A Blast From my Past

Remember my first piece of animation that I ever created? I mentioned it in this post. Well, guess what I found while going through some old boxes of mine at my Dad's the other day? Wow, the cover has yellowed quite a bit, but the rest of it looks to be in pretty good condition. It was done for this advanced studies class that I took in 9th grade, called IMPACT. Like I said before, I was a terrible student for this particular project because I could never work on it while at school, therefore it looked like I was slacking off. Plus, it didn't help when I shot the thing, I had to wait 2 weeks to get the film sent off to be developed and processed. My teacher was fuming by the time I got it back.


Titled, "JJ," the very, very short film tells the story of a little character being created by an artist's hand, who then starts to walk around (A walkcycle? What was I thinking?) and then have things happen to him, similar to DUCK AMUCK. I remember having fun working on it.


It consists of 146 drawings done on 4x6 inch postcards, all shot on the wall with an 8mm camera. After showing it to my teacher, she just about flipped when she first saw JJ walking. She ended up giving me a C for the class, instead of the originally intended F. About a year or two later, my aunt's dog somehow found it and ripped the film to shreds. I was devastated.

It's completely strange to come face to face with this strange artifact from my past -- all the way from 1983. I was 14 years-old when I created it. Man. That person was a totally different artist, a totally different me back then. I feel a bit guilty when I lay my eyes on this yellowing stack of drawings because I pretty much neglected animation right after this. It wouldn't be until 11 years later when I finally get back into it by taking some animation courses in college. I feel that I missed out on what could've been 11 years of studying and training to become a great animator.

Anyway, enough of the "should've, could've, would'ves" -- I'm an animator now, flippin' and animatin' and lovin' every minute of it, so no sense mulling over it, you know?

And yes -- I plan on scanning the entire thing so expect to see JJ walk again soon!