger's and mostly he's telling aspiring youtubers how to be successful but if you skip to like 4:35 he talks about what it'd be like if in 100 years youtube still existed. It's kind of a neat idea.

Vigilance

Well. I feel it is necessary to post on Joseph's lovely little presentation. I was impressed with the fact that he actually had something interesting and worthwhile to say on the subject. When he first told me that he wanted to do a presentation on bullshit I was immediately kind of curious but mostly doubtful. I guess I should've known better since it was Joe, but I thought he might talk about bullshit just to talk about bullshit. When he first pulled up his slideshow and started his presentation my doubts disappeared and by the time we got to the end I was like 'wow, it did have a point.' So congrats, Joseph.

What I wanted to talk about though was this idea of vigilance that he ended with. Knowing the difference between truth and lies. It's easy to be skeptical and question everything but it's very important that your skeptical questions lead you to some form of an answer. The phrase "don't believe everything you hear" has recently become "don't believe anything you hear." I guess my point is that questioning doesn't do you any good if you don't come to any conclusions.


I think mainly what it means to be vigilant is to be educated. Don't just doubt what you hear but read up on things, learn both sides of the situation so you can come to educated conclusions. You can tell people to use their common sense but common sense really isn't all that common. It's important to hear the opinions of outside sources, people who have more experience with certain issues. Their insight - while you don't have to take it all as completely true - is helpful.

So yeah . . . that's basically all I had to say on the subject.

Movie Music

As Jacob was giving his great presentation today about musical numbers within movies I was just thinking what a difference it makes. Not really just with musical numbers, but how much like a musical film score adds. In one of my other classes we've been watching some fan-edit movies, and a few of the edited films had different music than the original. It is kind of interesting how completely different the mood for the movie is just by the music you hear while you watch the story unfold.

Music is extremely helpful in setting the mood for a scene. Think of the song 'Married Life' for Up's opening scene or Darth Vader's theme song. It's kind of interesting the way it affects us and can even cause us to feel happy or sad or whatever death-metal screamo makes you...feel. It's kind of beautiful how music can connect with people, or how it can be nostalgic and bring back old memories.

Heroes vs Sidekicks

So I am going to be talking about heroes vs sidekicks.  Not like as in superheroes, but just the main character and the supporting characters in a story. Discussing just a bit of Star Wars and class and watching the new movie trailer got me thinking. I don't think I've ever really read a book or watched a movie and found that the main protagonist was my favorite character. For example in all of the Star Wars movies neither Anakin nor Luke were my favorite. I liked Obi-wan and C3PO.

In the Harry Potter books, George and Fred were always my favorite and I also loved Hermione and Ron. But Harry? I mean I did like him but he definitely wasn't the best character in the book.

In Coraline I liked Wybie.  In The Lord of the Rings I liked Sam and Faramir. There might be a few movies in which I really do love the main characters the most, but not many. I wonder why that might be? I feel like we are supposed to connect most with the main character - feel their plight so that we want them to succeed in overcoming whatever it is they must overcome. All the movies/books I've mentioned do a good job at that, Harry, Frodo, Coraline, and Luke are all admirable characters.

Hmm. Maybe I'm the only crazy person that is a fan of sidekicks.

Seabird - Golden Skies

I really enjoyed watching all of the music videos in Intro today. It's kind of a fascinating subject to me, especially since music videos have changed so much since they first began. I loved the music videos shown in class today. I'd seen Johnny Cash's before, but the last two - the one with the kids and the other with the elderly people acting like kids - were stunning. It was like a whole new level of  music video, honestly.

So I already posted a music video earlier on this semester, before I realized we were going to bring up the topic in class. It was by a husband and wife duo named Arian and Daniel Armstrong who make animated music videos every once in a while. I am going to post the link of another music video of theirs below. This one they did to Seabird's song 'Golden Skies.'



