I am a 16 year old animator and musician. I have been interested in making films since I was 7 years old, building my sills in various techniques such as stop-motion, flip-book animations (see below), and teaching myself After Effects to make myself look like I am flying (see below). When I was 12 years old I started an animation called Ikkit the Cricket with my cousin Jerod, which was sent to Ralph Bakshi (Cool World, Fritz the Cat). Ralph then gave me advice on the animation, so that was really cool!! My YouTube channel that I started at 7 years old gained over 2 thousand subscribers and over 6 million views total (until I recently made a new YouTube channel for multiple reasons).
This is a flip-book I made inspired by multiple online videos of post-it note flip-book videos on YouTube.
After watching multiple tutorials online at age 12, I filmed myself jumping and animated it in After Effects to make it look like I was flying.
This is the animation I made when I was 12! Here is the critique Ralph Bakshi gave me:
"The animation is very good for such a young man, and it's complex in its structure - and that’s really good. I'm not going to bother with the small stuff, Josh is very talented. Now, not to offend anyone, but the voices are not interesting enough. Except, for the kid at the bar - who's perfect. Getting good voices can really help the timing, animation, and interest. Raise the bar on this very funny film - find them. They're everywhere, but be more picky".
-Ralph
"The animation is very good for such a young man, and it's complex in its structure - and that’s really good. I'm not going to bother with the small stuff, Josh is very talented. Now, not to offend anyone, but the voices are not interesting enough. Except, for the kid at the bar - who's perfect. Getting good voices can really help the timing, animation, and interest. Raise the bar on this very funny film - find them. They're everywhere, but be more picky".
-Ralph