“Am I? Real” is my first animated short film produced as my thesis film for my animation minor in 2021. This film was originally about my experiences with anxiety and dissociation. But as I was producing the film, I was also in the process of realizing I was trans. Unintentionally, this film ended up being a literal result of my gender epiphany, and the story aligned well with both my struggles with anxiety and my struggles with my gender. 

I latched onto the cicada as a symbol of transformation, and cicada-eating wasps as the antithesis of transformation.