Okay so, having to live alone after eighteen years of living dependent. People who have enough money are fine with that, they can pay for whatever the heck they need in order to GET to wherever they want to get to... but what about us less privileged? I mean, I'm not saying I'm dirt poor, living in the streets poor... We used to be close to that a couple of years ago, but my brother was able to find a programming job after college that has actually been helping us, sort of. Underpaid, but it's been helping out. At any chance he has, he tries to get me what I need. Like, I now have an iMac because I'd been sort of complaining about my net book being too slow with Illustrator, which I need for class (I shan't tell how I have the program.) He used the money he was saving up to buy a car. Our parents have been bickering at him about him getting himself his own car, occasionally stopping to remind themselves that that is no simple matter and that when you buy a car, you are obligated to pay for insurance, 'cuz, you know, who would like to get involved in an accident and not have any money to pay for medical bills or whatever lol WHICH YOU STILL HAVE TO ANYWAYS LOL but w/e um yeah.
I go to this magnet art school that is really ****in' full of itself, always bragging about how it's one of the tops schools in the ~NATION~ like seriously, if you were, you wouldn't be piss poor and making the kids have to buy their own ****ing art supplies because that shit is expensive and most of the time we don't even use it all. Not ALL of us are painters, not all of us are sculptors, and not all of use are photographers. My family has spent so much ****ing money on me because of this school, money that we can barely afford but we HAVE to because I had the IMBECILE notion of pursuing art after highschool, specifically animation, which, by the way, my school does NOT officially advocate... Sophomore year in my graphic design class, my teacher saw my drawings and was like "lol you better not draw your little anime for me lol"
I. Do not. Draw. "Anime". It is impossible to draw "anime" as a single frame or illustration because you just ****ing claimed that I draw animation (the Japanese term for it), and as far as I can logically tell, ONE DOES NOT SIMPLY DRAW ANIMATION, you ****ing ANIMATE, gdi
I know she meant that I can't copy the "anime" style, that is what she meant. Like hell, "anime" is not a STYLE, it's a mother****ing ART FORM. "Anime" is the Japanese term for animation. W/E TANGENTS LOL TL:DR She claimed that my illustrational style was not genuine. When I was in elementary, sure I copied line for line from this disgusting 'how to draw manga' book. The EPITOME of ignorance! How old was I, six! But I loved drawing it, and soon after, I didn't need to rely on the book anymore, I was drawing on my own... In middle school, I got more serious about drawing because of the best art teachers I could possibly ask for. My middle school wasn't the best, in fact, it was in TERRIBLE conditions when I began there. All the light-skinned people were always mocked and teased and bullied by everyone else, who were dark... I had friends, yeah, but even they referred to me as 'white', and it bothered me because I didn't see myself as white, I do NOT identify with 'white' people, I identify with Hispanic people, Hispanics from Europe, dark hair and eyes, because that's the origin of my specific family, I guess. Based on things idk, both my parents great, great somethings were from the same orphanage anyway.
Wow wtf okay so my art teachers, my fifth grade art teacher was a boss, and he saw in me what he had been WAITING to see in his students for YEARS. He is an artist himself, I believe. But in any case, my close group of friends and I were the 'art' kids in middle school, coincidentally, we were all in the gifted class. We were all picked on for this as well, regardless of color. My black friends would be referred to as 'white on the inside' or not 'genuinely black'. Get the **** out? Is there anything wrong with being black and NOT SUPPORTING A STEREOTYPE ABOUT THE COLOR OF YOUR MOTHER****ING SKIN okay I'm done with that.
