It’s been nearly 10 years since I created my last animation... I’ve been exploring many other things in that time, but in the realm of content creation, nothing has brought me as much joy and fulfillment as creating animations. Yeah, they take a long time to create. Yeah, they’re difficult to monetize. Yeah, I might spend dozens of hours on one, only for it to flop. But... I remember when animation was a big part of who I was. It WAS who I was. So why did I stop? I ask that rhetorically, of course. I know I’ve been messing around with other means of expression, but once again... none of them have given me what animation has.

I do feel the sting of regret though. I think about all these years... How many animations could I have created in that time? How far could I have gone? But no... I shouldn’t dwell on it; what’s passed is past. Perhaps I needed to explore? Perhaps I needed to dabble in all the things that didn’t bring me fulfillment to make me truly realize how important animation is to me? And there’s no time like the present to get started. As the saying goes: The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the 2nd best time is now.

I have plenty of ideas... I suppose that’s why I dabbled in comics. I wanted to be able to get those ideas out quickly. But... I dunno, I just didn’t enjoy the process of making them. But I do like the story I got going. Misadventures of a Level 1 Kobold. I want to make that the first animation project that I work on. But instead of trying to tell one big epic tale, I want to focus on short form storytelling. Episodic animated shorts. Yes, there can be an overarching story, but I want each one to be able to stand on its own.

I think the biggest challenge I’ll face going into this will be learning Blender’s animation tools. I spent years working with Flash, but I’ve since grown weary of... well, Adobe being Adobe. I’ve migrated over to Blender, but while I’ve been doing a lot of drawing with the Grease Pencil tool, I’ve yet to experiment with animating it. I suppose the best way to learn is to dive right in.

And so, the time to start is now. Write a script. Draw a storyboard. Put together an animatic. And then bring it all to life with animation!