VFS CA83 - Day1 - Welcomes and Pranks

Oh my fucking god, I'm a child in a candy shop with a pocket full of money that I found on the street.

No, seriously.

The Classical Animation section at Vancouver Film School has GOT to be THE single most awesomest, fantasmagoricalest place I've ever had the privilege to set foot in on the entire planet.
I can't quite believe I'm actually here now. It's actually happening.
"Yeah, it felt like a dream this morning." Malaika, one of my classmates very accurately commented on Facebook after I'd written those exact words in my status.

And the best thing? It's my home now. Or practically will be soon. Apparently in about two to four months time I'll be glued to my desk and probably wish I could be anywhere else but there hahaha.
But for now, I get to enjoy the amazing, earth shattering feeling of really, truly feeling like I belong, that I am exactly where I am supposed to be, for the first time in my life, learning about things I love and exhilarating in every second of it. How many people get to say that?
Honestly if this year isn't going to be by far the best I've ever had in my life then I shall henceforth be called "Normengard the Luckless" or something equally stupid of your choice.

And the very, very, very best thing?
In this place of awe and wonders I am surrounded by some of the funniest, diverse, fantastic, sweet, brilliant, kindest, nicest, geekiest and most loveable people I have ever met.
And they are ALL like ME. MUAHAHAHA! 

No, seriously, what I mean is that they are all super passionate about what they want to do and what they expect of this school. They are all giddy with excitement, they all have pretty much more or less very similar interests to mine.

Example: I was saying "Itadakimasu" one day at lunch which is kind of like "have a good meal" in Japanese and practically everyone knew what I was talking about. I just love it.

I think we were also probably all more or less outsiders at one point or the other in our lives and I feel like you can really see that in the way we treat each other with kindness and genuine interest and behave respectfully towards each other and get excited about each others geek attacks haha. Because I think we all feel more like we belong now than we ever did before.
Or at least I feel that way. Like I'm with my crowd now. :D
Finally.
No judging, no being made fun of, no feeling like people think I'm super weird because I luuuuurve manga and anime, or because I sit up until 5am marathon watching Avatar: The Last Airbender, or because I have seen and can probably quote from almost every single animated movie that ever hit the Cinemas (and then some), or because I have pretty much every single Disney song in my I-tunes Library as well as several Final Fantasy soundtracks and lots and lots of Jpop and Kpop and they happen to be mixed into my playlists and come on randomly between D&B and Jazz and Folk and Rock and French Hip Hop and I don't know what other style of music.
Because they are all like that. Not exactly like that of course, but we are all people that are crazy about some thing or other that, at least in high school, was considered "not so cool" or "weird".

Ahhhh this paragraph is way too long. Anyway - point being: I love these guys and I'm so happy to be part of this class and everyone in this whole school. <3

Moving on:

So today we had Orientation whiiiich kinda speaks for itself really. We got to our new classroom/future permanent residence (that joke went past several times...) BUT IT WAS JUST SO AWESOME.

I felt like I was 6 years old again on my first day of school. We even got a Schultüte in the form of a (mega stylish btw) rucksack full of lots of epic, useful goodies for heavens sake! <3 VFS might be fucking expensive but they seriously know how to make you feel like it was all worth it before the hard work even starts. I mean we even got a freaking umrella and a mug! And a sketchpad and lots of other materials like pencils, eraser, coal, sharpener, scalpel, scotch etc and several books among which was the extremely useful but expensive and unfortunately already in my possesion being "The Animators Survival Kit". 

A must-have for every animator. That Rucksack full of stuff was the best "welcome to school" present they could have given us. We all practically vanished into it the moment we got it. (As in we stuck our heads in so deep it looked like the Rucksacks were eating people haha)

À propos "welcome" hahaha.. So after our orientation we had our first class "Animation Assisting 1" in which we starded doing our first 4 "inbetweens" of geometrical shapes.

I said "started" because although this might sound like an easy task it was really not and most of us didn't finish it in that block (1 block = 3 hours) and we had to leave our sheets uncompleted and go to the IT orientation that was held in a different room.


Now, while we were away... THIS happened:

"BE PREPARED" - image of scar with a troll face LOL and I found a smiley face on my animation disk underneath my papers

Cory Evans is the guy that teaches Perspective. We haven't met him yet but this says: "St. Cory, Patron saint of perspective and composition" which sounds promising hahaha 

TERM 2 WILL KILL YOU! this is my personal favourite actually 

although this is pretty awesome too haha

I want to meet this person. she/he is epic.

