#if theres a will theres a way you cannot stop my creative genius

[saewokhrisz]

bro is pondering!!!

[fatouseckcreates]

New country. Same ol me.

I came to Senegal hoping to find myself back where I was in 2016 -  free, creative, anything was possible, troubles to the wind, exploring new territories, taking leaps of faith, going with the flow tuning into my truest self, discovering talents, surrounding myself with love and what I found here in 2019 was muchhhh different. I am different. 

In 2016 I left my cares behind, and in 2019 I took all of them with me, every last one lmao. I took them all with me and wondered why in this magical place where I felt different mentally, physically, emotionally, why I was feeling the same? Had the magic dried up? Did I not say the magic words? Did I forget stomp my right foot and click my heels three times? What? I prepared myself to find a job, saved my money in case of any emergencies, created the expectation for myself that I was going to turn over a new completely liberating chapter of my life. 

After 4 months I’ve chalked up the difference in my experiences to pressure. at 23 going on 24, I was just messing around, having fun, following my heart. At 27, I am trying to figure out my life trajectory and have something substantial to show for my talents. Still trying to prove that I know what Im doing, even when I blindly take the road less travelled. Knowing that everyone had questions and wanted to know exactly what it is I’m doing here and why, at a certain point I thought maybe if i just give an answer that sounds good they will be impressed and I’ll be motivated enough to pursue it for real. The initial pressure I put on myself to become a self made success story that amounted to more than bragging rights of living abroad and a slightly larger wolof vocabulary was multiplied tenfold. I played myself when I decided it would all be simple and straightforward. Here I was, expecting to get on a plane and leave all my mental baggage behind in NY when lo and behold I made space for all of it to come with me. Every last worry. I stopped writing because (get this) I had too much to say and none of it sounded nice or pleasing or matched my blog’s hopeful, bright new world aesthetic. 

Not only did I bring with me my baggage about getting older and meeting expectations for my career, meeting personal financial goals, relationship, family goals, but for the first time ever I attempted to live the bachelorette life, no mom and dad, brothers and sisters just me and two other adults coming and going as we pleased. I hated it lmao. It was quiet, it was boring, it was missing so much. And that’s no shade to my awesome roommates, I just came to realize, wtf am I doing here saying I want to be closer to my Senegal family and spending 5 days a week in my room, watching youtube and Netflix. Every time I visited my family in Parcelles or Rufisque I missed all the voices, the kids, the sounds and smells of cooking, the people coming and going, the neighbors. So when I had the opportunity I ran back to where I felt most at home. Initially it felt like I was giving up on trying to be a “real adult” but eventually I came to peace with the fact that this is the life that feels good and right and comfortable to me. 

Comfortable. That villainous word. Was I supposed to feel comfortable? Or was I supposed to challenge myself? Grow beyond self imposed restrictions and contentment. Theres always more to do, more to give, farther to stretch, but when and where do you go  to find peace after you have stretched yourself beyond your limits. You go home. Parcelles for me was home. Is home. I am home. Still, I cannot let go of all the things I’m “supposed to do”. It’s almost as if knowing the reception I got when I came back from traveling in 2017, now I have to present something bigger, shinier more astounding. I have to be bigger.

This feeling that I need to do more, to be more, have more to show, has always been present. And at times has kept me from creating from a place of depth, and total sincerity. Granted, everything I create comes from my heart, but in my quest for bigger and more astounding, in order for me to dive deep I had to be comfortable. Comfortable not with my career, life, financial goals but comfortable inside of myself. How can I be comfortable when I am worried?

The fact is, that while I will deny it I am often worried. Worried that what i have is not enough, that i don’t know enough, that i am having to make up for being perpetually disadvantaged in some way or another. That i am reaching too far ahead of myself, that i will settle back into unfruitful patterns. Worried that one day I will be old and still only wishing that I had acted on all the bright ideas I came up with while possessed by random stroke of genius. I took these worries with me and have yet to cast them away where they belong. My prayer for 2020 is that I find comfort in every part of my spirit. Even the crevices I’ve never shown light. 

