As if! A whimsigoth teenage witch from the mind of animator Bree O’Donnell is taking the internet by storm

Since 2022 the Brooklyn-based filmmaker and animator Bree O'Donnell has been creating short clips of Mary, a teenage witch from the fictional town of Portsmith. With an ever-increasing fanbase across Bree’s Instagram and TikTok channels, Bree tells us that Mary’s inspiration is close to home. “She’s is inspired by all the girls that I hung out with in suburbia, girls who were powerful, girls who dreamed, girls who I wanted to be with,” shares Bree.

Often lit in deep purples and greens, Bree blends a fantastical, sci-fi inspired colour palette with a mysterious visual narrative, depicting Mary – quite like your average teenager – looking rather pensive while making her way across various spots around her fictional hometown. Made in short-form with no captions and no dialogue offering even a sliver of information, these snippets leave the audience wanted to find out more about Mary’s lore. One particular TikTok (now at nearly one million likes) stands out for Bree. Set to Poison Girl Friends’s 1992 airy trip-hop track Hardly ever smile (without you), it features Mary hurtling through a dreamscape – a blissful wind running through in her glittering hair.

It’s often Mary’s hair that the eye is drawn to, especially as Black hair has long been a topic grappled with, often lagging behind advancements in computer graphics. In the portrayal of Black characters, formulas to depict textures often stick to culturally approved styles like the Killmonger locs. Bree adds to the growing variety of styles in the 3D space. She says: “similarly to Mary’s personal style, this specific animation really pushes the box of our practice and animation aesthetics.” With such a massive fanbase, its clear that there’s an appetite for depictions of Black longings especially in the era of The Summer I Turned Pretty sincerity.

Bree’s work is also a tool to unpack her own inner world. “With Mary, the audience and I both grapple with longing and desire, which have been pillars of my trans-feminine experience.” Sincerity is back, as marked by Mary’s ever-expanding lore. Currently, Bree is working on a short film which will dive deeper into Mary’s story as the witch of Portsmith.