Puppers Adventure

Amy Arrington

9-29-19

CMI-3370

 

Artist Statement

 

            I came up with this character because it is actually somewhat of a true story. Just like as we saw in class with those pixar videos I remember one girl saying she writes all of her stories from personal experience and that’s how she gets her inspiration and that worked very well for me. When I was little me and my family went to New York City for Thanksgiving and the morning I woke up my little stuffed dog “Puppers” was missing. I was heartbroken and my mom called the hotel when we got to our home in Midland, Texas and asked them to look for him. They did everything they could. Went back to our room, looked under everything, liked in the lobby, restaurant, and even the spa. After a few weeks, we got a call and they said the laundry mat that does all of their laundry said they had him, he was wrapped up in the sheets. So, they sent him back to me in a box and I still sleep with him until this day (yes, I am 22 years old and still sleep with a stuffed animal). When I was thinking about his wants and needs I immediately put myself in his shoes and how I would feel if I was lost from my family. I am typically a pretty positive person so that’s why I had Puppers in each 3 endings have a good attitude and make the best out of the worst because that’s what I would do. I made his “want” obviously to get back to Amy but we see that change over time within the course of this story. We see him just wanting to be happy. His needs are to let go and allow himself to live in the circumstances he’s in, and enjoy himself despite the unfortunate past events. You see these wants and needs displayed in 3 of the 3 endings. When him and Alan meet and he debates jumping out the window to go find his old owner. His fear of being lost again and his fear of losing Alan and their bond hold him back. He wants to be happy and found and he had that with Alan. In this moment, the reader realizes that Puppers is just like us. There is always someone in our lives that we are afraid to lose and we sacrifice our own choices just to be safe and I feel as if this is very relatable for everyone. The other instance is when he decides to stay back stage and lets the mail truck leave, obviously he knew him being at the Broadway show was a mistake on the mail man’s part but he takes it as fate. For me in this moment you feel hope because Puppers is excited. There is something about being excited about the unknown, I feel as if every human feels this emotion in one way or another. This makes this story relatable. His needs change a little bit in the third ending where he makes it back to Amy. His needs here are to never give up hope but allow hard times to run their course but have hope that all your hard work will turn out how you intend. I believe the wants and needs are clearly shown through the motivations of each climax in the 3 stories. How I came up with the decisions that he made was as I said before I put myself in his shoes. There are a lot of different things I would have done if faced with losing my family. In every situation in life you are provided with choices and you have to make them and you get to do that in this story. So, in each situation I basically just put myself in his shoes and thought about if I would be scared, motivated, or calm and I feel as if I did a good job as executing all of these emotions at least once within this multi-ending story. The most difficult part of making this story was the fact that in real life there was only one ending and now I had to make up 3 different ones. I had to delete a few different options before I finally got one that made since. It was hard to just randomly think up so I thought of my favorite things about New York City and incorporated those in my story somehow. Also, another hard part of this process was how to combine all of the boxes in some way. Even though there are three different endings I still had to connect boxes that might have not made since and I had to make them make since and that was difficult. By far though the most difficult part of this whole thing was the stories. Making up 3 different ending was so difficult for me. Despite all of the difficulties I feel as if I have executed and finished this project well. I am honestly very proud of myself. How I aligned the characters motivations with the readers interest was how relatable it was. I feel as if every person would react a different way in a hard situation like losing your family. I think the fact that this story provokes emotion it intrigues the reader and allows them to have the freedom to react how they personally would in a tragedy. Obviously, this story is way more light hatred than I am making it seem but in all reality this story does turn up emotion weather that’s in the form of happiness Puppers found happiness or sadness Puppers didn’t find Amy. In conclusion, this project was all together hard and time consuming but very rewarding. I enjoyed challenging myself with this story and connecting them in ways I didn’t know I could. I am very pleased with the way this turned out and I am also very proud of myself I completed such a hard task.