mrcontro:

anthonyholden:

What are studios looking for? How can I get into a good animation school? What should I be studying?

I get a lot of these types of questions now and again, and I never know how to answer them. I can’t be sure of what studios are looking for, I don’t control admissions policies to schools, and I have little idea what makes for a current and relevant curriculum. There are a lot of variables in your bid for a career in animation, and it’s kind of impossible to control most of them. You must be crazy to want this job!

I find it helpful to focus on the things I can control. Among those things are your study habits and how you spend your personal time. It’s good to work hard and have goals—without them we would get nowhere. Study hard and make decisive strides towards achieving your art goals. But in the heat of that pursuit, don’t forget to go out and live your life!

If you spend any amount of time looking at artists online, you’ve probably figured out by now that there are about a million dudes and dudettes in internetville who draw better than you (I relive this realization daily). Once your have done your best to rise to their level, the only tool you have to compete with these crazy talents is your background, your personal character—is you!

Consider developing your whole self with the same raw focus and intensity that you develop a particular skill set. Get focused. Go out, have adventures. Run, jump, skin your knee, fall in love, root loudly for the away team at a baseball game, barely escape a crash of stampeding rhinos, live to see another day. Experience things big and small. Go for a walk. The world is full of wonders.

I know this advice is not particularly animation-specific, but maybe that’s for the best. At any rate, it is something I feel strongly about. Animation is great, and there are few things that I enjoy doing more than drawing and storytelling. But in order to have stories to tell, first you have to live them.

Be good, and see you soon!

PS, if you were looking for advice on draftsmanship you should probably be reading this.

Definitely worth a reblog.  

Source: anthonyholden

But the 8-hour workday is too profitable for big business, not because of the amount of work people get done in eight hours (the average office worker gets less than three hours of actual work done in 8 hours) but because it makes for such a purchase-happy public. Keeping free time scarce means people pay a lot more for convenience, gratification, and any other relief they can buy. It keeps them watching television, and its commercials. It keeps them unambitious outside of work.

We’ve been led into a culture that has been engineered to leave us tired, hungry for indulgence, willing to pay a lot for convenience and entertainment, and most importantly, vaguely dissatisfied with our lives so that we continue wanting things we don’t have. We buy so much because it always seems like something is still missing.

Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed (via beccap)

YESSS i knew i wasnt the only person out there who was making an issue out of this

My dad just explained this to me a month ago. True as fuck. 

(via baronessvonbullshit)

very tired of people defending the 8-hour workday.

(via marieyall)

(via bcfortenberry)

Source: raptitude.com

androphilia:

Life With The Hijab By Sadaf Syed

① University of Michigan’s DJ Hadeel Al-Hadidi created and broadcasts her own hour-long radio program.
② Scholars teach that Islam encourages sports and physical activity for all, wrote Sayed. The prophet Muhammad is said to have invited his wife Aisha to a foot race.
③ Nadia Afghani, left, and Nadia Chohan make up Hijabi Deafness, a Muslim punk rock/hip-hop band.
④ Michelle Yim, a network engineer, skis, swims, body surfs, rides motorcycles – all while wearing the hijab.
⑤ Atlanta-based Mariem “Punchenella” Brakache (5-5, 1KO) is a former IBA Junior Middleweight Champion, boxing coach and renowned trainer.
⑥ A ballerina and tap dancer from Texas, Hiba Awad is anxious to prove “how versatile and unique a Muslim woman can be.”
⑦ Nousheen Yousuf said the practice of tae kwon do “taught me to treat daily prayers as a real meditation, where the focus is on my relationship with God.”
⑧ Nosheen Cassim, a part-time makeup artist and full-time mother of two, was born and raised in Illinois, but has been threatened by strangers who told her to “go back to where she came from.”
⑨ No matter how different they may look from other beachgoers, Sama Wareh, left, and Aurelia Khatib believe in doing what they love, including surfing.
⑩ Asma Azim, a step-grandmother from Pakistan, has been a manager of mechanics and a truck driver for more than a dozen years. She said her male contemporaries treat her with respect – especially when they discover she can repair her own engine.

