Creepy Cartoonist: Noella Borie [EDIT]

October 18th, Monday night, approximately 8:00 PM. At the School of Visual Arts, the ASIFA-East Annual Open Screening is in full swing. Twenty-three-year-old Noella Borie and recent Parsons the New School of Design graduate is up next on the queue to introduce her six-minute senior thesis film to an audience of professionals and students in the animation field. The theater darkens. Before the crowd, the big screen comes alive with the image of a stop motion curtain sliding open, presenting, in sharp and shaking letters, the opening titles: “Faceless Neil in THE FACE SHOP.”

The short is darkly humorous and visually engaging, using an interesting and eclectic mix of flash animation and lovingly crafted stop motion on top of vibrant watercolor textures—a striking contrast to the trendy CG modeled animation features filling movie theaters today. Borie’s film still feels handmade, personal, and maintains the feeling of the human touch. The appreciative crowd reacts with enthusiastic applause by the short film’s conclusion. Still, Borie is not yet done treating the audience with her cheerfully dark brand of humor; she gets one more laugh out of the viewers as she credits herself at the close as “Jobless Noella”—an amusing but bittersweet nod to the harsh reality of the job field for young animators today.

October 19th, Tuesday afternoon, approximately 4:30 PM. In the Parsons

building at 2 West 13th Street, Noella Borie sits in the lobby prepared, taking out a stylishly printed book brimming with whimsical character designs, concept art, and storyboards brilliantly rendered in rich watercolor—all for the world of Faceless Neil. Borie herself looks quite stylish as well. No doubt she would be easy to spot in a crowd, standing out, tall and slender, with her mane of vividly red hair. Today she is sporting a trim black coat with tights and a pair of butterfly-esque glasses frames that suggest a quirky but cool personality underneath. Noella is calm and composed, answering any question that is thrown at her in her soft and pleasant voice, accented in French. She has always been interested in cartoons. From Disney movies in her childhood (her favorites being Dumbo and The Lion King) to Japanese anime in her teenaged years (a fan of works like Escaflowne and Neon Genesis Evangelion), Noella has been a fan of animation for as long as she can remember.

“I love watching cartoons. Ever since I moved out of the dorms and got my own place with cable, all I do is switch between Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon,” she says, smiling and miming pressing the buttons of a remote control.

As a child, she would always wonder how movies were actually animated, thinking to herself, “How did they do that?!” but it wasn’t until she came to Parsons that “all the secrets were revealed.” The idea for Faceless Neil originated from a four sentence prompt for her Illustration Concepts class that ultimately led to the story's first piece of concept art—a meek little boy sitting on a bed, surrounded by skeletal creatures.

Inspired by this image, Noella set off to work, developing an entire world set in the city of Morteville where it’s Halloween practically everyday, where skeleton bands can bust out jazzy, toe-tapping tunes for a crowd of cheerfully ghoulish creatures, and where no one bats an eye at anyone who has eight eyes. This story has grown to encompass two animated shorts, including her senior thesis The Face Shop in which young, and apparently faceless, Neil along with his endearing monster buddy, Manny, attempt to buy the boy a new face.

Ideally, Noella would love to pitch Neil to Cartoon Network, but it is not exactly easy to get in. She interned for a brief stint at World Leader Entertainment, the studio responsible for Adult Swim’sVenture Brothers, but she left, disappointed at the lack of work she was given. With the upwards trend of American studios outsourcing the actual job of animating to Korea, young animators are now competing with the cheaper service of overseas companies.

“You can’t really sell yourself as an animator—you have to sell yourself as a storyboard artist or character designer,” says Noella.

Still, while she calls herself “jobless,” Noella is not standing idly by doing nothing as she waits for opportunity. In a sea of digitally modeled, computer generated works—what is rapidly becoming the industry standard—Noella resolutely stands by keeping handmade techniques alive. She is always creating art in her spare time, (maintaining a pencil and paper as her weapon of choice) working not only on a Faceless Neil children’s book but also developing designs for a sci-fi comic and assisting independent animator Signe Baumane on her film Rocks in my Pockets. She is also planning on taking a trip to California this winter to scope out the booming animation scene in Hollywood.

