S P Hannifin

Uh oh, I don’t want to write a tragedy

I’m still slowly but surely continuing to plot my novel The King of Diaden. I have an outline which details the main events of each of the 45 chapters I think I’ll have, and now I’m going through and writing a little outline for each chapter, which I’m hoping will make writing easier.

This is also helpful just to get the characters and the tone of the story pounded deep into my subconscious. I’m not sure if that’s something readers will be able to recognize, but I think it will surely make writing easier.

Currently, I’m outlining chapter 7, but I’ve already hit my first little snag… the overall tone of the novel isn’t working for me. It’s too tragic. It’s as if one of my themes is: “Life stinks!” And I don’t really want it to have that theme. At the same time, I don’t really want to change the tragic elements of the ending. So I’m really struggling trying to figure out how to make the tone of the novel more positive, while not changing what actually happens plot-wise.

My first idea is to change how the characters respond to certain events in the plot; they should be more optomistic. Their spirits should be more positive, even though certain plot events are understandably tragic. Not that they don’t feel sad, but they shouldn’t let that sadness stop them from feeling good about other plot events; it shouldn’t get them down in the dumps.

This idea is somewhat dangerous, however, as I certainly don’t want their attitudes to seem too sugar-coated, or just too plain apathetic. I don’t want their reactions to seem like a silly lie. So I think this will be a tough balancing act.

My second idea is to separate the narrator and the viewpoint character at some points. I like the idea (and have used it before, mostly in my unfinished novel attempt The Game of Gynwig) of adding in [a little dark] humor by having a narrator who describes tragic events bluntly, because he is apathetic.

(That isn’t to say the narrator has to state: “Hello, I am your narrator” and be some defined character, like Lemony Snicket. It just means there is no viewpoint character at that point, or it’s a very limited viewpoint.)

Again, that will be another balancing act, because if I overdo it, it will be much more of a comedy book, and it won’t be that funny.

And, lastly, I suppose I should try to keep the tone of the novel focused on the wonder of the magic in the book. Overall, it’s still a character driven story, it’s not just a portrait of magic. In other words, the theme of the novel shouldn’t be just how wonderful the magic is. But it should have an effect on how the story is told.

Not sure if I’ll be able to keep all those ideas in my mind while I write, but I hope I can pound them into my subconscious so I can start understanding the story as an overall positive story, and not a big gloomy tragedy, which is kind of how it seems to me now.

By S P Hannifin, ago

Is cyberbullying real?

Here’s an interesting blog post from someone who doesn’t like the term “cyberbullying.” As he writes:

It’s important to note that blaming technology for horrendous, violent displays of homophobia or racism or simple meanness lets adults like parents and teachers absolve themselves of the responsibility to raise kids free from these evils. By creating language like “cyberbullying”, they abdicate their own role in the hateful actions, and blame the (presumably mysterious and unknowable) new technologies that their kids use for these awful situations.

Some articles might be written as if the writers and parents and school administrators do wrongly place too much blame on technology, but I’ve never inferred that in the phrase “cyberbullying” itself. To me, it’s always meant bullying using the Internet and mobile phones. That doesn’t mean I blame the Internet for bullying anymore than I blame a gun for murder. The Internet has brought about new ways for students (and adults) to bully each other, and the phrase “cyberbullying” is simply a way to recognize that. I honestly don’t think anyone invented the phrase as a way to dodge responsibility. The word instead reminds us that this problem can’t be dealt with in the same ways as physically-present bullying, which has been around for much longer.

I do agree that we shouldn’t blame technology for these bullying issues, but I wouldn’t jump to the conclusion that that’s what all uses of the phrase “cyberbullying” do.

By S P Hannifin, ago

Some classical music for your soul

In my continuing efforts to enlighten the masses with an appreciation for the fine arts…

No, no, I didn’t mean it! Come back!