Seabird - Golden Skies

I chose to post this not only because I love the art-style they use but also because after seeing this I found another video that explains some of the story behind the animation. The couple had personal reasons for choosing to present the characters and situations the way they did and I found it intriguing  to see a bit outside the window that the music video displays. It made me think of how Leeper talked about there being the box you see that is the music video, but the more you know about the people or detail behind the video creates a kind of bigger box around it. Here is a link to that video in case anyone is interested:

Behind the Scenes of Golden Skies

Two Things

So quickly, I had to laugh because I was scrolling through my newsfeed and this new article by Relevant Magazine popped up on video games. I thought it was timely and I figured I'd share. They do a decent job of explaining the pros and cons of gaming, I thought. But like I mentioned before I'm not like a gaming pro, so if anyone has disagreements I'd love to hear their side of it. Anywho, here's the link:  http://www.relevantmagazine.com/culture/video-games/4-reasons-we-escape-through-video-games

Also that clip we watched from Tree of Life was absolutely stunning. I sat with my mouth open like the whole time. Wow. It was fantastic. The whole quote from Job in the beginning reminded me of this song called 'Where Were You' that was based off of those verses. Like the clip shown in class the lyrics put our smallness and God's bigness into perspective beautifully. I think so often we feel like we need visible reasons for suffering. When we can't grasp why certain things happen it gnaws at us and can cause us to question God. It's a hard place to be at, and it's basically the story of Job. I'm going to share another link with you to the song, so yeah sorry for all the links I just had to share. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLf_Nlukra0

Video Games as Art

I really enjoyed watching the indie games film in class yesterday. I hadn't really been aware of indie games actually, although as they were throwing out some random popular ones I recognized Limbo, which my sister had gotten me into a few years ago. It was kind of a creepy game, actually, but the silhouettes and charcoal based colors were eerily beautiful to me, and I loved it. I was almost more impressed with the art of the game, than the game itself.

Which brought me to something I'd never really thought of before, that video games are art in a way.

Now, I wasn't a huge gamer as a kid, I grew up mostly on PC and Nintendo DS games. The first actual game console we really had in our house was a wii. So I'm not entering this conversation with a lot of  knowledge. The most I really know about video games is super smash bros and Zelda the twilight princess - oh, and star wars battlefront. But that's it.

Watching that film gave me more of an appreciation for the work that goes into a game. I guess I assumed they were way easier to create than movies, and a little amount of time and energy went into them, which I know now is apparently ridiculous. When we were discussing children's media and read up on C. S. Lewis, he said he used children's media it because it was the best art-form for what he had to say. I think it's fair to apply that to video games. They can be the best platform for some people to connect with others and express themselves.  There is often an assumption that video games are a complete waste of time, but it was intriguing to watch that film and see a new light shed on the subject.

Quiz Essay 2

I really loved Frederick Back and his film 'The Man Who Planted Trees." Actually after the reading on him for the week I watched a couple other short films of his, such as "Crak!" and I loved it. In "The Man Who Planted Trees" I was very impressed with how Back kept it simple and yet beautiful. The story was very slow moving but it worked because the story itself (though several things came through in it) revealed that growth takes time and can be a slow process. A few other things it seemed to showcase was how even one person who doesn't think they can alter the world can change it. What we do will have effects, our only option is if those effects are negative or positive.

What's most significant to me is the tree planter's dedication and endurance. Year after year he plants his seeds, and it takes so much time for even a few to come up. How could someone not give up after that? Patience was the beauty of this film to me, and how one man's patience could bring so much joy and loveliness to the lives of countless others. It was beautifully animated and the story was very rich and motivating. It kind of makes you want to sell everything and go live in the wilderness caring for little saplings. Maybe that's the hippie in me, though I don't think I'd have the patience of the man in the film to accomplish that. It was still a meaningful concept and it seemed to grab ahold of everyone's attention, it was intriguing without being exciting which is impressive to pull off. All around I enjoyed it  and it was a lovely film. 

The Street

I really liked Caroline Leaf's film "The Street." The whole concept of animating paint on glass is pretty mind-blowing to me, but more than that I was struck with how I could connect to the film. Now personally I've never had the experience of waiting for my grandmother to die so I could have her room. However, when he walks through his house at the end, and it's all full of family members either chatting or crying, it did sort of transport me back to when I was little and one of my great grandparents died. As the young boy walks through all the rooms filled with people I just kind of thought 'oh, I've been here before. I've been the kid who knows there was a death but can't really grasp it, watching all of the family mourn.' So I guess the thing I loved was how real the film was. It was simple but raw in how it depicted life. I think that's one of the beautiful things about film in general; how it can display different situations or moments in life and the way that can connect to or affect people.

