The Brand Spanking New Facebook Page!

It's here, guys!

Stepping up my social media game at last.

I have created the official (use that term as loosely as you'd like) Matt's Musings page. If you find that you're enjoying my ramblings on, or if you'd like to be a part of the conversation of the day, feel free to hop on over onto your Facebook, search for Matt's Musings Blog and show that "Like" button some love.

Or, to make it easier, click the caption under the creepy literal Face Book:

I know how tempting it is to just stare, but just click here and unveil

the treasures that lie beneath.

I will soon be setting up a Twitter and possibly a Tumblr account to compliment the blog as well, so keep a sharp eye out for that! :D

Quick post

This is a quick follow up to yesterday's blog entry, where I discussed my desire to bang my head against a table when I read about animation news. Well, last night I found out the direction Universal thinks the industry should be heading...

Watch JonTron's review of this cinematic CG masterpiece if you don't

understand what the problem is here.

Yeah. That.

Anyway, I'll make an actual post later in the day, guys, but right now, I just... why, universal, why...

Animation Critique #1: The Problem with Pitching

Oh hi there!

I don't believe I heard you come in.

If you've read all of my posts up till this point, you might guess that I have a deeply-rooted passion for animation. Perhaps you might have deduced that I aim to make a career out of animation, if you are so clever. So, as I heard from a great leader I had the pleasure to be under while I was in the Army, "Professionals read professional things." As such, I try to keep my thumb on what's going on in the animation industry - for better or, usually, for much much worse.

This is usually what I end up doing when I 

read about that dark, confusing place.

I mentioned in my SCAD retrospective post that I've pretty much came to the conclusion that if I'm going to make animation a career in a fashion that won't make me hate my life 25 hours a day, I'm going to have to go independent. Why? Well, a lot of reasons, but one of the main, telling reasons for my conclusion comes... well, I'll let you listen for yourself. I credit this Cartoon Brew article as where I had originally found this video.

5:28 - 5:54

For the uninitiated, the talented woman speaking in this video is Lauren Faust of Powerpuff Girls, Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, most recently My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, and nearest and dearest to my heart, Cats Don't Dance fame. Here, she is making a point about the pitching practice that the mainstream television studios are, and probably have been, using. If you missed it, I will quote: "(studios) will really like the stories and really like the characters, but than tell me, 'We don't want shows for girls.' They were attributing the poor performance of the shows to the gender of the target audience instead of the quality of the shows." Hm... maybe this is why most people in their 20's and up will say "Cartoons were better when I was a kid."

Pictured: The creative process studios use to churn out animation.

If you read the original argument, the debate it fires up is the uphill battle for girl-centric animation. To be perfectly honest, I am representing Team Switzerland in that particular fight, because I believe that if you have a good story with good characters, it shouldn't matter if it's girl-centric or boy-centric. Now I know what you're thinking - "But Matt, why than are you inserting your thoughts on this video?" That's a very good question, boys and girls.

The quote I referenced brings up a highly frustrating fact of life if you are a person who wants to bring your animated ideas to the big, small, or mobile screen: you have to march into a big, gray room and throw yourself, and your concept, at the mercy of a board of executives who are less interested in filling their timeslots with entertaining animation that brings something for every viewer to enjoy, and more interested in selling product or filling a demographic need. I don't remember exactly where or when I read this, but I actually read that one of the big studios actually brings in a representative from the merchandise department who can shoot down an idea because it won't sell enough T-shirts or stuffed animals or whatever the hell else.

0:24 - Couldn't have put it better myself, Yogurt.

To sum up my frustrations, what we have here is what's supposed to be an inherently creative industry, full of suits who are more interested in making a buck and satisfying either demographics or advertisers... maybe both... than actually making good, quality animated entertainment. I think that this is part of the reason that many famous figures within the industry have taken to IndieGoGo and Kickstarter with their ideas. After all, on the Internet there aren't any suits standing between them and the people who actually want to see creative work. And personally, I don't want to work myself up the ranks in a studio where I'd be involved with a bunch of films that nobody really wants to make just to have my ideas shot down because they don't match the piece of pie they want to fill their charts with. I don't have the time, money, or patience to do that.

