Author: Marina Marshall

The speech Steve Jobs did was very eye opening to me. The first story Jobs talked about I could relate to. Jobs talked about his thought process on dropping out of college. Which is parallel to my dad’s ideals of college. Just like Jobs, my dad dropped out of college because he did not see the worth in it. Both Jobs and my dad knew that they wanted to do what they feel passionate about. Surprisingly, both passions were in their own businesses’.

Jobs later talks about the fact that dots in your life later connect. I have always loved this thought process. To me, things happen for a reason and that reason is shown later in life. For Steve Jobs, being fired from Apple was the kick off to his creativity. Big events, even the devastating ones, kick me into gear. Given, the first moments of the devastating events I cannot pull myself together. However, just like Steve Jobs said, the dots connect later in life. I can think of many events in my life that has kicked me into something even better.

The last story Jobs talked about inspired me the most. The thought of death has always been something I have struggled to think about. Thinking about death spirals me into almost a life crisis. However, Steve Jobs words the ideal of death perfectly. We should not fear death but use it as an influencer. The way Jobs said to not waste your life living someone else’s really got to me. Society is about fitting in or else you are seen as “weird”. In many ways, this way of thinking is starting to go away. Yet, this pressure to fit in still lingers. Jobs got me thinking, I really should try to live my own life. As well as not get too caught up in what other people think. This is detrimental to creativity. Overall, the Steve Jobs speech gave me a lot to think about. Especially with my big life decisions and how I react to them.

Last semester I had a talk with John Kuiphoff and he gave me great advice. John told me about one of his friends that does animation. The friend chose one element of animation to focus on in his career. This gave me great inspiration to focus on facial expressions. The part of me that is greatly enraptured with psychology was drawn to the idea of expressions in animation. In this project, I want to dip into the world of facial expression.

My first big idea is to incorporate music into my project. I want to have a close up of a face that reacts to different genres of music. I want to really focus on smoothness and the realness of the facial reaction of music. For the face, I would have the 3D model to be a female in her late teens or early 20’s. I am a bit conflicted on what my time duration would be. I would love to have it on loop. So maybe having 30-50 seconds of animation would be great to present. The music that I will choose will be royalty free. The genres would most likely be: Pop, Emo, Alternative, Country and Screamo. I am hoping that this will be my project. However, I do have an alternative project just in case.

My alternative idea would be to animate a mermaid captured in an aquarium. I would focus on her sad expression through the glass aquarium. However, with this idea, I would animate her swimming around in the glass water filled cage. This could help me work on the smoothness of my animations as well. I would include music in this idea too. However, it would not be the focal point like in my main idea. The music should be more incorporated in the background. I would want the music to be somber in mood, as you see the mermaid locked away for the entertainment of others. This animation I would also love to have on loop. This animation length would be about 45 seconds long.