(via darrylayo)

Source: calstate.fullerton.edu

When my husband died, because he was so famous & known for not being a believer, many people would come up to me — it still sometimes happens — and ask me if Carl changed at the end & converted to a belief in an afterlife. They also frequently ask me if I think I will see him again. Carl faced his death with unflagging courage & never sought refuge in illusions. The tragedy was that we knew we would never see each other again. I don’t ever expect to be reunited with Carl. But, the great thing is that when we were together, for nearly twenty years, we lived with a vivid appreciation of how brief & precious life is. We never trivialized the meaning of death by pretending it was anything other than a final parting. Every single moment that we were alive & we were together was miraculous — not miraculous in the sense of inexplicable or supernatural. We knew we were beneficiaries of chance… That pure chance could be so generous & so kind… That we could find each other, as Carl wrote so beautifully in Cosmos, you know, in the vastness of space & the immensity of time… That we could be together for twenty years. That is something which sustains me & it’s much more meaningful…

The way he treated me & the way I treated him, the way we took care of each other & our family, while he lived. That is so much more important than the idea I will see him someday. I don’t think I’ll ever see Carl again. But I saw him. We saw each other. We found each other in the cosmos, and that was wonderful.

Ann Druyan on her husband, Carl Sagan.   (via milktree)

(via bookworm-chic)

Source: jukeun

Good Bye, Norfolk

Why am I leaving you? I’m afraid in life, Jasmine has always been drawn to the most exciting, the most daring, the most weird. There is tell of a mystical place, far north of here, called Reston. Exciting, because it contains a my childhood home and what I perceive to be my ruin. Daring, because it has the potential to lead to my future and be better than I fear. And weird, well, because I live there (again). And the craftsmen of fantasy, for ladies, gentleman, and those of you who are yet… …to make up your minds. Tonight I give you, the Kinky Boot Factory.

Well, I don’t give you the Kink Boot factory, but I love that movie and some of the monologue, with a few tweaks, ​works for this announcement. To tell you all the truth, I’d rather not leave Norfolk, I don’t want to go home. It’s my past, and maybe I don’t want to face my past and remember things, and maybe I’m afraid of figments of my imagination but I’d rather not live there again. I sometimes think of myself as being akin to a shark, I need to always be moving forward. That has not been happening these past few months and I’ve stagnated. 

In January i did produce a mini and I am always working on more comics and things but I’m not doing anything with my life. Like many graduates I haven’t found a job yet so I have to move home because I can’t afford to live here anymore. It has been an experience but I’ve always said and I’ve always known that Norfolk isn’t where I was going to stay. Maybe I haven’t tried as hard as I could to enjoy my present and make stronger connections with people, or maybe I don’t need too many close friends, but like I said before I don’t feel like I’m integral to anyone’s life so mine (and my brothers’) are the only lives that I feel will be affected by my soon exodus. ​

I’m going to be around for the next few weeks, I’m still looking for work, just not permanent work in Virginia, I need to live somewhere else. I’ve felt I needed to leave Virginia for years and there is a part of me that still hopes that will be possible soon. I mean, I’m currently dreaming of having a chic apartment  a cat and living on my own in California. In my dream I live not too far from a studio space and I work on my comics professionally. I get to go to cool things, shows and events and I am what society consideres a successful adult. My success is leaving home and being able to support myself. ​Maybe that movie will happen before long. I have known for years that Reston is not where i belong, living in Reston will be detrimental so wish me luck that I won’t be there for long and I can get on with my life. 

—-​

This has been sitting waiting until I felt ready to share this. I think I’ve told most of the people I think would care, which really isn’t that many. I don’t share every post I make on facebook but they’re are posted here, in the open, for any one to read. i don’t know who will miss me, I don’t know who values me. I feel like no one does but that doesn’t make me cry as much as how much I just want encouragement from my family. My brothers are fine, it’s the extended family I’m thinking about. ​I don’t need a stern talking to, I don’t need or want the lecture right now. I want to not feel like shit about what I have to do because I feel like shit crawling back home, my proverbial tail between my legs and can’t I just get a fucking hug? Can’t I just get some vague placating nice words and be told it will all be all right instead of being told that I was wrong and I did the wrong shit. The disappointment in their voices hurts so fucking much, but it’s not like there’s a handbook. It’s not like there are job just ripe for the plucking waiting for BFA graduates to rifle through and choose. I just want to feel like something is going right in my life and nothing feels acceptable, let along right, right now.  

​—-

One last thought, this was written at three different times because of three different emotional states. My brother came down to Norfolk the other day and took away a bunch of boxes of things. Left in my apartment is mostly trash and things that need to be taken to thrift stores and put to use. It’s all in good condition so I’m taking some bookshelves to Hope House. I just have to sift through the refuse left and figure out what’s really refuse and what’s worth to holding on to. I guess that can be said about a few different things and this entire moving situation but it feels different when it is objects and having to figure out what is trash. There are a lot of bags around my apartment that just need to be put out. i think i’ve accepted what has happened. I hope I find a job soon and can save money and move for real. I have to get some things organized at home when I get back, but if I make a nice stab at putting away some savings then I’ll be better prepared to straight up move when the opportunity arises. 