That's about the jist of this post, though, without beating the dead horse for too long. I think I might make this into a "series" of sorts, speaking my mind about the ups and downs of the animation industry in my perspective. Definitely feel free to comment on what you think, I'd love to get some conversation going about this, and I think for the next post, I'll discuss a movement in animation that I'm looking forward to seeing progress, titled "Hullabaloo." Until than! :>

Where did DDR go?

Hi there.

Glad to see you could make it.

I have a couple of things on my mind tonight, so without further ado, I just want to jump straight into the gunk. 

First, I want to talk about something that's been near and dear to my heart since I was about 15 years old. If you are reading this in the future, or have never stepped foot into an arcade anywhere between 2002 and 2012, you'll probably have no idea what I'm talking about.

Does this stainless steel sweatbox look familiar to you?

Of course, I'm talking about Dance Dance Revolution, or as it is colloquially referred to, DDR. If memory serves, DDR was introduced in Japan (of course) in about the mid to late 90's. It was the perfect culmination of fast-paced music that's easy on the ears... sometimes..., a "dancing" mechanic for people who have the rhythm and dancing prowess of a potted plant (me), and the thrill of "This is a video game, not exercise! Hell yeah!" It was such a huge hit in Japan that, sure enough, it was imported right here in the US of A, and going to the arcade has never been cooler. Or more healthy.

Running tracks, however, took the biggest hit for this. They were quickly

converted to airport runways as the demand for Euro dance music with cardio skyrocketed.

I was introduced to DDR when I was a freshman in high school... more specifically, I was introduced to the PS1 version, when (in my humble opinion) publisher Konami had any kind of interest in publishing quality dance simulation games for home consoles in the United States. It's pretty safe to say that I fell in love almost instantly... I grabbed my own copy of the game as soon as my limited teenage funds would allow (mine was the Xbox classic "DDR Ultramix") and I spent just about every night destroying the $10 dance pad the game featured improving my dance skills.

Before long, my dance skills were so on point, I was

ready to hit the club. Alas, my age prohibited me from doing so.

But the home versions are not what's on my mind tonight. I want to focus on the money-gobbling arcade machines that many of us were more than happy to feed and / or crowd around. 

I had the unusual privilege of living right down the street from one of the only 2 arcades in the one-horse town of Augusta, Georgia... at the time it was called Funsville (when it was actually fun, in an ironic twist of fate, before its name changed). Funsville had something quite unique that, even back at the height of DDR's popularity in the US, I have not witnessed elsewhere: it had not one, not two, but three machines freaking side-by-side, each giving the opportunity for 2-player dance-offs. That's right, those financial genius tycoons at Funsville gave 6 people the opportunity to play at the same time.

"Ha ha ha, I can just smell the money... and

the outrageous amount of body odor... rolling in!"

Needless to say, this is where I spent a lot of my summer days. And living in humid, humid ass Georgia, I would brave 100+ degrees walking for about a half hour to the arcade, where I would proceed to play about $5 to $20 worth of change I manage to scrape together on DDR, than taking my tired, weak, sweaty body right back into the sun on the way home. Honestly, looking back, it's a small miracle I didn't die a lot of those days.

Truly, those were the good old days. Than, around 2007, something terrifying happened. And it wasn't just the previously-named Funsville that saw this disaster.

I went to arcades across different states (being in the Army helped this a lot), and I noticed that either DDR machines just began to break down... I'm talking arrows sticking or just not working, screens dimming, you name it... or machines just removing the machines altogether. Just recently, I went inside the movie theater right down the street from me to apply for a job and one of the last machines I've been lucky enough to play on in town was taken away. This leads me to wonder... what happened? 

I can only speculate... one of my theories is that people just got sick of playing on dilapidated machines and the money started running dry, so rather than trying to repair the machines, they just had them taken out altogether. Maybe it just cost too much money to maintain the machines.

Alternative theory - arcade goers got sick of that one centralized

area that generally smelled of a gross high school locker room.