DON'T SLEEP! XD

And this next one is such a treasure <3 I'm sorry it's so big but I HAD to show it in original size yo you could read all the hilarious (and scary) little gems of wisdom :D

 I reckon this is another teacher hahaha it's fucking hilarious either way.

So apparently, it is somewhat of a tradition to prank-welcome the "babies" that come in every 4 months. The newest batch of victims so to speak haha - I seriously can't wait until we get to do this. We'll have to think of something good... MUAHAHAHAHAHA 

Anywayyyyy~~~~ EPIC DAY! and now sleep. I have a Life Drawing class to attend to at 9am tomorrow and OHMYGOSH it's already past midnight AAAAAAAAHHHH! 

good night,

pice out,

a very happy Jill :D

PS: "VFS CA83" = Vancouver Film School Classical Animation 83
(CA83 that's our "name" since there are new takes of students coming in every 4 months in our course it doesn't make much sense to call them by the year so rather they number us. So "CA81" who seem to be the ones who pranked us since it reads that on the board would be the Classical Animation guys who are already here for 8 months and about to graduate. well in 4 months they will anyway...)

Orientation Day, Temporary Housemates, New Friends and Brave

What a crazy awesome exciting day!

So... Remember how I said a Helén the swedish girl was coming over on Sunday to crash on my couch for 2 weeks and I hadn't told my mom and was super worried she'd be angry? well of course I totally worried for nothing. My mom reacted so cool I felt like a total fool for making such a big deal out of it in my head. Typical.

Helén is here - and she is brilliant, of course. I mean come on, she actually has a Darth Vader pyjama. complete with cape. It's so geeky it blew my mind with its epicness. I still can't quite comprehend how she doesn't strangle herself in her sleep with that thing around her neck but I think it's fucking awesome. As predicted, we have tons of stuff in common and it's so much fun having her around. I'm really looking forward to these 2 weeks with her. :D

We got up at about 7 am, I had a little help from my lovely Josh who woke me up with a skype call and I thought it was really funny because I "took him with me" while I was getting ready - making breakfast, brushing my teeth etc haha. Helén probably thought i was a bit nuts carrying my laptop around the place with me during my morning routine of trying hard not to fall asleep.

We arrived on time (oh wonder) at the Scotiabank Theatre where Orientation was held and by that time we were both pretty excited about pretty much everything.
We got our welcome folder and name tags and then went to get our student visas copied, had a bit of a chat with several of the advisors we had had only email contact with up until now and then managed to round up quite a lot of our future classmates before heading in to the theatre at 9. It was all pretty great.
The "show" was so amazing, I can't even describe what it is like to actually, finally, feel like you're exactly where you're supposed to be, surrounded by people who are just as excited and passionate as you are and to get a first glimpse of this marvellous adventure ride we are all embarking on these coming 12 months. The whole theatre had such an amazing energy, people were clapping and whistling and laughing and shouting excitedly and it was just SO FUCKING BRILLIANT how happy and motivated everyone seemed to be. I cannot wait to get started.
After the presentation (that almost made me cry it was so epic) we all got our mug shots done and I tried to collect everyones email address but it was such a chaos I think I missed a few people :(
We got to meet lots of students from across all courses and it was just so much fun. Vendor fair was ok too, most of the things were a bit useless but at least Helén and I got an appointment at a bank the same day to set up a bank account.
We then went to grab some food with a pretty big group actually - including someone from Writing and from Digital Design which was super nice. After that some people had to split because of several different things but some of us went down towards stanley park to chill a little and we even did a little "Hi, my name is" round which was kind of hilarious because we got distracted after each one and were geeking out about random stuff in between but we did manage to make a full round in the end.
Helén and I had to leave at that point because our bank appointment was drawing near, but everyone left with us in the same direction.
On the way back we actually completely spontaneously decided to go to the movies tonight and watch Brave. We managed to organise it just barely but we managed.
Helén and I went back to the apartment and changed because it suddenly got really hot, went for some food and then chilled a bit at home while I was setting up everything for our Facebook group and sent everyone all the emails I managed to get - not without complications due to various handwriting disasters. lol
We met up at the movies at 7:30 pm (seriously the day passed soooo quickly) and it was my second time watching Brave actually haha but it was epic nontheless. I particularly enjoyed how we all stayed in our seats for the entire credits as if it was the most natural thing in the world. Just goes to show we are all of a similar mind haha

Just got back and I apologise for this fairly lame account of this amazing day but it's like midnight and I am so ridiculously tired from all the excitement I can barely keep my eyes open.