I just heard the 3rd movement Franz Krommer’s Oboe Concerto, Opus 37 on the radio earlier today, and it’s become quite stuck in my head.  It’s quite catchy and a lot of fun:

Enjoy!

By S P Hannifin, ago

Banned Books Week is stupid

From tweets and Facebook comments, it seems to be “Banned Books Week”!  What is Banned Books Week?  Maybe it’s actually a commercial ploy to sell books.  However, according to BannedBooksWeek.org:

Banned Books Week is the only national celebration of the freedom to read. It was launched in 1982 in response to a sudden surge in the number of challenges to books in schools, bookstores and libraries.

…

During the last week of September every year, hundreds of libraries and bookstores around the country draw attention to the problem of censorship by mounting displays of challenged books and hosting a variety of events. The 2010 celebration of Banned Books Week will be held from September 25 through October 2.

The purpose of this Web site is to help the public join the celebration of our freedom to read.

What, as if censorship is always bad?  As if the content and messages of certain books being challenged is bad in and of itself?  Of course disputes will arise in any society full of people with different beliefs and values.  That’s not a problem, and it’s not bad, as long as we can deal with it civilly.

But I don’t think anyone disagrees with me on that.  So I guess Banned Books Weeks isn’t really about “the problem of censorship” or an attempt to stop books from ever being challenged.  I think it’s just about getting people to talk about books and their moral issues.

What it turns into is more of a: “Hey!  Pat yourself on the back for liking this book that some other group dared to say was bad!  Can you believe it?!  Some people!  Hooray for freedom of speech at the level that most of us agree it should be at!”

I think it’s great to encourage people to think for themselves, and not accept censorship blindly.

But I think if we need a “Banned Books Week” to remind ourselves of that, then we’re awfully stupid.

Hmmm… Banned Comics Week anyone?

By S P Hannifin, ago

Creative processes

Here’s another post from Elizabeth King, whose blog I critiqued in an earlier post.  This post is really just a graphic, but it’s still interesting…

Overall, I appreciate (that is, I like) the author’s overall goal of encouraging people to be more creative.  This graphic though seems to suggest that an artist’s creative process involves a lot of consideration for the “rules” of art, and then decisions as to whether or not to follow them: “risk taking,” “innovation,” etc.  This also suggests that an artist is very concious of where his or her artwork fits in the big scheme things.

And I don’t necessarily disagree with any of that, if that’s what the artist wants to think about.  (Though I do think an artist can think he knows more about the role of his and other artists’ work in the big scheme of things than he is actually capable of knowing.  Things like influence are like stock market prices; they’re chaotic systems.  They are not linearly-defined cause-and-effect patterns, even though they can be simplified to look like that, and we humans tend to simplify things into cause-and-effect patterns quite naturally.  Nassim Nicholas Taleb, anyone?)

I don’t think any art is created in a vacuum.  An artist is going to be influenced by all the artwork he’s seen before, especially work that really resonates with him.

But I don’t think there’s anything wrong with an artist’s creative process not involving consideration for “rules” (which often aren’t really “rules” in the first place, so I don’t know why people keep calling them that), or consideration for how “innovative” they think they’re being.  After all, one can only judge “innovation” based on what one’s seen before, thus it is a subjective property, a matter of opinion, not objective academic analysis (though such analysis might be interesting for the sake of getting new ideas).  Innovation for the sake of innovation is, of course, worthless.  It’s kind of annoying how many music composers out there could, for example, spend their time trying to create something “new” despite sensing any beauty, hoping the beauty will be found by future generations.  The point of creation is then a hope for later fame, later recognition for being the first, even though they claim to be entirely unselfish in their creative act.  But I guess that’s all beside the point…

I don’t really understand the concepts of “safety” and “bravery” in relation to artistic creation, so it will be interesting to see those concepts expanded upon.  Perhaps it has to do with an artist asking “will this creation of mine work for others?”  If the answer is: “Gee wiz, I just don’t know!  But I believe in it!” then the artist is brave.  If the answer is: “Yes!  I have followed all the rules!” then the artist is being safe.  Or perhaps it has to do whether or not the artist even cares what other people think.  If the artist thinks: “I’m going to do what I wish to do and I shall not compromise for the sake of the masses!” then he is brave.  If the artist thinks: “Well, gee wiz, I sure don’t want to confuse anyone and I hope everyone likes me!” then he is being safe.

