Anim Ch 13: The Limbo After College (Season 2)

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A routine of watercolor, animation, and existential clouds

Ghost Stories From Limbo

From sketch to animation in a single day—there's something pure about these compressed creative bursts. The ghost animation emerged like this, a spectral figure climbing out of its own non-existence. One moment it wasn't there, the next it was haunting my Vimeo page.

These single-day projects became my lifeline during the post-college limbo. No briefs, no clients, no professors—just impulsive creation without permission or purpose. Sometimes the best animations happen when nobody's watching and nothing's at stake.

Digital Exorcisms

When my computer got attacked by malware, I didn't call tech support—I animated my despair. "Peace, bro" turned into digital warfare, the relationship between man and machine deteriorating in real-time.

It's strange how we anthropomorphize our devices, especially when they betray us. My laptop wasn't just malfunctioning; it was actively rebelling against me. Animation became both documentation and therapy, turning technical frustration into narrative.

The Language of Deliciousness

Some experiences defy verbal description. That moment when food is so good that language reduces to primal sounds—"hmmmoooo~!!!!"—demanded its own animation.

There's something wonderfully universal about this: the way taste temporarily disables our higher functions, reducing sophisticated humans to happy, moaning creatures. Animation captures these moments that exist between words, the expressions and sounds that more accurately represent our experiences than language ever could.

Typography In Heat

"The summer this year in Vancouver is longer than expected. So just an advice, keep your fonts text and other stuff in nice and cool place."

The Shaggy text animation emerged from Vancouver's unexpected heat wave. Typography melting like ice cream—letterforms drooping and stretching under the sun's assault. Even our digital artifacts aren't safe from climate change.

Bedsheet Prisons and Brain-Lickers

There's someone in my head, and it's not me... The animation of being trapped by your own bedsheets perfectly captures those mornings when getting up feels not just difficult but metaphysically impossible. Your own comfort becomes your prison.

Then there are the brain-lickers—those people who irritate you but somehow still fascinate you. "You always come across people who like to lick your brain. They may come across as annoying or irritating but you don't actually hate them." These characters became literal in animation—jumping up and running their tongues across cerebral matter.

Watercolor Documentation

The stop-motion of my palette over time might be the most honest artwork I've ever made. No pretense, no concept—just the raw evidence of trying to learn watercolor, recorded in the changing colors of my palette.

Sometimes the most accurate portrait of an artist isn't their face but their tools. This time-lapse of pigments mixing and evolving tells the story of countless hours of practice, failure, and occasional success more truthfully than any self-portrait could.

The Natural Love Cocoon

The animation of someone holding a person's heart, which then grows into a cocoon engulfing them, emerged from that post-college period when relationships take on new gravity. No longer just college flings, they become potential life directions.

This metamorphosis is both beautiful and terrifying—intimacy that completely envelops you, changing you into something else entirely. The cocoon as both protection and transformation.

Abstract Fishing and Watching Bats

Trying to fish in abstract 3D waters. The bat watching from darkness. These explorations into more symbolic territory marked a shift from literal storytelling to mood and metaphor.

As Alfred says: "People are afraid of the dark, because people imagine things in the dark. People see things in the dark." The bat animation explored this space between perception and reality, between what we see and what we imagine we see.

The Yeti Saga

Then came the Yeti trilogy—an unexpected narrative that emerged across multiple animations.

First, "A Yeti is coming... and I think he got some inspiration with him"—a mysterious figure boating through limbo, carrying creative energy.

Then: "Somebody informed the beans about the Yeti... obviously the beans don't know the Yeti. Nobody knows who informed and we can be sure it was not the Australians ;P"—an army of beans rolling furiously in response to rumors.

Finally: "They are saying this is the big mouth who told everyone about the Yeti"—revealing the loud-mouthed bird responsible for the chaos.

This absurdist narrative emerged without planning, each animation inspiring the next until a miniature universe with its own bizarre logic had formed.

Celebrations and Contemplations

The wedding animation for my brother captured another transition—a helicopter, a boat of love, two people jumping into a shared journey. Personal milestones translated into symbolic movement.

Couples watching planes from car rooftops. A man walking while birds circle his head. A figure trying to clear the cloud surrounding his mind. These quieter, more contemplative pieces reflected the growing awareness that comes after education ends:

"Being the younger one at home, most of my childhood memories are made up of how I always wanted to grow up and be a grown up. Now that I am a little mature I see things more clearly. Which actually is not a good thing. Conquered by boredom, because everything fun actually makes no sense, (like all tasty food is unhealthy

) and things that make sense are not so much as to say (on a very broader view) Standing here I understand why ignorance is bliss."

Animation became my way of processing this disillusionment—finding beauty in the confusion rather than just surrendering to it.

Walking Meditations

"Are all of nature's greatest secrets encrypted in our own selves? And I get time to ponder over this when I walk... I encourage everybody to walk for sometime. Walking is like a person's imagination, to each person it has its own meaning."

These walking animations captured movement as meditation—both the physical act and the mental journey that accompanies it. When negative thoughts circle, when clouds obscure clarity, the simple rhythm of walking creates space for new perspectives.

Each animation from this period, whether completed in a day or developed over weeks, represents not just a creative exercise but a method of navigating the disorienting freedom of post-college existence. Without assignments or deadlines, animation became something more personal—a visual diary of confusion, exploration, and occasional clarity.

Some of these pieces are available as NFTs or prints—artifacts from a transitional time when animation wasn't yet a career but had evolved beyond being merely a student pursuit.

This season of limbo may have lacked structure, but it offered something more valuable: the space to develop a visual language that was truly my own, unconstrained by client needs or academic expectations. Sometimes you need to get a little lost before you can make something worth finding.
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