UnlikelyCARSfan

Knee-Deep in Obsessions; Up to My Eyeballs in Ideas Category: Life Views: 105 Heya, NRT! I figured it was time to write a blog again, and as I told you guys, I'd not only be blogging more, but I'd be doing better blogs that were more honest thoughts from my heart than just statistics on how my week/month/year went. So... as the Facebook status updates prompt, "What's on my mind?" At the moment, I'm listening to Jam The City radio. The song at the moment is You Found Me by The Fray. And before I began blogging, I was reading Siri Mitchell's Kissing Adrien. Great book thus far... great music... yeah, today's a lazy day. Rare for a weekday, right? Now why don't I begin by letting loose those things I'm just obsessed over at the moment: Brave, The Bugman Series, and Wallace and Gromit. Because those are definitely things on my mind. Now, of course, I'm always obsessed over Pixar, VeggieTales, Disney, and Star Wars, but I often have varied things that I just go crazy about. I mean, half the reason I decided to blog today is because BRAVE COMES OUT IN EXACTLY ONE MONTH!!! XD XD (Sorry, this is what I mean by "obsessed") I am very excited for this one... and I still haven't seen any trailers beyond the teaser. I think I'll see the trailer about a week before the release, just to shake things up a bit. I think that this one will be great! It's Pixar, it's got a princess, it's got adventure, it's got horses, and medieval Scotland! How epic is that?! And interestingly enough, I look a little like Merida... kinda... my hair's not as curly, and I can guarantee she's probably taller than I am :) It's always interesting about my personal rising excitement of each Pixar film; I've been getting excited over new Pixar releases since, truthfully, 2004 when The Incredibles came out. And I've been drooling over them since 2002 when I saw Monsters, Inc. But it's been tricky getting used to the fact that this one isn't a sequel again. I mean, it was real easy to get excited for TS3 and Cars 2 because I loved the films' predecessors as much as I ended up loving the sequels. But now we're back to where Pixar started; with new, original stories. And this is the first original since I saw A Bug's Life in late 2009 and realized how hopelessly in love with Pixar I am. But I've got a good feeling... it'll be different, certainly, but then again, every Pixar film has seemed "different" at first, and then I saw it, loved it, and it became another hit along with the company's other classics. And then next year, we'll have a return of the Monsters in Monsters, University and possibly Disney's take on Planes. Which of course, will bring about more obsession for Monsters and Cars... it's nice to know that there are certainties in life :D And now, I've found a place where all my fellow Pixar Nuts (as dubbed by my cousin's boyfriend) can come together and gush about Pixar! Now, don't worry; Pixar Planet will not be replacing NRT. Just a new place where I can discuss things on their forums and post my artwork and learn about what's new with Pixar. Interestingly though, I'm still obsessed over Cars. Now, with every new Pixar film that's released I get obsessed over each new one and the previous one will be then designated as a "timeless classic" ; it's not that I end up loving the new film and forgetting the old one, it's just that the new one becomes my new focal point for the year while I continue to love Pixar endlessly and all the movies to the same extent. I guess my obsession over the Cars films is fueled by (no pun intended) the fact that I still love drawing them as humans, the fact I bought the Meet The Cars book three months ago, the fact that I am constantly finding ways to uplift it after Rango took the Oscar for best animated feature this year (Quite wrongly, if you ask me. But then again, I haven't seen Rango), and the fact I got a subscription to the Cars Magazine for Christmas. How did that go? There were apparently some issue with the publication and the selling of it, so I didn't get my first issue until APRIL. It was an agonizing wait, but it was so worth it! I love reading the comics and the factoids on the characters and real-life auto racing and the fan art and the games! I admit: I still subscribe to so-called "children's" magazines. Long before I got my first issue of Cars Magazine, I've been subscribing to Ranger Rick for my fill of nifty animal factoids and green tips and nature news for about 6 years. I also loved Clubhouse for all the cool Christian-based stuff (including a rare Wally McDoogle short story!!). I once subscribed to Brio (Focus on The Family's extinct teen girl magazine), but come on... Christian advice on boys, school, friends, and life is great and all and the magazine was full of excellent stuff, but it wasn't my thing; magazines with games or actually interesting subjects are more of my thing. And besides, dating and boys are so NOT in my list of concerns :) Of course, I did subscribe to Cat Fancy for a while and enjoyed it, and I would just love to subscribe to Star Wars Insider and Animation Magazine... oh wait, now I'm totally off-subject again! But if you've been reading my blogs for any amount of time, you're used to that, right? Anywayz, next on my list of my latest obsessions would be this absolutely great new series of books! No, not The Hunger Games (not saying I might not read them someday); Tim Downs' Bugman Series. My mom, who is my trusted guide to great books, has told me about the series for years and I could never remember to look for them at my library (at least, not when one's nose is constantly stuck in a Karen Kingsbury novel). A few weeks ago, I finally remembered and checked out Shoofly Pie, book #1. And let me be honest; it's rare that I get truly obsessed over books. I love to