[2djdanger]

RAMBLINGS OF AN ANIMATION STUDENT ON THE BOSS BABY AND THE INDUSTRY ITSELF AND WHY I LOVE THE BOSS BABY WITH ALL MY HEART AND SOUL:

Words cannot describe the love I have for The Boss Baby. I saw an advanced screening of it a few weeks back with the director there & it blew my mind it’s like 3D animation meets 2D along with gorgeous art & so many opposites attract motifs like the baby acting like an adult & the graphic bold bright comic book feel type scenes that also meet this almost soft pastel 1950s/1960s vibe going on. AND THE EMOTION IN EVERYONES FACES AGH IT MAKES ME SO HAPPY AS AN ANIMATOR!!! It’s such a fast paced movie & everything happening at once & throughout all this everyone’s showing a variety of different emotions in a few seconds & the writing is amazing like not many animated films these days go back to the roots of traditional animation & just making it for a wide variety of an audience from all walks of life instead of making the same movie over & over again with great animation but a story line that seems rushed & choppy & not thought out but they keep making sequels anyways whether we wanted them or not just because m o n e y. I’m looking at u Disney with almost everything & Illumination with Despicable Me. It’s not to say that I don’t like sequels bc those companies have made some I enjoyed but it makes me disappointed when they could be putting their talents towards something fresh & new & original. This movie was o r i g i n a l in every sense of the word. Go take your kids to see it, yourself, your parents (I took mine & im a fully grown adult as are they & we loved it), your grandparents, your grandparent’s grandparents!!! It’s so great!!! It’s literally what the 3D animation community needed. I’m a traditional/2D animator myself & it seems more of the 2D movies out there recently have been trying to keep it original and don’t even get me started on the amount of work the animators do in not only 2D but 3D as well. But like recently 3D animation seems obsessed with the technology realizing they can make anything look more & more realistic nowadays then say when Pixar created Toy Story & their shorts in the 80s. These big companies keep churning out these movies not putting much thought into it & spending everything to make it look as real as possible. But that’s not the point of animation at all! They’re losing touch with why we animate in the first place!!! As my old storyboarding teacher once told our class on why we animate, we animate because it shouldn’t be possible in the real world. When you make anything animated you should stop & think: why am I making this story animated? Does it really need to be animated? Can I do this in live action? If you can make a story in live action then why are you animating it at all in the first place? It doesn’t need to be animated! Literally animation is just beautiful. You can do anything with it. And more & more especially with the technology in 3D films they’re slipping away from those values & ideas & making things that can be replicated in live action. So to see The Boss Baby really utilize the original concept of animation to tell that beautiful crazy impossible story & to top it off tell it through the bright eyes of an over imaginative child make it all the more better because it gives way to these big brilliant imagination sequences with these bold graphic designs that I’d die for. The editing and the animation in this movie is literally perfection it’s one thing flows into another into another into another & it works ANNND THERES EVEN GOOD COMEDIC TIMING!!! Sometimes movies live action & animated just can’t capture that kind of fast paced back to back tension followed by good comedic timing so to the writing team on The Boss Baby I say bravo to you & to the animators as well because God knows how difficult it is to draw out a normal sequence of actions but to follow the writing & get that vision out there in the open & follow it & draw it out so every detail works that’s just insane. This movie just inspires me so much & it’s relatable. My childhood was like Tim’s where everything was perfect & I was happy until my baby sister came along & we went at it for years. Another thing back to the genius writing in the film is this style where it forces you into Tim’s shoes because when they first introduce Boss Baby & for the first half of the film you’re made to hate him & he acts as the villain of the film until about halfway through Boss Baby really comes out of his 1 dimensional evil villain shell & just sees Tim in distress & reveals why it’s not only bad for Tim the current situation but why it’s bad for him too & then proceeds to give Boss Baby this insane narrative & beautifully tragic multidimensional backstory. Tim as the first main character has already been developed as a multidimensional character with different feelings & emotional expressions because he doesn’t know much about the world except for his imagination since he is a kid but by showing this then completely flipping everything on it’s head & giving Boss Baby real flaws & strengths that balance out Tim’s strengths & weaknesses it makes them seem a lot more like real relatable people & more so like siblings who depend on each other. As an older sister I can say some of my weaknesses end up being my sisters strengths & vice versa. Then by the end of the film,Boss Baby is this character you can't help but love & root for hoping he wins & can get out of the bad situations like when his formula was stolen so he kept going baby again it's like you feel panicked because you don't want Boss Baby to be normal you want him to be his crazy quirky self. Also this whole tragic narrative really hit me like it just stuck with me because I’m a sucker for these kinds of dark/sad stories layered in a brighter happier story & they coexist in harmony like that’s when you know a film’s really working. So SPOILERS AHEAD even though if you got this far there have already been some light spoilers I couldn’t avoid talking about but these get right into the grit of it. So the idea that Boss Baby was never really born fascinates me. In this world in the movie it makes sense. It’s also really sad as Tim points out as we’re finding out more about Boss Baby that he never had a childhood & how Boss Baby even says himself he was “born” or more so created (in both the universe of the movie & if he was self aware ((which he isn’t but for the sake of explaining this just humor the thought if he was)) that he was created as a character to work in this movie world realm plane of existence whatever you want to call it) all grown up as an adult in a baby’s body. Just think about that for a minute. What if you were born an adult & never went through childhood, never had a family, no one ever loved you or played with you or anything, all you knew was co-workers & business stuff. You never had fun or imagined things. That’s a really sad life if you ask me personally. He never had a chance to be creative or find himself all he knew was what the cold adult business school taught him from day 1. Most adults these days forgot what it was like to be a child & have fun & I think that’s what they were trying to get at with this backstory especially when Tim’s on the plane to Vegas with Boss Baby & just trying to teach him in small little ways how to use his imagination & just be a kid & not be so serious & black & white all the time. Also, I feel like that’s the issue sometimes with my own parents. As an animator I see animated movies as just another way of telling a story whereas people like my parents who don’t understand much from my line of work see it as a children’s media with no substance & pretty pictures. I want to break that barrier because the first animated pieces were NOT made for kids they were for other adults. I feel like it shouldn’t matter anyways if the movie’s marketed for kids because it could always be a good movie regardless of that & people like my parents forget what it’s like to have fun & see a good kids movie. They were kids once, we all were. As with many animated films before it, The Boss Baby brings subtle tasteful adult humor to the film as well as some just downright outrageous adult humor like Boss Baby running around butt naked with a censor bar over his nether regions. When you can marry adult & child humor together in a movie & make it work nicely it’s always a sign of a good movie. So tonight’s the opening night of The Boss Baby in cinemas everywhere & because I have so much love for this movie after seeing the advanced screening & listening to the director, producer, & designer from the movie speak about it & their own experiences they put into this film, like I stated before I dragged my parents out of the house on a Friday night when they would normally be in bed sleeping really early & shared the joy & beauty of the animated feature film with them. Normally my dad’s the one who will give almost any film a try & watch it & really like it. My mom however is extremely picky & if it doesn’t please her in the first 10 minutes or less she will zone out & fall asleep taking a nap through over half the movie. Both of my parents were on the edge of their seats tonight paying the utmost attention to the movie. It was a really beautiful moment to see my parents actually giving this animated movie a shot & they both ended up loving it as much I did on my second go seeing it. I’m not gonna lie I saw the trailers for this movie late last year & it caught my interest but I had this nagging thought that it wasn’t going to be a fresh new story it would just be typical & only made to make some money & keep Dreamworks in the game another year. I was happily proven wrong & this movie just takes everything about these money making no story movies & flips it on its head entirely. I even bought the art book for The Boss Baby because the artwork alone is enough to inspire me while working on my own projects. And that my friends is why you need to see The Boss Baby

TL;DR: The Boss Baby is an A+ gorgeously animated film with a breath of fresh air new story told in a way that’s really interesting & new & takes you back to the old days of 2D animation classics despite being a 3D film so disregard Rotten Tomato’s obviously wrong ratings & go see it for yourself because as an animator this movie makes me happy & I want to live in it forever ❤️❤️❤️