Junior Max Rubin expresses his creativity through flash video animations. His interest in animation began when he was 10 years old and frequently visited web sites with hand drawn cartoons. “[Seeing them] inspired me to make my own,” he said. Rubin started the physical process of making animations after he installed the FlashMX video program on his computer on July 11, 2004, a date he fondly remembers.

Rubin taught himself how to use the program by spending time with the program and doing online tutorials. It took him about two years to get to his current skill level. He posts his videos on his web site, http://www.maxamania.com. He originally drew with drawing tools on the FlashMX program, but Rubin eventually bought a tablet that allows him to draw more freely by hand and not directly on the computer with the mouse. “It almost took us all by surprise when he started doing this,” Rubin’s mother, Amy Lansky said. “He started animating right away; he was animating that entire summer.”

“ I like to sit there and watch him animate,” Rubin’s father, Steven Rubin added.

Rubin’s self-described “definitely most successful” project is an animation of the popular television series “America’s Next Top Model” (ANTM). A fan of the show, Rubin visited FourFour, a blog site about the show, after each episode aired in the seventh season. “A lot of the jokes [on FourFour] inspired jokes in [my animation] series,” Rubin said. For his parody “ANTM Cycle 7.5” he produced an introduction episode, six regular episodes and one “Where Are They Now?”

All the episodes feature an identical opening scene, very similar to the scene in the real series. The girls have farcical names, such as “Anorexia” and “Funkalicia.” The episodes are parodies of previous episodes from different seasons. Rubin tried to finish each one before the next ANTM episode aired on television. Rubin submitted his series to FourFour, and the web-master posted a link on the forum.

By the next day, Rubin had over 10,000 hits on his web site. Mo Johnston, head of the annual New York Underground Film Festival (NYUFF) contacted Rubin and told him that Johnston wanted to include his ANTM Episode 2 animation in the 2006 festival. “The way he worded it made it seem like it wasn’t a really big festival, but in reality it was like a huge thing,” Rubin said. Although Rubin couldn’t attend the festival to see his animations on the big screen, his grandmother from New Jersey went on his behalf.

In the ANTM series, Rubin’s friends, including juniors Danielle Edelman, Maya Itah and Meghna Dholakia, and his family members helped out with the voices of the characters in the animations. Writing, drawing and putting the animation together was strenuous at times, but paid off. “I kind of did go crazy after a while,” he said with a laugh. “But it was definitely worth it.”

“Max’s sense of humor is really unique,” Dholakia said. “He has a really good way of translating it to the screen.”

Five out of Rubin’s six regular episodes got accepted into the Gunndance film festival in 2006. Rubin has other animations on his site as well, but speaks of them modestly. “They’re all not really anything compared to the ANTM series,” Rubin said. They include a “creepy,” as described by Rubin, animated monologue from the movie “Carrie,” another one of Rubin’s animations that played at Gunndance 2006, and other shorter animations such as a tribute to the movie Kill Bill and a happy face talking about food titled “Grilled Cheese”.

Currently, Rubin is working on a lot of music videos. “I [will] listen to music and come across a song that would give me a vision,” he said. “It’s like the animation would play for me in my head. Why bother with a storyboard?”