Once upon a time, I took my Dad to see Lightyear for Father’s Day. The next morning, as I was about to enter an operating room to videorecord a liver transplant, I received a text from him reading, “I have Covid.”
I left the hospital, tested positive, and in weeklong fever-dream state conceptualized “Stars.” I decided to realize the project after seeing Inside Out 2 with a sibling who had recently suffered a panic attack. Envisioned as an examination of love and illness, “Stars” became an exercise in balancing those two forces as my Grandmother’s health began to fail.
For over 60 years, my Grandmother held together a family deeply impacted by anxiety and schizophrenia. She raised four children while working days as a nurse and putting herself through business school at night. Now, she was hospitalized with complications from breaking her back while rescuing my Grandfather from a fall shortly before his passing.
My Grandmother’s perseverance empowered me to pursue “Stars” while working full-time, tending to family, and combating preexisting burnout. Having only created a few hand-drawn flipbooks in college, I taught myself digital animation between October 2024 and January 2025, excluding a two-week hiatus during my Grandmother’s hospice.
On the night before her death, my siblings and I told our Grandma a bedtime story modeled after the ones that she once delighted us with. I held her hand as she passed and resolved to complete “Stars” in honor of her infinite radiance as my family’s inextinguishable guiding light.
