If there’s one lesson I can take away from this past semester, it’s that embracing the talents God has given you allows Him to open new doors to greater experiences than you could ever imagine.
On November 7th, 2014, I presented my senior show in the Graduate Center for the entire student body of Oral Roberts University to see. As graphic design majors, I, along with four other seniors, were required to spend a great portion of our semester working on a project centered around our artistic field of interest. Anyone who knows me is well aware of my passion for cartooning. Since my love for illustration had already been fulfilled through the Oracle [ORU’s student newspaper], I always knew that I wanted animation to be my medium of choice for the project. This decision, however, was not without its uncertainties.
Before I get ahead of myself, let it be known to anyone and everyone who comes across this journal: I have loved cartoons for as long as I could pick up a crayon. From reading comic strips such as Calvin and Hobbes and Peanuts to watching animated series on countless television stations, I’ve always been invested. Seeing such an art form used to tell stories and entertain through imagery and movement inspired me to make cartoons of my own. It was a passion that I only cultivated as I got older, and the advent of accessible digital animation software made me dreams even more of a reality. Unfortunately, my passion was not met without its share of critics: people trying to convince me that I should find a “real” career, people telling me that I was just going through a phase, people giving me the overall impression that what I was doing was juvenile and stupid and would never amount to anything. These words of discouragement haunted me for years. What I eventually found was that my interest in cartooning was not in vain and that it could be used to make people happy.
Flash forward to my college career at ORU, where I have taken up graphic design as my major and have worked my way up in the Oracle from freelance layout designer to part time graphic designer and editorial cartoonist. While I had partially overcome my preconceived fears, some of my insecurities lingered on. “What do you tell people you want to do when you graduate, Matt? Cartooning? That sounds dumb. Just tell them you want to pursue a career in something ‘graphic design related’. Keep it broad.” “You can’t create art in the traditional sense, Matt. Your art is inferior compared to theirs. You’re nothing.” Thoughts like these persisted even during the early stages of my senior project. Somehow in the midst of it all, I shook off all of those negative voices and went forward with my plan. I acknowledged that senior show was an opportune venue to show off my animation talents in a mass environment, so I carried on. After nearly two months of revisions, drawing, animating, compositing and rendering, I completed my short animation well in advance for me to get the remains of my display prepared for the opening reception.
Not only did I receive the approval and adoration of my project from many of my friends, but a number of incredible opportunities became available from that point forward. I was personally asked to work on not one, but two paid(!!) commissioned projects, one involving creating illustrations for a children’s story and the other a collaborative effort combining music and animation. (I won’t say anymore about those projects in particular for the sake of artistic integrity. Sorry!) I was also asked to interview for an internship at a local creative firm for an internship in animation – an internship that I had applied to earlier in the semester and was unable to obtain. (Although I still did not receive the internship, my project still gave me the credibility for an interview to be make possible, which was a blessing in itself). On top of that, I’ve also been asked by many other people on campus to work on smaller yet similar projects. All of this because I decided to take a risk and embrace a side of my passion many people I knew didn’t know about me.
If you’ve made it this far into my journal – and this went much longer than I had anticipated – then allow me to leave you with this: if you believe the Lord has instilled a burning passion for something you think is amazing, something you can do without being prompted, something that you believe can better the lives of people around you, follow it. Don’t ignore it, don’t let anyone give you a hard time about it, don’t get discouraged, follow it. Nurture it, learn more about, do whatever it takes to keep yourself at the top of your game, and when the opportunity comes for you to show that talent off, seize it…because I can assure you that the fruits of your labor will be absolutely worth it.