Decade’s long trek to your doorstep

Dear supporter

We’re delighted to tell you that Decade has been printed and bound, so will soon start to make its way around the planet to your doorstep, with copies set for delivery this winter. It’s been quite the feat to put this together, with Waneella’s hand-signed intro pages making their own separate journey from her living room and then onwards to China, where each one has been bound into a copy.

As the title suggests, it’s a book that’s been ten years in the making, as Russian artist Valeriya Sanchilo – better known as Waneella – gradually evolved her style and built up a global online fanbase. While Decade charts her story so far through vivid memories of her upbringing and education, we’ve been marking each stage of the book’s production process by asking her to go into even more detail about the hows and whys of her pixel art…  

Ciudad animada – Waneella

How long into creating pixel art did you experiment with animation GIFs?

I think I actually started out by making GIFs with pixel art and that animation was the reason I got into this format. Back then, GIFs were truly treasures for me. I have always loved animated illustrations, especially when they were only available when someone shared them from one mobile phone to another, or even via floppy disk.

Evening Forecast – Waneella 

What inspires your style and does creating a mood influence your work?

Of course, I’m naturally very inspired by anime, by Ghibli movies and by the worlds created within Satoshi Kon movies. But I think that generally, my animation style is mostly defined by my limitations. I create a lot of small, almost unrecognisable animations that are just enough to make the impression that the entire illustration is moving. Animated illustrations differ greatly from static ones and while it’s not for me to say whether they are better or worse, they definitely have a different mood. I think if I were skilled enough, or had more of a drive to try out new things, I would definitely experiment with more intense animations. I remain open to change, so maybe in the future, my style will transform dramatically! 

For the videogame, What Lies in the Multiverse – Waneella 

Can you talk more about how you use these subtle animations as a simple but effective form of storytelling?

Actually, not much happens in everyday life, which is why I really like using only subtle animations. If, for example, I’m just sitting in a room and looking around, what would I see? A flickering TV screen, some city lights, maybe a few dust particles caught in the beam of a room light – but that’s all. I would call this the animation of stillness. I think this also might be why my scenes feel realistic because, from what I remember from my university years, it’s considered good form to make animated scenes far more dynamic and even exaggerated. While I totally agree with that, I don’t have the patience to make something similar, so I have found other ways to express myself in my own style. 

Quiet Town – Waneella 

Thank you for supporting this project! We look forward to showing you glimpses of the completed publication in our next update.

The Read-Only Memory team