Born Again - Josh Garrels

Below is a link to a pretty well done animated music video. Plus the music is by Josh Garrels who is rather fantastic. I really like the style they used for the animation.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBWeRK-j0Hw

Beginnings and Endings

So I'm still stuck in the world of the fairytale. Something I found interesting was the idea of beginnings and endings. Often the differences between fantasy stories and the stories of real lives is how they begin and how they end. There is a part in the book Inkspell where the main character is recalling something her father said:

    "Stories never really end, Meggie," he had once told her, "even if the books like to pretend they do. Stories always go on. They don't end on the last page, any more than they begin on the first page"(45).

Maybe I'm talking crazy but it seems to me that we rarely begin at the beginning in stories. Often we are introduced to a character by being given a brief description of who they are and the world they live in. Every once in a while a story will begin with the characters birth, but usually we come in partway through their life and rarely do we stick around till they die.

Frequently in books and movies whether or not they end happily or sadly depends a good deal on where you stop in the story. Similar to how we don't usually begin at the beginning, we rarely find ourselves ending at the end. Cinderella and Prince Charming get married, and unless you watch the 2nd or 3rd Cinderella movies (which I wouldn't suggest) that is the end of their story as far as we know. You don't see what happens after 'the end.'

The difference with life is that it's beginning is always at birth and it's ending always with death. Death is the end for us. And gosh that sounds morbid but I'm just trying to point out that if death is always the end, than why do people get so hyped up about happy endings? Doesn't that point to some deeper part within us that knows that death is wrong and longs for things to be set right?

 As Christians we know that death isn't the end...that we can die but we can't be destroyed, in a sense. And isn't it quite fascinating how we are all caught up in God's story, all characters in His book of the world? Another interesting thing is that if it is ongoing, and like in that excerpt from Inkspell up there the book may end but the story goes on, than the end of the world isn't the end of the story.

Ok, I'll be done now. 'Scuse me for rambling. Terribly sorry if I confused anyone, just some thoughts.

Fairytales for 'Grownups'

I have a story to tell you. Once upon a time I went to a dentist appointment. Like most normal people I was dreading the visit but it took a turn for the better. My dentist's assistant was a very friendly woman probably in her 30's. We got to talking and connected immediately over kids. I'd been a nanny for three children under the age of 7 for a year, and she was a mother of two young girls. She told me about how she'd read children's books to her daughters most nights, and she lit up talking about that time spent together. We both laughed at how we loved the opportunity we had to watch kids movies and read children's books. It was obvious this woman enjoyed the books just as much if not more than her kids. At one point she quoted the entirety of her favorite children's book from memory, and the love she had for this simple story was contagious.

After the reading for this week I'm sure no one was arguing that children's books are just for children. However, I wanted to share a real life experience of why I'm sure fairytales are still for grownups.

Why Christians Need Art

Some Christians don't really seem to find art necessary or even advisable. I know several people who are especially wary of portraying Christ or God as a visible image because this would put God in a box. Worse yet we could conjure up this inaccurate view of God in our minds and He could end up looking like the famous but unrealistic Jesus painting. *gasp* Idolatry! Plus art in general is rarely beneficial for the Christian to view. 'Secular' art such as movies, music, or film often are filled with trash and there are few things worth partaking of. It is safer to leave God out of art because the idea of art is often in some silent and some spoken ways associated with godlessness. God is not present in movies where sin is portrayed, even if there is a unique and beautiful storyline, because repentance and redemption
were not shown. It's a good idea to leave God out of art, and even better to leave ourselves out of art.

The question discussed in class yesterday was do Christians need art? My question would be: how could we not? I think we lose something very beautiful and vital to a certain aspect of our faith if we leave art out of it. I understand the hesitation with portraying God, I see why some would think it's dangerous but there are so many different portrayals of Jesus and I don't think anyone has claimed to create an accurate one. Even though we can't create an accurate picture of God that doesn't mean we don't gain something from trying. God is a Creator and He made us in His image. We have been created to create, in a sense. If we ignore that I think we'll miss out on a great avenue to connect with the world and those outside of our faith.

Our creativity will only expand as we are introduced to new methods and ideas and we'd lose some of the most mind-blowing and interesting if we ignored non-christian media. I liked it when Don Hudson said "The only effective denial of God is silence; even art that denies God cannot deny God." Basing what we partake of by whether or not it has a 'Christian' label is honestly quite ridiculous. Do we not trust God enough to keep our faith intact when we encounter challenging ideas? Maybe their are some limits we need to set for ourselves but I think its unwise to rule out non-christian media entirely.

