All about Sergio

 

    My name is Sergio Barajas, but I am known through many different aliases. I love reading and writing and am very passionate about these subjects. My particular interest lies in telling stories and writing fiction and I adore the art of animation and visual storytelling. 

As a kid I always loved animated movies like the work of Disney, Don Bluth, ghibli, and Richard Williams.

 My interests go hand in hand together, I want to create beautiful moving pictures and depict marvelous meaning. It is one of my greatest dreams to create a moving masterpiece that will outlive me. But if i’m gonna go for something as ambitious as that, there is a lot of stuff i’m gonna have to learn before I can soar that high. Such as the ins and outs of writing a story worth telling. My expectations for this class is that I will learn how to be an expert at writing and be able to learn all the rules of writing so that in turn I can be well versed in english. 

Writing has always been a part of my life. Every single day I write. I put words on a page, or on an online document, or on a social media site, or in a search engine. Every day I am writing, and every day I am reading. Movies, books, papers, all forms of media have affected me deeply and I find it hard to imagine a life without these forms of expression. I will always be fascinated by a writer of any kind, good or bad, when they put their work out there because whether that meaning is obvious or not, there is always something behind the curtain.

I like the rain and the winter seasons, as it is during those times when I’m indoors that feel the coziest. I love stuffed animals, and I enjoy listening to video essays and critical analysis on media I consume. I dislike complete silence because when everything is too quiet it scares me. I find it uncomfortable when it feels like the world around me is dead, and void. I also dislike people who hurt spiders when the spider has done no wrong. I hate the smell of cauliflower.

My favorite films of all time are; Hayao Miyazaki’s Lupin the third: Castle of cagliostro for it’s my favorite movie to rewatch, Spiderman into the spider-verse for it’s brilliant animation that still holds up even 4 years later, Walt disney’s Alice in wonderland because it’s such a wonderful and whimsical movie that is basis for a lot of my inspiration, and finally the thief and the cobbler, specifically an online recreation of it in its original form, for it’s incredible work by master animator richard williams and its intricate and beautiful visuals despite it being unfinished in the way he originally intended.

My hobbies that I do on a daily basis are drawing, listening to music or video essays, occasionally playing video games, and watching animated movies. My favorite type of video games, films, and other media are ones that I can replay. I highly value replayability in the media I consume however, I don’t believe that it is necessarily required for something to be good. I like art that I have to be fully invested in to enjoy and be able to experience something rarely. 

Writing is extremely important to me and one book can be attributed to why writing is such a vital and incredible part of my life, that book being Noelle Stevenson’s Nimona. While a majority of people have not heard of Nimona, and even those who don't rate or value the book as highly as I do, Nimona to me is the most crucial piece of fiction in my development as a person and as a creator. To quickly summarize Nimona, Nimona is about the titular character Nimona, a shapeshifter, who works for the evil Ballister Blackheart. Ballister was a promising hero raised in an institution that creates heroes and villains in a sci-fi medieval society alongside Ambrosius Goldenloin. The Institution pitted the two against each other in a joust match, Ballister won but ambrosius in a fit of impulsivity fired at Ballister’s arm with a shot-gun. Ballister was left to become a villain and a narrative was created by the institution that posits ambrosius as a hero versus the terrible Ballister. This is only one of many instances of something that causes a moral quandary which is what drew me to the novel. This novel was one of the first times that any piece of literature had caused me to think critically about morality and what a book can say. If not for Nimona I probably would not love books as much as I do now.