This summer, I was fortunate enough to be a recipient of the Laspa Center’s We Act grant. The Laspa Center for Leadership is dedicated to supporting Scripps College and seeks to improve gender equity by providing resources to its students, as a historically women’s institution. The We Act grant emphasizes supporting a student’s underfunded experience, and transforming their ideas into action.
I have been wanting to make an animated short film for quite a while. As someone who hopes to one day work with video games and digital animation, it is quite important to have a portfolio with lots of different animated work. However, animation and coding are both very time intensive, and have a steep learning curve. I feel so grateful to have had this summer to dedicate to improving my skills, as I was able to accomplish a quite ambitious project!
This project not only allowed me to create an animation much longer and more detailed than any I had previously worked on, but it also allowed me to code and complete my first video game. I decided to try my hand at coding using GameMaker Studio 2.0, a free-to-use video game development engine. I learned how to make a sprite sheet, how to animate these sprites depending on user input and create parallax backgrounds, how to add sound effects and physics so that the weapons and enemies react to objects the way you want them to, and more. Through the power of YouTube tutorials, and with a lot of trial and error, I was able to learn so much. It was important to me to have an interactive aspect of this film. As the emphasis of the We Act grant is putting your ideas into action, I wanted everyone who watched my film to be able to jump right into it themselves. The video game also has slightly different ending dialogue, depending on how many “anxiety monsters” you destroy. I like the idea of each viewer having their own unique experience with the game, thus adding to the interactive aspect.
I have always been an avid lover of video games and animation, but have rarely seen myself in them. As fields in tech are highly male dominated, as well as most gaming communities, the people who are creating and consuming this art form are, for the large part, straight cis men. Furthermore, gaming communities have a reputation for being closed-minded and misogynistic. Much of casual gaming jargon is rooted in hate-speech, and bullying. I think it is a shame, as these digital worlds have played a huge part in my own experience growing up queer. When the world around them is unaccepting, it can be essential for a young queer person to have a reality in which they can experiment, appear however they would like, and imagine more radical realities.
I also hope to submit this short work to some animation and film festivals, which is a very exciting prospect. I look forward to seeing where it finds its way, and I am glad to be able to continue sharing this project throughout the year. This video is a tour through what it felt like to grow up and feel different from the world around you. To be a child, and filled with anxiety, but not having the tools or words to express it. To spend a lot of time alone, as your parents struggle with invisible monsters you cannot possibly comprehend. To talk to your pet rabbit, and feel like he is the only one listening.
I am incredibly grateful to the Laspa Center for supporting this project, allowing me to further my technical skills, and explore themes which are so close to my heart.
Personal Reflection
When I saw that the We Act grant was being offered, I thought of a project which I have been wanting to bring to life for a while – a short film. I couldn’t quite picture what it would be about, but I knew it would center around growing up with my pet rabbit. He passed away last summer, which was the start to a tough mental health year. I found myself coming face-to-face with a lot of emotions I had been avoiding. Seeing these emotions so clearly, I was able to see how many of them were familiar. Feelings of intense anxiety, an inability to sleep, shaky hands, an impending sense of doom – it reminded me of being a child, and struggling with the same things.
This is what forced me to start thinking about how difficult childhood truly can be. My parents did not discuss mental health with me much. Particularly amongst my parent’s generation, it is rare to see discussion of uncomfortable emotions encouraged in family dynamics. Though my parents showed me a lot of love throughout my childhood, life can be deeply complicated, and there always seemed to be a lot going on when I was growing up. As a child, I did not I didn’t know why the dark scared me so intensely, or why my hands shook when I would raise my hand in class. In hindsight, I can see a lot of loneliness and anxiety in my younger self. A desire to reach out, but an inability to know how. My older sister graduated high school when I was twelve, soon after my parents’ divorce. Both of my parents worked, so I ended up spending a lot of time alone during those years. I wanted to explore these feelings without being too focused on feeling bad for myself, or complaining about a childhood which was very privileged in many ways. Rather, I wanted to express empathy for my child self, as well as the millions of other children who grow up with that feeling of isolation. Childhood is seen as a time that is carefree and easy, but my childhood felt more fraught and anxiety-inducing than even adulthood!
When I got BunBun as a pet, it was the first time I had really felt like I had a friend that was just mine. I don’t quite know how to describe how much he meant to me growing up. He made me feel like everything was going to be okay. Sometimes, he would run away, and my mom and I would be wracked with worry. But he would always come back. He seemed to be proof that life was beautiful. When you are so worried about the world around you, and your parents are also quite stressed, seeing a creature that is just happy to be here is so important.
I was initially hesitant to apply for the We Act grant, because I didn’t know how important my project actually was. It feels strange to spend so much time analyzing what a rodent meant to me. But the more I pondered it, the more I thought about how much I would have loved to see something like this as a kid. It is strange to be a child. To be a young girl, scared of everything, and deeply anxious of the way she is perceived. To watch your family fall apart, move away, and fall into depressions of their own. To feel strange compared to the other girls at school – you can’t talk about liking girls, or video games with them. Not in middle school, where stepping out of the norm feels terrifying. I wanted to show people it is okay to suffer, make mistakes, and be deeply uncertain. I am happy with the work that’s resulted from this summer, and I feel that I conveyed many of the strange emotions I was feeling as best I could. Though I am nervous to show it to others, I hope that people connect with it, and see what I was hoping to get across. Having the opportunity to work on this has meant a lot to me.
Link to the short film: https://youtu.be/icSvcBdT_JQ