read, though I must admit that more than often my true obsessions lie with the movies (and books based off of movies). But I am very very very obsessed with these novels. I've only read the first two thus far, and I have found a series that makes me laugh, cry, gasp, and go crazy waiting to read the next in the series! And it's Christian! It's about a cool and somewhat quirky Forensic Entomologist named Nick Polchak. What's a forensic entomologist? A scientist who can uncover crime scenes by the um... bugs... involved. I would have never thought an actual profession existed that involves the study of (warning; "ick" factor on approach) flies and dead bodies, but yeah, there is. But don't let that deter you (unless you are a little sensitive on the whole "murder mystery" thing. I kind of am, but yet, I enjoy these!), Tim Downs can really write some great stories as well as great lines and a character so great I had to actually draw a picture of my image of him, and I don't do with characters in just any book! Take my word for it -- READ THESE! Now, the next thing I've been obsessed over lately has been, interestingly enough, Wallace and Gromit. If you have no idea what that is, it's a (let me repeat myself) British stop-motion animated series of shorts (and a movie) about a quirky inventor and his dog. I went through a short obsession with the show in 2010, but it was... yeah, short. And while I've been a fan for a long time, my current obsession has peaked this year ever since I watched the three most recent episodes when they came on Cartoon Network last month. I don't know why I'm so into them now, but they are so funny,  so wonderfully wacky, so very well-done, and maybe ever since seeing Cars 2 my interest in British actors has peaked. So now I draw them more than usual and quote snippets of Wallace's lines in my daily life as much as I quote Pixar films and even find myself craving cheese more often ('Cause dang, does Wallace love himself some cheese!). Plus, my overall feelings about Aardman's other movies has been upped a bit. So I might be weird for loving it, but then again, I am a little weird, if you haven't noticed... speaking of animation, I also have some cool news! I have been trying to learn how to computer-animate for the last month! How? Well, have you ever heard of the open-source free CG animation program Blender? I had considered trying it out for a while, but I had no idea just how to use it. Then I remembered that my library had a book on how to do character animation with it! So far, I haven't gotten anything made :( but only because I've been having issues with the version of the software and the version the book is referring to (which was done in 2007). I have aspirations to prove myself capable of a new art form, though. And I've made a goal that I WILL HAVE SOMETHING ANIMATED BY THE END OF THIS YEAR. So wish me luck! I want to animate a CG dog, a CG version of myself, and a scene from Cars 2 -- humanized in my style! And who knows where I'll go from there? I do very much want to work in animation! Now, the title of this fine blog mentions both my obsessions and my ideas. So... what ideas have I been having, exactly? Well, besides my usual "think-up-something-new-for-my-original-stories-every-five-seconds" ideas, thanks to my friends at pixarplanet.com and their Fanfiction forum, I've been getting some interesting ideas for Pixar minisequels and stories. And you probably know I do come up with those a lot. I'm thinking mostly about an ABL sequel and a story about Lightning McQueen's daughter (I'm going to say that probably most female Cars and Pixar fans have come up with their version of this kind of story). And when you're already working on... what? 5 in-progress story drafts and about who-knows-how-many other ideas, it's hard to consider starting a little series. Most of my inspiration has come from my friend CowgirlJessie, who not only is my friend on Pixar Planet, but she runs a fantastic VeggieTales blog! She also is an exceptional artist (she has an account on a art-sharing site called DeviantART) who draws lots of Pixar and VeggieTales stuff and writes great fanfiction! And I've been coming up with lots of great ideas for drawings, but I think I'm drawing on the computer and on paper so much that I'm hurting my wrists. Gosh, what is one supposed to do when you have a million ideas and no way to get them out of your head?! Well, enjoy my movie-TV-and-book-related obsessions and let my wrists have a vacation... not that sitting here typing this blog is going to help them much... oh well... So yeah, I'm getting excited for Summer! I really hope I'll be able to volunteer at my church's VBS this year, plus there's the Library Reading Program, and I would really like to see if there's a good play at my local Little Theatre to audition for. And of course, there are more movies I'm excited to see than just Brave! And maybe doing some church choir again would be awesome... and then there's making some progress on that animating. So, I've got a pretty busy-looking summer ahead of me. But even if all I do is go see movies and draw, I'm doing the Phineas and Ferb thing and making every day of summer count! i can just smell Summer... it's on its way... :D Anyway, thanks for taking your time and reading me go on and on and on about the things on my brain. I'll definitely be blogging again when I see Brave next month! Until then... Later, NRT-ators! Get me outta my mind, and into Your heart/it's not about me, it's not about me/So I'm gonna start playing my part in Your design/Now is the time, get me outta my mind! (Sorry, I haven't broken into song in the middle of my blogs in a while, and Anthem Lights' song Outta My Mind just came on. Couldn't resist)

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