Week 3: Sketchbook Stencil

For my stencil I cut out a drawing inspired by one of my favorite animated characters from Kiki's Delivery Service. When I was growing up, I remember being discouraged by the lack of female characters that I could identify with in animated movies. It only takes a few games of imagining to be a princess trapped in a castle to realize that playing princess is kind of boring. What I started to do was imagine new characters for myself to play within roles that seemed more complex and exciting, but rarely did I find a story that was already doing that for me.

It wasn't until much later that I discovered the movies of Hayao Miyazaki, a Japanese animation director who has been noted for his liberal views on the rights of woman and working class people, and on the importance of the environment. I first watched Kiki's Delivery Service as an eighteen year old girl who had just moved away from home. Here was a female character who was struggling with all the things I was--from finding a place to live and a job, making friends in a new town, and struggling with her talents...and she was a witch! It was unlike anything I had seen before. As a creative writer and artist, Miyazki's influence has been profound. Especially in the context of my experiences as a young girl, his movies have informed the way I write and relate to children's stories today.