Kayee Au: All I want to do is draw pretty pictures

We meet again cyberworld!

I think I've pretty much given up on convincing myself that I can do a good job of regularly updating my blog, maybe once I graduate I will be better at living a more consistent life? But then again, I'm a pretty spontaneous person so je ne sais (that's about the extent of my French.) Shout out to my friend Cauchy for reminding me that I need to keep this blog alive :)

Graduation is really starting to close in on me. It's strange to think that in 2 months I will be out of USC, and floundering around in the world somewhere. By floundering, I really mean that I will be joining Intervarsity's Los Angeles Urban Project, and then living in Tanzania for 6 months where I will be an animator/artist for Pamoja ministries, but between then and now I still have so much to prepare. And so much of that involves having minor identity crises every other day. Leaving Los Angeles for such a long time is becoming more of a reality for me, and I am starting to realize how much I really, really love this city. This video of celebrities/random regular people in Hollywood, for example, makes me really emotional and homesick for a home that I haven't left yet.

Where was I going with this? Anyways, I think a general theme in my life is that I have a tendency to aim in a certain direction, and hope that life will land me somewhere in that area. There was some quote like "aim for the stars, if you miss you'll land on the moon," or something? That seems like a pretty accurate description of my life right now.

I really would type more but unfortunately I'm starting to find myself in more and more of a time crunch. My last post in December closed with my re-figuring out how to redesign my story for the ground up. That may have sounded crazy at the time, but in the long run I am so thankful to my 2013 self for having the balls to scrap my old story and start over. I love my story- it's not perfect, but it definitely says what I want to say way better than my old one. And it's one that I can connect to so much more. If there's one thing I learned through this entire process, it's how ridiculously difficult it is to come up with a good story. Daniel Sousa, one of the academy award nominees for the animated short film said that in order to be an animator, you have to be a kind of masochist. (Someone who takes pleasure in their own pain.) That sounds so disturbing, but it's so true! For the moments when I am animating or working on my film, there is literally nothing more important than giving my lifeblood to these little moving pixels on screen. It seems stupid and totally irresponsible of taking care of myself, but I guess it's just a poison all film students have to take at some point.

So anyways, here are some rough passes of what I have done so far. We still have a long way to go, but I've decided to be an anti-social hermit during spring break and shut myself up in the film school... aside from some occasional trolling...