Letter of intention

Hello! My name is Kersti Lundqvist and I would like to apply to The Animation Workshops Character animation course.

I have always enjoyed animated movies, animated tv shows and comic books. To watch and read them gave me great joy both as a child and as an adult. They inspired me, fueled my interest in drawing and gave me a reason to continue improving. I loved watching shows like Samurai Jack, Kim Possible and Fosters home for imaginary friends because to me they were intelligent, had fun styles of drawing/animation and were exciting adventures. Before I could read my dad would read Carl Barks, Donald Duck comics and the adventures of Tintin to me and my siblings, giving me incentive to later read more like them on my own. All of this has given me many great memories and inspires me even now. today I continue to find more inspiration to draw from people I follow on different websites. A few of them are WhiteFoxCub and huanGH64 on DeviantArt and rcdart and verticalart on Tumblr.

For all of us who draw it's something we have always done. Most people draw as children but stop as they get older. Some of us neither can nor want to stop drawing. I want to draw and enjoy drawing, just as I do now, for the rest of my life. I also think that, no matter what might happen, I will always come back to drawing.

By the end of my gradeschool years I knew I wanted to draw cartoons, to contine to create and improve. That's why I wanted to find a upper secondary school where I could, coupled with the basic classes, get the chance to improve my drawing skills and learn how to use that to tell good stories. I found Eksjö upper secondary school's animation course which I then studied at for three years. There I learned the basics of animation and learned how to use Photoshop, After Effects and SAI which I practiced with on my own and still primarely use to paint/draw on computer. I had two dedicated teachers and my classmates/friends were as motivated as I feel that I am. Everything we learned there led to us getting to make our own short films as our finals project.

After studying animation for three years I am now sure that I want to work in this industry. I have learned along the way that what I really want to do and what really inspires me to draw is the possibility to create and express my fantasies, daydreams and ideas through drawing. I want to make a living out of working with animation and entertainment, while also being able to create and experiment to my own content in my freetime. With this in mind,I have presently become interested in working as either a concept artist, to draw out ideas and concepts for the project you're working on, or a storyboarder, to decide how a scene will play out visually. I want the chance to know more about these professions, but also learn what other possebilities there are. I want an education that prepares me and helps me in a way that when I graduate I feel confident in what I want to do and that I can do it.

One day, I want to work on projects/movies with good writing and good pacing, stories that are fulfilling both to the creator and the audience. I love studio ghibli's style of movie making. You can tell how much they care about emotion, feeling and character. They make Wonderful films that almost always make me cry and feel close to home. I think that is because Studio Ghibli's priorities are to make good quality movie's and that their animators/staff are happy with their work. In the documentary The kingdom of dreams and madness, Hayao Miyazakai said when asked in the documentary "The kingdom of dreams and madness", ”What if the studio fails?” that ”The studio will fail, it is inevitable”. To make alot of money was never his motive. The motive was to earn enough to continue working with projects that he and his colleagues believed in (and to pay the bill's, of course). This is how I would like to lead my career. As long as I earn enough to live I want my focus to be to work with projects that I enjoy, regardless if they fail financially.

I use Studio Ghibli as my favorite example for what I htink competent storytelling should look and feel like, but I think Japanese animation overall is better at this than american animation. Just recently I saw a japanese short film, 3:36 min long, that felt charming and very well put together called "Noitamina poullette's chair". The animation had only muscial accompaniment. The short summary is that it's about a girl growing up with her unusual chair, but I reccommend taking a look for yourselves. It can be found on youtube.

After I started studying animation and filmmaking more seriously I also learned how different movies, both animated and live action, are paced today compared to about 20 or 30 years back. An old black and white movie like, for example, one by Jaque Tati or  an animated movie like ”101 Dalmations” by Disney takes it's time. I feel like that is something I see less and less in animated films that are released today.

Two new movies that I recently saw, Storks and The secret life of pets, are two examples of movies that I feel have this "lack of calm" in common. I feel that the following can be said of both "storks" and "the secret life of pets". whenever a joke or gag was made, a character would just continue to talk over it or the story would move on immediately, giving me barely any time to process it. This, is what it felt like someone working on the movie had been thinking, "The audience MIGHT think this is funny, but if they don't they'll get bored, so we are just going to have the characters keep talking so that no one even has time to consider if it's funny or not". I felt I barely had the chance to process what was being shown to me, which was a shame because, while I didnt think much of "the secret life of pet's", there were scenes and moments in "Storks" that I thought were pretty good and that could have been fun if they been given proper development. For example, There is one scene were one of the main characters is stuck in a room so she entertains herself by pretending to be several people, which then turns into an office drama. There are fun ideas like that throughout that are just sort of drowned out.

A movie that I like but I still see a problems with that hold it back is BigHeroSix. In Big Hero Six there is this very important subject of losing someone and dealing with the aftermatch of their death, and while a family member dying in a disney movie is not at all uncommon, Big Hero Six graces a good moment that could have been great if given time to be still/silent but interupts it and ends it just like so. Hiro, the main character, finds out who was responsible for his brothers death and heads home with his robot Baymax after making an almost fatal mistake in a fit of vengeful anger. When they get back home and after Hiro tries to deny his pain in vain, Baymax gets through to him with something Hiro's brother left behind. I like this scene, but I would have loved it if Hiro and Baymax had spent more time in silence, mourning and contemplating. Instead I barely get to feel anything before Hiros friends and team comes to find him and it's immediately off to find the bad guy and stop him. It's as if nothing happened because I didn't get to feel any real emotional impact from this scene. This is something I want to be aware of and avoid in my future work.

Along the way I have had my share of personal issues that I have had to face, in order to keep on developing my drawing skills, and some of these I feel I´ve have overcome. My animation teacher told me that when faced with adversity, as we try to improve, we have to work with and understand it in order to get better. I can get nervous and stuck when trying to work while being around other people, or when faced with situations I can't find immediate sollution's to. I am aware of this and have tried to get better at this for the last two years. I feel that I have gotten better but sometimes I stumble. I participated briefly in TAW's classical drawing summer course in 2016 and I thought I was prepared mentally, but I ended up leaving early. Me leaving had to do with me feeling trapped and having nowhere to go and I know that the situation would be different if I were a student with my own living space.

If I am accepted to TAW I will finance my education with student loans from ”CSN-centrala studiestöds nämden” in Sweden.

I have applied to TAW because you stand for and teach in what I love most and choosen the character animation program because I think it would suit me best, considering what I do know about drawing, animation and how I want to further my education. I also know that you are one of the best schools that teach animation and that you have clear connections to the proffesional reality and industry that I want to be part of.

With my letter of intention follows my portfolio. It is a true representation of my ability, what I like and what inspires me. I know that the competition is great and I have doubts about if what I can do is enough. At the same time it's been a conscious choice to draw ideas and choose pictures for my portfolio that represent what I think is fun and inspiring. I hope that you, by looking at it, can see what I´m aiming for, how I want to get better and that you see someone who can get better.

http://tawportfolio2017kl.blogspot.se/

Optional

Perspective

Movement

Storyboard