And it was just the beginning... the promise of a year I shall never forget. <3 <3 <3

piece out,

Jill

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry - a book review... of sorts

This is not really a book review per se. As in: it is not a classic book review. It's not trying to be. It's more of a collection of feelings and thoughts that lingered with me after having read it. It's not going to be structured, it may be confusing at times, I'm not trying to be professional or to adhere to any sort of "rules" of what a book review should be like. It's probably not going to be useful in any way for anyone, I simply have the desire to write something about this book. The pinnacle of what I could hope for is that it may be interesting for some people to read and maybe, possibly, if I'm very lucky, make them want to pick up this wonderful piece of writing in the next bookshop.
The only thing I will actively try to do is not to spoil the reading experience for those who haven't read it.
so... enjoy... I guess? :D

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry - by Rachel Joyce

Now, where do I begin...
What a beautiful book. I literally couldn't put it down either, I read this 319 page edition within 2 days and the only reason I didn't manage in one was that I bought it at about 10pm, had a two hour skype session after reading the first few chapters and had to go to sleep about halfway through because it was about 2am if not 3 and I had to take a much needed sleep break.

It's difficult do describe it somehow, I can't quite seem to find the words. I think a little introduction of sorts may be needed. I will simply quote the summary from the inside flap thing of the cover (you know what I mean..) because there's no way I could summarise or rather introduce it any better:

"Meet Harold Fry, recently retired. He lives in a small English village with his wife, Maureen, who seems irritated by almost everything he does, even down to how he butters his toast. Little differentiates one day from the next. Then one morning the mail arrives, and within the stack of quotidian minutiae is a letter addressed to Harold in a shaky scrawl from a woman he hasn’t seen or heard from in twenty years. Queenie Hennessy is in hospice and is writing to say goodbye.

Harold pens a quick reply and, leaving Maureen to her chores, heads to the corner mailbox. But then, as happens in the very best works of fiction, Harold has a chance encounter, one that convinces him that he absolutely must deliver his message to Queenie in person. And thus begins the unlikely pilgrimage at the heart of Rachel Joyce’s remarkable debut. Harold Fry is determined to walk six hundred miles from Kingsbridge to the hospice in Berwick-upon-Tweed because, he believes, as long as he walks, Queenie Hennessey will live.

Still in his yachting shoes and light coat, Harold embarks on his urgent quest across the countryside. Along the way he meets one fascinating character after another, each of whom unlocks his long-dormant spirit and sense of promise. Memories of his first dance with Maureen, his wedding day, his joy in fatherhood, come rushing back to him—allowing him to also reconcile the losses and the regrets. As for Maureen, she finds herself missing Harold for the first time in years.

And then there is the unfinished business with Queenie Hennessy."

I think this book is wonderful for so many reasons. 

The writing style is light and fluent and for me, somehow has a charming innocence about it which contrasts some of the heavier themes and the actually pretty serious underlying storyline and makes it all the more moving because of it's simplicity. It is also undoubtedly intentionally written this way.

There are no overly complex descriptions or explanations, no extreme over-dramatic-ness, just a pure and simple feeling of being, in a way. It's not purely factual, not without emotions, not objective and yet.. I don't quite know how to say it, Rachel Joyce doesn't "overdo it" which is exactly right for the story but still she managed so easily to grab my heart in her hand, hold it tenderly and let it fly in some places and then make it heavy and squeeze it super tight in others.

She wonderfully manages to describe feelings and situations without being in-your-face obvious about it. She masterfully hints at things and lets the reader's imagination and life experience fill in the gaps and interpret some of the more ambiguous statements for themselves. She thereby displays an incredible and frankly quite impressive knowledge and insight into the human mind and psyche not only through her story and her characters but also through her prose.

Harold and Maureen have been given a perceptible voice through the way their passages are written, I immediately "got" who they are and I immediately loved both of them, despite or maybe because of their many "faults". 
I love Harold and Maureen, you can't help feeling with them, rooting for them, hoping, wishing with all your heart that they may find happiness again, that things will finally sort themselves out, that Harold will succeed in his quest, that all will be well. 

