Animation Guild | We are 839 Digital Magazine
Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1512296
D E PA R T M E N T 44 KEYFRAME 44 KEYFRAME F E AT U R E Tulip 4" x 7" with 3" chain $50 Mermaid Suncatcher 1.5" x 33.5" $50 ON A TANGENT Anna O'Brian Anna O'Brian is always on the lookout for renter-friendly ways to make her apartment cuter. When she saw videos about making stained glass on TikTok and YouTube, she thought: "I could do that!" She started small with suncatchers, gradually working her way up to window panels. The Florida native came to L.A. in 2013 to study character animation at CalArts, and she has been working in TV as a Storyboard Artist and Director ever since. Currently, she's directing Disney TVA's upcoming Big City Greens movie. Unlike TV animation, which moves quickly, O'Brian says, "Making stained glass is an extremely slow and tedious process … so working in this art form has been a nice change of pace." As well, stained glass design has its own unique rules that differ from animation. "In art school we're taught to avoid tangents in our drawings at all costs," O'Brian says, "but in stained glass they're essential to a design's structural integrity." etsy.com/shop/Annacrafts4you Earrings Cedar, black walnut, pine, maple 2" x 1 7 8 " x ¹ 8 " $25 Earring Holder Pine, balsa, cedar, maple 6 ¾" x 5 ¼" x 3 ½" $50 IRREGULAR BEAUTY Kate McMillan Having worked as a Visual Development Artist at DreamWorks TV, Kate McMillan is a Location Designer at Disney TVA on Big City Greens. She's also a nonfiction and middle grade fiction author. Then there's her woodwork. "I studied architecture in college and fell in love with the process of building models in the woodshop," McMillan says. She started taking woodworking classes, and after college, she got a fellow- ship to study traditional Norwegian boatbuilding in Norway. "I love woodworking because the parameters serve as inspiration instead of barriers, which I think is true in visual development, as well," she says. "Wood is messy—it has knots and unusual grain patterns and can act in funny ways against different tools—but this irregularity makes the final design interesting and purposeful. In animation, the story, budget, and style create all kinds of similar challenges that end up pushing the design somewhere new and specific that I could never have thought of if given a completely knot-free prompt." kategmcmillan@gmail.com