My sixth-eighth grade art teacher, which I'm so glad she's now not teaching anymore, she's doing this artist residency thing at Miami Beach which is like, rich people lands, and she's getting a sort of humble commission there <3 She was an artist herself. And she TOLD us that if we wanted to draw cartoons we needed to draw from life in order to understand proportion and to make things make sense. Understanding how things work in life gives us the knowledge we need in order to be able to exaggerate and abstract FROM life in order to create lively cartoons with emphasized proportion and believable weight. She called them 'manga' because we talked about it to her like that, haha. But what I appreciate about it is that SHE herself tried it out! SHE herself drew her own cartoons with us to get us to create our own stories and comics. The class she had with us was like her special class, we had this student teacher bond kind of thing. She told us all we should try entering the school I'm in now and I actually got in (which I was teased for, too, "You got in because you're white lol", when in fact, another student got accepted to another art school that is like leveled with mine, and he was Haitian, so... there was no reason for that :///// )
And now, THIS school, is the least supportive piece of shit. Well, now that I'm a senior, and I apparently /matter/ now, my graphics teacher told me that she is proud of where my illustrations are and that they don't look like 'anime' anymore. I feel the same way, I HAVE come a LONG ASS way, when I think about it, I'm actually quite proud myself! But the thing is, my style was NEVER CONSIDERED 'anime' by the others, or by people on dA lol, my style has always had this more western boldness to it. I feel like just RECENTLY, I've been melding more sleek, feminine aspects of Asian art, specifically the graphic elements of Japanese prints and those kinds of lines, with my previous style, abstracted from life... I USE flat line and color and gradients to create illusions of depth while still remaining graphical in depiction. THAT is thanks to being in the graphic design program for three years, having to work that kind of stuff into my personal drawings. And of course, the foundation life drawing classes and whatnot.
Now when I think about that, I think about college. I'm a senior. And I should be applying to colleges and whatnot. I have, my big one being CalArts. But... you know how expensive that shit is? VERY ****IN' EXPENSIVE, okay. But Disney FOUNDED that school! It is THE school for animators! But I don't underSTAND how anyone that is NOT rich and from Valencia would even have the CHANCE of ATTENDING that school! Not only do I have to pay tuition and supplies, I have to pay an arm and a leg for room and board and food, and then the flight TO California, which is literally the OTHER side of the U.S. for me, I live in Florida, gdi. But god DAMN, I REALLY want to do animation, no, I NEED it... it's the only way I ever really DO feel accomplished, genuinely, and AM willing to accept criticism and actually go and try to make a BETTER animation. I love to take criticism for my illustrations, but it's not as exciting for me as when I am told about what I can improve in my animations for them to be better.
Another thing: my school, DASH, does NOT give me time to work on the things that matter... at least it hasn't given me any time. Here, I can admit that this is partly my fault. I get tired of working on art, art, art all the time that I go home and I end up drawing for myself in my own private sketchbook, or I go home and spend HOURS on tumblr lol, or do UTAU things. But I wish I wasn't so compelled to work for a GRADE as opposed to work on a legitimate portfolio piece for COLLEGE like an ANIMATION. I did one last year for my film elective class, but last year was JUNIOR year, the year we ARE PUSHED to work as MUCH as we can to use all THAT work in our SENIOR portfolios. So ****, all I did was some shitty little flipbook animation, not the most I felt I could achieve, but the most I tried to achieve, the most I could. It got into the school's film festival and it made me happy to hear the audience's reaction after it was finished. I never felt so accomplished... I sort of cried because it was MY animation played out LOUD and shown BIG on this beautiful theater downtown, and everyone loved it... luckily the animation was super fast and people couldn't tell that in the last flipbook (I used three), the character had no pants or his antennae lol It's on my YT and I still haven't fixed it but **** the police xD time to move on to other projects to improve.
But the more I think on it, the more I feel like it's a big waste of time and money to even go to college... I can go to my state school, it's cheap as all ****, but from what I heard from my mother and my brother, both went there, it's pretty rigorous itself. I'm glad, but I'd like to have time during college to develop my animation...
And then I ask myself, "why the **** am I getting so worked up? Why in the gods name are we made to work so hard to get somewhere in society when WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE ANYWAYS! In a couple of million years, will ANYTHING I do be of ANY importance in the ****ing universe? My god, I bet NOT. EVERYTHING will be forgotten. And that is the biggest fear of mine... to forget and/or to be forgotten. And what sucks is that I can't enjoy life as I wish I could because I can't ever stop thinking about these things... people forget about me all the time, and I really can't say it's bad on them because really, I try NOT to stand out. But sometimes, I really do wish I could be appreciated every now and then, which I am sometimes, but ugh I feel so selfish and disgusting saying that...
![[K] of Honor](/data/medal/1_1406930084l.jpg)
<3 Just like the time of the Renaissance masters. <3