Camelittle- A Year in the Making

For all of you that don't know, this past year I created, wrote and directed an animated children's show at my college. The show was called Camelittle, and it is set in Medieval times at a boarding school. The school is where children go to learn their certain "trade" such as: peasants, princesses, duchesses, wizards, knights and so on. The school's headmaster is the eccentric brother of Merlin, named Marlin. The children all have to deal with the everyday situations that all children go through like: crushes, popular kids, bullies, fitting in, and they also have to worry about dragons, magic, and other crazy medieval things.

original character designs

This show was so much fun to create and write because, as many of you know, I LOVE children's television! I still watch cartoons and kid shows, they are just so much fun. So I knew that I wanted to create a children's cartoon, much like the ones I grew up with. I first came up with the idea because I love history, I always thought it was so cool to learn about different time eras and to think about how the children would have lived then. So I picked medieval times because I love princesses, but then I started thinking what if they all had to go to a school to learn how to be their outcome in life.

Let me backtack though, this whole thinking of an animated show first started because my college's student run television program, AVW, was having pitches for new shows. So my nerdy boyfriend, Ryan, and I decided that we wanted to pitch an animated children's show. The competition began, we both began thinking of ideas for children's shows. That's when I thought of Camelittle and told Ryan about it. He loved it and we began thinking of characters and a title! (I came up with the title in case any of you were worried.)

My Brothers and I!

The first characters I thought of (and they happen to be my favorite) are Forthwind and Borin, which are inspired by my brothers, Eugene and Colton. My brothers are the funniest, nicest, crazy boys I know and they are constantly making me laugh. I thought they would be perfect for a children's show, especially mine! Their characters in the show are a knight and a squire who are constantly bickering with one another. They are there for a laugh but you know that they care about each other deep down.

Forthwind and Borin

So after we had finally discussed characters and the story we began trying to figure out exactly how we were going to make this show. Neither one of us had any animation experience, nor did we even know how to run an animated show. The first thing we did was get storyboard genius and all around artistic visionary extraordinare, Sarah Queen to join in. Sarah loves medieval stuff, not to mention she is artistic in every way possible. I called her up and she was immediately interested. She signed on as head of illustration and co-director, not to mention storyboard artist and co-writer. Next we got one of the greatest producers I know, Alison Meyers. Even though she didn't really have any experience in animation either, she loves children's media and just has her stuff together. She joined as Producer and pretty much made sure all of us had our stuff together. None of us had any experience still but we had faith and perseverance that kept us going.
Our crew was just as inexperienced as all of we were, but that was my favorite part of Camelittle, we all helped each other learned. Ryan learned all of his animating skills at the beginning of Fall 2010, and he headed up the animation department because he loved it so much and he kept practicing til he became a crazy good animator. We were all we learning things together, I myself learned some animating and photoshop, however I am way too impatient to actually animate anything. I was better at organizing and telling people what to do. I like to think that our greatest accomplishment was having a crew come together and learn about a artform that we never really had an outlet before in our school.

2nd place at the Creativity Expo

We all soon learned how difficult it actually was to animate. We had originally hoped to have a full 25 minute two part episode, however we realized we were going to have a hard time getting one 11 minute episode complete. It roughly takes 3 to 4 hours to animate a second of footage, depending on the shot. However we never gave up! I had never been as proud of my crew as I was those last few weeks of school. We not only had to finish our episode and plan for our premiere, we also had to compete in the Creativity Expo because they had awarded us a grant. We are very happy we did compete though, we came in 2nd place in the Media Arts awards and 3rd place in the Business School Entrepreneurship award!

A picture taken by Sway the Crowd
of Michael Stephens and I
talking about backgrounds.

We then had to work hard to complete the episode and plan for our premiere! Sarah, Ryan, Mara and myself pulled many all nighters that last week to make sure our episode was presentable and we had everything we needed for the premiere! We organized an entire festival that benefitted the Make a Wish Foundation, and ultimately raised $400. The premiere was a great success, as was the episode. It was all I could have hoped it would be! We were also so lucky to have the very talented, Sway the Crowd Productions, make us and AWESOME behind the scenes documentary.

Michael Bierhup was awarded Camelittle's
Most Dedicated Member
at this year's Avies!

Overall, this past year has been such a whirlwind, but I am so incredible proud and happy of everything I myself and my crew has accomplished. We created an animated television show, something that has never been done at Ohio University before. I am also very happy to say that Camelittle will be continuing on next year with the very talented Katy Lewis taking over as producer and Brynnie DeLange and Tiara Brown taking over as directors. I look forward to seeing what they create and I hope that Ohio University will have Camelittle as long as there are students there that wish to work with animation.

Camelittle's Festival before the Premiere

This show means so much to me, it is my baby! I created and raised it and now it is off and running. I was lucky though and had the help of sooo many wonderful and dedicated students. I am very happy that I got to meet and work with so many great people and I hope I have the chance to work with them again in the future. They all put so much time and energy into this that it is surreal to me. I cannot thank them enough for all the work and time they gave to Camelittle, it couldn't have gotten done without them.

Now to bring this very long, emotional rant to a close, I am happy to say that Camelittle is finished and we are currently in the process of sending it out to festivals and making DVD's. If you would like to see Camelittle please email me at ashleymgriffis@gmail.com and I can send you a link and password to watch it. You can also email me if you are interested in recieving a DVD of Camelittle.

