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Comment by dchung333 | Hacker News Reader

Huh, looking at the other nominees a part of me wonders if it was created by someone else and they just had a child stand in to take the credit. This is incredibly suspicious to say the least but who knows. There's nothing wrong with a parent or someone else helping them but to the extent of this...

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Hi, we had other entries from teenagers with similar skills, so Euan's work is not an outlier:

https://younganimator.uk/winner/1699875806584x29956216420210... (Jeremiah, Aged 14)

https://younganimator.uk/winner/1668441140134x35615750206437... (Nishaan, Aged 17)

Thank you for direct links to these. Winner is obviously much outlierier than these other two "mere mortal" young animators.

Mentally daydreaming, my thoughts flash back to 2002 — back when a simple 16-color, ten second animation (done by a peer at our elite creative arts HS) took days to render [PowerMacG4MDD Rage128 FTW!] and secured this peer artist acclaim from his classsmates, state, and future creative employers.

How far we've come. To where we'll go. Just incredible — can't imagine what the next decades will allow, but looking forward to robotic dumplings/streetfood.

I hope works of these extremely talented kids were not demotivating for other contenders

You're showing the winners not the nominee's its pretty clear what's going on here.

You could be right; I'd hope the competition vetted the entries. But 16 isn't really a child. There's a lot of variation, but there are a lot of very talented people that age or even younger.

Some 16 year olds are kids some are not… but whether they’re a child or not doesn’t depend on their level of artistic talent / skills

Honestly at 16 even if a child reached this skill level it means they typically sacrificed other aspects of there life to reach it. Realistically less than 0.1% of children reach this route and from I've seen it's due to "encouragement" by their parents. I've seen a wide range of people children who had have "gone" far. Kids who finished their PhDs by the age of 16. It's almost always child abuse. There parents don't necessarily hit them. But they "encourage" them by forcing them down a path because it's "good" for them. If you're thinking of going this route, don't. The professors I've talked to kind of just see this as abuse and they will not help these children.

No I'm not endorsing anything like that. I'm thinking of the kid who picks up a guitar or sits at a piano at age 12 or 13 and falls in love with it, and is an amazing player by age of 16. It's an inner talent and passion that is unlocked, not a skill that was learned by force.

None of the people I've described have been forced to learn these skills. Well, not in the practical sense. Here is an example. You an born in a Tibetan Monastery in front of you is a set of items, the items that you pick are the ones that you will follow for the rest of your life. A child in this scenario is never forced into an option. Instead, the option just does not exist. From birth you are encourages and taught about the wonders of a skill that you will learn for the rest of you life. Of course you aren't being forced. But wouldn't it be fun if you could learn just a bit more? Oh friends? What friends? The people that the departments I've had the opportunity to interact with deal with these kinds of people. These children are never forced explicitly. It can have later in life too. 12 or 13 this is around the age for many sports and athletes. It's not a talent or passion, what you think exists doesn't.

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