Again, though, I don’t think this necessarily has to be a conscious decision, or even a decision at all.  If an artist is just trying please himself, then “safety vs. bravery” just doesn’t apply.  It’s not like you can be “brave” to yourself; you’re never going to do anything outside of what you would do.  To me, “brave” seems to mean you have something to fear, but do something despite that fear.  If you’re not afraid of anything, then you cannot be brave.  And maybe I’d go so far as to say that a fearful artist is a stupid artist, and therefore no good artist can be brave.  After all, if you’re truly fearing something, then your creative priorities are probably wrong.

So, overall, I don’t think this diagram describes a lot of people’s “creative process” and I don’t think that’s bad.  I think it’s a lot more automatic for most people.  It basically goes: What would I like to see exist? –> Create it.  That simple.  No thinking about innovation, rules and rule-breaking, being brave or safe, studying long artistic histories, etc.  Just creating for the joy of it.

Perhaps I will at some point launch my own site dedicated to encouraging creativity… but first I will have to study whether or not such a project will be innovative enough…

By S P Hannifin, ago

Legend of the Guardians

I saw the animated film Legend of the Guardians the other night.  Seeing a movie like that late on a Tuesday night, I had the entire theater to myself!  A reminder of what it’ll be like when I’m rich!

Anyway, visually, the movie is one of the most beautiful animated films ever made; the fantasy world with giant trees and mountains is just so… welcoming.  You just want to fall into it.  They also did an amazing job with the feathers and fur on the creatures.  The character design was also fantastic, and they’ve done something no other animation studio has done (that I can think of); they were able to find this wonderful balance between the stylized and cartoony design, which allow you to read a facial expression on non-human creatures, and realisticity.  These animals (mostly owls) don’t look Disney-ified (or Pixar-ified), which leans to the more cartoony side.  Yet they definitely don’t look like real owls either.  To me, the balance they came up with is just awesome.

And, should you desire to see the movie yourself, I do highly recommend the 3D version.  I know a lot of people don’t like paying extra, but to me it’s worth it, it just looks some much richer, more tangible.  Some say it’s distracting.  Well, you can be just as distracted by any aesthetically beautiful non-story element, so what does that matter?  As long as it’s not distracting because it’s awful… and it’s not!

Oh, some of the action sequences reminded me of the movie 300… which I suppose makes sense, since these movies were directed by the same guy!  Zack Snyder.  He loves those epic action slo-mo closeups.  Really fun style.  According to IMDb, the director is working on a sequel to 300 called Xerxes.  I usually don’t much like the idea of sequels, but I do hope there is a sequel to Legend of the Guardians.  It seems like there is still more story to tell here… unfortunately I’m not sure the film will make enough money to warrant a sequel.  We’ll see…

Finally, I loved the 3D animated Looney Tunes short before the film!  My only complaint is that it was too short!  But I hope they continue the trend, and bring back even more animated shorts before films, even for non-animated films.  Pixar has always done it.  (Except for Toy Story, I guess.  And they sometimes cheated and used shorts they had made in the 80s.)  Anyway, film distributors should bring back the tradition!

owls

By S P Hannifin, ago

Semester’s first Animation Mentor Q&A!

Had my first Animation Mentor Q&A just a little while ago, and it was great; I’m really looking forward to the new semester! Unfortunately our Internet connection seems terrible here at the moment, so the video streaming stalled every now and then… ugh! But it was still good.