Ryan, Mara, Sara, me, and Alison posing with
our characters at the Camelittle Premiere.

Again, many thanks to everyone who has helped Camelittle! My parents, crew, family, friends, and especially to Ryan, Sarah, Mara and Alison, without all of you this would have never been possible.

A animatic for Camelittle's promo. Ryan took the storyboards that Sarah Queen drew and animated them, so we all had a idea of what the final product would look like.

Harry Potter and the Overly Emotional Fan

2011-Tonks and Voldemort!

Well, as many of you know this weekend was a very special weekend, especially for me. The last Harry Potter film was released last night at midnight, and I had the pleasure of viewing it. It was one of the greatest movies I have ever seen (Yes Dad, I know you think that I say that about every movie) but I'm being serious this time! It definitely did the book justice and left me in tears, not a very hard thing to do but still. 

I know many of you find my desire to see the midnight premiere of movies a bit odd, and even odder my need to dress up in a ridiculous costume for said showings! However, I think that even though you may find the purpose of my behaviors odd, the reason behind it is something I believe to be one of my greatest qualities, my passion. I find myself to be EXTREMELY passionate about a lot of things in my life, especially things that I have worked very hard at or have a deep love for. Harry Potter happens to be one of those things, and rightfully so. 

2010- Hedwig the Owl:)

Harry and I met when I was a wee little girl in 5th grade at Harrison Street Elementary, in Mrs. Hoge's class. One day Mrs. Hoge began reading from a book that she heard was really good; it was Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Well I soon found out that there were two more books in the series and the fourth book was coming out in two summers. I read them all within two weeks and couldn't wait to read the fourth. I think when I began reading, my original excitement was the fact that I was turning eleven that next year, and as we all know you get your letter to Hogwarts when you turn eleven.

So I anxiously awaited my letter, of course I never got it, but we all know that was a mishap with the owlery. Owls are really not the safest way of communication. However, I continued to read the wonderful books that took me to another world. I think my parents first realized I had a problem when I insisted they drive me to Meijer at midnight to get the fourth book. I called ever Meijer to see which one would be putting it on the shelf exactly at midnight. Luckily, my parents indulged my obsession and we all went to get it at midnight. Ever since then I have been at ever midnight book releasing of Harry Potter and almost all of the midnight film premieres. When the movies first came out I was too little to go to the midnight premiere, but my parents were pretty cool and let me skip school on that Friday to see the first film.

2009-Luna and Hagrid

Harry has been with me for the past twelve years. I had him with me when I experienced Middle School, High School, and even College. He was a constant force in my life when I had a lot of changes and transitions going on, and that knowledge always comforted me. He stands for what is right and that you can conquer your fears if you believe in yourself and have the love and support of your family and friends. This all seems like a bad movie review, but I genuinely believe that those early years when I first read Harry Potter, led me to become the overly passionate woman I am today. Those books captured every part of my imagination and I jumped aboard the Hogwarts Express and never looked back. 

2011- Right in the Middle of the Action!

I realized that I did have so much passion, even for a small girl, that it felt so great to release my passion into something I loved. I began doing this with everything I felt passionate about, especially in High School with my music and acting. I then began College and found the right major for me in (surprise surprise) the entertainment industry. I began releasing my passion in my school projects and films, and I believe that shows in the work that I have done. I was also honored with 'The Directors Award of Excellence' this year, which I would like to think came from the fact that my professors saw how passionate I was about my work. 

So as I bring this rant to an end, just like the Harry Potter films were brought to an end this weekend, I think it is important to realize that these books and films really helped me realize how passionate I could be. And that passion has stuck with me and is now a part of who I am, and I am happy that it is because I definitely have a lot of fun with it :)

2007-On the Hogwarts Express, Waiting for the 7th Book!

2009-Luna, Hagrid and the Death Eaters!

2011-Tonks and her muggle boyfriend

I posted some pictures throughout this blog so you could see my "passion" at work  throughout the years :)

La La Land!

 Today I got to go see some sights around my new town! Its really beautiful here! The weather is sunny and around 80 degrees with NO HUMIDITY! My hair doesn't know what's hit it! With time I am sure I will be ready for a Herbal Essence commercial. So of course our first stop, in typical tourist fashion, was the Hollywood sign. There was a really pretty park at the bottom of the sign, so we went and took some pictures. We heard rumors that there was going to be fireworks on the beach tomorrow for the fourth so we will hopefully go to those! We just don't have beach fireworks in Ohio.

I will hopefully be able to write more about what is going on later this week, but I wanted to show you some fun pictures!

Love and miss you all so much!

The Home Front!

My walk in closet!

The TV stand!

So I wanted to show you all the glamourous apartment that is my new home. It actually is pretty nice, I have a large walk-in closet and a bathroom attached to my bedroom. I found all my furniture for free on craigslist and it is all pretty nice. My apartment complex has a pool, gym, conference rooms, and studio as a part of our lease which is neat-o! I think I may go investigate the studio later, and if its a audio one, you all just may get an Ashley's Greatest Hits soon!

Today I will be going exploring! More pictures later :)

The Boy stinking up my room :)

The area awaiting a desk still!

My Bathroom !

We have fancy sinks!