Ethics of Elfland

"We have all read in scientific books, and, indeed, in all romances, the story of the man who has forgotten his name. This man walks about the streets and can see and appreciate everything; only he cannot remember who he is. Well, every man is that man in the story. Every man has forgotten who he is. One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self more distant than any star. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God; but thou shalt not know thyself. We are all under the same mental calamity; we have all forgotten our names. We have all forgotten what we really are. All that we call common sense and rationality and practicality and positivism only means that for certain dead levels of our life we forget that we have forgotten. All that we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that for one awful instant we remember that we forget."

I loved this quote and it made me think of another by G.K Chesterton from his other book Heretics on pg. 89: 

"Humility is the thing which is forever renewing the earth and the stars...The curse that came before history has laid on us all a tendency to be weary of wonders. If we saw the sun for the first time it would be the most fearful and beautiful of meteors. Now that we see it for the hundredth time we call it, in the hideous and blasphemous phrase of Wordsworth, "the light of common day." We are inclined to increase our claims. We are inclined to demand six suns, to demand a blue sun, to demand a green sun. Humility is perpetually putting us back in primal darkness. There all light is lightning, startling and instantaneous. Until we understand that original dark, in which we have neither sight nor expectation, we can give a hearty and childlike praise to the splendid sensationalism of thing....The man who destroys himself creates the universe. To the humble man, and to the humble man alone, the sun is really a sun; to the humble man, and to the humble man alone, the sea is really the sea. When he looks at all the faces in the street, he does not only realize that men are alive, he realizes with a dramatic pleasure that they are not dead."

I think the 'remembering' Chesterton talks about in the first paragraph I mentioned is tied closely to the humility he mentions in the second. And I think it is only through humility that we can really see the world through the eyes of a child; and see the fairy tale of it. Also because we are talking about fairy tales and G.K. Chesterton, just one more quote from him about fairytales:

"If our life is ever really as beautiful as a fairy-tale, we shall have to remember that all the beauty of a fairy-tale lies in this: that the prince has a wonder which just stops short of being fear. If he is afraid of the giant, there is an end of him; but also if he is not astonished at the giant, there is an end of the fairy-tale. The whole point depends upon his being at once humble enough to wonder, and haughty enough to defy. So our attitude to the giant of the world must not merely be increasing delicacy or increasing contempt: it must be one particular proportion of the two - which his exactly right. We must have in us enough reverence for all things outside us to tread fearfully on the grass. We must also have enough disdain for all things outside us, to make us, on due occasion, spit at the stars. Yet these two things (if we are to be good or happy) must be combined, not in any combination, but in one particular combination. The perfect happiness of men on earth (if it ever comes) will not be flat and solid thing, like the satisfaction of animals. It will be an exact and perilous balance; like that of a desperate romance. Man must have just enough faith in himself to have adventures, and just enough doubt of himself to enjoy them."
-Orthodoxy pg 114 

I wonder if there's more to wonder.

I really loved this week's chapter in Buechner's book on the Gospel as Fairy Tale. I especially liked the top of page 78 where he says:

 "You enter the extraordinary by way of the ordinary. Something you have seen a thousand times you suddenly see as if for the first time like a looking glass over the mantle or the curtains of the bed."

It appears to me he is bringing up the idea of wonder. Wonder - I think - is for a moment losing our blindness to every day miracles. It can be the moments we are floored by breath-taking views like sunsets or mountains. Wonder can also be caused by seeing the beauty and detail of the ordinary. Sometimes it is just realizing how much complexity and creativity is put into one single second of the universe.

The funny thing is that it isn't the world that changes in these moments of awe. There is not one thing on this earth that is dull or unimpressive. Anything you think you can point at and call boring I dare you to take a closer look at. There's a quote by someone and - sadly - I can't remember who but it goes like "There is no such thing as an uninteresting subject, the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person."

Now I know the world isn't perfect. Obviously the Fall dealt a serious blow and even the beauty here is flawed. It can be dark and cruel sometimes, but though it is flawed it's still beautiful.

So if I'm not talking crazy and there are others out there who agree with me on this topic of wonder, I pose this question: Why are we so often uninterested in this fascinating yet frightening world? And what breaks in during those moments and causes us to wonder?

won·der

ˈwəndər/

noun

1. 1. 

   a feeling of surprise mingled with admiration, caused by something beautiful, unexpected, unfamiliar, or inexplicable.

