Production had just wrapped up for Ara and there was a void developing in my animating life. To quickly remedy the boredom that would ensue I commissioned a new project for myself, the remake to my very first Flash animation. This time I would be learning the ins and outs of After Effects.

This started it all, after it all started when I was 10. I remember as a tot using my family's shoulder mounted straight to VCR video recorder as a means to animate. I drew a picture and then tried to press the red button on and off as fast I could in my bedroom in Flower Mound, Texas. Of course it did not work and unfortunately the will to create was stifled for practically a decade until it was revived on the first day of Freshman orientation at Purdue University. I declared animation as my major when Hilary Fulton showed me her friend Jason White's music video that he digitally created with Autodesk Maya. I began to merge back with my ten year-old self and discovered how animation was possible thanks to digital mediums and I would never have to time my finger reflexes to sync with frame rates ever again!

The last month before my freshman year of college was over, I became convinced that I needed to purchase Macromedia Studio 8 which featured Flash. I was so excited to learn the package that I immediately dove in and created anything. Through that experimentation, Penguin 1.0 was born. It is pretty bad, but hey, you don't rip out the first page in a sketchbook. You keep it to look back on and see how you've progressed.