"Living Arts has helped me to figure out the possibilities of what I can actually do."
Image: Jasper, Verity and Phi wearing 'Colour My Garden' t-shirts, standing outdoors at Adelaide Festival Centre's Open-Air screen.
Jasper was not sure what to expect when he first arrived for Life Without Barriers' Living Arts Holiday Program, and he did not anticipate that Phi Theodoros, Resident Artist who ran the program, already knew about his work and was waiting to meet him in person.
"Phi watched my videos and had already subscribed my channel!" said Jasper, talking about his YouTube channel Mc.Mandy!, which was brand new at the time.
Phi's warm and fun manner immediately put Jasper at ease, and they set about combining their creative talents. In the first session, to help Jasper get into his creative groove, they used a 'roll a story' template and a fluffy dice to come up with a storyboard for their animation.
With Phi's support, Jasper created characters out of light crafty clay, built sets, set up lighting, and filmed the animation over several sessions. They created, recorded and produced an original music score for the film, recording the sound live with Jasper creating the soundtrack and himself and Phi doing the character voices.
"You don't know how stoked we were making the sound. It just sounded so good. We did it first try, all the recordings, everything!" said Jasper.
Image: Jasper and Phi working on the annimation together.
They named the film 'Colour My Garden'.
"Colour My Garden' is about a curious young girl and her cautious, but very caring, aunty and their journey to discover colour in an otherwise monochromatic world," said Jasper.
"Although they face challenges, they keep going on knowing that they have supports behind them, such as the wise old man."
He went on to describe how he drew on his own experiences to create Colour My Garden.
"I call Aunty Vee my Maunty, which is a mum aunty," he said.
"This character, the aunty, is definitely my view of Aunty Vee in that she's kind and caring. And in the film, you'll see that the aunty really cares for the girl, and everybody around the girl is supporting her."
Like the main character in his film, Jasper feels supported by his support team, which includes Life Without Barriers' Child Family Practitioner, Kathryn Woods.
"'Team Jasper' refers to all my supporters and my thousands and thousands of people working in the background. Some of them I don't even know, but they know me. Aunty Vee would say I am the soloist, Aunty Vee is the conductor, Phi and all my supporters are the orchestra just playing along for me, the soloist," he explained.
Jasper is proudly neurodivergent and displayed a self-awareness beyond his 13 years when he explained what art means to him.
"When I was a little lad, I needed to understand what was happening for me and also how to explain that to others. For example, when I was sangry (sad angry) or mangry (mad angry) or had, which is happy-sad, all those different combinations," he said.
"Doing that with my crayons - those colours and the way I drew meant something to me. It was literally me showing people, 'this is how I feel'. And even if you don't understand it, I do. That curve or swirl means this, but since it's around that, then it means this. I didn't have the words to really say that. Like when I had my braces, I said, 'Aunty Vee, you do not understand my pain, I need to draw this out'."
Phi and Jasper launched Colour My Garden at Life Without Barriers' Unley office on Jasper's 13th birthday, making the party a celebration of the film and of Jasper.
Team Jasper showed up in full force to the celebration, including Lucy Wade, Director of Child Youth and Family, South Australia.
"We had speeches, 30 people came, all the snacks, all the decorations. I was not nervous about public speaking. I was actually very proud and happy because it went exactly to plan of how I thought it would," Jasper said.
Image: Jasper, Verity and Phi wearing 'Colour My Garden' t-shirts, standing on a train.
As Jasper basked in the joyous event, no one guessed a secret only he, Phi and Verity knew.
"In one of my sessions, Phi had the amazing idea to submit the animation into the Youth Week," Jasper said.
As part of this year's South Australian Youth Week, two winning two animations were to be screened on the Adelaide Festival Centre's Open-Air screen, playing for the thousands of people who pass it every day.
"I thought it was worth the shot. If we got the selected spot, the director would get a nice artwork loan fee of $250!" he said.
Colour My Garden was selected for South Australian Youth Week prize, and Jasper found out that he won just before his launch party.
"I'm still stoked, and I can't believe it," he said.
Jasper, Verity and Phi went to the Festival Centre to see Jasper's work on the big screen.
"My first thought was, 'oh my god!' We were in the Uber, we were looking through the trees and we're like, 'No Way! That's our animation!' It was a massive screen. 10 times bigger than I could ever imagine. It looked so good too."
Image: Jasper and Phi standing infront of a large outdoor screen displaying 'Colour My Garden'.
Along with the pleasure of creating art with like-minded collaborators, the exhilaration of winning, and the taste of fame and success, this experience opened Jasper to the world of potential that lay ahead for him.
"When I grow up, I would like to be entrepreneur. I want to inspire people and get people to do stuff they love," he said.
"Living Arts has helped me to figure out the possibilities of what I can actually do."
"This could actually be a good career path for me. I could get a degree in teaching, maybe. I could use it to start my own business thing where I teach people how to do things like animating."
You can support Jasper by liking and subscribing to his YouTube channel Mc. Mandy!, where you can also watch his animation film, Colour My Garden.
