Almost half a year of hard work, the development of skills of using sophisticated animation technologies, coupled with periods of exacerbation of the disease, creative failures and disappointments about herself. All this is an overwhelming task even for an adult person, but such is the reality of fifteen-year-old Veronica Timofeyeva, who, despite of all of that, fulfills her dream - to create her first cartoon.
Veronica is 15 years old, she lives in Smila, Cherkasy region, draws a lot, comes up with characters and subjects, in the future wants to become a professional animator. For this, the girl needs expensive equipment, teachers who can teach the complex art of animation, and what is the most important she needs the forces to fight against a rare autoimmune disease every day.
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"She has seizures of unbearable headache; no medication can prevent it. So as just not to think about this pain - she paints. She sits down and paints landscapes, characters, just shades something - this is her personal meditation", Iryna Markevich, correspondent for the Television News Service, «1 + 1» channel says.
On June 22, when Veronika came to Kyiv for one of the courses of treatment, it was quite a surprise waiting for her: she was invited to the Animagrad animation studio, where they chatted with animators, directors and artists who held a workshop on the basic techniques of animation and storytelling, and during the following months remotely helped Veronica to work on her first cartoon.
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The surprises are not over: Olena Borysova, manager of the network of Dmytro Borysov`s gastrofamily presented Veronica with a high-tech and powerful laptop, while representatives of Wacom Corporation presented the girl with an Intuos Comic graphic tablet, installed a package of necessary programs and showed how she should work with them. The curator of the project «Make a dream come true» Lidiya Taran and the team of «1 + 1» were preparing and planning this day for almost two months.
Veronica had dreamed of creating his own cartoon for two years, but there was neither knowledge nor high-tech equipment. Finally, when everything needed appeared, there was a stage of homework. For mastering the program Veronica needed more than one month, at first she managed to draw only a few seconds of the cartoon. The disease was aggravated, and headaches returned to her: "There were such some critical moments when I did not want to do anything, just to lie and surf on the Internet," the girl says, "but in the animation, I discovered a lot of new things for me, and realized that despite of everything - I want to continue".
For three months, the Animagrad studio team helped Veronica to work on the cartoon. The animators corrected the visual component of her work, and screenwriter Yaroslav Voitseshek and director Sasha Ruban helped to develop the characters and prescribe the plot.
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Finally, a two-minute cartoon is ready. Its premiere took place on September 23 at the "De Kino" short film festival, and the audience met Veronica with roaring ovations. And although the dream to create your own cartoon has come true, the girl is not going to stop. In her plans to create an animated series that tells about a magical school of the future, each series will uncover the stories of unusual inhabitants of this school. And she will be helped in Animagrad studio whose team will continue to advise Veronica to further improve her skills in animation.
"For us, this is important and consistent with what we do every day in animation, embodying the most daring plans and fantasies in reality because good cartoons are primarily intended to make children happy, to train them, to develop imagination, to set the right meanings. We sincerely wish Veronika recovery, good luck and will try to do everything possible to make her dream come true, "- said the CEO of the studio Animagrad Yegor Olesov.
And more about the story of Veronica - look in the special story of the project «Make a dream come true» for TSN:
