Animation is love, animation is life~

I've been immersed in this form of visual storytelling ever since then. I ate, slept, and breathed this stuff; I would replay my favorite movies over and over, and I still remember imitating dialogue from The Lion King with a friend in pre-school, squealing with laughter in my parents' room every time I watched Mushu pick up the giant statue's head and talk through it, and admire all of the iconic characters throughout history come out and gather together and sing at the end of Who Framed Roger Rabbit. (Nowadays, that scene brings me to tears every time because it's like the entire animation industry together as one big happy family.) By the time I was 6 years old, I made myself a persona and was attempting to draw comics with it. At that age, I could easily recognize the music of Looney Tunes or Pop-Eye or The Flintstones and I would come running from the other side of the house and plop down on the floor to watch. I was captivated about how they were made.  They were just like the drawings I did, but they were moving and talking as if they were real. The ability to take creations from your head and make them come to life and move on the paper like that was dumbfounding. And with my daydreams always seemed to be in 2D animation, I wanted to make my drawings move like cartoons too. They're like my safety-blanket; when I just got home from getting into a car accident once and I was still rattled by it, I immediately turned the TV to cartoons while we waited for my parents to come back and within minutes of watching, I had calmed down. And after coming in from a stressful time in the studio and my roommate wasn't around, I would turn cartoons on to help me unwind and de-stress. Sometimes, just having them on in the background was enough to relax. 

Growing up watching this stuff since I was very little, as far back as I can remember...It's no wonder my parents weren't that surprised when I told them I wanted to study animation. My fascination, childish passion, and the longing ambition to create my own stories through animation was strong then and now even stronger after 5 years of learning it. It's what drove me to pursue the career, and it's still driving me forward. I'm a true diehard fan of cartoons, and no matter how much people mock them as being "just for kids," my enthusiasm for them won't ever go away.

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