Animation ch 4: Reasons to animate

Where deadlines, broken limbs, cardboard pizza accessories, and expensive toys become excuses to avoid real life.

The Festival Fiasco

Let's talk about pain. Specifically, the special kind of pain that comes from working your tail off on something only to watch someone else get the credit. The NID Animation Festival Chitrakatha promos weren't just any project—they were a 10-day marathon of sleep deprivation and questionable life choices.

While everyone else enjoyed their Diwali vacation, Vivek and I barricaded ourselves in the studio like a pair of animation martyrs. Why? Because we were either dedicated or completely lacking common sense. Probably both. Vivek "the perfectionist" (a nickname that was 100% accurate and 0% sarcastic) elevated these promos from "student work" to "actually watchable." His obsessive attention to detail meant we redid shots that I would have happily called finished days earlier.

Then came the screening day. You know that moment when you're waiting for your well-deserved recognition and instead get a public kick to the creative stomach? Yeah, that. Somehow the credits made it look like I'd done the whole thing myself, effectively erasing Vivek's massive contribution. I couldn't even enjoy our success because I was too busy watching my collaboration implode in real-time.

So here's Animation Truth #437: In animation, the credits matter as much as the content. Years later, I'm still saying it: None of that work would have been possible without Vivek. Not a single frame.

The Broke-Person Birthday Solution

Nothing reveals your financial situation quite like your friends' birthdays. When Alister's birthday rolled around, I found myself with the toxic combination of empty pockets and social obligation. What's an animator to do? Transform laziness and poverty into creative genius, obviously.

Instead of actually buying a gift like a functioning adult, I animated how I would dramatically deliver a gift—IF I had one. The meta-brilliance of this move still makes me laugh. I didn't give him anything tangible, yet somehow emerged looking thoughtful rather than cheap.

Those hand-drawn frames weren't just a gift—they were an elaborate scheme to disguise the fact that I couldn't afford an actual present. Yet somehow, the animation became more meaningful than whatever forgettable store-bought item I might have purchased.

This masterclass in broke creativity taught me that sometimes animation is just financial limitation with better PR. But hey, at least it worked.

Animation From Forced Bed Rest

There's a special kind of cabin fever that develops when you're confined to a room with a broken leg. My world shrank to the tragic distance between my bed and desk, a journey that became my daily Everest. The upside? Lots of delivered pizza. The downside? Everything else.

It was those silly little cardboard pizza tables from Dominos—you know, those seemingly pointless pieces of environmental excess that supposedly keep the box from crushing your pizza—that saved what remained of my sanity. In a moment of either inspiration or hallucination (the line gets blurry around day 12 of confinement), I cut out a tiny paper man proportional to the table.

Before I could question my life choices, I had transformed half my sketch pad into an army of paper figures. This animation gave me nothing but trouble, which was still better than giving me nothing at all.

This bizarre episode taught me that animation is sometimes just the creative manifestation of cabin fever. When your body is trapped, your mind finds ways to move that your leg can't.

The Red Bull Contest Confusion

Nothing says "professional animator" quite like completely misreading contest rules. After resurrecting an old animation that had been gathering digital dust on my hard drive, I poured hours into reshaping it for a Red Bull contest with prizes that made my student-loan-burdened brain do backflips.

Only after I was elbow-deep in the project did I actually read the rules. UK residents only. Permanent UK address required. Well, great.

Did I give up like a reasonable person? Of course not. I called Emil, begging for his UK address like some animation hustler. Problem solved—until I realized my chances would be better in the student category, triggering another round of bureaucratic gymnastics.

After all this rule-bending and friend-exploiting, the most bizarre thing happened: I stopped caring about winning. Somewhere between starting and submitting, the work transformed from "contest entry" to "thing I'm making because it now exists and demands completion."

This ridiculous journey taught me that sometimes you begin animating for the most random reasons but finish for the right ones. The prize became irrelevant; the animation itself was the point all along.

The Diwali Animation That Barely Was

I promised myself: NO FREELANCE until graduation. A sacred vow that lasted right up until a relative asked for my services. Suddenly my principles vanished faster than free food at a student gathering.

This "EVIL FREELANCE" (not being dramatic at all) derailed my planned Diwali animation, which served dual purposes: holiday wishes and an excuse to break in my shiny new Cintiq—the expensive toy I'd convinced myself would magically make me a better animator.

The resulting animation was a disaster by my standards—rushed, unpolished, missing all the post-production finesse I'd planned. I served it up raw, like sushi but less intentional. Just bare Photoshop animation without any of the garnish that might have made it palatable.

Yet sending out this half-baked creation taught me something valuable: Sometimes "finished but flawed" beats "perfect but nonexistent" by a million miles. That Diwali animation might have been the visual equivalent of a hastily scribbled note, but at least it arrived—eventually.

Why We Actually Animate

After years of creating under deadlines, while immobilized, broke, confused, and overwhelmed, I've realized something profound about animation: it almost never happens for the pure, noble reasons we pretend it does.

We animate because our leg is broken and we're losing our minds. Because we can't afford real presents. Because we committed to projects before understanding what they entailed. Because we got new equipment that needs justifying. Because relatives guilt us into freelance work we swore we'd never take.

These messy, human, often embarrassing motivations don't make the resulting animations less legitimate—they make them more honest. Each project carries the DNA of its chaotic origins, visible only to those who know where to look.

Perhaps the truest animation comes not from perfect artistic vision but from our deeply imperfect lives—our limitations, obligations, mistakes, and accidents transformed frame by painstaking frame into something that somehow transcends the ridiculous circumstances that birthed it.

And isn't that the whole point, really?