102
Feedback… everybody’s asking about it after The BEQUEST trailer from youtube and our blog address appeared in Bryan Gorrell’s blog few days ago (August 20) from text messages to emails. Some of my close friends and new blog visitors were asking what good it did to us. Well, it’s too early to conclude anything big about it. What really matter to us is the fact that Mr. Gorrell, who’s presently on top of his blogging sensation is doing public service to the mediocre elitists and Pinoy masses with his daring expose. Somehow he appreciates our gifts and talents for animation.
Sure Filipinos are very talented, gifted and passionate with almost anything…from music, science, movies, literature, arts and a lot more you can think of. I think his important message for us is not to give up if we know we have beautiful intentions, great ideas and passion to create change. Though he’s a victim of harsh reality, this guy is one big tough soul who fought for what is right, worthy and real.
But since we’re already on the 102 post of this blog, the best way to appreciate life is to post our 102 thoughts, ideas and dreams. We hope to share pieces of our soul and the best things that happened to us along the way. Are you ready?
1. The Adventures of TASI is our very-first animated team project, a 10-minute animation that features TASI (reverse of ISAT, the old name of WVCST, our training school).
2. TASI is the statue of a man in WVCST holding a hammer that symbolizes “labor is honor” who became a little boy through a thunderstorm and had an adventure inside the school.
3. His adventures took only a day and when the sun sets, he transform back as a statue.
4. We were a bit disorganized when the time we made TASI so we didn’t follow the model sheet of TASI that’s why he had different kinds of looks.
5. This flaw is called “off model” in the standards of 2D animation.
6. But somehow people like it when we showed it in the IT Week event at Marymart Mall last September.
7. TASI became the official school mascot of WVCST.
8. It took us more than two months to finish TASI.
9. We started our training in 2D animation last April 2008 through TESDA’s PGMA-TWSP program.
10. The program was supposed to be 2 months but it took us more than five months to finally finish the course.
11. Our graduation took place at SM City Iloilo last October 19, 2007.
12. It was the first-ever graduation held at SM City Iloilo according to the mall management.
13. There were supposed to be 40 scholars in our batch but only 29 2D animators graduated.
14. We are the second batch of trainees/scholars in 2D animation.
15. Two weeks before our graduation, we were looking for a name of our group. Dado suggested that it would be cool if it’s going to be an Ilonggo word.
16. Elson suggested “Kuris”, an Ilonggo term which means “a scribbled line”.
17. But Bryan wanted to name the group “Eyemage” (coined words for eye and image).
18. During the election of our officers and votation for the group name, “Kuris” won just one point ahead of “Eyemage”.
19. Bryan was a bit frustrated coz’ having an Ilonggo name for the group sounds low profile. But time goes by and he learned to like our group name.
20. In Ilonggo dialect, “kuris-kuris” has negative connotation which represent an idea about false promises or anything to do with nonsense talk. But “Kuris” truly defines artistic stroke, idea s of art or a starting point of drawing/sketching so we will try our best to change that wrong impression and prove that we have talents.
21. Our first get-together party was weeks before our graduation at Villa Beach in Iloilo City. We enjoyed an afternoon of eating “talaba” and some drinks.
22. In the party, it was the first time that Dado suggested that we should take our group and bonding seriously to pursue our passion not only for animation but create an event management team.
23. Since then Dado and his dog Sultan became our favorite companion whenever the group attends events.
24. Before our graduation, we were asked to create original animated characters each and animate it as our individual project to pass the course.
25. There were different kinds of animated characters that we created from Western type to Japanese anime.
26. But our goal is to create our own style that would make more original Ilonggo animated characters.
27. We need to make a compiled presentation of characters for the graduation.
28. But personally, I didn’t like the music they used and the way our individual characters was complied at first. So I change it, put some bits of poetic ideas and text to make it look funky.
29. We finally called it “Kuris Universe” since it represents various personalities of the group through our characters like Marvel or DC Universe.
30. We revived S and M, the former mascots of SM Department store through a 30-seconds animated clip and showed it during our graduation.
31. Kuris Universe expanded with the addition of S and M, Nino of the Bequest, TASI and the lead character of our future project “Lapis”—Lauricio.
32. Marx’s character “Kadulom” (Darkness) is also included in the final poster as a spin-off character.
33. Unexpectedly, his friendship with the group made him decide to join us for good.
34. Marx with the help of Brynh were responsible in designing Nino, the main character of The BEQUEST with inspiration from The Avatar.
35. Some of the characters made by former members are still part of the final poster but we refuse to remove them since it’s our group legacy and they first entrusted us their intellectual property for these characters.
36. Yes, it’s true. Some of our members are not active anymore and we respect their decision to move on with their lives.
- Half-truth about the reasons why they (or even us) lost confidence with our passion is the fact that the course we completed and the chances for employment promised to us before we were granted the scholarship was not fulfilled.
- Until now, we are still waiting for that precious promise of a good animation job after we finish the training. But it seems we’re going nowhere.
- So we decided to form a team of animators/artists that can be marketed in creating various kinds of projects related to animation, graphic designs or just anything about arts.
- Building up the name of the group seems to be the hardest challenged we ever face since we are still bothered by the fact that our funding was non-existent, no good facilities to use and Iloilo is still far from embracing the trend of animation.
- Honestly speaking (after finishing the course), we only have two laptops (my own laptop and Marx’s), one lightbox and not even a single scanner to scan our drawings.
- The rest of the facilities we used in the past to make our projects were all borrowed from generous friends and sponsors including WVCST who helped us in finishing The BEQUEST.
(to be continued)
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