This is my cat, Sookie! She’s currently 11 years old and a half to 12 pounds. I adopted her in 2010 from the ASPCA when I was volunteering as a animal associate. She stole my heart with her black and white spots and her cute little pink paw pads. And whenever she wants to get my attention, she likes to flop down on the ground, and I’ll heft her up like a carton full of milk.

The film “Spirited Away” by Hayao Miyazaki has been a major artistic inspiration in how I govern my creative works. Not only is the japanese aesthetic of “Spirited Away” been a major resource in my artistic aesthetics, but the wonderful animation accompanied by strong story telling and compelling characters makes gives me motivation to replicate this in my artistic endeavors. The world Miyazaki is populated with mystical Japanese creatures, the animation is gorgeous and fluid, and the pacing of the story is near perfection. Miyazaki isn’t afraid to shy away from giving the audiences moments of pause i his film, which allows the audience to fully absorb and savior the beauty of his stories.

Throughout my adolescence I have experienced a persistent feeling of being alone. Around the seventh grade, I began the transition from female to male, and while two other friends were also going through a similar experience, they seemed to find a community within their friend group very quickly, whereas I struggled to find a place of belonging within mine. My friends were accepting of me, but none of them were transgender, and since the majority of them identified as female, there was a part of me that felt my masculinity was invalid since I didn’t hang out with any male friends. The feeling of insecurity around my gender identity and incongruence with my outside appearance and inside feelings left me in emotional turmoil daily. This ended up taking a toll on me physically, as I was unable to sustain my body with nutrients due to the constant stress and anxiety I felt around my body. I ended up having to endure several hospitalizations and horrific treatment programs that left me with PTSD instead of curing my insecurities. Despite all these hardships I’ve faced, I have managed to turn a lot of my suffering into inspiration for my artwork. After many months of therapy after being discharged from those treatment centers, I have slowly come to be more comfortable in my gender identity and expression and used this to fuel my creative work. Over the summer of my senior year, I attended the California State Summer School of the Arts, and for our final assignment, we had to create an animated short film. After many lectures on the importance of personal touch in storytelling, I decided to use my struggles with depression and body dysphoria as inspiration for my short film, which I titled “Starved.” It was about a young boy who suffers from an unknown disease, and is unable to eat, despite his mom’s best efforts. But, his grandmother refuses to give up on him, and gives him his favorite childhood dish to restore life back into him. While my struggle does not end in a satisfying conclusion, having used my past experiences in this animation has motivated me to create similar stories based on my personal struggles with my long suppressed issues related to trans identity and body dysphoria. For the first time in my six years of transitioning, I have designed and created a character who is openly trans and loudly asserts it to the world, yet feels insecure, as he still loves and adores femininity. To this day, I still feel conflicted everytime I wear something feminine in public when I fear I will be perceived as a girl. But, thanks to hormone therapy, finding and connecting with other trans folk, and learning to care less about other people’s perception of me, I have grown comfortable in how I present myself. I now can enjoy playing and pushing the binary with my appearance. Though I still have a long way to go in fully accepting myself and learning to love and take care of every part of who I am, I hope that by sharing similar stories through my art that I can help console others that they are not alone and that others are out there, looking for a place of belonging too.

As an aspiring creative director, I place tremendous importance on my ability to tell creative and unique stories. I want to tell dimensional stories of underrepresented communities such as the Asian American or LGBTQ community that allow audiences around the world to connect and engage on a deeper level. To do this, I need to be able to effectively communicate my ideas, themes, and tones clearly so that it is evident how I want my audience to feel and react. Though I want to focus my attention on animation and visual illustrations in my storytelling, without an effective story to solidify my artwork, it would fall apart and fail to engage audiences. That is why I am currently aspiring to get a creative writing minor at Art Center College of Art and Design, as a way of ensuring that not only am I a strong artist, but an effective and clear storyteller. As for the types of stories I like to tell, I lean towards telling dramas with splashes of comedic elements. Mystery, science fiction, and adventure inspire me to create, but I also draw inspiration from slice-of-life, biographical pieces like “Catcher in the Rye,” or “The Joyluck Club.” The witty sarcasm of Holden Caulfield telling his struggles, the elegance of Amy Tan’s writing in each of the mothers’ and daughters’ stories, these are all elements I want to intertwine in my own creative writing. I hope that incorporating these writing styles in my own creative works that I can clearly communicate stories of underrepresented communities to audiences around the world.

As an Asian American citizen, I find myself drawn to studying East Asian cultures, partially because of my family heritage and partially because I am simply fascinated with learning the culture of different countries. Learning from other cultures helps me as an artist by providing more resources to diversify my stories and be more inclusive with my artwork. If I were given the opportunity, I would love to study abroad either in Japan or in France. I have studied Japanese for seven years, thanks to an early passion for Japanese Animation, but have since grown to admire the japanese lifestyle and want to fully immerse myself in their culture. As for France, as an animation fanatic, I would want to work for Gobleins, a French animation school that has produced outstanding animated shorts and films. Plus, I find myself fascinated with French culture, especially the aesthetics of French architecture and fashion. It would be an honor to learn more about either French or Japanese culture as a way of broadening my artistic views and improving my story telling ability. And once I gain a better understanding of the historical and cultural significance of either culture, I would translate this into my stories and project this to the world, informing audiences everywhere of these countries rich with culture.

My favorite artist is a film maker named Hayao Miyazaki, who has created such splendid films such as “Spirited Away,” “Howl’s Moving Castle,” and “Kiki’s Delivery Service.” His stories are grounded and impactful, filled with mystic wonder and populated with interesting character dynamics. However unlike Disney, though they may have similar whimsical tales, Miyazaki allows for pauses in his stories, giving the audience a chance to breath and fully absorb the story. Combined with excellent story telling and breathtaking animation, Miyazaki is one of my biggest artistic inspirations.

The majority of society don’t care to think about their gender identity; they accept who they were at birth. I am not one of those people. As a gay transgender non-binary guy, gender identity is so intertwined in how I function in my day-to-day experience, both in my creative work as an artist/animator, and living my average life. Not a day goes by when I am not thinking about how the world perceives me and whether I made the right choice, not to “choose” to be transgender, but about coming out. Luckily for me, I live in San Francisco, and have never had an encounter of harassment on the basis that I was openly presenting as transgender. On the contrary, because I’ve been so open about my gender identity at times, I’ve met other trans artists, and with that some of the deepest relationships have been formed from these connections. Without being out to the world, I don’t know what my life would’ve been like . Despite this, it saddens me to see little to no representation of feminine or non-binary trans men in media or entertainment - it’s either glorified LGBTQ stereotypes or the same, cliche coming out story: how the person always knew since they were little, felt extreme dysphoria from the start, was disowned by their family and labeled with a mental illness before finally getting the money to transition surgically and pass as a cisgendered person. However, I am not discouraged by this, rather this motivates me to create my own content and fuels much of the inspiration behind my creative work. Being gay and transgender and a part of the LGBTQ community in many other aspects has influenced so many of the characters and stories I’ve created, revolving around gender identity and the feelings of questioning and dysphoria that arise from them. Yet, they all have the underlying theme of being proud, being vocal about who you are and unafraid of displaying your full array of colors to the world. That is a dream, a mission I have with my ambitions: to normalize LGBT in the media and at the same time, normalize these conflicting feelings that I have about myself. I want every LGBTQ youth to know when they too are confronted with these feelings: your story may not be the same, but there are similarities with others, and in those stories, you will find that you’re not as alone as you thought. Once I graduate, I plan to work in the animation industry; it is my aspiration to work in television or serialized animation as storyboard or concept artist. I love everything about the pre-production process of animation. During that stage of development, you have control of what the narrative will look and feel like, what you want to say to your audience and how you want them to hear your message. It’s one of the most important stages of the storytelling process, so I aim to learn as much as I can from visual development and storyboarding to revision and how to be concise in making the workflow a smooth transition from one team to the next. From learning the pre-production phase of animation and working together with teams of other wonderful artists, I aim to gain important leadership skills in order to achieve my dream goal of becoming the showrunner of my own animated series. I hope that with the added support of this funding that I am able to ensure some stability in this process as I work hard to recite to the world the narrator of underrepresented communities.

Thanks to the pandemic, an immense amount of free time was given to me. With this time, I decided to hammer down on my productivity and enrolled in several online arts courses in order to further my education for when I began college online in the fall. I took several animation intensives, from programs offered by California Institute of the Arts to courses taught by School of Visual Arts. I developed some great portfolio pieces thanks to the given assignments and advice from the professors on each course. And even after the courses ended, because I still have time thanks to the ongoing pandemic, I continued to further my independent studies. During the summer, there is typically a program called California State Summer School of the Arts, but during the pandemic, it was canceled. However, some alumni from previous years decided to hold a quarantined version of this program independently and provided an excellent replication of this program, all for free on a discord community server. Thanks to this program, I developed even more portfolio work and even creates a one week short film I called “Gone Fishing,” which I am still proud of to this day. It really tested my abilities as a storyteller and as an artist, so in that way, I’m thankful that I was able to spend this time isolated on furthering my progress as an artist.

