Saturday, April 23, 2011

Black Saturday

It's funny how some happenings in your life can relate to the day itself.

Black Saturday, because I came across this video:



 I'm one of the first batch of animation students here in the Philippines. In the year 2007, new courses were offered in DLS-CSB and one of them was AB-Animation. I enrolled to that with a lot of enthusiasm and hopes...but 3-4 years later, I came out with only a quarter of the satisfaction I deserve.

I honestly am not sure how things went wrong. That, or I have a hard time expressing my angst about everything that happened to my college life then. But I guess it can revolve on this statement our German professor said when he was giving a lecture during our Pre-production class (note - this is more of a rephrase since he said this to us around 2008-09 so it's not verbatim anymore):
"You know, you kids are one of the laziest art students I know of. Yes. It's true that your professors are not offering the right education you deserve; but that's mostly because they're tied down to the school's idiotic system. If your school can't help you, don't mope around! Go out! Find other places where you can actually learn something -- most of the time you don't even need to go out since you have something all of us old people here didn't have when we were your age: internet! You'll find a LOT of things already online. You just don't know how to use it. If you really want to be in this business you have to find other ways to learn if this school won't give it to you. Sorry, but that's just how it is...
But, you have a right to complain to the school board. Who among you has even done that? Your professors can try and try to pitch a new kind of curriculum but still get rejected unless you students actually show to them you are as well unhappy with how things are going. They should know! You have a right to let them know -- so let them know! Stop sitting around complaining amongst yourselves. Be responsible and act upon the things you know you can do! You have more power than your professors will ever have when it comes to the higher ups because your parents are the ones who are paying. So use that advantage!"
I'm just filled with mixed emotions over it. Like...I can just imagine what could've had happened if  we were trained properly as animation students, if I wasn't such a whiny little spoiled brat before -- but overall mostly what if we had a much better lay-out of the curriculum and education and training about anything related to animation. I really believe it would have made such a big difference if the students and professors alike weren't groping for solutions in the dark. We actually just discovered that the whole set-up of our course was messed up during our 2nd year when two professors from the outside came in and offered their wisdom to us. If it weren't for them, us students would never have been actually prepared for what's out there in the real world of animating. (i.e. Training was so bad that until now I honestly still do not understand the concept of those time grid things placed at the corner of animation papers. Haha. I asked people, I did. But somehow I just really have a hard time understanding it...and no one took the time to explain it to me well enough -- half of it was my fault. But still.)

Oh well, past is past and there's no other way but forward. You just can't help but feel bad at times that you could have done so much more if it weren't for the lopsided view of "some people in authority" when it comes to education and art. Just imagine if art -- or education for that matter -- was properly supported here as it is in European countries; by high school you'd actually know what you want to do and how to get to it since at that point, they'd actually help you go to art schools/workshops so that when you enter the universtiy, you'll be well equipped. And by the time you're in the university, you'd actually be honing your skills at an international level of quality.

It's just so disappointing...especially since we actually see "some people in authority" go abroad, but come back with nothing to offer to us for improvement. We are obviously not getting what we deserve, and a lot of us are so desensitized to this hopelessness that a lot of us are just stuck to ranting in blogs. How many blogposts, angry statuses and forum boards do we need to actually do something? haha...I admit that I am guilty of this, but I myself still don't know what solution could there be to change a culture that looks like a giant thorny vine with it's roots planted deep into the ground? How do you uproot such a pest, if it's the only thing that keeps our ground stable? How do you kill something that's not good for your garden that's obviously dying already? How the hell, do we, as the hope and future of this nation be able to do something about it if solutions are slim and the chances of them working needs a lot of money -- and we're poor?

Maybe I'm just a pessimist at the moment. And I guess I'm just worried too much because I'm not looking at this from His point of view. I just really hope that His wisdom would come down to the youth of this generation by a landslide-esque sort of impact, so that a lot of us would move this nation to a different direction with such force, that those corrupt old bags can't do anything about it. Haha. Soon. But for now, I must train myself hard to be of international quality as well.

See you guys around! :) God bless.

1 comment:

  1. Hey there! Im studying animation here in the Philippines as well, only in another school.We are actually going through the same situation. We enrolled with high hopes only to end up disappointed. We were doing self study most of the time. I feel like we wasted money and time taking up the course there mainly because we aren't really learning that much, and we were treated like an experiment batch. And yes, we still couldn't understand the grid thing either.

    A teacher told us that we have it worse than you guys actually. Thats why we were thinking of switching schools.I guess the problem is, because its a new course, the curriculum is still going through trial and errors. We did complain, but the answer they gave was we are sort of the first batch, so it was unavoidable that we got a crappy curriculum.

    I also wonder what would have happened if we were given a better curriculum and training. But i guess theres really nothing we can do except study on our own and do our own research. I try to see that as a positive thing. In a way that we become more resourceful and more disciplined... and less dependent

    Thanks for posting what your professor said.
    And by the way, you drawings are really good and inspiring. :)

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