Ms. Pepper
When I was given an assignment for my Online Journalism subject, Gosh! I don’t know what to do because we were given a task to make an article about our partner and make him or her become the center of the topic and discuss about their passion. I thought I was going to have a hard time. I have not hanged out with my classmates long enough to actually write about them and write something they are passionate about. Then, the day finally came. She has to feed me enough information about herself and passion so that I can write something about me and vice versa.
Samantha Fae Ignacio. My God! How am I going to describe this girl? She is a 2nd Year B.S Phycology student studying in the University of the Cordilleras and mind you that she is still not even her 20’s – she is 19 actually – but she was able to experience a lot of things in her life. As for me, the most exciting thing I’ve ever done is separate the coffee, sugar and cream from a 3-in-1 sachet of instant coffee. All those experiences made me intimidated towards her, I admit.
When I asked what she was willing to share, she told me that she loves voice acting and as of this moment she is honing her skills to be one. I envy her cause she was able to find her dreams at a very early age. You see, ever since she was young, she was always fond of foreign animation. May it be in movies or cartoon series. She watched them so often that she wanted to it for the rest of her life the moment she figured out that you could make a career out of it. What shocked me the most was this realization hit her at the age of 4 or 5 years old. Most people would reach the age of 30 and they still finding themselves and have no idea what to do with their life. That character of hers is very admirable.
Being a self-driven person that she is, she didn’t just sit around and did nothing. She honed her skills as much as she could without getting formal voice acting class or training and relied on the lessons she got online. She told me that one of her greatest influence was the animation “Helios: Axis Power”. Basically, it is a Japanese webcomics and later adapted in to manga and anime series written by Hidekaz Himaruya (a Japanese manga artist). To cut the story short, it is a show that personified the different countries of the world where political views are being discussed and historical moment are shown in a very over-the-top comedic manner. I personally saw this animation as a child so I could say that it was a very good animation.
For the reason that this animation became her huge influence, she started practicing a lot of accents and key dialects online where she imitated some of her favorite characters. Some of the accents she learned was English, Mid-Atlantic, Jewish, New Yorker, French and German. Despite being able to do these accents, she has always had a lot of difficulties talking in her own native language which is Filipino, particularly in Tagalog.
Her efforts were not even vain when she had an opportunity to become a voice actor. Her good friend Zaid Al-Shaheed introduce her to a contest held by Morevna Project (an independent company where they create and produce open-source short animation and develop free/open-source software for animation). The Morvana Project, or MP to make it simple, is CEO-ed by Konstantine Dimitriev which is also a good friend of Al-Shaheed. One could put two and two together and see how Samantha got the opportunity that she wished for.
This contest happened during March of 2017. She went through a lot of trials and ended up working on the animation where she got the lead part as Pepper on “Pepper and Carrot”, a web-comic made by an artist called David Revoy. During the process, she told me that she felt honored that she would be working on the animation. Considering that she loves pepper – the actual seasoning – she felt that it was fated. I would really want to put a lot of details on how the contest worked but my words are not enough how to describe the process of the contest since I was not the one who experienced it myself. However, one thing is for sure. She worked so hard in it that it finally paid off. After she duration of the contest, she won and earned herself $100, which is around 5000 Philippine pesos at that time. Anyone could see her performance through Youtube. Just type in to the search bar “Pepper and Carrot (MOTION COMIC) Episode 6: The Potion Contest”. Unfortunately, she was not able to fully enjoy the fruit of her labor and used half of her price to buy proper equipment so that would help herself to improve her voice acting skills.
She wanted to thank a lot people especially her friend Kevin for giving her discounts for the sessions that she needed and her friend Alex for voice directing her through it all. As of this moment, Samantha Fae Ignacio is working on a new animation and audio book projects and all I could is wish her the best of luck in her endeavors.
To Samantha, you may or may not be reading this somewhere near in the future. All I could say is that we may not be friends, we may not know each other personally but I truly wish that you would reach your dreams and continue chasing the stars. I admire you for chasing your passion since not a lot of people could do so. If there is something I learned in this world is that “hard work will never fail you” and I am passing that advice to you. I hope for you be happy in this path that you chosen, coming from a person who became you fan.
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