Warriors is a very long-running series of kids books about groups of feral cats that are constantly at war with each other.

And they fight each other whenever their territory or livelihood is at stake.

But I think the most thing that people remember is the forbidden romances.

There's lots of cats and non-cat related drama going on.

They're really fun to read when I was younger and they've grown a huge audience since they've come out.

For a lot of people, it became just an easy outline for their own stories and their own ideas.

That's why I think it became a hit.

I think that there's a reason that certain scenes from Warriors show up a lot in the fan animation community.

Like, I don't know, for example, the Ashfur fire scene, the battle with Bloodclan, Tiger Star's death, Hawkrust versus Brambleclaw, the way those scenes are described in the books really paints a vivid picture in your head.

And I think there's something really cool about how everyone in the community would reach different conclusions about how the scenes would look.

They were animated, but there was also a similarity there as well.

And I think just really the books get people's imaginations going.

My friend would show me YouTube videos.

We both liked Warrior Cats and she showed me the SSS Warrior Cat opening.

That's how we got introduced.

And then we also watched Alley Cat Nya's videos, which was one of the first people on YouTube that really started the Warrior Cat animation community.

Dare I say, they were the person that started the animation community.

I remember just going like, oh, we could do this.

Thirteen years old.

Oh, I could do this.

There wasn't really a Warrior Cats animation community when I started.

In 2007, the only Warriors videos that I could find on YouTube were slideshows mostly.

I was always frustrated that there wasn't a Warriors cartoon as a kid, so I decided to try making my own.

I honestly didn't expect that anyone else would watch it because YouTube was a really small place at the time and getting a thousand views then felt like getting a million views now.

So, well, I still kind of get a little rush anytime I see someone mention my old Warriors videos.

I think it's really funny that people talk about them more than a decade later, even if it's like usually kind of joking.

All right, here's the big question.

What are maps?

What are they indeed?

It stands for multi-animated project or multiple animated project.

Maps aren't unique to the Warrior Cats fandom, but I do think that they started with Warrior Cats animators.

Well, it takes a lot of time to do a music video by yourself.

So why don't we just cut it up into seconds, the music, and split it up as parts and then ask people to animate one part of the music video.

So you're only animating about six seconds or seven seconds instead of three and a half minutes.

Maps are super varied and can be a lot of things.

And, you know, there are pros and cons to each type of map and lots of differing opinions on which one is like the most pure map, you know.

And I'll say that I've made a few maps, but not since 2015.

I think that Little Fang, which was a map that I did with my friend St.

Gosis, who did the character designs, was the first one to have a character design sheet that had animators follow a set style for the project.

We actually got a lot of backlash for that at the time, which shows how much the map community has changed since then.

I think I see a lot of people now using set character designs, palettes and art styles for their projects.

But at the time, people told us that we were like stifling creativity and that we were expecting too much of amateurs and that, you know, we were taking the community in a bad direction.

Yeah, I don't think that that's how people think about that anymore.

But that's how it was at the time.

I think loads of people have started animating because they wanted to get involved.

So it's encouraged lots of people to create and stuff as well, which I think is amazing.

There's such a push to get you to create, like if you just rely on yourself like, oh, I want to do this this weekend, it's so easy to be like, oh, no, I don't want to do that anymore.

I'm going to do it like next week, next week.

And it just goes on and on.

Whereas maps is like you're part of this team, you have someone who's relying on you for content.

So it's like it's a great way to make something small that doesn't take like months and months and months of work.

But also you've got that kick there where you kind of you don't have to do it, but there's someone expecting you to do it.

So it sort of makes you do it more.

It's just a nice sort of encouragement to actually like create stuff.

Yeah, I've loved them.

They've most of my professional showreel is from my map parts, which is a bit weird.

But I think I got the most practice out of it.

I think I learned more from them than I did from studies.

Do maps generally get completed on time?

Like what's kind of the ETA for maps?

Oh, they don't get completed on time.

They do not.

I do have a case where a map did get completed on time and it was very spectacular.

The Everything Moves map is probably my most favorite map that I participated in.

But what was really fascinating that we got it done in two months.

That usually never happens.

That was my last map I hosted.

It turned out amazing and it finished really quick.

I kind of like do a show, don't tell.

And that's what I did with Everything Moves.

I was like, this is what can happen if you have a host that's really like dedicated to the project.

It can get done on time.

So I have Sol running through the rain and just running and then splashing into the dirt.

And one thing I started to do, I said, well, let me help out some people.

I finished my part pretty early, like about a couple of weeks into the project.

So some people needed tasks like on specific parts.

Either they had some stuff going on and couldn't finish certain parts.

So on the serious part, the part with the smoke and all the sun, I had helped with the smoke effects and certain movements around the second parts.

I felt like I was on a roll.

I'm like, you know what?

Let's just try and get this done as much as we can.

This, this, this.

Next thing I know, it was like almost done.

And it was strange just how quickly it came about.

It's like we had so many people kind of helping and collaborating with each other.

And I said, I kind of want to see that happen again.

So what are your your favorite parts of the community and your least favorite parts?

Least favorite, I guess sometimes in fighting that can happen.

It doesn't get as bad as it could be.

Since it only happens like every once in a while.

But it's kind of sucks because this community can be really fun.

But then you just see a lot of stuff going on.

And it's like, boy, what is happening?

Got to take these cats seriously, right?

And my favorite besides animation, I enjoy making new friends and watching people improve over the years.

Like that's so satisfying.

A map, in my opinion, is not owned by the person that decided to split up the parts and host the map.

It is owned by the community, the people that created it.

The people that can lift it up and actually say, I worked on this at that point.

And it is really inspiring to see everyone work together to create something that would probably have been better than, in my opinion, it's better than what you could create on your own most of the time, because you have so many interesting ideas coming together.

And it kind of shows you like a little piece of the community from when it's completed.

Would you ever be interested in participating in the Warriors animation community again?

I don't think it would be as an animator.

I'm extremely out of practice and I'm not really interested in putting in the hours it would take to get back up there.

You know, I would like to contribute as an editor or a map host or something, though, if possible.

Like, I'm not sure if there's a precedent for that or how people would feel.

And I think it would be interesting and could possibly bring more people into the community who had different skill sets and might be really strong at editing or writing or directing, but not strong at drawing.

It's just, I think it's really inspiring that so many young people sort of start animating because of it, because like we talked about before, it's really bizarre as to why this book series in particular has spawned so many artists.

But I think it's amazing that it has, like so many people have gone into animation because of these cat books and they have nothing, it has nothing in connection with animation at all.

It's really great.

And you see so many really young people who get really good at drawing animation because they're inspired to.

And it's incredible.

I think it's amazing how many people have sort of become artists because of it.

And I think it's really inspiring that so many young people have gone into animation because of it.

And I think it's really inspiring that so many young people have gone into animation because of it.