Well, let me just say 2015 was a very fulfilling fruitful adventure into the unknown. From the move from Chapel Hill, driving seventeen hours to Dallas to spend Christmas with my wife and children, to taking a forty-three-hour train ride to end up in Oakland; life has been a varied experience of ups and downs.

However, the decision to attend CCA has been well worth all the downs of being alone in a new environment. There has been no shortage of hands being extended for helping me establish a presence within the community, sans missing out on what appeared to be a three-week story session held by my college in conjunction with Pixar. This session focused on story development and storyboarding, geared towards a group of 15-20 Chinese animation students and 4-5 CCA Juniors. From my interviews those selected through the school were chosen based on their Junior project review. Further insight into the sessions program was not shared with me due to privacy.

To the department credit, it did put together a great workshop for those students around for the summer highlighting key elements to story development, hosted by Jo Rivers. It was exciting to participate in the nightly lectures from the Pixarians who came to share their knowledge with we emerging animation students.

One takeaway from the three-week series of talks was no one was documenting this moment in history. With the lurking discussion of the Oakland campus possibly closing within the next three to four, it would have been nice to have a record of the strives that the animation department took to enhance students education. Which is why I took it upon myself to utilize the skills I learned intern reporting at WUNC/NPR to get that moment archived. Below is a list of speakers I meet over the year and topics covered in their lectures.