Throughout my adolescence I have experienced a persistent feeling of being alone. Around the seventh grade, I began the transition from female to male, and while two other friends were also going through a similar experience, they seemed to find a community very quickly, whereas I struggled to find a place of belonging. My friends were accepting, but none were transgender, and since the majority of them were female, there was a part of me that felt my masculinity was invalid since I didn’t have any male friends. The insecurity around my gender identity and incongruence with my appearance and inside feelings left me in emotional turmoil daily. This took a toll on me physically, as I was unable to sustain my body with nutrients due to the constant stress and anxiety I felt around my body. I ended up having to endure several hospitalizations and horrific treatment programs that left me with PTSD instead of curing my insecurities. Despite all these hardships I’ve faced, I managed to turn my suffering into inspiration. After many months of therapy after being discharged, I slowly became more comfortable in my gender identity and used this to fuel my creative work. While my struggle does not end in satisfying conclusions like my stories often do, having used my past experiences motivates me to create similar stories based on my personal struggles. Though I still feel conflicted every time I wear something feminine in public, thanks to hormone therapy, connecting with other trans folk, and learning to care less about other people’s perception of me, I have grown comfortable in how I present myself. I now enjoy playing and pushing the binary with my appearance. Though I still have a way to go in fully accepting myself, I hope that by sharing similar stories through my art that I can help console others that they are not alone and that others are looking for a place of belonging too.

It was another cold, foggy morning as I entered our video production classroom. On this day, we were given the surprise assignment of creating a documentary. It could entail any narrative so long as it was related to our school. The task at hand seemed rich with potential; being a transgender, non-binary gay dude, I felt it was important to give attention to a community that seemed barely to exist within my school’s immense population. So, I proposed a documentary spotlighting the LGBTQ students at my school. I envisioned a interview-based documentary, like the New York Times Op-Docs series “A conversation with Asian people on race.” I saw this format as helping to expose the diverse experiences that queer students experience on a day-to-day basis, from hanging out with supportive friends to struggles over which bathroom to use. I was assigned as the director to a group of three. I knew that we needed interviewees as soon as possible, and this being the week of AP testing, there was no time to waste. I created a poster announcing a meetup after school— which I asked our team to distribute throughout the school— and reached out to friends and school faculty, asking if they knew anyone who was a queer student. After much searching, we rounded up six interviewees. I conducted the first and last rounds of interviews while another member of the team who was savvy with professional cameras held the in-between interviews. Things were going very smoothly; all that was left was compiling and cutting footage, and doing any clean up in post-production. Unfortunately, we only had one computer, so most of the editing process was on my shoulders. My head spun with anxious thoughts: would we finish in time? How much more do we need to edit? How can I speed this up? But I stayed focused. I assigned my other team members to look up potential music scores and to record introduction dialogue for our documentary. I gave everyone a suitable task and kept us on schedule. After directing numerous after school sessions of cutting and refining, refining and cutting, I completed our film just before the deadline. Our film teacher praised our documentary as an outstanding academic and artistic achievement with an intriguing and in-depth narrative, and the interviewees thanked me for telling their story and sharing it with others. During my high school years before this documentary project, I had never been explicitly out to anyone aside from my close friends. So, to be in a position of opening myself up to my entire school and to newly meet other LGBTQ students at my school gave me more courage in being loud and proud of who I am. This has inspired me to create more artistic work centered around being queer, in all facets of my creative expression. As I continue to produce more work focused on LGBTQ pride, I hope to tell more stories where people can see themselves and feel validated in their wonderful, unique expression.

To me animation is one of the strongest mediums to tell captivating and compelling stories about underrepresented communities, as animation utilizes time and motion, two very powerful factors that ease the communication gap between the storyteller and the audience. As a viewer of animation, I have easily been moved to tears or laughter many more times while watching animation--more so than in viewing live-action storytelling or in reading a book or graphic novel. Because animation itself is such a beautiful medium bursting with potential, I aim to better myself in understanding the foundations, dissecting it in order to grasp what makes animation have a lasting impact. Hopefully, with that understanding, I will be able to communicate my stories and messages to my audience the way other master animators have done with theirs.

To me animation is one of the strongest mediums to tell captivating and compelling stories about underrepresented communities, as animation utilizes time and motion, two very powerful factors that ease the communication gap between the storyteller and the audience. As a viewer of animation, I have easily been moved to tears or laughter many more times while watching animation--more so than in viewing live-action storytelling or in reading a book or graphic novel. Because animation itself is such a beautiful medium bursting with potential, I aim to better myself in understanding the foundations, dissecting it in order to grasp what makes animation have a lasting impact. Hopefully, with that understanding, I will be able to communicate my stories and messages to my audience the way other master animators have done with theirs.