Well, 2016 has indeed been very generous so far, but let me just say 2015 was a very fulfilling fruitful adventure into the unknown as well. Since moving from Chapel Hill North Carolina back in January 2015, life has been a varied experience of ups and downs. Looking back that life that I was living with my wife and three daughters had stunted my growth creatively. I had become content on living an average life, in a small town, playing a role. It occurred to me that if kept in a small bowl, my ideal quality of life would remain small. But, if I had more space to interact and explore, my ideals could double, triple or quadruple its size. That's perhaps the reason for my feeling a need for growth; I'm intended for larger things. After all, a giant man can't have an ordinary-sized life.

With that said, 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 the 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.

The Ins and Outs of Camera Structure on "Inside Out"- Patrick Lin

Creating Believable Characters - Ricky Nierva

Creating Story with Improvisation - Christian Roman

Editorial- Keepers of the Movie - Kathy Ringgold

Staging the Camera in Real World Settings - Adam Habib

The Elements Needed to Create An Animated Short Story - Matthew Luhn

Visual Storytelling| Compositing & Staging - Nate Stanton

I'm looking forward to August o1, 2016 when I'll have the chance to sit in on what I viewed from the outside, last year.