I chose this blog template because it was pink

Here's idea 2

This one's the problematic one.

Because. Here's the thing. There's all this baggage. Because. See. Well. Okay. All the movies you see with computer animation? Are made by men. And ... think about this. Disney, the original Disney films, all had female main characters -- they were by no means all good, strong, positive role models, but they were female characters. And look at the shift that's happened between Disney's Cinderella and Pixar's Toy Story.

While Cinderella herself has no modern voice for girls, Toy Story presents no voice for girls at all.

Okay, so we step back in history a little way (and history is a dangerous place to be stepping back, especially in computers, ESPECIALLY in art -- because history, as we learn it in school, is the history of men, with the occasional sop thrown to this female artist or that one) and look at the Cinderella story as Disney told it.

It's sanitized to a point where it's barely recognizable.

The original story? It's about blood and tears. Neither one of those things make it into the Disney version. And that pisses me off, almost as much as Toy Story pisses me off.

So ... that's my baggage. Sort of. That's the short version anyway. I am really pissed off about movies by men made for men. And I really feel like I should be doing my part to try to get some sort of female voice into storytelling in the age of cinema.

Not that my thesis will ever be seen by anyone outside of school! It's just ... every time I am asked to make a movie, my first thought is, "How can I put the most of myself into this?" And I don't mean ME as a character. That's lame. I mean the voices in my head that tell me how to do things and how to feel about things.

So that's what I'm looking to do with this idea -- make a movie with a distinctly feminine voice.

Here's the story:
It's not necessarily a feminIST story, but it's folklore, part of the oral tradition passed down from mother to daughter forever and ever.

There was a girl watching geese -- a goose girl, and in the way of stories, she was lovely and everyone who saw her fell in love with her. And she was kind, and she was attentive and she watched her geese well.

One day, the prince of that kingdom rode past on his horse, and he saw the goose girl, and like everyone else, he fell in love with her. Maybe they met. Maybe they kissed. Maybe not.

The prince's advisors heard of his love for the goose girl, and decided it was dangerous -- the prince can't MARRY a goose girl! Of course not! She's a commoner. So they decided to take action.

By trickery, they managed to send the goose girl out into the woods at night. The woods are Baba Yaga's woods -- the ogress who lives in a hut on chicken legs, flies in a mortar and pestle, and eats little children who are naughty and don't say their prayers at night. And of course, the goose girl strayed into the woods at night and was caught by Baba Yaga.

What the prince's advisors didn't know is that this was no ordinary goose girl (this is a fairy tale! Of course she's not!) -- she was the princess from a neighboring kingdom, held hostage for her good behaviour and made to watch the geese.

Before she was taken from her home, her royal parents gave her three magical gifts -- a ribbon, a comb, and a mirror. These three things, she took with her into the forest, so when Baba Yaga caught her, she was frightened, but not panicked.

"Oh, Baba Yaga," she said, "You can't eat me now! It's after dark and you're an old woman. I'll give you indigestion."

"What a thoughtful girl," Baba Yaga said, "to think of an old woman so kindly. You're right of course. I'll eat you in the morning."

And when morning came, the girl said to Baba Yaga, "Oh Baba Yaga, you can't eat me now! If you do, who will sweep the floors?" And thus, Baba Yaga kept the girl alive again, and the girl swept Baba Yaga's floors and cleaned her house, and when night fell, it was once again too late for Baba Yaga to eat her.

As soon as Baba Yaga was asleep, the girl crept out of the hut on chicken legs and started running.

It was night and the forest was strange, and she hadn't made it very far when she heard a sound and turned to look behind her and there was the hut on chicken legs following her. She took the ribbon her parents had given her and threw it on the ground. It grew into a river -- to wild for the hut on chicken legs to cross.

She ran again, and again she hadn't made it very far when she heard a sound and looked up. This time, she saw Baba Yaga in her mortar and pestle flying after her. She threw her comb on the ground this time, and it grew into a dense forest and hid her from view. She kept running.

Eventually, exhausted, she stopped to rest. When she did, she looked behind her, and in the distance, she could see Baba Yaga, still following. Her last gift, her mirror, was very dear to her, but she threw it to the ground anyway.

The mirror grew into a vast lake, with her on one shore and Baba Yaga on the other, with no means of crossing. Finally safe, the girl was able to go back to her geese and eventually her home.

PROS: Everything mentioned above.
CONS: This is going to be very labor intensive, especially because I am not declared as a character animator. So really, my thesis statement would be something like, "As a visual effects artist, I was drawn to this story by its intense ... characters?" So really, it has nothing to do with what I've professed I want to do with my life.
But then, I've hated my last two visual effects classes, so who knows, maybe a change is what I need?
Other cons -- this story is too long, I think. It needs to be cut down. There are too many characters. I don't want to have more than three. Ideally, I'd only have two. The story needs to be far, far more simple while still getting the story across, and I don't think I've really come up with a way to do that.

Okay, that's it! Done with this one, for now.