Alicia Liu
Quarantine Diaries 2020
At the beginning of April, I moved to live with my parents' friend and his family near Boston. As I never got much time to spend quality time with my own family, because of both me and my parents’ busy working schedules, I am so glad that I can learn to appreciate the warmth of a loving family and every subtle happiness in life during quarantine. Being in this physical space has also made me develop a healthier lifestyle. Thanks to the baby, who wakes up and starts crying every day at six, I got into the habit of waking up early and starting my day off with a cup of overnight oats I made the night before and an energizing morning workout. Overall, I feel a lot more productive than before after I have adjusted to the distance learning experience.
For me, quarantining is not a limitation, but rather guidance for choosing the art media and what art I want to make. Babysitting a five-year-old girl and a toddler in the house has given me so many inspirations and fresh perspectives that I was too ambitious in the beginning, thinking that I was able to create something I have never done before ------ an animation piece with a full storyline ------ in less than two months. With some practice with drawing doodles digitally on Procreate and piecing them together with the video editing software Videoleap, I forced myself to select just one idea out of all the creative thoughts that are floating in my mind.
The emotion I feel when I was making this piece might seem totally unrelated, or even opposite, to what I have described at first, but I am sure everyone who is quarantining themselves has experienced through the mixed feeling of enjoying the slow-paced life and grumbling about boredom. So I made an animation, recreating the DVD loading screen with a digital drawing of a girl slothfully sitting on the couch and looking at her phone.