Early this year, we had the great opportunity to collaborate with The University of Arts in Philadelphia (https://uarts.edu). John Sepentelli, lecturer at UArts, was interested in creating a brief for his students to animate the AWUK logo. We loved the idea, and were interested to see how the students would portray AWUK values through their animations.
After a few months, we received some lovely animations and caught up with the creators of our favourites to ask them how they’d come up with and realised their ideas.
Lana Gearce
What drew you to study animation?
My whole life I only ever drew as realistically as I could with pencil and coloured pencil. It wasn’t until mid-high school that I realized my interest in animation. Looking back, I can see that it was always something I wanted, I just hadn’t figured it out yet. I have always had a strong love of cartoons and animated films, and now I want to be a part of them or make my own! I have also always loved writing and that goes hand in hand with animation.
Could you tell us about how you tackled the brief and the process for creating your piece?
For my piece I really wanted to do something that was fun, flowy, and full of transformations. I also love camera movement in animation and wanted to explore that.
What is the message you aimed to convey with your animation?
I am all about inclusiveness and diversity. I really aim to include all sorts of body types, race, gender, sexualities, and disabilities wherever and whenever I can in my work. With this piece I tried to make each woman that appears look different in race and body type.
And finally, what would you like to go on to do after your studies?
After graduating I would love to work on a 2D animated show, maybe as a storyboarder. It’s my dream to work on a show for Cartoon Network, but I’m going to make my own work for a little while (I am thinking of starting a webcomic) to improve my skills, while hopefully working for an animation company or interning somewhere.
Robert Bahn
What drew you to study animation?
I have been drawing ever since I could hold a crayon and always had the intention of being a professional artist, but I’m a recent convert to animation as a profession. Like a lot of kids in the late 90’s to early 2000s, I grew up on a vast diet of animation – far too many to properly list. To that end, I always had the ambition of becoming an animator right up until my senior year of high school when I conceded that, while I was a decent if inexperienced artist, I didn’t have what it took to be an animator. Little did I know that community college would put me down that path again when I saw a poster for an animation class. Surprisingly, I enjoyed it quite a bit! Not just the result, but the process. So my progress as an artist became inexorably tied to my progress as an animator, which lead me to UArts and my continued pursuit of animation as a career.
Could you tell us about how you tackled the brief and the process for creating your piece?
During the initial storyboard process I initially thought about making it like a Road Runner cartoon, where the cartoon character just met a very comical fate in a hole in the ground of a vast canyon by an unseen force. My supervisor convinced me to make it more hopeful and tied to AWUK’s message of gender equality, which is where the superheroine came from.
The whole process took about three months from conception to completion. I wanted to make the complex camera movements that I was attempting to be clear and concise from the get go, carefully planning the movements in the animatic before using it as the basis of the finished film. Rough animation was a two part process, animating the characters and the background on separate layers. Cleanup and color were the last aspects of of the film to be completed, being finally finished around the beginning of August.
What is the message you aimed to convey with your animation?
It’s honestly pretty literal. The cartoon character, who is characteristically classical in design, gets saved by the AWUK superheroine, who represents the future of animation and women’s role in that future. Women are the future of animation.
And finally, what would you like to go on to do after your studies
Eventually I want to get work as both an animator and a storyboard artist. I definitely have strengths as both an animator and a storyteller and they balance each other out.
Anaiyah Luther
What drew you to study animation?
I’ve always loved animation and I’ve been drawing since I could hold a crayon. I spent pretty much every day growing up glued to the TV watching cartoons. I remember one day someone on Nickelodeon explaining how animation works by giving a demonstration of “the bouncing ball” and then encouraging us kids at home to try it out ourselves on post it notes. After that I did a series of little stick figure animations on post-its for my friends and I remember how cool it felt to be able to make them laugh with my drawings. Once I took my first animation class before college I was hooked. I realized that even though animating was really hard and time consuming I actually loved every minute of it and I was really excited about being able to bring all the characters and ideas in my head to life.
Could you tell us about how you tackled the brief and the process for creating your piece?
After we found out what we were doing for this project I did a thumbnail of my idea right away and then went straight into TV Paint to get the major poses down. From there on it was all in-betweening and coloring.
What is the message you aimed to convey with your animation?
I mostly just wanted to show a woman in her creative process. Animation is hard and coming up with ideas can be frustrating. I like showing that because I think it’s great that despite that, we keep going and we keep making art.
And finally, what would you like to go on to do after your studies
It would be great if I could have my own animated series one day that had some kind of lasting impact on people. I really love to make people laugh but I also love cartoons that have multifaceted characters and shows that discuss important topics to kids. At the same time I also really enjoy animations that are aimed at adults so I think I’ll be happy as long as I can work on animation that I can be proud of.
Angel Kawash
What drew you to study animation?
As a kid, I use to love watching Disney movies with strong women. I believe what drew me in most was when I was watching Mulan and they showed the extra scenes where they would show us the rough animations. As soon as I saw that, it was a bit of a spark for me. I wanted to be a part of creating strong, smart, powerful women and I just remember thinking, “I CAN MAKE MY DRAWINGS MOVE?!” As I got older, I realized that I wanted to make a difference with my animations, I hope I can initiate a spark in someone else or make someone smile at the very least. I’ve had struggles throughout my life between identity, mental anguish, staying positive, and so on and so forth. I hope to create my animations in a way that I can let people know they aren’t alone in their struggles and that it does get better. Animation is powerful and I enjoy being part of this community.
Could you tell us about how you tackled the brief and the process for creating your piece?
At my current status, I am trying to learn as much as I can when it comes to physically animating as well as learning how to create a coherent story or message in my pieces. I had to do a lot of research on how the body moves when one belly dances, and mostly I had to get up and belly dance myself which was pretty funny. I enjoyed the process of learning body movement. I believe that animation is so fulfilling because there are times where once you get the hang of it the animation flows through your pencil almost by instinct. We are celebrating women of animation and I enjoyed every part of it.
What is the message you aimed to convey with your animation?
I am an Arabian and Italian woman. Growing up was a bit tough, especially during 9/11. I just remember being in kindergarten and not being allowed to say my last name – everyone just called me Angel K. When I heard about this opportunity to make an animation celebrating women, I really wanted to tackle incorporating some of my culture so I decided on belly dancing. Being sheltered and almost scared of my culture growing up, I did not learn much, but I always held onto the time my aunts taught me how to belly dance. It was our way of celebrating our culture and us as women – I had a lot of fun during those times.
And finally, what would you like to go on to do after your studies
After my studies, my goal is to be able to work in an animation studio and be apart of the character designs and hopefully story telling/storyboarding or even the animating itself. I know it will be a lot of work, but I hope to create animations that speak to people emotionally, mentally and spiritually. Again, thank you for this opportunity.
AWUK would like to take this opportunity to thank all the students that participated and UArts for reaching to us and supporting the work we do!
