*Update: Daily Second Place and Front Page!? Oh joy!! Muchos gracias Tom Fulp! W00t, it was fun answering reviews from you people, me and Martin read some and were happy with the response.. while some ...were funny. Thanks to everyone and Joe Rodgers for support.*
Hope you enjoy!
..and for those of you who like to read about what you watch, here we go:
About this movie:
This is my third submission to Newgrounds.. and not surprisingly, its another school project! This time, it is for my Grade 11 World Religion Course. The assignment was to present some material covered from the course and I got native spirituality. I teamed up with my good friend Martin to take this massive project on and I thought it would be cool to make an animation. This was started.. late November with me going on a school trip to a native preservation area, I was hoping to interview someone who was native but the whole Sha-bang was run by white people. Haha, kinda ironic. But I did get to see what a long house looked and other stuff, whatever. So then for the first time ever, I decided to story board a movie before I start it, and that took a while because I timed it with the song I choose. (Gladiator Theme Song = Enya - Now We Are Free). Once that was done, I started animating in early December, then on my Christmas Break I had it done..with alot of complaints. So I was editing and making things look less stupid for the past week. My friend Martin would sit beside me for hours and watch me animate slowly, providing insight and making me laugh to help me get through the tedious process. He also did some editing by telling me to fix things >_< …I know the animation is kinda choppy and slow but that is because the frame rate is low and when I speed it up, it does not go with the song.. oh well. It is only my third movie so before I ever get good I have to make a few stepping stones. By the way, the little picture thingy for this movie was crafted by my net-savy friend Joe, good job.
About the story:
The theme is native spirituality. It is about a boy, around age thirteen, going on his vision quest. And what a vision quest is you ask? Well it is a coming of age ordeal and it varies depending on what natives do it. A boy has to leave his family and go off on his own into nature and survive until he has sought guidance from “The Great Spirit” which appears to him in the form of an animal usually. It is a spiritual journey of reflection and inner maturity. So this is what I portrayed in my movie, a boy maturing through his vision quest.
Conclusion:
So I hope you have a nice time watching the colourful movie. I made my own art style for this, no black in the movie other then the fade-to-black-screen parts. I tried to stay away from anime because I am tried of it all. So with some day-dreaming and sketches in my binder when I was not paying attention in class, I crafted the boy and molded a style for him. Thanks for reading, if your still with me here. I will try to answer the reviews so tell me what you think… I wonder what my fans, (all 1 of you) think of it… =)