Whatever the case, DDR machines have all but vanished in most places, at least in the US. Personally, I find this fact a little bit disheartening. All jokes aside, DDR was a highly unique dance game that, for awhile, managed to bring a lot of people together, helped a lot of people lose weight and get into shape, and wowed players and spectators alike. For me, personally, DDR beings back a lot of great memories, and I for one am going to miss the almost seizure-inducing strobe lights, the deafening volume of some of the greatest songs I've ever heard, and the feeling of both pride and noodley-legs at once.

... well, I can at least kind of recreate the experience, as I happen to have in my living room a nearly-indestructible steel DDR pad, a dedicated laptop with Stepmania installed, and the internet to access pretty much all of the songs that my happy feet have the desire to acquire.  

Living in an apartment complex, however, slightly stunts

my experience.

I recognize, though, that not many people have the pleasure.

That's it for tonight though, guys... tune in tomorrow, I have another thought I want to share with you that I'm not going to bog you down with here. Until than! :>

SCAD - A pre-Senior Year Retrospective

O Alma Mater

So, I know most people will probably never see this or care, but if you do have any thoughts about what I’m going to say, feel free to share.

For those of you who don’t know me, I served in the military for 6 years to help me get to the next step of pursuing my dream - working for a big cartoon studio, making a name for myself on TV and pitching an amazing animated feature that I will one day hopefully take home an Oscar for. You might say that I had stars in my eyes on my first days of school at SCAD (or, the Savannah College of Art and Design, for the uninitiated). I had big goals, definitely, but I knew where I wanted to go and how I wanted to get there. 

Almost immediately, on my first quarter, I was exposed to the good, the bad, and the ugly about SCAD. I had three classes (a full-term at SCAD), and each professor was completely different from the other. The good - My Drawing I professor was amazing and really cared about challenging people who had drawing skill and mentored the people who were falling behind. This is the standard that I have come to expect all of my SCAD professors to try to meet, which thus far I’ve had mixed results with. The bad - My Western Art I professor, I am convinced, did not give a fuck about his job or what he was teaching. He was not engaging, and he made learning the course load a chore. I haven’t had way too many professors like this after that, but the fact that SCAD hires professors that are obviously entirely flippant about their job is alarming, to say the very least. The ugly - Design I. Oh my fucking god. This particular professor made class unnecessarily difficult, and it seemed to make him happy (?). He contradicted his own instructions at every turn, he made sure the entire class knew when one of his students did something he didn’t like, and this old boy made no bones about picking favorites. Long story short… this class made my very first quarter of SCAD a disappointing experience (as I said on the class review), and this professor still holds the title of the worst instructor of any class I’ve ever had in my entire life.

Don’t worry, guys, this is not going to be a detailed listing of my experience of all of my classes. I wanted to give you guys my first taste of what SCAD was like to set the tone for the rest of this post.

In the past 5 quarters since my Fall 2012 class, I’ve had one other professor who has demonstrated the same amount of concern for his students to understand the course, and actually learn / improve on their skills as my Drawing I professor: that would be my Intro to 2D professor. I learned an immense amount from his class, and I look forward to having his mentorship for the remainder of my time at SCAD. I’m happy to say that my worst experience has stayed with my Design I professor, though there was one other class that came close… that came from my Design II class.  I learned a hard lesson about some SCAD classes after my Design II quarter, one that I hopefully should never have to experience again: if you don’t have the money to get the top-quality supplies you need immediately on hand (and by this, I mean your Pell grant or any other aid money you’re getting had better not have a glitch affecting when it hits your bank account), you will either fail, or come dangerously close, and no amount of trying to explain this to your professor will save you. I digress, though… through it all, I’m just happy to have made it through, even if sometimes it was by the skin of my teeth.

Being an animation major, though, the most useful and pertinent lessons I’ve learned through my SCAD experience have been through my major curriculum. Among those lessons have been the fact that I have no skill in 3D modeling or animation, and the farther I stay away from Maya, the better. Dead serious. There will be no 3D work in my demo reel, it’s all terrible. I knew from the beginning that I wanted my focus to be on 2D animation, and going through (most recently) Intro to 3D Animation reaffirmed this. 

In spades.

