Animation Guild | We are 839 Digital Magazine
Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1399900
D E PA R T M E N T 15 KEYFRAME FALL 2021 15 animation has this accessibility to it, maybe because it's been softened with its association to children or family content: You're willing to watch it with an openness that you don't with other genres. I feel like you can backdoor some good messages that way." Dhaliwal received her bachelor's degree for animation from Canada's Sheridan College. After graduating in 2011, she landed an internship at Nickelodeon and was later hired on, working as a revisionist on Robot and Monster and The Fairly OddParents, and as a storyboard artist and storyboard director on Sanjay and Craig. She also served stints at Cartoon Network, Disney TV, Sony, and Netflix, most recently working as a writer on the latter's series Centaurworld and story artist on a Sony feature in development. When Dhaliwal finally made the jump from her Instagram comics to publishing, she encountered new challenges. But she feels that dealing with the business end of animation prepared her for them. "As soon as show meets business, I think it's always a struggle for any artist," she says. She thinks she stayed at certain companies longer than she needed to out of a reverence for their history, "but it probably would've been beneficial to my mental health and creative ambition to have left earlier." Today, Dhaliwal is thankful to have found an outlet that allows her to be in charge of her creativity. At the same time, she also appreciates the lessons she's learned from her 10 years so far in the industry. "Rejection can dictate our identity where you think you're something and everyone tells you you're not that thing that you thought you were," she says. Instead of fighting rejection, she embraces it. She's also learned how to have confidence in her own voice and to set reasonable career goals, which she feels should not be confused with hopes. "I try to think of goals that are completely in my control because that way if I do fail, I at least know it was in my control," she says. "A goal could be to write a book, but to hope to be on The New York Times' bestseller list is completely out of your control. That's been an important dichotomy for me to learn." — Sonaiya Kelley all images: From Cyclopedia Exotica. Copyright Aminder Dhaliwal, courtesy Drawn & Quarterly. F R A M E X F R A M E