Hey look! Spurred on by my apparent love of prize-free online competitions, and possible creeping dementia, I drew several hundred pictures to create the fleeting illusion of motion.

Actually, I’ll spare you the usual self-effacing stuff. I impressed myself over the past couple of weeks by finally finding the patience to accomplish something I’ve wanted to do since I was a kid. I learned a lot, and started to grasp some concepts that seemed amorphous on the printed pages of my animation how-to books. I have a long way to go, but I’ve crossed an important threshold: I now realize that animating, mad as it is, is not superhuman task. It’s just something that will require a huge amount of practice and patience.

You can check out the contest here; as of this writing it hasn’t started yet, but maybe it will have by the time you click. And luckily, this contest doesn’t stretch for 10 weeks; I believe the voting is over in less than a week.

Edit: I’m amazed that out of 347 frames, the Posterous video player’s holding frame is the exact same drawing I posted yesterday!