Camelittle- Episode 2

As many of you know, last year I created (along with a few other talented students, Ryan Etter and Sarah Queen) an animated children's television show for my College's student run organization AVW, called Camelittle. After graduating I left it in the hands of some very young, yet capable students. I didn't expect anything too over the top from them, afterall AVW is supposed to be a learning place and Camelittle is the only animated show available, so I thought at best it would help some more willing students learn the ways to animate and run a animated TV show. Which was always the goal we had last year during Camelittle. However, I couldn't have been more wrong. When Tiara Brown (the new Director/ Producer) contacted me, telling me they had completed a 12 minute episode, I was in shock! If you know anything about animation, it takes a long, long time to animate, so 12 minutes is AMAZING. Then I watched the episode and I couldn't believe it. It was so so GREAT. I  was so thrilled with the quality of the animation, the artwork, the photoshop and the whole episode. All of it was at a SUPERB level.  What was even more of a joy to me is that they used a script that I had written for Camelittle before I had graduated. As a writer one of the hardest parts of watching something you've written is that it isn't what you imagined, or it wasn't told they way you wanted it to be. Well, again that is not the case in this instance! They animated/ directed it EXACTLY the way I imagined it, even better at times. The jokes were funny, the direction was fantastic, especially the jousting scene which I imagine was extremely difficult to animate. Overall, I cannot express how proud I am of all the students who worked on Camelittle, and made it as wonderful as it is. I never thought this little idea I had a few years ago would turn into what it is today. Thank you to everyone who works on the show and made it what it is, it couldn't have been done without you. I look forward to watching the future of Camelittle, and the talent of OU students to grow as the years continue. I cannot say enough how proud I am of everyone!

Here is the link to  the new episode, I recommend you all watch it :)
Camelittle

WHERE HAVE I BEEN?!

I know what you are all thinking, Ashley internet presence has disappeared for the past 6 months!! Except if we are facebook friends you know that's not true. I have just been lazy with my blogging, but never fear I am back!! (at least for this post) The past half year has been AMAZING, I have had great oppurtunities as well as loving life! My friends came to visit, my two great boy friends are living with me now, my parent and my grandpa is visiting next week, all and all its been GREAT.

Wish there was more to really say but for now this is it, maybe in my next post I will write a short story, or a poem, or both?!

Ttfn ta ta for now!

<3
Ashley

2011- The Recap

So I realize its been a few weeks since the new year but I didn't get a chance to recap the events of my life, which I would really like to do because boy was this year a big one! Lets recap in bullet points and pictures because I love making lists:

• Graduated College

• Moved to LA

• Interned 

• Got hired 

• Began life as a full-time working adult 

Can you say WHAT! In the terms of my life, things have been relatively not exciting. I mean I did go away from home for college, but I was in the same state. So moving 2,000+ miles across the country to start an unpaid internship was quite a leap for me. Luckily, I have the GREATEST support group of all time. My best friends and family have been 100% behind me in all my endeavors and this one was no different. Even though I am 2000 + miles away from everyone, which makes things very difficult at times, I know that I am doing what I am supposed to be doing: Living my dream in the big city and its so great to have their love and support!

Looking back I still can't believe it all happened! I am so incredibly blessed to have the opportunities I have had and the love and support! 2011 was a great year and I am thinking 2012 will be EVEN BETTER.

Sooo long 2011, you were a great year. Maybe if you are lucky someday I will have enough time to scrapbook you, but let's face it, I'm lazy and facebook is my digital scrapbook.

Two Loves of my Life!

10th Grade (2004) at the Hartford Fair

Jake Murphy's Wedding 2010

I have been so lucky to have some of the greatest people be a part of my life. When I was a little girl, more specifically in Mrs. Monforts' first grade class, I met two girls that would change my life forever, Mariah and Genny. Now being 6 years old at the time I don't think any of us realized what we were exactly getting ourselves into. I had just moved to Sunbury, OH the year before and went to a different kindergarten, so I had no idea who anyone was or where anything was on my first day. Thankfully Mrs. Monfort understood that and asked the class for a volunteer to show me around the school. In true Genny fashion, she raised her hand and said she would show me around but she wanted to know if Mariah could come too. At that time they thought I was a weirdo, I was wearing my little pink dress and my mom had put my hair up all cute for the first day of school, and they both were wearing overalls and probably had ponytails in. I was definitely the odd man out, but they soon grew to love me. That day I first met the two girls that would be my best friends for 16 plus years

Spring Break 2009

The day I realized that Genny was my best friend was the day I forgot to wear my Halloween shirt to school. As a class art project we had decorated a shirt to wear on Halloween and I completely forgot to wear mine. When I saw Genny wearing hers on the bus I began to cry because I was so nervous that I would get into trouble. Genny said that if I got into trouble she would switch shirts with me so I could wear hers. That act of kindness touched my little first grade heart and I knew our friendship was going to be a great one.

I don't think there was ever a particular moment that I knew Mariah was my best friend, I just knew that she was my favorite person to be around. We were kindred spirits right from the start. She was the funniest person I had ever met and could always make me laugh, she also loved everything I loved! Not to mention she would always come up with the funniest games. Mostly we loved to play twister when it was a overcast day, which was us running around pretending that a twister was coming.

Mariah, Genny and I had such a great childhood together. We were always laughing and playing, or walking to each others houses. I look back at my childhood with such fond memories, mainly because of them. We remained best friends all through Middle School, High School,  and College.

High School Graduation 2007

I recently moved to California and I find myself missing them so much. My favorite times is when we would just lay around and watch TV and eat Donatos Pizza. Its so hard that I can't just call them up and see if they want to go grab lunch, or come watch Keeping Up With The Kardashians. But I know that we will remain best friends for the rest of our lives, I've never had to worry about a time in my life where I wouldn't have them. I know they would be by my side in an instant if I needed them to.

I was just reminiscing about those two because Monday was Genny's birthday and Mariah just passed her boards to be a Nurse! I am so proud of both of them. They are the greatest women I know and are both destined for a wonderful life. I know if the 3 of us are together, which we will be, all of us will be very happy.

Mariah's 21st Birthday 2010

Halloween 2010

The Internship!

This past week my boss went on vacation, so I was asked to fill in for her while she was gone. Here is how  it works at Henson, my boss is the Coordinator of Children's Television and her boss is the Executive President of Children's Television. So for the past week I was assisting the Executive President of Children's Television and she was so awesome! She is one of the nicest people ever but she also is such a strong, powerful woman that kicks ass! So she asked me if I would want to sit in on a few of her meetings with her, I was like "uhhh YES!" So I got to sit in on a writers meeting, a  development meeting, and a few animation reviews with Craig Bartlett (the creator of Hey Arnold).  It was an amazing experience to witness how the industry works and to see so much creativity. I was also happy to realize that  so many of the things I was thinking during the meetings were the things they would suggest or talk about. It just really reenforced that children's entertainment is what I am supposed to do and what I truly love to do. I really can't believe I have gotten to do so much during my internship and I look forward to my last month here. Fingers crossed good things will come :)!

Dinosaur Train is the show Craig Bartlett created that I got to go to the review of.
You should all check it out on PBS :)

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.