My first attempts at animation began at the end of March 2019 pretty much on impulse. It was a time when I had lots of ideas and mere still art did not feel like enough to bring them to life. I have always strongly felt the desire for flight, and animations (majorly dragons) felt like a way to get at least a little close to satisfying that.
My first ever animation attempt, 24th March 2019
After that it was a massive boom, within less than two months I improved massively, already able to do relatively smooth and fluid, although sketchy animations with more or less consistent anatomy. This is when I started thinking about going to an art university to learn how to do proper 2D animation and perhaps even work on movies in the future.
But some time during May, as quickly as I gained the interest in animation, I lost it completely. Not sure why, perhaps all the effort put in it did not feel rewarding enough, or I felt like I was not moving forward fast enough.
I simply stopped animating altogether.
Until a year later, once again in March I got a sudden burst of inspiration thanks to a roleplay with my friends' OCs. We had all these great characters and I wanted to see them move and come to life so much I simply sat down, grabbed a pencil, and drew, this time mostly traditionally instead of digitally.
One of my greatest pieces was an animation I thought up at 11pm, half-asleep and thinking "there is no way I could pull off that sort of camera movement when all I have ever done were still, mostly side-view animations where most of the movement was done by the character." But the next day I woke up and decided "hell, let's do this." And it worked. I still consider it one of my greatest achievements (even though the coloring is pure shit because pencils are not my friends)
Inspired by many Warrior Cats MAPs, artists like Nightrizer, Sagutoyas, AlexHarrier, I wanted to make something similar, come at least a little close to that level of quality and skill.
But the interest was quite short, I never had the patience to actually finish any of the longer pieces I had planned and did not feel like I have improved in any way, quite the opposite, in fact. This is also the reason I gave up the idea of studying animation on the academic level, since I knew I would not be able to keep up with the deadlines and did not want the stress to ruin my desire to make art.
Then after I finished high school and entered university (linguistics and translations) I found another, perhaps biggest inspiration. I saw the Amen and Birth To My Creation animatics by corinkeen and zoeves, and thanks to my friend @scarlet-being who pulled me even deep into the Frankenstein hellhole within the first three or four days of knowing her, I made a decision that I want to return to animations, only as a hobby but this time one that I would not abandon at the first sign of art block.
I realised animation does not need to be perfectly fluid, animatics can convey just as much movement and feeling as high-fps animations, sometimes perhaps more.
We began working on an AU that has been the main reason I managed to keep my sanity during lockdowns, later I joined the fandom on tumblr and my interest in the book (despite never having finished reading it) and in animation stayed alive for the entire six months since I first started making Frankenstein art. All the fan animations, art, analyses and headcanons fuel the desire to keep on animating, and even though I reach a low point many times, feeling like there is no point putting the effort in something that won't be seen by anyone and will remain forgotten a few weeks after I post it, I get another bout of inspiration thanks to a scene in our AU, or someone else's art, or just a comment under one of my older animations, and the fire is back again.
As of now I have plans for about five animatics, three of which are Frankenstein-related, and one big project I have been working on since December and while it is only halfway done and would use some reworking, I have high hopes that it will be finished soon, and that it will mark my place both in the Frankenstein fandom and as an animator in general, and that it will be a sufficient gift to all of you that have kept me inspired in these difficult times.