Right now, however, Noella remains optimistic, eyes lighting up as she proudly mentions that she has been selected to participate in the 7th Annual Big Apple Film Festival this November, where The Face Shop will meet its largest audience yet. Festivals and screenings may very well be the livelihood for a new animator, offering exposure and allowing for networking that may eventually lead to a paying job. Despite everything, Noella’s passion and love for the art keeps her animating and creating, unhindered by any difficulties that come her way.

"I think you can always improve. You just have to keep drawing."

_____________________________________________________________________

All artwork credited to Noella Borie. For more on Noella Borie and her creepy cartoon creation Faceless Neil, find her at www.nobiechan.com or facelessneil.wordpress.com.

Kiyan's Got Life [Edit]

Jason McGill Profile (EDIT)

The name Jason McGill had no significance to me before I was exposed to who he was. Jason is vice president at Philanthropy New York a non-profit management group that helps operate and manage over 280 non-profit foundations in New York City. Some of the member foundations his company works with include The Carnegie Corporation of New York, The Ford Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, Carnegie Mellon and the Alfred P Sloan Foundation. As vice president he delegates who and what these foundations spend their money on. In total he pumps 4.5 billion dollars into the New York Public specter, this allows groups such as the cities education system and the United Nations to function the way they do. At first it was hard for me to grasp what exactly Jason did or even who exactly he was. As I walked into his office Jason said “ are you sure you can get enough out of me to write a story”. His modest attitude did a great job of disguising his work.

Jason is one of the most charismatic people I have ever met. Before we engaged in conversation ranging from nuclear non-proliferation to Juvenile justice system reforms, he had me tell him my life story. As I spoke he never once glanced at his blackberry or had his secretary update him on member group spending. It was essential for Jason to understand who I was before I learned about him.

Jason then told me his life story. The nearly seven years he has had at Philanthropy New York has allowed him to work with the city state and federal government on a variety of levels as well as the UN and EPA. He has guided member foundations to donate billions of dollars to benefit the people of New York. Perhaps it is the lack of knowledge the public specter has about non-for profit groups that fuels Jason’s modesty about his profession. Jason then told me an example of how foundations can affect New York. He is currently working with the state and cities education system as well as the juvenile incarceration system to ensure that minors who leave schooling to serve a sentence still receive a proper education and improve their chances of receiving a diploma.

As the pieces began to come together I slowly began to realize how important the work Jason does actually is. The word non-profit can disguise its importance at times, yet in reality the foundations Jason works with contributes 15% of the cities spending money.

After the big picture was exposed, I was curious to see how his work affected individuals that live in New York City. Jason said, after a chuckle or two. “ It affects them in every way possible, the money that our member foundations spend is all about the individual. Whether its funding projects to increase art education in the public school system or simply funding the work of stem cell research and alternative energy, it all in some way comes back to the men and women of New York”.

The mood of the interview then made a stark change, Jason took of his glasses, rubbed his eyes and took a deep breath. The recession has had a major effect on the non profit field, “it essentially striped foundations of the money they had” said Jason, “ I had a handful of foundations close because they literally could not stay open, the major contributors survived by making lay offs and pay cuts but the scary thing is, is that the worst is yet to come”.
I was stumped; I was under the impression that the economy was going in a positive direction, if this is the case how is the worst yet to come?

“ The investments and stocks of each company has not had time to show what exactly the effects of the recession are” said Jason “ in time its full effects will be seen, and I think a lot of companies whether its non for profit or not will have a serious problem on their hands"

I then found myself listening so intensely that I forgot to take notes. Jason started to talk about how severe the recession affected him as well as his company. The look in his eyes was not one of sadness but rather relief, Jason was just happy to still maintain his job. He hopes that the recession still allows him to improve New York City.

“ What could be better then bridging the gap between the individual and government? I help maintain that each project I work on betters someone in every facet of society”

Reading Journal: Profiles

I much prefer reading and writing profiles because I think they allow the journalist to express themselves in ways which news article writing does not. In news article writing, the writer has a responsibility to just give the facts to his or her reader without any bias on spin on the material. While these principles certainly do apply to some extent with profile writing, from the profiles we have read in class, I get the impression that the journalist's duty is to give the reader their own perception of a person in as truthful, unbiased, and empirically observed manner as possible. This allows the journalist much more license for freedom in their writing, while also asking the reader to have more faith in his or her discretion. For example, in the article "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold," the writer find himself unable to get an interview with the the singer, however we, as the reader, completely allow him to paint a picture of Sinatra, his demeanor, his body language based entirely on our trust in the journalist's observance of him. Whereas news articles seem to be built and structured around quotes and sources, profiles seem to have much more leeway for the writer's interpretation, perhaps because one's reaction to a personality is bound to be highly more subjective than one's reaction to a group to facts or an event. 

