Animation has always been the most compelling art form to me. The way a story could be told in moving drawings has always fascinated me as a child. The majority of my childhood was spent watching cartoons and attempting to capture the essence of the characters onto the paper that I was drawing on. While my peers were aging out of cartoons, my heart still gravitated towards animation which led me to a loving devotion for drawing. I wanted to create something meaningful. During my teenage years, I dedicated myself to learning the fundamentals of animation. I would spend hours watching tutorials and slowing down certain animations to see how the frames looked individually. It was difficult to learn how to depict movement in single drawings, but I was determined to create something and seeing the progress felt fulfilling for me. Comics, sculpture, and painting were all stuff that I had done before but none had the same spark that animation did. As I grew older, I expanded from cartoons into watching anime, animated indie films, and student films which all gave me a different taste of inspiration. Surprisingly, it was the student animations that I loved the most. Most of the ones that I watched were all created amateurishly by people close to my age. The animation was oftentimes choppy and the compositions remained simple, but it was the greatest evidence to me that anyone can create art. One of my favorite animations was a video titled “SAD MACHINE music video” created by SkytheSharkicorn on YouTube. This six-minute long animation was a reflection on the creator’s life– showcasing the memories that she made from her childhood to her current age. Although the animator was clearly a beginner, the story impacted me deeply. Through a simple six-minute video, I caught a glimpse of the creator's memories and their place in this world. The animation left me feeling incredibly inspired. As someone who has always struggled with self-esteem issues, I often had thoughts that I was not good enough for animation or even for art as a whole. Standing out among so many talented, diverse creators seemed impossible; but watching these animations made by kids full of passion made me realize that I could do it, too. True happiness, for me, always came from creating art. Since childhood, art has been my greatest joy– to create my own characters, to build my own worlds, and to share my perspective to the world. Animation became the ideal medium for my creative vision, as one that embodies both drawing and storytelling into moving pictures. Nothing fulfills me more than hearing that my work has inspired someone. Knowing that I can form connections with strangers all over the world through my animations makes me happy.

Trying to pinpoint the exact moment of when I started loving art is difficult for me because, ironically, I had not always loved it. Both of my parents were decent artists when they were young but neither of them ever pursued it beyond college which led them to not really caring if their child was artistically talented. Despite this, I amassed a large collection of my own drawings. The reason why I had started drawing, to my knowledge, was because I was lonely. Struggling with social anxiety since I was a child, I rarely had any friends and it left me feeling isolated and broken. To repair myself, I started drawing my own characters and came up with grand stories about them. I remember one of the stories I had created was about a shy girl named Diana being transported to outer space and meeting aliens who became her life-long friends. Reading the story again as an older teenager, I deemed it nothing but “escapism trash.” I truly hated that all of my art was nothing but a substitute for my loneliness– a trait of myself that I absolutely despised. The fact that art and suffering were always connected to each other in the same way that my identity has always been symbiotic with shyness, loneliness, and isolation had almost made me detest art. Despite all this, however, I never stopped drawing. I took long breaks but never truly gave up on it because it was the only thing that stayed with me all throughout my life. However, my passion was dimmed. Trying to regain a lost passion felt impossible for me until I discovered my favorite artist and biggest influence of all time, Ryuichi Sakamoto, who does not draw but creates music. I had been familiar with Sakamoto’s music since I was little through his iconic melody, “Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence,” but really only started to dive deeper into his discography when I entered high school. From his experimental debut album, Thousand Knives, to his deeply personal and profound album, Async, I was impressed by his diverse range of sonic abilities. Becoming more interested, I spent hours reading about Sakamoto’s views on art and the world itself. One part of his philosophy that really struck me was his statement on how silence and music were dependent on each other– a reflection that he made after witnessing the 2001 September 11 attacks where there was no music except for the quiet sounds of people helping and caring for each other after a tragedy– concluding that music cannot exist without moments of peace. It reminded me of my own views of art and identity being intertwined with each other. Sakamoto’s perspective on art and his never-ending curiosity about the world made me want to try again, to draw again, and to rethink about the meaning of art again. As I grow older, my thoughts and views are not the same as when I was a kid; though, I still believe that art is a reflection of the self. Maybe to love art, I had to love myself which would mean that my love for art had stemmed only recently. In an attempt to draw again, I began with doing studies and it has been very fun. I do love art and have already decided to continue my journey in college. As I keep learning, I hope that my love for art grows everyday.

Because of fear and anxiety, I have constantly questioned my own life. I questioned why I couldn’t just be normal like everyone else. I questioned why I couldn’t just speak when I wanted to. I questioned whether or not people like me even deserved to live out their hopes and dreams when one of the most basic capabilities of being a human being felt like an impossible task. Since preschool, I have always had social anxiety. My parents just waved it off, assuring themselves that I would become more talkative eventually. However, the opposite occurred. My social anxiety became worse over the years to the point where a single word wouldn’t come out of me for an entire day. This problem became especially noticeable during my high school years where my parents finally took me to therapy and got me an official diagnosis of severe social anxiety and selective mutism. When I got my diagnosis, I didn’t feel any different. I always knew I had some sort of anxiety disorder but had constantly been rejected by my Asian parents who knew nothing of mental health–falsely telling me that I was completely normal. Being unable to talk to anyone out of fear, I spent most of my childhood years alone. Instead of interacting with others, I would occupy myself with drawing, listening to music, and various other forms of escapism. Most of the time, I felt fine. But other times, a dark pit in my stomach would form. Other people my age were forming precious memories with their friends, while I lived through the same everyday. Loneliness was a side effect of social anxiety. On really bad days, I couldn’t hold it in and would burst into tears, crying in front of everybody. The kids in my class would notice but not say anything. Nobody knew how to comfort me. Nobody knew who I was. Nobody even knew my name. I wept. Living with selective mutism is painful. It makes you feel less than human for being unable to speak– the simplest task that anybody could do. However, that was in the past. For several years, I have tried to change. Although progress was nonlinear, I feel as though I have transformed immensely. It was difficult and scary to withstand my fear, but I slowly reached small goals one by one. I answered questions in class even if they were wrong, I attempted to approach someone first instead of waiting for someone to do it to me, I actually made friends although it took me several tries, I have formed unforgettable memories of folding origami with my best friend and exchanging it to each other as a token of our friendship and our shared love for art. Spending nearly thirteen years of my life drowning myself in my own loneliness, fear, and pity, I had convinced myself that I deserved nothing. However, that was not true. I am a human being, after all, like everyone else– capable of change, to love, and make friends despite my social anxiety. Currently, I am eighteen years old, pursuing a degree in art– the one thing that had comforted me when I had nobody. Although I still have small bits of that cemented fear from my early childhood, I hope that I can continue to change when I get to college. I want to form connections, learn more about art, and make memories like everyone else because I deserve to live out my hopes and dreams too.