Animation Guild | We are 839 Digital Magazine
Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1500204
SUMMER 2023 13 her first job in animation, as a Storyboard Revisionist, in 1996—a leap she says was enabled by having an adaptable skill set, solid draftsmanship, a willingness to learn, and a little luck. Her next job would be as a Prop and Effects Artist at DreamWorks SKG when they were just starting their animation department. "I sort of went from zero to 80, just kind of got thrown in," she says. When she started at DreamWorks, people advised her to always play to her strengths. She watched what her colleagues were doing with characters, backgrounds, and story and asked them to explain why they were making certain choices with their drawings. "I applied those principles to what I was doing at the time. And it made me excel at that," she says. She discovered that her strength was in designing things that don't have their own consciousness—trees, architecture, machines, robots, or structural pieces. This brings her back to playing with Legos and drawing in her childhood bedroom. Hardin notes that Legos have a three- dimensional structural element to them, and when you combine that with drawing, those skills are very close to what she does today as a designer. She feels she may also have been influenced by her adoptive father, an aerospace engineer who was constantly designing creations at home, once even building a robot in the garage. Later, when she met her birth father, she discovered that he was a general contractor, which, she points out, also requires structural thinking. All these factors, as well as the amount of from top clockwise: Hardin at work at Nickelodeon; We Are Inclusion mural at Luther Burbank Middle School; Hardin has worked on numerous murals as part of Nickelodeon Community Efforts; Hardin's diverse style can be seen in her painting, Goddess of the Hunt. time and effort she's devoted to her craft, have helped her to excel at mechanical caricature. Still, drawing remains a joy for Hardin. "When I draw, I lose track of time…it's almost like a meditation or a prayer," she says. She feels that if she puts good energy into her work, people on the other end of the TV screen will feel that energy, and it may brighten a kid's day. Although Hardin is mostly self-taught, after making the shift from live action to animation, she took a few formal courses in traditional animation at the Academy of Art University satellite in Van Nuys and in concept art, visual communication, and digital painting at Concept Design Academy in Pasadena. But she cannot emphasize enough the extent to which peer-to-peer learning has influenced her journey. Every production she's worked on has been an opportunity to learn from those around her—productions that include Santiago of the Seas, Casagrandes, Shimmer and Shine, The Fairly OddParents, Catscratch, Johnny Bravo, and many others. "I've been very, very fortunate to work with some incredibly talented people," she says, and she views every new job as a learning experience, which is further strengthened by how she branches out, from helping a friend with a custom house remodel to working quietly with a close group of animation colleagues on a creator-based start-up. Hardin's trajectory in animation has been a steady progression, and she's stayed pretty much in her lane. This can be a double-edged sword, because she feels she has much more to offer. In the next phase of her career, she would love the opportunity to explore her full range of creativity. "The high points in my career are when I'm given the chance to do more and get out of my lane and sort of swerve about recklessly," she says, adding that she is filled with gratitude for her long career: "Being able to do what you want for a living and being able to forget what time it is because you're having so much fun … Not everybody gets to do that, and you can't really put a price on that." Learn more about Hardin at amberhardindesignportfolio.carbonmade.com. – Karin Briner T H E C L I M B