On a more serious note, though, I feel that all of my animation classes up to this point have given me a fair grasp as to how things move and how to make appealing and believable characters on screen, and this is probably among the more important lessons you’ll ever learn if you want to pursue animation as a career. It’s not an exaggeration when I say that you learn from the best at SCAD, most of them being veterans from Disney and Dreamworks. I cannot lie when I say, and express concern, that a few of the professors have no problem flaunting this fact in a way that does not drive a useful point home and only serves to intimidate or just show ass. Regardless, though, they know their stuff, and when they are teaching, you’ve got to pay attention, because you will learn from them. 

The most important lesson, and I think the one that has completely altered the direction I’m going to take my career, was recently learned during the past spring quarter. Conversation about the notion of 2D animation being dead and 3D animation becoming the primary vehicle that moves the studio filled the halls of Montgomery Hall for a short while, and it wasn’t long before it reached the classroom. (this is where what I said about coming to SCAD as a starry-eyed dreamer shooting for a career at a major studio comes in) Among the uncomfortable, disturbing revelations was the doubt that 2D animation would have any major precedence in features or TV for the foreseeable future. The most optimistic prediction that came out of these conversations was a possibility of full revival in about 50 or 60 years. I had a feeling before hand, but I knew for a fact right then and there that the industry and I were going in two different directions. Accompanied by the fact that I had attended last year’s SCAD career fair where I got to talk to one studio but spent most of the time calming myself down before I had a claustrophobic panic attack, knowing that only a handful of the people who were around me would even be considered for a job, along with seeing that my style of animation / drawing doesn’t fit the mold of what was popular and in demand, I realized that any notion of pursuing studio work will be a waste of time, talent, and money.

In a nutshell, I realized that if I’m to have any meaningful work, I will have to venture forth as an independent animator, which is a scary notion… one certainly brand new to me, not until recently having been worried that I don’t have that “thing” the major studios are looking for… mastery of Maya… the cool, popular Adventure Time / Regular Show / Steven Universe / Gravity Falls look and storytelling… I don’t know what exactly it is, but I know that I don’t have that “thing.” I’m both okay with this, and a little annoyed about it at the same time. I’m a mixed bag of feelings about the direction of the animation industry. Oh, and about winning an Oscar… ha ha ha, they have have that bullshit until someone who gives a fuck about animation will come in and judge work. Do your homework if you don’t know what I’m talking about.

In summary… I don’t know if anything will change this year while I’m working on my thesis film. I do know that I’ve met a lot of awesome people that I will hopefully keep as friends and contacts for the rest of my career / life. I’ve met a lot of amazing artists, and I received mentoring from the best, most talented professionals in the world. As of now, though… all of the plans I thought I had together when I came fresh out of the Army to SCAD have been derailed because of all that I’ve learned. I’ve become a bit jaded to the notion of industry work before I even got in… and it’s a little bit of a frightening notion.

I still have my senior year to go, though. Who knows? some bit opportunity might come to me (doubtful). We’ll see. I’ll just do my best and try to figure out the best plan for me from there. See you on the other side!

First Post :P Hi.

Hello all. :>

So, uh, yeah. Happy day for finding your way here!

I'm so happy to see you. See?

My name is Matt, and this first post is a little bit about me. Be warned, I'm exceedingly bad at introducing myself.

I like to think about myself as a mixed bag of things. First, I'm an Army veteran - I served for 6 years as a Multimedia illustrator... fancy talk for a Graphic Designer (heh heh). I completed a deployment in Iraq in 2009, nothing exciting - I promise.

Pretty much this most of the time.

I separated from the Army in 2012 and started pursuing my dream career: animation. I started as a sophomore at the Savannah College of Art and Design, or SCAD for short. I've learned a bunch about art, drawing, animation, and most importantly, the direction I want to take my career. I've made a bunch of amazing friends and connections along the way, as well!

I'm not going to sit here and say my life is perfect, and this is far from any kind of full autobiography, but I'll let you guys learn about me more as I continue posting here! :D

What kind of things will you see on my blog?

My blog will be about a lot of things - I'll post crap about the things that happen in my life that I feel like sharing with you guys. I'll post about animation things I think are awesome. I'll post about Disney-related things. I'll post random crap I think is funny. Art. Pizzazz. Things. Stuff.

There, I made a start.

I hope you'll stick with me for this little journey!