To feel-

*Animation by Natalie Kim

Being ‘alive’ is to be in touch with life-forces, both from outward and inward natures.

Imagine yourself a sea otter; your life among the kelp forest. On this day, you’re at ease, twisting and twirling about beneath the sea, just having fun…

If I were to animate a sea otter, for this instant, my spirit is reaching to that of sea otter and becoming one from an imaginary perspective. This experience is then reflected through the outcome of the animated scene.

Perhaps this is the most captivating aspect to animating; to animate is to become one in spirit with the subject I’m animating, taking flight like a bird, gracefully elusive like a snow leopard…and here, a carefree sea otter.

From live action footages of otters in the wild, I look to tap into its energy by mimicking its movements, feeling its twists and turns within my body through hand gestures or head and shoulder movements…

For me, to ‘feel’ is first essential, before embarking the drawing aspect; here is where I build foundation to animating. To feel is to experience, and so to understand the texture of the particular energy embodied in a subject of conversation is critical to animating.

(Actually, a conversation with sea otters is very much a subject of interest to a future film idea I would like to one day embarks; likely I was inspired by a short film of the same subject by my friend Natalie Kim. She made the clip above around 1999; the surviving film clip was not in best quality, but nevertheless, her lively portraying of the sea otter is intact. And below, some sea otter sketches I made from a visit to Monterey Bay, California)