Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
Adam Elliot
I have to admit, I've never been a big fan of animation.
My God
, you're all shrieking!
Blasphemy
! How can
an Oscar (TM) winner for animation dare say such a thing? Well I could lie and say how Sjankmayer,
Harryhausen and Park have truly inspired and rocked my world since I was a foetus. I confess; they
have not. I admire, respect and acknowledge all of their wonderful fi lms and will always speak highly of
their work, but for me, becoming an animator was never a dream and quite truly an accident. I'd always
been creative; drawing since birth and making deformed objects from egg cartons and pipe cleaners.
But though the big strange adults around me marvelled at my artistic fl air, it was just a pastime and an
excuse not to play football or any other kind of dull and enforced exercise.
I dreamt of becoming a vet and gathered around me as many sick and sorry animals as I could
capture. I'd administer my own medicine and invented treatments, and regrettably did more harm than
good. I poured seed down a maimed sparrow's throat hoping to nourish and feed its twisted wing
back to health. Sadly, my premature mind had no idea that the seeds needed to be husked fi rst and the
poor bewildered creature choked to death. I've always felt guilty about the many defenceless animals I
put to death precipitately, and as some sort of homage and recompense, have honoured them in all
my fi lms.
To help fund my way to university, I was also a keen entrepreneur, devising many unique but fl awed
ways to make money. Aged six, I jumped on the 'pet rock' bandwagon and made a tray of my own mutant
pebble friends with stick on eyes that resembled people from the dark end of a mental
asylum. While other kids sat out the front of their homes spruiking lukewarm, unwashed, hand-squeezed
lemonade, I set up shop on the curb with a card table and sign; 'Adam's Pet Roks - 25 sents eech'.
By lunchtime I should've sold out and been on my way to fame fortune and the owner of the biggest
veterinary clinic Australia had ever seen. Disappointingly, I only sold one pet rock, to my next-door
neighbour, Mr Stewart, who was dying of emphysema and felt more sorry for me than I did for him.
He pointed out that we lived in a court and that foot traffi c would always be slow and perhaps I should go
and play on the freeway where there were more customers. Anyway, I digress. My burning desire
to be a vet did not waiver even into my adolescence. What did waiver, however, was my skill at maths
and science; key subjects needed to study medicine. Sadly, the left side of my brain, according to the latest
pop psychology topics, was 'defunct' and not fi ring on all cylinders, while the right side and 'creative' part
of my head was bursting with fecund activity. I was doomed to become an artist and unsurprisingly in my
fi nal year of high school, didn't receive the grades to get me to college. I stumbled into the real world with
no idea how I would survive; all I could do was draw. I remembered my days as a pet rock entrepreneur
and wondered if I should set up shop again. Perhaps I could sell something more appealing this time. It
was then I started down a career path revolving around tee-shirts. I set up a stall at the famous outdoor St
Kilda Esplanade Craft Market where for the next fi ve years I sold over fi ve-thousand shirts, all individually
hand painted with little strange cartoons. My most popular design was 'Murray the Tap Dancing Dim
Sim' (a type of Asian dumpling). It was a great lifestyle; I only had to work a few days a week and the
money was abundant! However, after fi ve years and thousands of Murrays, I got bored. Was this it? Was
this my life? Was this as good as it was ever going to get? I looked at the man next to me, Neville, who
sold handmade coffee tables. Nev had been down at the market for 25 years and looked windburnt,
downtrodden and bored to the point of suicide. It was then and there I decided to leave. Where would I
go, what would I do? I had no idea. At that stage all my friends were graduating from university. I felt left
behind and 'stupid'. I was twenty-fi ve and had zero qualifi cations.
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