an·i·mate \ˈa-nə-mət\
adjective:endowed with feeling and unstructured consciousness

Za·cha·ry \zak-uh-ree\

My earliest memories of creating aniamtion go back to when I was 7 years old. My first experiences creating animation involved a video game from the early 90’s called Mario Paint. I was equipped with a mouse, a video cassette recorder, and a Super Nintendo game that would allow one to create rudimentary animations that lasted an entire nine frames. Animating this way was a tedious process of drawing nine frames at a time, which I would later record via an elaborate setup of my game console connected through my VCR. After hours of work, going back and forth from game console to VCR, I would finally have something to show for all of my efforts – poorly drawn stick figures animated violently maiming each other in some fashion. Not long after, I discovered the magic of creating flipbook animations in the margins of old, discarded books, which produced a similar quality of stick figure animation with a lot less effort.

Pursuing education at university facilitated my obsessions in animation, leading to the discovery of several influential artists. My influences include the likes of animators, film directors, and traditional artists such as Jan Svankmajer, The Brothers Quay, David Lynch, Michel Gondry, William Kentridge, Yoshiro Kimura and many others that have added to my visual repertoire. A related career in animation would be ideal, but to be honest, I don’t care what I do for a living as long as I can still create.