“I come from an artistic background. I took HADV Art 1 and Art 2 for my freshman and sophomore years. I also just have a knack for creating stuff. My goal with animation was to translate my skills in drawing, painting and watercolor and help make that move and put it into motion.

My interest in animation was kick-started by watching ‘Across the Spider-Verse 2.’ It was kind of hard to watch the movie because on one hand I was trying to enjoy the plot and on the other hand trying to figure out, ‘How did the artists do this?’ or ‘How long did these three frames take for the artist to draw?’ and I decided to take inspiration from the movie.

It was my first time thinking about animation. I’ve done flipbook animation in the past, but never with something that most people would associate with animation these days, using a tablet, computer and pen. Watching the movie really inspired me to do those things.

I was inspired around the same time my friends started Instagram dance videos. I want to know how I could translate my skills in art and drawing, things that are not typically associated with dancing, into my love for it. I looked at some references. I looked at those figures and I traced prototypes on my iPad and over the span of two months, coloring and shading, I created a dancing guy and posted it on my spam.

Animation definitely helped my patience. It’s really easy for outsiders to look and wonder why it took three years to make a movie that’s only two hours long. But you have to look at it differently, because each frame requires attention to detail. It helped me with my patience because rather than rushing through the process and creating some type of wacky and rushed art, it really forced me to focus on each frame. This has helped me a lot in school, especially with calculus and macroeconomics. These subjects, someone else might pick up in two seconds, but I’m different. I sit down, maybe [for] hours at a time, just reading through the material and being patient with it.

When I go off to college, my first semester is going to be in Korea. I’m going to try to look at some animation companies in Korea and try to learn their style.”