I’m an inner-city kid born and raised Auckland Central so I was exposed to animation at a very young age. We had comics, morning cartoons, arcade games at the local dairy, old cartridge video games and movies. Animation was all around me, so I soaked it up like a sponge and put pen (or pencil) to paper whenever I could. Like most kids, my first animations were done in the corner of big textbooks in class usually involving a couple stickmen fighting.

I loved animation; it spoke to me in ways other forms of media just couldn’t.