Trying to find where my love of art stemmed from is like trying to find a needle in a haystack. The farther I look back in my memory the more hazy everything becomes as that's just how memories are. The most clear way I can put how I learned to love art was immersion. I have been drawing longer than I can remember, as all artists must start somewhere; that is normally taking a stray pack of markers or crayons from my older brother and scribbling a "masterpiece" onto my parent's once bland wall. Though decedent, the memories that lead to me loving art mostly point to the pieces around me in my home or from around St. Louis as my grandma would take me around town to see museums as a simple yet effective way to keep a toddler stimulated on rainy days. I started drawing by illustrating how I saw and interpreted the curious new world around me. The exhibits including Lego sculptures at The Magic House children's museum down the road, or my interpretations of the world and characters in the various "Rainbow fairy" books my mom would read to me before bed were among some of the notable items I would try to sketch with an improper grip, poor memory of source material, and adorable reassurance from my parents insisting that my new scribbles of incomprehensible lines and colors were deemed fridge worthy or even letter-to-the-grandparents worthy. While I may have not known what I was doing nor doing it in an efficient and clean process, I still managed to do one of the most important aspects when creating art. I was just having fun. Often I now get too caught up in trying to make my art presentable and full of purpose, but I often forget some of my best memories with art are normally the fun pieces that may look sloppy at times or have no overarching message, but art doesn't have to be perfect or deep. It just has to be fun to create and full of emotion. As for my favorite artist? I would say a fellow named Scott Christian Sava. He owns a YouTube channel that's followed by two million subscribers including myself, all of which are deserved. Sava is an extremely down-to-earth artist who reminds his audience of artist numerous lessons that wouldn't traditionally be taught in art classes or even by practice. These lessons include: "How to know when your art is truly finished", "Why you should make "bad art", and "Did I ruin a sketchbook with bad art?". The best part about these videos, especially any that mention "bad art" is that he talks about how no drawing is bad nor ever finalized, even if a piece cannot be saved in your eyes there always is another page to turn to or another canvas to start on. The only thing that can stop an artist according to Sava is the fear of creating something "bad" despite the fact art is never bad, just not up to expectations. Sava's best piece of advice however has been one I have lived by and I will continue reminding myself until I sketch my last drawing, "Just have fun with it." Well put Sava, well put.

I’m not too keen on live action movies, meanwhile my family prefers them. I tend to dislike content that devolves from unsavory memories, but my family finds these movies entertaining. There are only a few things that me and my 4-person family can all enjoy together. These two items are the Christmas season and lighthearted comedies. The former of the two must be executed in a near perfect way as almost is not all of my entire family consists of perfectionists. This can generate a large amount of friction and stress between each other in situations where it is not warranted. All this aversion ceases on Christmas eve after all the food has been cooked, decorations have been hung, and plates are then served on the living room table. My family then starts our favorite holiday tradition; watching National Lampoons Holiday Vacation. This originally started because of my parents enjoying the majority of the regular vacation movies, but something about Christmas vacation made the holidays more special to them, and gave them a sense of comfort. ~ Everyone in a way is like a Griswold. All the vacation movies, but especially Christmas vacation are relatable because they highlight the forgotten parts of all the normal holiday cliches. Some of these notable moments may be ones we remember but just keep to ourselves. This makes Christmas vacation both relatable and more realistic than most if not every other Christmas or non-Christmas movie at times. Where hallmark shows the acquisition of a large Christmas tree being a fun, easy, bonding, or even romantic experience in their movies; National Lampoon presents the mistakes a common man could make such as forgetting his ax to cut the tree, or the unsafe road conditions of the holiday season. Once the tree is in the home it only continues to stick out like a sore thumb as its over cumbersome size dwarfs the room it resides in. In a classic and predictable Christmas movie family comes together in order to help the main character celebrate Christmas or to reach their desired traditional goals. In Christmas vacation family only creates roadblocks in Clark’s path to celebrating Christmas the same way he did when he was young. He wants to re-experience the perfect Christmas but both his family and himself keep preventing this from occurring. These discrepancies are what make this movie so real and intriguing to watch with your own family. ~ This tradition my family holds is used to highlight how nobody will ever have the Christmas they imagine. No matter how simple the plan is, a celebration will never be 100% as expected, but that’s what makes them fun. Our mistakes and impatience is what makes the holiday season memorable and human. If every Christmas was perfect, then we wouldn’t remember them as individual holidays. In my opinion one mistake is easier to remember than one-hundred perfect days in a row. Will these mistakes sometimes become too much to handle? Of course! That’s true for both real families and the Griswold's. The most enjoyable Christmas will never be a perfect one, but one where you can laugh back at the mistakes eventually in the same way Clark Griswold would.

