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Solomon's Journey: Unleashing Creativity with Story Xperiential

  • Writer: Story Xperiential
    Story Xperiential
  • 1 day ago
  • 4 min read

Solomon Sloan with his framed illustration of "The Meditiation of Birds" featuring a white bird in an airplane over an ocean at night.

Solomon Sloan from Watsonville, CA, is the director, writer, animator, editor, and voice actor for the one of the spring 2025 Story Xperiential award winners in the adult cohort, "Wacky Thing Called Life". He has been a part of the Story Xperiential community since 2021, where he joined as a youth participant and has a YouTube Channel: Sloan Presents.


"Wacky Thing Called Life" is my fifth project with the Story Xperiential program. This film was one of the hardest, yet most personal films I've ever had to make, with well over 3000 frames being animated for both the dialogue and musical sequences over the span of about six months.


Title image from "Wacky Thing Called Life" featuring an illustration of a blue cat and green frog singing.

This is also the first short film of mine to feature an original song, so to see this win such a great award like this, I think, really shows that the hard work I put into this really paid off.



Filmmaking is something I've been interested in for quite a long time. I've always grown up with watching movies and TV shows, and, I think, it was the pandemic that helped my creativity thrive and grow in various ways, and being cooped up in the house for quite a while.

When I heard about the opportunity to be a part of this program, where I could learn from animators and storytellers who worked at Pixar and other wonderful animated films, I, of course, had to say yes.

Starting off in October of 2021, with my submission "Close Encounters of the 22nd Kind", at the beginning of my eighth grade year, I immediately came to appreciate the kind of feedback that I was getting from the program with people from all over the world and getting to share ideas and improve together as storytellers.


Close Encounters of the 22nd Kind frame - 3 aliens having a conversation

The feedback aspect of the program is actually the thing I value most about Story Xperiential. I've not only grown as a storyteller but also as a collaborator and an artist. I learn more about myself as well as others through getting to see what everyone has to say.


It's definitely not easy to make these kind of films, trying to balance this one film with everything else you're doing; with your own mental health, what you're doing at home, and what you're doing at school. It's a balance trying to take in feedback, to make a better product for your film while also trying to have enough time to make the deadline. It's essential that when you get all this feedback from other people, that you take in these ideas and you can really see like, "OK, how I can grow in terms of making characters or making these worlds, how you can make the best kind of story out there?".



I think you can't really go into a program like Story Xperiential with this perfectionist kind of mindset. For as much as an artist can try and make the best possible product, there's always other factors coming in to affect how you make your story, but, ultimately, you have to know how to deal with it and become confident in what you make.


I think it's also important to not be your biggest critic because, at the end of the day, each story you make is something that you can learn from and you can grow from. It create areas of confusion and areas of just trying things out, but if you don't try at all then you won't really know how much you can actually grow from there.


With these short films of mine, I've gone outside of the program to submit them for local and national film festivals, films of mine such as "Midshipman Mallory" this past October was an official selection for the 2024 Crave Arts: All American High School Film Festival in New York, on of the largest high school film festivals in the world. Learn more about this Crave Arts film festival: https://cravearts.org/aahsff and https://www.hsfilmfest.com/.


An illustration of Mr. Red at Allergies Anonymous.

Currently, I'm working on several projects of mine, one of which is a short film with one of my recurring characters, Mr. Red of the "Wacky Creature" series, and he finds out that he has allergies and he has to find ways to deal with it, otherwise he'll get massively sick.


An illustration of a racoon and dancing trash can music number from a to be named project inspired by "West Side Story".

Another film of mine that's in the works is something that's inspired by "West Side Story", where it's rats and raccoons that are having a kind of war on the streets. It's a whole musical outing that I'm planning for next year.

What I made with "Wacky Thing Called Life" is not at all like what I was making during my first Story Xperiential session. It really takes time, effort and passion. And, you know, you should also not become complacent with what you're trying to make.

You should continually want to improve as well as collaborate with others, so you can have a mutual bond where they learn from you, you learn from them and you guys can both improve as storytellers. Watch "Wacky Thing Called Life": https://www.xperiential.us/exhibition/38d53451-33b0-439a-8a02-9e4ae7c46182/124b5669-937d-449b-be05-eca95e667ae3 Watch "Midshipman Mallary": https://www.xperiential.us/exhibition/7a15b1f3-94de-4426-833e-b8a797553513/cc8cab39-d855-4385-99ca-ea0d6bedb11f YouTube Channel: Sloan Presents, featuring animated and puppet content: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNmQ8LTgLy9uMUyXLBf7r0Q

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