I’ve been watching cartoons ever since I was a kid, haven’t we all? I was not only just simply watching them however, I was inspired by them, at the age of 8 I started to create my own comic books with my own super heroes, it had a story line (a particularly bad one, but it still had one) it had good guys and bad guys, awesome fight scenes, and to top it all off each comic had its very own limited edition poster including all of the characters and ‘greats’ colouring in skills. I believe that’s a key point in my life that made me, me. I have stories to tell, fantastical stories and all I want to do is to share them, and I want to do that in the coolest way I know how…. well am learning how…. Animation!
I’ve dreamed of becoming an animator since very early high school, around grade 8-9, which was when I discovered Anime. A new style of cartoon that actually takes the characters seriously, that actually had allot more depth than allot of movies did. Anime’s such as Death note, and Code Geass, where the characters don’t just fight over who is stronger than the other, but have a very psychological battle between each other amazed me. To be able to make writing so dramatic, only Death Note could achieve such a feat.
I later discovered the animation course at SAE along with other institutes such as JMC during a careers expo at the Sunshine Coast Uni while I was in grade 10, why I decided on SAE at the time I’m unsure, the others were substantially cheaper and on the page offered the same thing, but I was set on this SAE. I continued to improve my drawing skills as much as I could, using any and every excuse to draw for my assignments at school. during grade 12 I managed to turn 4 of my assignments into drawings and 2 into animations getting high B’s and A’s for each respectively.
There was one incident that at the end of one my assignments, I was cartoonifying my friends face, my poor little laptop overheated to the point where the battery blew up and literally caught on fire destroying everything and corrupting the files on my USB, the two places I had it saved. After sorting out the fire I tried opening it on my Mac, the Photoshop had become a red, digital mess, it was due the next day, I went to work and used the corruption as the theme and changed it completely.
After I had graduated from school, I stumbled upon SAE summer series while looking at the prices, there was something like 2 spots left for animation and signed up straight away. I came down to Brisbane for 3 days staying in a hotel and basically had my mind blown for 3 days consecutively. After that it was sort of a waiting game, I tried countless times to get 3ds max but I don’t have a computer that even has enough power to install the thing, so I’ve decided to buy a new computer I just don’t know which one. I very recently moved down to Brisbane and as if by fate where I’m living is literally the building next to the hotel I stayed in when i came for the summer series.
I’ve continued to draw and I’ve been trying to improve but it’s hard when you have taught yourself everything, the only feedback you get is “that’s actually really good.” and thank you but what’s wrong with it? I want to know so I can get better. No-one will tell you your creations are bad to your face because it’s not morally correct. So I continue to make the same mistakes which drives me insane.
Some of that may have accidentally turned into rambling, sorry about that it happens allot, for those of you who were like TLDR here’s a summary:
I was inspired by games and anime to become an animator and would often turning my school assignments into drawings/animations. I found out about SAE at a careers expo and came down to try the summer series out, loved it so much that i moved down to Brisbane and am now studying here full time, and somewhere in there my computer blew up.
WHOOPS THE EXACT OPPOSITE OF WHAT I WAS MEANT TO WRITE…. I’ll leave it in there to see what you think but yeah… take 2….
*Name and describe a piece of media or creator of media that has inspired you to study in your chosen field. This is not a personal narrative about your decision to study at university, but rather an attempt to reveal your specific interests in your field. For example, you might like anime, but what is it about anime that you like? (it might be the design, narrative, story world, characterisation, production techniques, story-world, a combination of one or two of these things, or something entirely different). Use media examples where appropriate.*
The number one thing that I look for in a TV show, anime, game, movie and generally any piece of media is a story, a world with it’s own history, culture, laws, rules of physics, etc. once that has been established I look for an excellent plot I truly believe both of these are the most important point of creating an animation. If you do all the concept art and character design before the world and plot it most likely won’t make any sense and throw the audience into confusion, for example there are an infinite amount of anime that are based in school, but if you just draw up a high school girl and expect them to simply fit and then create a world that is based on another planet with an alien race in the far far future where there are literally no females. There are of course exceptions, and sometimes they are the best, for someone to go and break all the rules can, if done very well be a masterpiece.
An Anime that has inspired me the most is RWBY, RWBY is a very unique anime series, Created by Monty Oum a genius that successfully made a very compelling story set around four teenage girls, Ruby, Weiss, Blake and Yang and their path to become huntresses. The obvious and most notable thing that’s unique about this series is that it is a 3D anime, a genre that is known for being very difficult to do well, most struggle to get off the ground. It’s clear to see that as the team gain more experience the quality of the animation goes up as well. RWBY is an American made anime, produced by RoosterTeeth who also created the longest running web-series Red vs Blue, which is where they found many of the voice actors in RWBY.
RWBY shows continuous improvement, they are constantly making the series a much more polished piece as they go, Volume to Volume they make huge leaps in the quality of their models etc. demonstrating that practice makes perfect.
Volume 1 on the right and volume 4 on the left, you can clearly see huge visual improvements.
Another thing that stands out to me about RWBY in comparison to other anime or other media in general is the time and effort that Monty and the team put into building the world RWBY takes place in (Remnant not Earth) and even created a mini series, each episode discussing an element of that world in further detail, this covers things like the reasons that certain people have certain abilities, political stand points, the law, old legends and folk lore and much more. This series makes the world seem so much more real, Monty stuck with these laws and rules he created for this world such as the color naming rule, a law passed down to encourage the future generations to be the embodiment of creativity. Monty Oum realised that fan’s started to create their own original characters (OC) but weren’t following this rule and posted this everywhere on the internet that he could.
I came to SAE to learn how to animate, so that one day I too can create a complex world and tell it’s stories like Monty Oum has. To create characters that deal with the problems and hardships that living in that world comes with, to quickly be able to capture an emotion with the way they move/emote/express is the ultimate goal at the end of the course.
References:
Miscellaneous, (n.d.) Red Volume 4 vs Red Trailers Comparison Shots. Retrieved June 5th 2017 from http://www.redddit.com/r/RWBY/comments/55pjcj/red_volume_4_vs_red_trailers_comparison_shots/
Miscellaneous, (n.d.)web animation / RWBY. Retrieved June 5th 2017 from http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/WebAnimation/RWBY
Miscellaneous, (n.d.) Beowolf. Retrieved June 5th 2017 from rwby.wikia.com/wiki/Beowolf
Miscellaneous, (n.d.) Color Naming Rule. Retrieved June 5th 2017 from rwby.wikia.com/wiki/Color_Naming_Rule
Zuce, (n.d.) Light Writing Skills. Retrieved June 5th 2017 from gifsoup.com/view/3934946/light-writing-skills.html
Cameron McLean 
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