Every character, every story, every individual is so absolutely believable, so recognisable as someone you may know, someone you may have met, someone you may have heard of and yet they are all unique and special. We are all the same, but we are all unique, but we are all the same... It's one of the underlying messages and it's a rather unavoidable truth. "The dilemma of being human" as it says so well in the book... 

The story overall is so touching, so quintessentially human in both a good and a bad way, so that it will make you cringe and shake your head but give you hope and make you smile practically at the same time.
This book will make you cry and it will make you chuckle, it will make you think and consider and reflect, it will make you frown and it might just possibly make you see and understand a little bit better. 
Do not expect an easy ride because it is also scruplelessly honest when it comes to the nature of human beings, which can be hard to read because it is like the metaphorical mirror in front of your face and a bit of a wake up call for dreamers and helpless optimists like me but that is also the very thing that makes it so very refreshing and enjoyable. 

Right... and that's that! I hope that I made some kind of sense for someone at least :P 
Point being - definitely read it! It's a lovely book and a total must-read in my opinion. <3 <3 

Piece out,
Jill 

I mayyy have been a bit stupid on this one...

Mkay, so tomorrow this really sweet but probably slightly crazy Swedish girl who will be in my classical animation class at VFS is arriving and I'm letting her crash on my couch for 2 weeks or so until she can move into the place she organised for september. And I haven't told my mom yet. Reason being I'm kinda shitting my pants that she will go a little bit bananas because, errr... well, I'm letting a complete stranger stay at a very expensive apartment which she happens to be paying. whoops.

But seriously, I just couldn't let the girl arrive in Vancouver after a nearly 24 hour journey (if her's is anything like ours was) without a place to go. That Crazy woman, honestly.

We were introduced via email by my super nice VFS advisor Shannon who send me a little message saying there was this Swedish girl Helén who would like to meet up with some future class mates and if I was interested. I had actually been looking for exactly such people via facebook but had been unlucky in my search so this came as a sweet surprise.

So I shot her a quick mail saying hi and I would love to meet up and when will she arrive etc etc. It became clear pretty quickly that she and I had lots of geekiness in common (yaay) and she sounded super sweet and fun. It also became clear pretty quickly that she was a bit of a nutter (also a similarity we share) because she told me that she'd be arriving this sunday (tomorrow - 19th of August) which is exactly one day before Orientation day and that she didn't actually have anywhere to stay until september - she said she'd see if she could "shere a hotelroom with someone or something". CRAZY PERSON! So out of pure instinctive reaction more than anything else I immediately offered her to stay on my couch as I thought it was seriously unlikely she'd find anyone to share a hotel room with on the very day she'd arrive, so there.

Obvious dilemma in the mom department now, because although I don't have any doubts Helén is super awesome and although she instantly expressed extreme gratitude saying her parents were "doing the happy dance" (sooo cute) I haven't actually brought myself to tell my mom yet - who is currently not in vancouver but will be coming back on the 24th soooh... I can't get away with just not telling her. YIKES. I hope it will be fine. I think it will be fine. I just feel a bit guilty about not consulting her first as she's actually the one who is so super kind to pay my ridiculously expensive rent because she wanted me to have the comfort of living close to school and on my own so I could concentrate on my studies. I love her. She's the best. And then I agree to let a complete stranger into the place for 2 weeks. ARGH! what am I doing.

Spending the next 2 hours composing the perfect "casual and subtle but apologetic; it's fiiiine but I'm aware of the risks and the inconsiderate, rash way I acted; so, are you ok with it? and btw this really awesome thing happened (distraction tactics) ; I love you, you're the best and sorry that you're daughter is stupid" email to my mom. that's what I'll be doing. >.<"
siiiigh~~~~

let's hope things don't end this way:

piece out,
Jill

I wish someone would have told me that when I was 12

Even though I went to private school and did not get my education off taxes - this is still rather eye-opening I find.

a sculpted dog cake...

I don't quite know what to make of this. It is pretty awesome but... it somehow freaks me out a little bit too. o.O"

First off, some art I think. Then, some Random Ramblings.

Simply because, well, that's kind of what I am: An artist... of sorts. I don't really like that stamp to be honest. Tough luck if what you do is drawing, mostly. :P
Anyway, voilà my final pieces for my degree project. They are all pencil, aquarell watercolours, and a bit of gouache on Watercolour paper.

