1. Production Post:  Getting Started

Hello world!  I’m one of those masochistic humans trying to be an animator. Here are my musings as I’m trying to figure out what to do for my senior project.  This is really stream of conscious-ish, so apologies for the lack of focus.
I’m interested in things like philosophy, Greco-Roman myths, dark fables/stories, and plants (hm, one of these is not like the others).  But I don’t really know where to get started on any of those interests.  When I was little I used to make my own books with crayons and printer paper, so my family has maybe a hundred of these printer-paper books.  They’re like tiny glimpses into the life of a seven-year old—tiny little half-stories about simple, random stuff.  I have no idea what drove me to make so many, only that I did.  Hm, I wonder if my current self met my seven-year old self whether it would be like two strangers meeting.  Anyways, my instinct for storytelling has continued into my adult life, and now instead of crayons I work mostly on the computer.  Except I have about 1% of the drive I did when I was seven.  I hesitate a lot more, probably because my printer-paper books took about an hour to make, and my current projects take tens of hours.  Also it’s so hard to find the right idea... and sometimes I worry that my old motivation to create things is fading.  I've heard some great artists talk about just NEEDING to get their work and ideas out there, NEEDING to make art.  Some people would say that a real artist needs that drive.  Well, whatever to those silly snobs.  
What all of this just means is that I should be finding people who DO have that need and the knowledge to intelligently talk about something.  I want to be their mouthpiece—the channel for their ideas to reach the public—only with visuals.  I want to develop my communication skills to figure out what people are really saying, what they really want, and find the most elegant solution for them based on that.  However I think that's a pretty hard-won skill and will only come with practice..

Wait, back to ideas for senior project.  Maybe I could reach out to a professor of history or philosophy and ask them if they want an explainer video?  That’s not a bad idea…


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