Hell, who knows, maybe i’ll be lucky and yes, I’m packing now to move north to Reston, but maybe i’ll get lucky and find a job somewhere away from here out west soon and I can really move away. That would be the bee’s knees. ​

But with this I say goodbye to you, Norfolk. It has been some years. Neither my best nor my worst years but this has been a formidable experience for me. I’ve grown from a depressed 18 year old to a depressed and panicky 24 year old over the past few years here. I’ve had experiences I never imagined as a kid and I’ve met some very special people. Most importantly, I’ve had a taste of not being in Reston. I got away and I can psychologically survive on my own away, I now just need to be able to do that financially. I’ll be back for visits when possible, and I’m always somewhere on the Internet and pretty easy to find. ​

Oh, this feels like I’m shutting down my site and not physically moving, but I’m physically moving. I’ll try to have a new thing written to post here soon.​

lesupernerd:

Once you reach your 6th Year in Hogwarts, you start to get used to all the shit.

I know people have said this before, but it has to suck to have been a normal kid at hogwarts for those years when all this shit went down and a fuckton of your classmates were up and murdered every year. 

(via dinolich)

Source: weasleyismygingerhairedking

When you grow up as a girl, the world tells you the things that you are supposed to be: emotional, loving, beautiful, wanted. And then when you are those things, the world tells you they are inferior: illogical, weak, vain, empty. The world teaches you that the way you exist in it is disgusting — you watch boys cringe backward in your dorm room when you talk about your period, blue water pretending to be blood in a maxi pad commercial. It is little things, and it is constant. In a food court in a mall, after you go to the gynecologist for the first time, you and your friend talk about how much it hurts, and over her shoulder you watch two boys your age turn to look at you and wrinkle their noses: the reality of your life is impolite to talk about. The world says that you don’t have a right to the space you occupy, any place with men in it is not yours, you and your body exist only as far as what men want to do with it. At fifteen, you find fifteen-year-old boys you have never met somehow believe you should bend your body to their will. At almost thirty, you find fifteen-year-old boys you have never met still somehow believe you should bend your body to their will. They are children. They are children.
Stevie Nicks (via tiredtalk)

(via bookworm-chic)

Source: whisperingwordsofwisdom

If I’ve learned anything, anything, getting older, it’s the value of moment-to-moment enjoyment. When I was young, all my career was “If I do well tonight, that means that Wednesday will be better. That means I can give this tape to my agent and … ” It was this ongoing chess game. And that is a really disappointing game, because when you get to checkmate, it never feels like it should. And there’s another board that they never told you about. So if I come here and talk to you, if I have an enjoyable three hours, goddamn it, that counts.
Albert Brooks in January’s Vanity Fair interview. (via fdfaumders)

(via oldfilmsflicker)

Source: fdfaumders

End of Formal Education: A Lazy Walk Through My Scholarly Life

It has been a long 19 years I the making but I’m finally reaching the end of my formal, school education.

I started school at the delightful age of 5, a bit before my 6th birthday I entered kindergarten at Terraset Elementary School in Reston, Virginia. A school designed by hippies that had partitions for rooms the school was divided into circular pods for the classroom areas of the school and the library. The front end was fairly normal shaped. I guess the most interesting design aspect of Terraset was that it was inside of a hill. They built it and then covered the back end of the building with enough soil that they were able to plant some might fine trees, honeysuckle and other plants on the roof of the building. The things you consider normal.

Read More

life: In November 1990 LIFE magazine published a photograph of a young man named David Kirby — his body wasted by AIDS, his gaze locked on something beyond this world — surrounded by anguished family members as he took his last breaths. The haunting image of Kirby on his death bed, taken by a journalism student named Therese Frare, quickly became the one photograph most powerfully identified with the HIV/AIDS epidemic that, by then, had seen millions of people infected (many of them unknowingly) around the globe. On World AIDS Day, we shed light on the story behind the photograph above that changed the face of AIDS. Read more here.
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life:

In November 1990 LIFE magazine published a photograph of a young man named David Kirby — his body wasted by AIDS, his gaze locked on something beyond this world — surrounded by anguished family members as he took his last breaths. The haunting image of Kirby on his death bed, taken by a journalism student named Therese Frare, quickly became the one photograph most powerfully identified with the HIV/AIDS epidemic that, by then, had seen millions of people infected (many of them unknowingly) around the globe.

On World AIDS Day, we shed light on the story behind the photograph above that changed the face of AIDS. Read more here.