Knowledge Tree

Before I answer the questions below, I'd like to appologize sincerely for being so late on this! I lost track of time for a while, and then I didn't know what my first post was supposed to be. I just found Mr. Robert's blog today, so I'm trying to catch up. Again, sorry!

1. Tell us about yourself in a brief autobiography of between 20 - 25 sentences. Where are you from? What do you most like to study? What are your passions and your dreams? Tell us a bit about your personality. Are you outgoing? A leader? Quiet and shy? An observer? What do you want us to know about you?

My name is Cheyanne and I'm fifteen years old. Right now I am living in a small town in northern Washington just a few miles from the Canadian border called Oroville. Oroville is the longest place I've ever lived. So far, we've been here for seven years, much longer compared to everywhere else. I was born in Texas, and from there I moved to Minisota, then Montana, then Canada, and then here to Washington state. All the moving around is due to my mother's job as a Border Patrol agent, but thanks to her job I've been given the opportunity to experience things most people my age cannot. There was one point where I got to live in Herndon, VA (a city very close to Washington D.C.) for 6 months, and every weekend we'd go and visit a museum or monument. It was a wonderful experience. I remember very specifically when we went to the Lincoln Memorial and my mom showed me the spot where Martin Luther King Jr. gave his most memoriable speech. I was around 12 at the time, and I remember standing there where he once stood, imagining a crowd below me as I inspired some sort of world change to occur with my words alone. Just from the feeling I got from thinking about it, I wondered how great I would feel if I ever got the chance to do that. That thought continued to pop up time and time again every time I went somewhere historical or listened to a motivational speaker and it wasn't long before I realized that to create change was to be one of my main goals in life.
How I want to create that change is through my art. Drawing is my passion. It has been since I was five and first watched Sailor Moon, and it will continue to be so, as long as I can help it. Art has always been my number one goal in life, and I plan on creating a future out of it. I still have a very long way to go, but I believe as long as I keep my passion for it I'll be able to get where I want to. I plan on either going to both DigiPen and the Seattle Art Insitute or going to an art college in California and living with my aunt and/or cousins. From there I want to go work for a big corporation, like Disney, Pixar, Nickelodeon, or Cartoon Network as a character designer or animator. I hope that with my art I can inspire someone with their life, just like Sailor Moon did for me.
As for my personality, I'm a little all over the place. Depending on my mood and/or the situation, I can be shy or I can be outgoing. I try to be more on the optimistic side of things and I smile as often as I can. When I learn, I prefer to observe how it's done and then try it out myself. I can be very hard headed and I refuse to back down to a challenge, but that sometimes isn't always the best thing to do. I'm not really sure if you'd be able to call me your typical highschool girl, since I'm really not like the other girls I go to school with, but I do mostly fit the description of one, so I'll leave that one for you to decide.

The first one is a sketch I started out with on Open Canvas using my tablet. The second one is the line art, where I cleaned up the out of place lines and added in a few details. The last one is the final, all colored. This is one of my first digital drawings, and it's of my friend, Alanna. I used tutorials to help me out with the process and found I really liked it. However, I really want to work on my coloring :S!

2. Explore your relationship with media in five sentences by telling us about a favorite media experience you are having – a book you are reading, a video game you are playing, a movie you just saw, a magazine you subscribe to, a newspaper you read regularly, or a musician or band whose music you really like. What is it about this media experience that makes it powerful for you?

Recently I have been obsessed with the movie "The Dark Knight". The movie got me interested in Batman as a whole, and I started watching the old animated shows from when I was little and reading a few of the comics. I'm entranced with the way they have such in-depth characters and the way the feel so real, even though I know in the back of my mind that they don't really exist. Seeing the differences in they way older movies are compared to the newer ones are another thing that has really impressed me. We've come so far in just a few years, it's outstanding!

3. In five sentences, tell us about an issue you are concerned about in your home community. Why? What, if anything, have you tried to do about something you are concerned about, or what would you like to do if you could?

An issue I'm concerned about in my home community is the lack of art. As this DOTCOM Program is recognizing, Media is a HUGE thing in our culture today, and art is big part of media. Without art we wouldn't have nearly half the things we have today; things would be so boring! Yet it is still one of the things that is constantly ignored when it comes to learning. So far I haven't tried anything to change this, and the only ideas I can come up with are ones with difficult steps that need to be worked on.

4. In five sentences, tell us what you can contribute to the group of participants during our DOTCOM program (face-to-face) workshops?

I hope to contribute my attention to the animated world of media and how far it has brought us in technology today, as well as to characters created in our sources of entertainment and how they are a big influence on people today. These things are often overlooked and considered insignificant, yet they can be a turning point for so many things. Had Mickey Mouse never been created, or Walt Disney never been a cartoonist, we'd still be watching silent movies. Without the depth of characters, we wouldn't be able to enjoy our movies or books, and some people wouldn't have someone to look up to. These things are so vitally important, especially when coming to keeping a person's interest, that they deserve to be recognized.