Shinpai: Biting My Lips

The word 'shinpai' means anxiety in Japanese. This work is about my anxiety and my nervous habits that I cannot overcome. My teeth are worn down from years of biting the insides of my mouth, and I fear that I will wear down my teeth into nothing. This habit is so engrained, that I feel powerless to overcome it. There is nothing like being aware of doing harm to myself, but being powerless to stop doing it. About my process: This was redrawn from an earlier drawing I created with pen and ink. I hand-drew it in Gimp, then created about 20 different still images, then added them all together to create the animation. This took most of one day to complete.