   "he had stood in front of it, observing the intricacy of the ironwork with the wonder of a child"

   synonyms:

   awe, admiration, wonderment, fascination; More

verb

1. 1. 

   desire or be curious to know something.

   "how many times have I written that, I wonder?"

   synonyms:

   ponder, think about, meditate on, reflect on, muse on, puzzle over, speculate about, conjecture; be curious about "I wondered what was on her mind"
2. 2. 

   feel admiration and amazement; marvel.

   "people stood by and wondered at such bravery"

   synonyms:

   marvel, be amazed, be astonished, stand in awe, be dumbfounded, gape, goggle; informalbe flabbergasted "people wondered at such bravery"

"Chaos vs Control"

 I've really enjoyed discussing both comedy and tragedy in class. It's interesting to me how they aren't really separate things, but you sort of have to have one to have the other. You can't really know you are sad unless you've been happy before, and vice versa. 

Now I'm hoping I don't get too far off topic here, but.... something I found interesting was that people are addicted to control. They want control of God by stripping Him of emotions so He can be safe and predictable. They want control of their circumstances, to avoid tragedy and pain. They want control of others so they are never offended or challenged. This love of control is almost comical in and of itself, when one realizes just how helpless and small we as humans are. I posted the link of an article below, written by Jon Foreman called 'Chaos vs Control', he sums it all up rather nicely and I highly recommend reading it. 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jon-foreman/chaos-vs-control_b_7243662.html

Masks

In the chapter The Gospel as Tragedy from Buechner's book, I thought it was interesting how he talked about the way people tend to avoid tragedy. Joy is an essential part of the Christian faith, as Buechner says "Joy is at the end of it, after all." But he makes a key point that it is at the end. Something must come first and I think that is facing the realization that our world is broken, and that we as humans are broken.
   People wear masks. We hide the hurt or pain because it makes us vulnerable; and there is nothing more terrifying than vulnerability. We try to pretend that we are stronger than we are. Authenticity is rare. It's hard to be honest about ourselves and our struggles. Our problems and the worlds weigh so heavily it is easier to avoid them. It's easier to pretend. But the fact that it's easy is exactly why we shouldn't do it. Pretending the problems don't exist won't fix them.

Here are a couple different poems on the subject: and an illustration I did to illustrate my point. ;)

If you go outside at night,                                                      Underface
After the world has gone to sleep,      
You can hear the planet sigh,                                         Underneath my outside face
Under the secret it can't keep,                                        There's a face that none can see.
And the wind sings different tunes,                               A little less smiley,
To all the ones you hear by day,                                    A little less sure,
As though it's choking on the words,                             But a whole lot more like me.
That we're all too afraid to say,
And I wonder at the problems,                                       -Shel Silverstein
We've tried to melt inside it's core,
Whether it's packed so close to bursting,
That it can't hold many more,
For how can we see it's weakness,
When we've not known something so strong,
And if it weeps and we can't hear it,
Does that mean there's nothing wrong?

-Unknown (can't find author but if anyone does lemme know)

MichaelaSnyder DMA 115

Hi all!

I'm Michaela Snyder and a freshman here at Huntington University. I am majoring in animation as it is something that fascinates me and I'm passionate about. I love a wide range of movies but that excludes chick flicks. My favorite films are ones like Inception that make you stop and think. Making movies is something my sister's and I did growing up, writing and acting in our own shorts. We had a blast and it's something I've loved ever since. I am an artist, or an artist wannabe - something like that. I like to draw, but work mostly with charcoals and pastels. I grew up in Van Wert, Ohio, a small town you've probably never heard of a little over an hour from Huntington. I was homeschooled, and yes there were days I did school in my PJ's. It was great. The whole classroom and professor experience is very new to me, but I've enjoyed it so far. I'm looking forward to this class, especially the first few weeks because I love stories and storytelling. I'm also a bookworm. Give me a rainy day, a cup of coffee, and a good book and I'm happy. Last but not least music is another love of mine. My group of friends back home were all pretty musically talented and we led worship together a lot at church. I like most genres of music, but folk is pretty high up on the list. And now I will stop babbling because that basically sums me up.

                                     

                     (Pastel I did yesterday when I had some free time)