By Lauren Farberman
Staff Writer
Mira Costa junior Barbara Garrison’s passion for art has led to her acceptance into various art programs, a newfound interest in animation and figuring out what goes on behind the scenes of every classic animation movie.
Garrison enjoys art, but has mainly only had exposure to traditional forms of art such as painting and drawing, she said. To expand her knowledge in these forms, she applied for an art program through Ryman Arts in Los Angeles. The program is divided into three classes called Foundation Drawing, Intermediate drawing and painting, and Advanced Art: Painting.
“I had a few friends who had done the art program at Ryman and I decided to look into it,” Garrison said. “I thought it would be a good program to really advance my art through traditional training.”
In order to apply for the Ryman program, Garrison had to complete an essay that explained her interest in the program, two of her drawings and an application with a teacher letter of recommendation, which she received from Advanced Placement studio art teacher Valerie Park. The program is very competitive as it only has a 50% acceptance rate, Garrison said, and the program is held at Fullerton University and Otis College.
“Barbara has such natural talent and is one of the most original and creative students that I have come across,” Park said. “Barbara is also very mature which helps because she understands the pressure, time and energy to fulfill an arts interest.”
Garrison is now shifting gears into the world of animation after being accepted into the 2016 summer program at California State Summer School For The Arts (CSSSA) for its animation program. Despite her lack of experience with animation Garrison thought it would be interesting to learn more about the process.
“I watch a lot of cartoons and I always thought the animation aspect behind cartoons was interesting,” Garrison said. “I wanted to get behind the scenes of animation to see how it was all done.”
The CSSSA animation program is one of the organization’s most competitive programs. To better her chances of being involved in one of the CSSSA programs Garrison also applied to the visual arts program.
“At CSSA, the animation program is notoriously known as being extremely difficult to get into,” Garrison said. “I knew that although my first choice was to be accepted into the animation program, if it didn’t work out I could still go into the visual arts program and have some fun with that.”
The animation program running from July 9 to August 4 of this coming summer will consist of core classes on the basics of animation, screenings of historical animation films and field trips to animation studios. Students in the program will also have the opportunity to learn from guest speakers involved with Nickelodeon, Pixar and Disney.
“Animation is really different from other forms of art so I thought it would be really entertaining to see everything that goes into a simple animated film,” Garrison said. “I look forward to learning from people that have worked on the pixar movies I’ve seen many times.”
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