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Andy Bailey (Andymation)- Biography, Wiki

Andy Bailey is a popular stop-motion animator and YouTuber.

He has more than 4 million subscribers on his YouTube channel by the name Andymation.

Introduction-

Andy Bailey hails from Vancouver, Washington, United States.

He has a younger brother, Robin and a sister, Lizzie.

In 2001, Andy attended Brigham Young University Film School in Provo, Utah to study for filmmaking.

In 2002, he won first place in Novell’s first annual student video competition with his entry, Novellionaire.

Butterflies was Andy’s senior film project at BYU and this film was selected as the Best Children’s Short Film at Heart of Gold Film Festival.

Love for flip books, animation & filmmaking-

At a young age, one of his teachers at school taught him the process of creating a simple flip book and Andy fell in love with the process.

Later, he also developed a passion for storytelling, filmmaking and stop motion, especially Claymation of Will Vinton Studios and Gumby.

Mike Jittlov, an American animator inspired Andy with his film, The Wizard of Speed and Time and he was also influenced by Tim Burton and Aardman Animations.

He loved the process of making flip books as it is a simple storytelling process which requires just paper and pencil.

As a kid, Andy also got interested in riding a unicycle, ventriloquism and mimicking (of Donald Duck voice) but only creating flip books and stop motion stood the test of time.

As a kid, he used to often create flip books impulsively with just a bunch of papers, a pencil and without a light box or a light pad and used to draw simple stick figures and used to hold the papers of the flip books with rubber bands.

Whenever Andy needed light to draw, he used to make a makeshift lightbox by placing a piece of Plexiglas on his lap and illuminating it from bottom-up by a flashlight.

At that time, He-Man, DuckTales and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were his favourite cartoons.

Working in movies & becoming a YouTuber-

In 2005, Andy started working as a professional animator for a small animation studio.

Later, he worked as a professional stop motion animator at Laika Studios and worked on ParaNorman, The Boxtrolls, Kubo and the Two Strings and Missing Link movies.

On 21 February 2006, Andy started his YouTube channel by the name Andymation.

Initially, he published short films and a few random videos onto his channel but on 13 March 2010, he published his first flip book video titled- Flipbooks I made as a kid and eventually, this video started becoming popular (as of September 2022, this video has a whopping 11 million views).

So, Andy started publishing more flip book videos onto his YouTube channel and thanks to this, his YouTube channel started growing.

During that time, he was inspired by the Kasey Golden YouTube channel.

Later, Andy became a full-time YouTuber and quit working in movies.

A successful YouTuber-

Now, Andy is a successful YouTuber.

As of September 2022, he has 4.39M subscribers on his Andymation YouTube channel.

And has 582K followers on his Facebook page and 52.2K followers on Instagram.

Andy earns by a variety of sources like advertisements on his YouTube videos, selling merchandise (especially Starter Flipbook Kits) through Andymation website, affiliate marketing, receiving sponsorships for his videos and he also accepts donations through Patreon.

He started manufacturing Flipbook Kits through Kickstarter.

Andy failed in his initial Kickstarter campaign and succeeded only at the second attempt, thanks to the success of his YouTube channel.

On 29 September 2020, he started his second YouTube channel by the name Andymation Extras and as of September 2022, he has 8.75K subscribers on it.

Personal life-

Andy is married to Laurie and this couple have three sons.

Much like him, his son, Asher is also into drawing cartoons.

Andy lives near Portland, Oregon, United States.

Some interesting facts about Andy Bailey-

  • Fantastic Mr. Fox and The Iron Giant are Andy’s favourite animated movies.
  • While animating he listens to movies, TV shows, audio books, 1980s and classical music and Spotify’s Discover Weekly songs.
  • Casey Neistat and Kevin James are Andy’s favourite YouTubers.
  • He is tall at 6’3” and is a fan of Copic markers.
  • Since a young age, Andy drew a ton of flip books and preserved all of them.

So, how are you inspired by the success story of Andy Bailey?

Share with me in the comment section below.

About Author

Hello folks, I'm Naveen Reddy.
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