Picture this if you will; it's a rainy and rumbling night. The temperature is still blazing despite the torrential downpour. Even though it's about 10PM you decide, "I wonder what anime Netflix has right now." The usual big names such as "One Piece" or "Inuyasha" are visible, but an unfamiliar but eye-catching result appears in the middle of the sci-fi section. An anime called "Orbital Children" shall now become the only input to your life for about 5-6 hours if you decide to watch the short series in one sitting. I promise once you pick it up, you will not be able to put it down. -This is my personal summary of "Orbital Children" also known as "The Orbital Children". The first few characters the audience is introduced to include two children who were born on the moon, who now permanently reside on a space station that mimic the environments of the moon in some areas and the earth in others. These two kids are named: Toya, a careless and reserved older brother type who was the 2nd to last surviving moon child and Konoha, a more caring yet shy younger sister archetype whose "implant" that the two children received, is now causing severe health complications. This makes her extremely frail in appearance and manner. Luckily these two kids have caregivers such as the A.I. "12" and a nurse named "Nasa". After the audience gets to meet the "Orbital Children" if you will, we are introduced to our earth based humans. These are three contest winners named: Mina (A phone obsessed blogger), Taiyo (The know-it-all who often gets under Toya's skin), and Hiroshi (Minas younger yet surprisingly smart brother). The cast of the moon-born and earth-born kids eventually meet after they arrive on the station. Toya vocalizes his distaste towards the kids from earth through some resentment of the actions of previous earth-born people. This includes the creation of the implant meant to improve him and Konoha's survival which only hindered it, as well as the whole missing to have humans live on the moon in general. The earth based kids just brush off his criticism and keep following their tour guide in an effort to grow accustomed to this resort-like experience for them. The only two children who really hold beef between each other are Taiyo and Toya. While Taiyo is rule follower or even enforcer are times, Toya is pretty lenient to the point of illegally modifying his drone "Dawky" to do service tasks it wasn't programmed for. Taiyo takes note of Toya's disrespectful actions and tries to discipline him by threatening Toya with his own contrasting drone. Taiyo has a more powerful drone due to his dad being part of a judicial authority, unlike Toya who only overclocked his drone. After the two have their scuffle the inhabitants of the space station start to notice strange behaviors occurring. Unknown meteors, unexpected missiles, and strange terrorist threats emerge until finally the ship's power is knocked out. In a state of confusion, both the earth-children, moon-children and Nasa must figure out who or what is behind these actions, as well as how to escape their grasps safely. Before they get off the ship at this point, the crew must first escape the now unfunctional elevator shaft. This anime is a complex mystery that is enjoyed best when one connects the pieces as they watch. The fun part about solving Orbital Children's mystery is that once you finish the show, you can rewatch it and notice the clues that hinted to the now obvious answer to the mystery.

