Amanda animated a fantasy animal (which she then lost)
When Amanda van de Meent started the Animation Design bachelor course, there were a few things she had not expected. She never thought she would have such great organisational talent – so much so that she is now ‘the HR manager of my class’ – but she had also never foreseen that she would have to dig so deep into herself to be able to create beautiful work. Amanda on taking smaller pains seriously.
At the beginning of this year, Amanda experienced something intense. Something that made her go into a kind of mourning process. ‘I felt lonely. I didn’t feel like this sadness was taken seriously.’ Perhaps not by herself either, even though she had lost something from which she drew much strength. Back to the beginning. Amanda studied Film & Animation in Utrecht and then knew that she wanted to work in animation. ‘Animation is fun because the sky is the limit in terms of options. You can invent anything and make anything. I wanted to learn more about animation and ended up at ArtEZ. The personal guidance they would offer me here really appealed to me.’ She wanted to tell stories anyway. ‘The narrative is often what I like best about art.’
In touch with your materiaal
It was clear to her that it was going to be Animation Design and not Comic Design or Illustration Design. ‘With animation you have control over time, I like that. A comic is something someone reads at their own pace. Animation allows me to determine whether someone is going to dwell on a moment for a long time or see something very briefly.’ Time was an important element of the course anyway. Amanda and her classmates were given ample time to examine their work. ‘We had to let go and re-examine everything we knew about animation. We had to leave our computers behind and do our work on paper first, or in clay, or just what we wanted. So you can feel with your hands what you’re making. It sounds woolly, but then you are more in touch with your material. In a computer, it’s mostly software and clicking buttons.’
Take a good look at yourself
That discovery, feeling and exploration remained central throughout Amanda’s studies. She did many of her subjects together with Comic Design students. ‘In the beginning, you do everything together, except the subject-specific subjects. You take classes together in theory and storytelling for example. In addition, we were specifically taught animation.’ She learned a lot very quickly. ‘Not necessarily a lot about software, but a lot about depth and self-development.’ That she is a kind of natural born HR manager for example. ‘I never thought that of myself,’ she says, laughing. ‘In the course you are asked to look closely at yourself and to constantly reflect. So then you find out about things like this.’
‘Something dies in all your films’
But it went deeper than that. ‘In my first year, a classmate said to me: ‘Something dies in all your films’. Apparently, that was a fascination I have. My lecturers encouraged me to explore this; What is this fascination? Where does it come from? Then you have to go digging in the depths of your struggles. There you find heavy but also beautiful stuff. If you understand where something comes from, you can shape it more powerfully.’
Fantasy animal
And dig, that’s what Amanda did in her final. ‘My film is about mourning, the loss of a philosophy of life. The characters are metaphors of me and my experiences. The main character is a girl who looks a bit like me. She rides her philosophy of life, a huge fantasy beast. Then she discovers that something in that world is very different from what she thought and because of that she loses the animal. She’s suddenly alone.’ Her work is about that violent event Amanda experienced earlier this year: she lost her religion. ‘Suddenly the world meant something completely different to me. I lost my religion, and with it, my world view. The world as I knew it no longer existed. I had to mourn that. I took it very seriously.’ Often this is too easily ignored, Amanda thinks. ‘Of course, for example, losing your father is much worse, but even something more abstract like losing a religion definitely deserves to be taken seriously. You are free to mourn over that.’ 
Contract at a studio
Amanda hopes people will recognise something in her film. Losing a religion, but also divorcing parents, or something completely different. Everyone’s free to do so. Just as she is free to shape her future as she wishes. ‘My top priority is buying a home. During my studies I found out that being happy with myself is the most important thing rather than having huge ambitions. I’ve been offered a great contract with Big Shots, a video production company. If I’m working there, perhaps I can buy a home. If I like that job, I’ll carry on. Otherwise I’ll go back to freelancing – that’s what I’m doing besides school now. Some of my classmates do so , by the way.’ She will just see where life takes her. She lost the fantasy animal she was riding, but the next one is already starting to feel pretty comfortable.
Want to see more?
Like many other graduates of Animation Design, Amanda has a (Dutch) student page on our finals site. Go there for more information about her graduation work.