Thus, if news articles are meant to make the truth accessible to the public, then I wonder what profiles are actually meant to do? Do they make exceptional people (i.e. celebrities, CEO's, and public figures) more accessible for the readers so that we feel we have a sense of what the person is like in real life? And what about profiles that don't cover people that are generally known to the public but are instead interesting in their own right?

Profiles that bring to light people’s experiences that are seemingly mundane but are actually extraordinary fascinate me the most. Unlike the profile that covers the celebrity, these profiles aren’t made to bridge the gap between the public figure and the reader but between the reader and someone whom they would never have the opportunity to know in real life. By making their stories public, the journalist takes an almost anthropological role and introduces his or her readers to different characters of which we would otherwise be unaware. 

Second Draft of Profile - Ashley Hefnawy

Coast-to-coast Man of Music: Kristopher Bowers

Enter through the spinning doors of Millesime, (located at 29th street and Madison Avenue) and you’ll find yourself in a chic, beautifully decorated restaurant bar. In the center of the high ceiling, 2 story-lofted restaurant, stands a grand Steinway piano in the middle of a small stage. The waitresses are dressed in little black silky dresses; the clientele for the most part is dressed to impress; the men wear ironed button-down collared shirts and dress pants, and beautiful eveningwear. In this charming restaurant, I sit at a candle-lit table in the back, across from Los Angeles born musician Kris Bowers. In front of me, he appears relaxed and comfortable, at ease in this calm cool restaurant atmosphere.

Needless to say, Millesime is not the usual hang for just any college student, but if you’re Kris Bowers, it’s an entirely different story. A jazz piano musician since the age of four, a grad student at Julliard, and the CEO and founder of Campusounds.com, Kris has already done much more than the average 21 year old.

Tonight, Kris has been given the opportunity to play piano for the beautiful people of Millesime, at approximately 8pm, for one hour with his band. Through a friend connection within the restaurant, Kris tells me that him and his band have secured a Thursday nightspot at this restaurant.

The story goes something like this: at four years old, Bowers started in music school, and at nine years old, he began private classical piano lessons. At some point, he was able to switch to jazz piano, which he found to be far more entertaining than classical.

“I hated that I was inside practicing piano all the time while my friends were outside playing; my parents decided for me basically before I was even born that I would be a musician,” Bowers said. “My mother used to put headphones on her stomach while she was pregnant with me.”

Kris remained loyal to the piano, for he’d developed a love for jazz. Drawing influence from the greatest, like Herbie Hancock, and Brad Mehldau, he decided to devote all his efforts to the piano and eventually found himself at the Julliard School.

According to Kris, Julliard wasn’t even his first choice school, because he actually intended on going to Berklee School of Music in Boston. He says that he’s glad he ended up in Julliard though, for the musical expertise and education the teachers’ have to offer is beyond anything he could have ever imagined. At Julliard, Kris has already completed his four years of undergraduate studies, and now is now studying for his Master’s degree.

When Kris completes his masters’ degree, his ideal job would be to work with film scoring. “It’s cool because I have a lot of teachers who are able to offer me connections with the type of career I want to pursue,” Bowers said. “Jazz music is amazing, and it’s fun to play, but I want to score the music for films. That’s a much more grounded lifestyle, as opposed to traveling and gigging all the time.”

Kris’s love for music definitely takes up a lot of his life, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. He says that there are other things he likes doing, but it ultimately comes down to the fact that everyday has a pretty strong focus on music. “Sometimes, I score the music for my entire day…I get a little anal about it,” Kris says. Scoring the music to his day entails that music is playing when he wakes up, when he goes to classes, when he’s walking from place to place, and etc.