Breana Lydon Junior(Class of 2025) 6 December 2023 WildXYZ Scholarship The Path to Creation Despite being cliche, for as long as I can remember I have had an interest in two things; I enjoy creating stories and drawings to expand or inspire them. This has evolved from creating small doodles to pass the time, to interpreting dreams, and later the wandering thoughts in my head. Interpreting the chaos and discord in my hyperactive mind has become a fascination to both me and my family. Many Saturday mornings we will wake up, turn on the T.V in silence until I crack the question, “So what did everyone dream about?” In this time my parents will take a sparse amount of time to give a quick briefing on their dreams. My moms will always be more in-depth than my fathers due to her own passion for art. I like to believe she is the reason I am so drawn to creative endeavors. Once my turn occurs, a good 15 minutes can be taken up, if the dream had enough going on; assuming my memory isn’t being stupid I can use the large amount of visual and echoic details to create my surreal settings in my drawings. The best example of this is my swirled blue and pink sunset seen in my first mushroom drawing I did in Junior year. I have been utilizing my wild mind for art longer than I can remember. I wish to pursue education in the arts because I want to master my storytelling skills through digital animation courses, as well as to get used to creating animated content on a tight schedule that still holds a standard to quality. I feel that art school would be an appropriate setting for me because I can only learn so many of the basics from my own exploration and self-learning which is why I plan to attend structured in-person classes. I also want to improve my ability to keep quality work being produced on a schedule. In the career field, I want to go into I will have to meet an unthinkable amount of deadlines for the team I will work with or just with production in general. I’m not too bad with meeting deadlines at the moment, but I feel I could always improve this skill and diminish my slight habit of procrastination by attending courses for professional animation. In relation to professional behavior, I may also be able to connect and find opportunities with studios in the art school environment via representatives who will visit for presentations or with an expanded portfolio that would contain more work from classes. During and after my art education I plan to create my own small animated works, while afterward, I plan to do longer productions like full-length episodes in series. The decision I’m currently trying to make is whether I should focus on a career in just indie animation with my own or another studio, or if I should go to the big leagues in a well-known studio such as Sony or Warner. No matter where I end up, I want to stay determined to make my stories heard amongst those in the world who need to pick me up. I want to continue my longest interests of creating stories, art, and helping others. -Breana Lydon

Breana Lydon [breana.l.art@gmail.com] Nintendo Super Fan Scholarship 9/11/2023 While it's not the most popular game among Nintendo’s catalog, it sits on the golden throne in my heart. The game I am talking about is Nintendo’s first dip into the 3rd person shooter pool, Splatoon. The series as a whole is my most talked about interest, just ask any of my friends. The game was able to pull me in for a variety of reasons ranging from its energetic music, enthusiastic community, or its graffiti-punk-skater aesthetic. The most personal reasons I love Splatoon however, boils down to two main aspects; The lesson it teaches and the bonds it forms. Starting with the lesson, while it's not told by the story it holds just as much narrative value. In my experience Splatoon teaches us as people that we will fail, it doesn't matter if we have people supporting us or dragging us down. We as humans aren't perfect and will stumble. Do we fail forever? no we never. Is losing always a short process, absolutely not. The amount of “Splatfest” I have won compared to playing is an embarrassing ratio, but I don’t ever stop playing them. When your Inkling loses in Splatoon 2, you can see they're physically upset, almost as if saying “I give up!”. We as the player make them continue though. Despite them wanting to take a break, you say “one more match, and then I’m done”. If you lose, you lose it's only a game afterall. If you win however, you triumph not only over the enemy team but the doubt that was holding you back. The doubt that was making you want to throw your console into the trash. I have said on too many occasions to count, “I hate this game!” or “Why do I play this!” If I didn't have those moments of failure, the feeling of getting back up to finish what I started or even achieving a surprise “Splatfest” win is more powerful than anything I could feel in any other game. In highschool this feeling of giving up can easily poke its nose into sight, but I try to remember how easy it is to pull through; how great it feels to triumph. My second point is Splatoons strange ability to form unlikely bonds. Splatoon honestly helped me meet some wonderful people in my life. To start, was a boy in my art class. At the time he was just getting into the Switch. I at this time was trying to start a competitive team. We had a plan to gather some more people we knew, but then COVID-19 messed up our original plan. I later sent him an email as well as two twins who I was also becoming good friends with who were interested in joining. The team, unfortunately, didn't last too long for many circumstances. Frankly, we all enjoy the game a lot more as casuals now. I say now because the twins and I run the school animation club together and the boy from the beginning hung out so much we started to date temporarily. Sadly we both were too busy to stay together but we still are amazing friends and play Splatoon together. These connections are ones that I could never form in any other community. These are some of the best people I have met in my entire life. Without this game, I would have almost never been able to get to meet them.The co-op mode may not work the best, but the fun and memories it produces will never be forgotten.