Yes, I am now a graduate of the Manchester Metropolitan University, I have a BA(Hons) Illustration with Animation. Since July 11th to be precise. The graduation ceremony was a lot of fun, and I am proud to have accomplished something of sorts. I finally finished something. I have a degree now. I can't deny that I feel pride about that. 

Society says I am a real person now. So much bullshit. It doesn't mean anything, it's a piece of paper that is somehow supposed to prove to some cretins who obviously don't know what talent is that I know what I'm doing and that I am worth employing. It's all pretty stupid, really, there are self taught people out there who are absolutely incredible and much, much more competent than I will ever be, but for some people, some, not all, no diploma equals no competence/talent/trustworthiness. 

But nevertheless I am proud to have finished it, to have passed. And studying abroad has taught me so much about life. And even though I hate Manchester (sorry guys) which is a grey, unfriendly, drug infested, rainy-as-fuck shit hole par excellence and even though I suffered in my first two years, struggling to find any likeminded creature at all, and even though I had an early midlife-crisis of sorts, I would live through it all again JUST for that 3rd and last year. That year in which I met my Schmusekater: my boyfriend Josh and all of his wonderful friends, housemates and colleagues and of course my wonderful new course mates, who accepted me into their midst with welcoming arms (so to speak - english people don't hug much, at first.) I mean of course I had some fun in my first two years as well, some good times, some fun people, some very, very few close friends in the making (one to be exact), it wasn't all doom and gloom... but... well, mainly. 

Which is probably also why my subconscious decided to fuck me over and pull that stupid stunt that made me have to sort of "drop out" for a year. Namely not write the only essay we had to write all year and not do it over summer either, which would have been my chance to get away with it but noooo. I just ignored it. I was lucky they let me back on the course at all I reckon. Anyway, got a frustration filled gap year off, finally did the stupid essay and got accepted back into the course a year later. 

And this time, I went back knowing exactly what awaited me, determined to concentrate on my studies and fuck everything else, expecting nothing at all, least of all to find Love and I was barely settled back in and suddenly BOOM! Out of nowhere I meet this amazing, charming, lovely, beautiful, kind, funny, intelligent, intriguing creature and WHAT the fuck he fell for me too. And then suddenly lots of lovely people kept appearing all over the place, most of them related to Josh's environment somehow or other and I had the bestest year ever. 

I guess there's a reason why clichés and sayings exist... 

"...when you least expect it..."

"...when you've stopped looking..."

Piece out,

Jill

Something... Something...

Here I am again. Starting a blog. Again. I have as of yet no idea where this is going to lead me or whether or not it will go anywhere at all. We shall see.

For now, this is entirely personal. Something for me and maybe some of my closer friends. Something... I don't know quite what exactly... but something selfish. Something, maybe, hopefully, creative too. Something confusing as well. Something random.  Something... Some piece.. of me.

Something where I can be free. Or will try to be anyway. Something unrestricted by necessity, obligation or responsibility hopefully. I am all too quick to burden myself with such things. Feelings of obligation to post, necessity to edit my words, responsibility to update regularly... No more do I want to be chained. I want to have fun. Blogging should be fun, not annoying. Something I want to do, not something I have to.

It will not be easy. I am all too easily tempted, I admit, to try to write what I think other people would want to read instead of what I really want to write about. Or downplay my opinions because I am worried someone might take it the wrong way. Or worry that the way I phrase things might reflect badly on my personality.

It shouldn't be that way. I shouldn't fear to make mistakes, or say something a bit weird or strongly opinionated.  The people who love me and understand who I am won't get angry at me just because I happen to say something strange and these people are the only ones who matter, so there really is no reason to be afraid. Besides, I am very aware of the fallibility of my mind or maybe rather of the fact that there are a lot of things that I simply know nothing about and I am all too happy to be proven wrong.

Time... Time is an issue too. It takes me a long time to write something, simply because I can't help being a perfectionist and trying to find the best way to express what I want to say. And I think the fact that English isn't my first language and I have to rewrite a lot several times before it "sounds" halfway right doesn't make things any quicker either. And to put it frankly: Most of the time I simply can't be arsed to sit down for 2 hours and write. This post for example, it's already taken me at least an hour to write. Yes, I am that slow. Shocking, isn't it?

So we will see where this "Something" will end up. I hope it's someplace good. :) Preferably not on the "forgotten and forsaken" shelf. That's such a sad place to be.

Piece out,
Jill