So, there was this thing I kept seeing in my neighborhood. This kid, probably around nine, I started calling him ‘Schoolboy 9′ in my head ’cause he always seemed to be wearing some sports jersey, often with a number nine, or maybe he was just the ninth kid I’d mentally cataloged that day, who knows. Anyway, this Schoolboy 9, he was always, and I mean always, chasing this other, smaller kid. It was like a daily show.
It got me thinking, you know? What was their deal? Pure fun? A bit of bullying? Just kids being kids? I got this itch to try and capture it. Not with a camera, that felt a bit weird, but I figured I’d try to sketch it, maybe even make a super basic animation. A little side project, just for myself, to see if I could get the feel of it.
First off, I tried just sketching them. Man, kids move like blurs. My first few attempts at drawing them looked like a plate of noodles someone had dropped. Trying to get Schoolboy 9’s focused look, that forward lean, and then the other little kid’s expression – which was this weird mix of scared and thrilled – was way tougher than I figured. My sketches were just static, lifeless.
So, I thought, alright, animation. Super simple stuff. I dug up some ancient free animation software I had lying around, the kind where you basically draw frame by frame, or move cutouts. Nothing fancy. I just wanted to get that chase dynamic. The feeling of movement, the weight. My first few tries? Terrible. They looked like two badly drawn sticks sort of jerking towards each other. It was frustrating, to say the least.
I probably wasted a whole weekend on it. Kept replaying the scene in my mind. Was Schoolboy 9 genuinely mean? Was the smaller kid really scared? My animation wasn’t telling any story because, truth be told, I didn’t really understand the story myself. I was just animating what I thought I saw on the surface.
Then, one afternoon, I was out, and I saw them again. Mid-chase, as usual. But this time, the smaller kid, the one being chased, he tripped and his ice cream went flying. Splat on the pavement. And Schoolboy 9, who was right on his heels, he skidded to a stop. Didn’t laugh, didn’t gloat. He actually bent down, picked up the messy cone, tried to salvage what he could, and then, seeing it was a lost cause, just sort of shrugged and helped the little guy up. They both started laughing. A few seconds later, the chase was back on, but this time, I saw it completely differently. It was all a game, pure energy, that slightly chaotic way kids play.
That was the lightbulb moment. My animation was missing the why. It wasn’t about aggression; it was about the joy of the chase, the shared game. I went back to my clunky animation. I tweaked Schoolboy 9’s posture, gave him less of a scowl and more of a determined grin. I made the smaller kid’s run a bit more bouncy, less like he was running for his life. Suddenly, even with my rubbish drawing skills, the whole thing started to click. It looked janky as hell, still, but it had a bit of life to it. It felt more like what I’d finally understood.
It’s funny, isn’t it? You observe something, you think you’ve got it pegged. But until you really try to dig in, to recreate it, to understand the bits under the surface, you’re often way off. It’s like some of those projects, you get the brief, nod your head, think ‘yeah, I get this,’ and then halfway through building the damn thing, you realize you’ve missed a crucial piece of the puzzle. This whole ‘Schoolboy 9’ exercise, as silly as it was, really hammered home the point of looking closer, questioning my own assumptions before jumping to conclusions.
I still see ‘Schoolboy 9’ around sometimes, though he’s probably ‘Schoolboy 10′ or ’11’ by now. And that little animation? It’s buried on some old hard drive, probably wouldn’t even run on a modern computer. Never did anything with it. But every now and then, when I’m wrestling with some complicated problem, I remember trying to capture the essence of those two kids running. Sometimes the simplest-looking things are the most complex to truly understand, and you just have to keep watching, keep trying, until you see past the surface.