But event a full-time jazz musician/student needs a break from the Jazz world. And that’s where Campusounds.com enters the picture.

Kris is also the CEO and founder of a music blog called Campusounds.com, which started around August 2010. The blog’s mission is to make people aware about college musicians. That can be anyone from a young underground musician in college, or successful musicians/bands that originally got their start in college. The purpose, according to Kris, is to give some recognition, and share new music with viewers. According to the website, the writers for Campusounds all have some sort of musical background.

Sammy Miller, a writer for Campusounds and a friend of Kris’s, said that working for Campusounds has helped open new doors for him. “I’m always excited to check out music, and it basically gives me an excuse to spend more time doing that,” Sammy said. Sammy, 19, studies drums at the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music, and the two play in a band together.

So far, the website has gotten a fair amount of traffic, with about 10,000 hits total in its first couple months of existence. There’s an average of 200-500 hits everyday, but Kris says that it fluctuates larger and smaller, as Campusounds becomes even more attention by word of mouth. Kris says that his cousin, Murs, a rapper who just left the Warner Bros record label and wants to go back to the underground hip-hop scene, will be joining forces with Campusounds as a new partner. He feels that the new addition to the team will hopefully help make the name even bigger.

The life of a Julliard college student, jazz musician and CEO/founder of a music blog can be somewhat hectic, but with strong work ethic and positive attitude, anything can be accomplished. All that’s really left for Kris is his career with film scoring, but for now he’ll just have to settle for putting together the soundtrack for his day-to-day activities.

WikiLeaks (Reading Journal)

Since we have been on the subject of profiles for the past week, I would like to share an article that I came across about Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, a website that anonymously releases documents and various information on the Iraq wars. The article tells us that Julian is on the run, while also profiling him as a character and discussing his overall role in the founding and maintenance of WikiLeaks.

The article starts off as a profile would, and states towards the beginning that he arrived for the interview “sporting a woolen beanie and a wispy stubble and trailing a youthful entourage that included a filmmaker assigned to document any unpleasant surprises.” Quotes like this shed light on Julian’s personality as a whole, rather than only in relation to WikiLeaks. This technique of describing seemingly meaningless details is often used in profiles to give readers a better idea of the individual, and the author is effective in going about this.

The author states that Julian “checks into hotels under false names, dyes his hair, sleeps on sofas and floors, and uses cash instead of credit cards, often borrowed from friends.” This makes Julian’s situation seem like a movie, showing us that he is truly physically on the run. The reason he is on the run is because he is now making his “most brazen disclosure yet: 391, 832 secret documents on the Iraq war.” The effect of dropping this information could obviously be detrimental to him.

Overall, the article starts off with a lot of personal details about Julian, giving us a clear picture of him, and segways into hard facts about him and WikiLeaks. I think this is a really effectively written profile/feature/hard news story hybrid, and I am curious what category it really falls into? It is an engaging, informative read and it helped me understand how to combine different journalism techniques to end up with a really penetrating story

READ THE ARTICLE (LINK)

Profile Piece: Yenee Seble

My aunt recently adopted a six-year-old boy, Workneh, from Ethiopia. His energy and spirit has brought light and joy to my family. He came to the United States knowing absolutely no English, and with no knowledge of American culture, but he was eager to learn. Subsequently, my aunt hired Yenee Sible, an Ethiopian immigrant, someone to care for him and speak in Amharic. For Workneh, she is more than that; she is a subtle reminder of home.

I had met Yenee months earlier, but had never thought to ask her about her life in Ethiopia and her journey to the United States... I’m glad I did. Yenee is a charming woman with a modest appearance but a bright, beautiful smile. Her outfit consisted of a plain grey dress with a cardigan covering her arms and shoulders.

“Ethiopian women, especially those in Addis, do not show skin. It is considered…” she paused “immodest.”

However, not all of her attire was unembellished. She donned a colorful headdress of red and gold fabric; large golden earrings; multicolored bangles; and a crucifix around her neck, a precious gift from her mother.

Whether it was making injera in the kitchen (Ethiopian sourdough bread), attending secondary school with her sister, Kassa, or playing soccer with the town’s children, as a girl, Yenee would have never dreamed of living most of her adult life in New York City. And she has.

Yenee is the eldest of two children and was born on September 15, 1970, to a working class family in the outskirts of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Her family owned a woodworking business, co owned by her father and her uncle, who were both carpenters. Yenee lived in a small, two-bedroom house with her mother, father, sister, and her “set ayat”, her father’s mother. The house was modest, but “sufficient”, with an outhouse and a small garden in the back that grew barley.

Yenee describes her experiences in elementary school. She attended a small orthodox Christian school that housed about twenty students. In class, they learned arithmetic, and read passages from the bible.

“You had to keep your hands under the table” she said with a smile, “If you didn’t the nuns would make sure you walked out with your knuckles hurting.”

She continued-

“I was lucky to go to school. It is a rare thing back there.”

Unfortunately, Yenee is right. Ethiopia is one of the poorest countries on earth and is plagued with poverty, crime, and disease, specifically HIV and AIDS. According to statistic recorded by UNICEF, the literacy rate in Ethiopia is just under 36%.

When she was not in school, Yenee was with her younger sister and the other girls in town. They danced and sang together, and even convinced the boys in town to include them in the soccer games they held on the street. It was a uncommon occurrence that the kids had an soccer ball, and Yenee remembers kicking around a ball made from leather, string, and “whatever else we could find,” she said reminiscently.

But Ethiopia was about to change, and Yenee’s life would follow suit. On September 14, 1974, the Ethiopian civil war began. Essentially, it was a conflict between the rebel communist militia and the age-old monarchy within the country. Led by Mengistu Haile Mariam, the junta was able to overthrow the government and obtain full political control of Ethiopia for close to fifteen years. Under Mengistu’s regime, hundreds of thousands of people died from red terror, forced deportations, and hunger. The whole nation was in shambles, in the northern frontier, the Eritreans had waged war in a desperate attempt to succeed from Ethiopian. In the countries eastern borders, there were conflicts with the rebel Somali forces who wanted to annex the eastern half the Ethiopian state. In 1984 and 1985, a series of famines broke out due to the record low rainfalls in the eastern and southern agricultural highlands.

The time had come to move, Ethiopia was no longer safe for two young girls. And so, Yenee, Kassa, and there mother ventured first to Israel. Her father, uncle, and grandmother stayed behind, and her father gave the rest of his savings to his wife and daughters to aid their journey. The family lived in Netanya for a number of months, living in a one-room apartment outside the city.

“We never planned to stay in Israel for long” said Yenee “A Christian has no place there.”

Tens of thousands of Ethiopians fled to Israel during the revolution. The majority of these migrants settled in Netanya, Ashdod, and Rehovot. However, most of these Ethiopians are considered Beta Israelis, a term for Ethiopian Jews. Yenee and her family practiced Eastern Orthodox Christianity, so were never fully included in the Ethiopian minority community in Israel.

All three women worked together, Yenee and her mother received cleaning jobs at a local hotel while Kassa stayed home and kept the apartment in order. But Israel was merely an intermission; the family had their sights set on America. Obtaining the proper visas to travel to the United States was very difficult, but after years of trying they were able to acquire the proper government approval. Thus, commenced their journey.

Yenees mother had a distant relative living in Queens at the time. The women lived in the basement of his apartment for three months, enough time to get on their feet.

“Its funny” she said “that apartment in Queens was the worst of all. No light, no space. It was horrible,” she paused “horrible.”

At the time, in was 1992 and Yenee was twenty-two years old. She spoke barely any English, and was minimally educated. In the beginning, she worked in the kitchen at a restaurant in the Flushing neighborhood of Queens. Meanwhile, her mother and sister had received caretaking jobs paying about four dollars an hour. Yenee and her sister enrolled in accelerated English classes and began to save money for a different apartment.

Over fifteen years have passed and since then, and a lot has changed. Five years ago, Yenee was informed that her grandmother had died, and two years later, her father passed as well. Kassa has moved to Philadelphia for employment opportunities. Yenee shares an apartment with her mother in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. She is a nanny to three children, my cousin included, a works six days a week.

“I would love to go back.” She said “But the papers are too complicated.”

Workneh sat on my lap mid conversation and said something to Yenee in Amharic.

“This one has sass.” She said “He has a bright future here. In Ethiopia, the children have very little, not like America. He looks happy.”