May 1st, 2009
Almost a year ago I wrote these for the Santiago en 100 palabras contest. Since I already posted my earlier micro-stories of two years ago, I figured that I could as well post these. Same warning as before: amateurish, and not very well translated from the original Spanish. (continue reading)
1Aug 4th, 2008
I’m a very amateurish yet enthusiastic writer. I started when I was about 14 years old; back then it had not been too long since I had discovered anime through Ranma 1/2, which aired on TV here starting from around 1998, probably, so it also became the subject of my AltaVista searches of those days of my young Internet persona. This is how I discovered fanfics, which I first thought were official, alternative stories, but, I soon realized, were actually written by fans like me. I became fascinated by them, and they provided a good part of my learning of the English language. Eventually, I too became interested in writing them, which is a shameful admission in many circles; I got to completing around five (in Spanish,) most pretty short (what some call ‘one-shots,’) and even though they were not terribly good, the standard was so low for the literary genre in Spanish that at least one of my stories became rather well-known, which means that around ten individuals read it in total. I wouldn’t dare share those, though. Later, during my latter years in high school I got into an elective subject about creative writing, which was terribly mild but did get me writing a couple of things, though nothing noteworthy; and that subject marks the extent of my literary training.
The year before last I discovered Santiago en 100 Palabras (Santiago in 100 Words,) a literary competition of micro-stories of a hundred words or less, which had actually been going for a couple of years already; I just never learned of it because it’s main form of promotion was through the Metro’s (Santiago’s subway system) ad spaces, and I only took buses back then. Last year I was actually able to participate, by submitting two stories that I wrote the very day of the deadline, which was a terrible move. This year’s competition has already started, so I intend to take this chance to send better stories. Either way, here are the two from last year, for your perusal: (continue reading)
Jul 12th, 2008
This is called Recaída (Relapse,) a decidedly bad and rather cheesy name (the ‘caída’ part means ‘to fall’) for an animation I made for school in 2006. It’s, as I describe it in the video page, ‘a simple story of lost love,’ as told in wiggly pen lines, abstracted characters and two colors.
The story behind its creation should start, I guess inevitably, with my getting dumped by a girlfriend that year…, or maybe the year before that (I’m not putting the ‘water under the bridge’ act, really.) Either way, the truth is that I’ve always liked misty love stories, the more heart-wrenching the better. Yes, yes, I know. The point is, though, that the girlfriend deal I just mentioned was really only an excuse for me to make a story about dropping down from a great height in hopelessness. No, I never considered suicide, don’t worry.
Well, I never stopped to think about this so deeply while drawing the storyboard; it was the night before I had my class, so I had to get something done, and I had previously come up with that squarey character, which looked rather charming and easy to animate to me. In general –and this is a characteristic of mine– I can finish things quicker and be more satisfied with the result the less time I spend thinking about it, and the more I let it just be whatever and blah: get it over with. So then I can be surprised if it turns out sort of nice, instead of underwhelmed because of all the effort I poured into it (like with another animation I made later, Pixevolución.) So for giggles, here’s the storyboard in its finished form, and a pageful of sketches, for those of you who… Ah, who am I kidding, no one cares about this other than myself.
Only thing left to add is that every frame was drawn freehand with a pen. I didn’t even use fancy light boxes or nothing, just like real men do. I cut paper into square pieces and drew on them, then scanned them and… put them in Flash. Which is ridiculous, since Flash is not exactly made for that, but still, it worked I guess. The point was to make an animation using Flash, that was the assignment, but I wanted to make it hand drawn, so I just did it. Oh, and about that breathing sound? Yeah, that was my lazy way of adding sound, which was a requirement; it totally doesn’t fit it, but I wanted everything to be made by me (it’s an obsession, perhaps,) and I can’t play an instrument, sing or make any sort of music, so…