Our mentor made a good point about the grades, saying after most universities, potential employers will want to see your grades, but in animation, they don’t care about your grades, they want to see your reel, what you’ve actually done. So you shouldn’t view your grade as: “Ugh! Why didn’t I get an A?” You should view it as a guide to constant improvement. Which is a reason I prefer Animation Mentor to traditional schools. But still, when I mention my “online classes” to other people, what’s one of the first things they ask? “What’s your grade? What grade did you get?” Another thing people ask me is: “Are you still doing it?” As if it’s as tough to stay interested in as traditional school material… it’s animation! It’s the stuff you see in movie theaters! (Of course, most people hear “online classes” and think, oh, meh!)

By the way, it’s just awesome to be able to interact with so many others who are just so passionate about animation and love it so much, since it has a reputation for being “childish” most of the time. Oh, dear fates, please let me work in an animation studio some day!

By S P Hannifin, ago

More boring old novel plotting…

Animation Mentor semester 2 has official begun! So it’s back to having no free time again, but I’m looking forward to it. My new Q&A time is on Wednesday nights, at 10 PM EST, with professional animator Shaun Freeman. I’ll try to upload my progress reel from last semester some time soon, so that y’all can watch it and be jealous of my professional ambitions…

In other news, I’m continuing to plot my novel. I’ve got an outline, detailing what happens in each of the 45 chapters I think I’m going to have. Now, for each chapter, I’m spending an hour or two outlining the chapter itself, making sure I know how it begins and ends, what the characters are feeling and what they want, what the tone is, what the characters might say, etc. It’s like I’m writing notes to some other writer who’s going to write the novel.

I already feel that this will be a great help for when I actually write the novel, as sometimes when I’m outlining a chapter I feel the need to go back and edit my outline for the chapter before it for the sake of continuity, so I think this attempt will be much better than all my other novel writing attempts.

That said, I’ve only outlined 4 of the 45 chapters so far, so this will take a pretty long time… hopefully it will make the writing itself go faster though, as I’ll have a much better idea of what exactly I want to write… I’ll have already figured out a lot details.

My biggest concern, however, is loss of interest. Well, not so much loss of interest as gain of other interest, if that makes sense. I have other novel ideas floating around in my head and they seem like a lot of fun, and it’s tempting to just go work on them instead. So it may be challenging to keep myself focused on this one novel until it’s finished… but I’ll try.

By S P Hannifin, ago

The Khan Academy is not that good

UPDATE (March 24, 2011): The Khan Academy has changed a bit since I originally wrote this. My original post appears right below, followed by some updated observations.

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It seems there are plenty of people, both students and parents, who are unhappy with our current education system, myself included. Unfortunately everyone seems to have different ideas of what exactly is wrong with it and how to fix it.

Google had a link on their homepage to their Project 10 to the 100, in which they gave millions of dollars to organizations that won voting contests. You can see they’re giving Khan Academy $2 million. A lot of people really love Khan Academy (including Bill Gates) and think that it is a great step in the right direction. [The Khan Academy is basically a large collection of cheaply produced educational videos. Being videos, they can only teach fact-based material, like math, science, and history. They can’t teach skills that require feedback.]

I don’t think Khan Academy is bad, but it’s not a replacement for our current education system. It’s not that good. It’s not worthy of praise from Bill Gates (or maybe it is, since he seems to have completely wrong ideas about what steps the education system should take), and it’s not worthy of this $2 million gift. Khan Academy is great because it makes a lot of educational material available for free. But education is not about just knowing stuff.

The big thing people seem to forget or ignore is that everything ultimately comes down to employment… whether or not you can do a job, and whether or not employers will recognize that you can do a job and hire you. Unfortunately people seem to think education is about getting a degree. But the only reason a degree has any value is because employers give it value. It has zero value by itself.

