Essay - A discussion of my educational and career goals or significant personal experience.

As a child I used to let my imagination run wild by drawing, painting and constructing space ships out of Lego sets. Enlightenment! Who would have thought that a childhood pastime would become a career goal? I believe that the major turning point in my life was when I started collecting comic books and paying attention to Japanese animation (Anime). I then discovered milestone comic books, cartoons, and animations that excited fans and even got the attention of the general public such as Superman's death and resurrection making headlines around the world in 1998.

Eventually I learned that animation, and art in general, is a powerful vehicle that communicates, inspires, and entertains. The whole process of producing an animated feature, which involves technical skills, creativity, story telling, and many hours of manual work, excites me. And, of course, creating moving characters and visual effects would be nothing without injecting expressions, mood, gestures, and emotion for impact and character development.

Communication is the goal. The sequencing of images is a technique that was understood by artists and storytellers of old: from the Egyptian hieroglyphs and paintings in the pyramids to the magnificent paintings of the Bible story in the Sistine Chapel in Rome. These have all made an impact on society.

Contemporary animation has continued that legacy in the creations of Disney, ILM, Pixar, and other independent producers. This is a legacy I would like to be a part of. I intend to continue my studies to learn techniques in storyboarding, cell animation, character development, sound editing, computer special effects, and computer animation. I would like to gain knowledge and experience by working in a cartoon/animation production company, then eventually producing my own stories and developing my own style.

I'm interested in a broad range of topics: from tales of mystery and intrigue, to complex sci-fi narratives dealing with social, political and technological issues. My goal is to communicate, inspire, and entertain through the art form of animation.

---Jerome M. Griffith, 2001