Nickelodeon is the reason I’m sitting here right now today.
Nickelodeon is what inspired my love of animation growing up.
When I met them for the very first time, was during the pitch-
I couldn’t believe it, the President of Nickelodeon was in the room at that time so
I was just like, (gasp) oh my gosh wow!
Brenna Verner found the opportunity of a lifetime at Miami Dade College’s Miami Animation
and Gaming International Complex, where she developed her animated short, A Balanced Breakfast,
now playing across Latin America on Nickelodeon and Nick Jr.
It was a dream come true, one she had carried with her since she was a child, when she first
conceived the idea for the short.
A Balanced Breakfast is the story of 3 flavorful sisters, sweet, sour and salty, who all argue
over what to make for their anniversary breakfast.
All the girls have different tastes, so they all think their breakfast has to be the best
one.
But in the end, they learn that it’s by coming together and mixing their flavors together
that they get the best result of all.
A Balanced Breakfast was created as part of her capstone project, where students apply
all they have learned in industry standard technical animation programs and practices
to create their own work.
MAGIC has all state-of-the-art technology and it’s just absolutely amazing the things
we were able to take part in.
So I would say the biggest thing was Toon Boom Harmony, I think it’s the best animation
software in the world.
It’s kind of the industry standard it’s used by Nickelodeon and Netflix- shows like
Spongebob Squarepants, My Little Pony, Adventure Time, Futurama, The Simpsons, too many to
list really!
They all use Toon Boom Harmony to animate those shows that are produced for television.
We also use Adobe Creative Cloud for Photoshop and After Effects, to make the lovely backgrounds
you see behind me, and also to edit the film together in the end.
MAGIC is MDC’s premiere animation and gaming facility.
Beyond teaching top of the line industry programs and practices, students have the opportunity
to pitch their projects to network executives and receive personalized mentorship from talented
professionals in the animation industry.
It’s a very very very important aspect of the program; students working side-by-side
with industry, that’s absolutely, uh uh...uh one of the most fundamental aspects of MAGIC,
that helps students understand what it takes to create a project and also to push themselves
to create a project they can commercialize.
From the beginning, they were mentoring us every step of the process, so at first, we
had to approve the script- very luckily for me they kind of told me “usually scripts
go through like 16 re-writes but girl, yours is just ready out the gate!” they pretty
much loved it I just added a couple of extra lines.
And of course, from there it’s improving the character designs.
We got the approval of the castle redesign and yeah from there we had to get all the
props approved as well.
We gotta ex the straw because that’s not environmentally conscious, right?
We introduce balloon animals to make it more playful, things of that nature, right?
All the little attention to detail right?
So, from there it’s kind of like really refining it and getting it ready for air,
and yeah from there once we start the animation process, they kind of just tell us, oh her
hand looked a little wonky there- oh maybe we can readdress this, oh and then of course
the music and the voice acting as well.
We did the voice actors from New World School of the Arts, by the way thank you to my voice
actors they are amazing talents.
Yeah it was just quite a process Nickelodeon helped us literally every step of the way.
Every 2 weeks they were right there to give us feedback.
Getting to work directly with a television giant like Nickelodeon is a once-in-a-lifetime
opportunity for most students, like Brenna, seeking to kick-start their animation careers.
And MAGIC serves as that launching pad where they develop their ideas and find their own
unique voice.
MAGIC has these great professors and this great software and hardware available to us
at all times in the computer lab and in the classrooms.
It kind of gave us those tools and resources that- it’s true, we might not have had otherwise
because these things can be expensive, even my own tablet that stood 13-inch, that cost
me a $1,000 I had to save up for years in order to purchase this for myself, so when
I found out MAGIC had 22-inch ones at every computer in the school, I’m just like “wow!”
like, that’s incredible that they’re offering that to people.
After all their hard work to bring A Balanced Breakfast to life, Brenna’s dream came true
when Nickelodeon selected her animated short to premiere on Nickelodeon and Nick Jr. in
Latin America and Portugal.
We loved Brenna’s idea, Brenna’s pitch from the very beginning, she’s a very enthusiastic
animator- she was able to sell the story, it’s very personal, it’s very deep for
her.
When we’re looking for projects with Nickelodeon, I think the messaging is really important.
A lot of our shows and series have a lot of girl power, and Brenna’s story “A Balanced
Breakfast” had all of that plus a King so we really enjoyed the story like Miriam said
from the beginning.
Having my cartoon air on Nickelodeon is nothing short of the representation of my lifelong
dream coming true.
It was Nicktoons that inspired me growing up to first kind of have that love of animation
and pursue a creative career in animation, like I said before, series like Avatar the
Last Airbender, Spongebob Squarepants, Hey Arnold, Jimmy Neutron, all these amazing shows
that were so formative to me in my life they gave me kind of a moral compass, they helped
me make friends and bond with others who shared the same interests and the same passions and
I really owe so much to Nickelodeon as it is for me to even be sitting here today so
the chance to even work with them and air something on their channel is just...legendary,
I feel like I can die happy, I feel like it’s the culmination of everything I ever hope
for or work for, they are absolutely champions in animation and innovation and amazing entertainment
and so I’m really proud to be any small part in their legacy.
I know what it’s like to be from a low-income family, I know what it’s like to struggle
for your dreams that you want in life- to give people that kind of access to those things,
that head start in life is absolutely amazing.
For MDC in Focus, I’m Daniel Rodriguez.