Or people think education is just about knowing stuff, and the more you know the better. The more facts you can cram in your head, the smarter you are. But knowledge is useless if you don’t use it. Oooh, there’s a profound idea! But people don’t always seem to believe it. Going through Khan Academy’s resource is just, in the end, really not that helpful. You’re just not going to use most of it in everyday life, even when you’re employed. It’s a nice resource to have available if it turns out you do need to learn some of it someday, which is the same reason it’s nice for colleges to have libraries. But it doesn’t replace or change anything important in the education system. It’s just a nice reference resource.

Which leads us to what is wrong with our education system. It’s become thought of as separate from the life you’ll live after it, and thus has little focus. Rich people and rich organizations can throw all the millions of dollars they want at it, but until there’s a widespread fundamental shift in employers’ and educators’ and students’ attitudes towards it, things aren’t going to get much better.

The Khan Academy does plan to expand and offer more than just videos, so we’ll see what happens with it. Ultimately it’s currently just a library. A library is a great resource because it means you don’t have to learn stuff; if you ever need certain info, you can go find it in the library when you need it. The point isn’t to try to learn or memorize as much of it as possible.

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Updated comments from March 24, 2011:

(Really this is just copied from one of my comments, but I thought it was important enough to move it up here with the original post.)

Since I first posted this, I think the Khan Academy has added practicing software and coaching abilities, so it’s no longer just a bunch of videos, but does include some form of feedback. If they continue this trend, adding more features that allow more personalized feedback, I think they can certainly come pretty close to replacing the classroom experience, maybe even making it better in some ways: no more needing permission to go to the bathroom, no more disruptive paper airplanes, children can work better at their own pace, etc. There would still be a great deal of challenges (funding probably a big one), but if Khan’s goal is to replace the classroom setting with something more personalized, I think it’s definitely possible with today’s technology and we only await someone with enough tech savvy, time, and money to get it going.

But making a bad education system virtual doesn’t really help. It’s like adding new fancy fonts and pictures to a poorly written textbook.

That is, my main criticism isn’t that the Khan Academy is (or was) just a resource. The specific information is still mostly useless to most students, no matter what form they learn it in, whether it’s a physical or virtual classroom.

If you’re just learning something so you can spew it back out on a test and then forget it next year, that information is serving you no real purpose. You’re just wasting your time learning it. (I shudder to see “California Standards Test” lessons now listed at the Khan Academy.)

The Khan Academy videos seem like Mr. Khan spent some time learning the content out of a textbook and then just regurgitated the material in video form. That *can* be useful in some situations, but to me it implies that Khan, like most public education systems in general, doesn’t really question the applications of the content, doesn’t question why or how that specific content is worth the teachers’ and students’ time and effort. In many cases, it’s just not.

By S P Hannifin, ago

Novel plotting progress

My break between Animation Mentor semesters is almost over, just got the weekend left.  I look forward to studying animation again, but it’s sad to say goodbye to the free time, and it will be tough to get back into the daily grind.  And some of the upcoming animation assignments look hard, so I’m kinda scared.  *Gulp*

Anyway, I didn’t spend much time playing computer games as I sort of wanted to (still got the weekend though, I guess), but I did finish writing my rough novel outline for The Designers, which I am now going to start calling The King of Diaden.  Not sure that’ll really be the title, but it’ll work for the purposes of blogging about it.

So, the outline is done, and there are 45 chapters.  Normally I’d begin writing at this point.  But not this time, oh no no. I really want to finally finish a novel, so I’m going to spend some time laboring over this outline and adding more details to make sure everything works and there aren’t any plot holes or missing elements. What I plan to do next is to go over this outline and really think about each scene individually. What exactly happens? How does the scene begin and end? What are the characters feeling? What is the tone of the scene? What is the point of the scene in relation to the rest of the book and to its theme? I might write some rough draft descriptions and pieces of dialog here and there if something I like pops into my head, but the focus won’t be on writing, it’ll be on making sure the scenes connect to each other well enough and the story works as a whole.

And… that’s pretty much it. This book will be some wonderful high art!

By S P Hannifin, ago