Animation Guild | We are 839 Digital Magazine
Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1525032
top: Fontecchio playing live in Long Beach in 2019; bot tom: A still from the album cover shoot for Long Live the Loser. Photo by Anthony Mehlhaff For Kali Fontecchio, it was always going to be animation or music. But over time, she's found a way to do both—even in the same project. Though she started drawing at three and has always loved cartoons, her youthful dream was to be a rock star. Her musician father introduced her to Bob Dylan and taught her how to play one chord a week on the guitar. Once she got the hang of playing, she started writing her own music and even formed a band with a few high school friends. In her first moment of combining multiple pop culture interests, they performed from the Silent Hill 3 soundtrack at her school talent show. Fontecchio pursued music even as she began attending Otis College of Art & Design for Digital Media. She played shows and worked at all-ages venue The Smell in her spare time. When her prized Les Paul electric guitar was stolen—one her father had bought from a friend the day she was born and given to her when she was finally "ready"—and she couldn't afford to replace it, she shifted to acoustic. With Katie Rice, who would later become a fellow TAG member, she released a set of country covers as Kot'n Katie & Kali Kazoo on MySpace and then Bandcamp. She also turned her focus on her art school assignments, and after she graduated, she built an animation career as a jack of all trades; although her specialty is character design, she has done everything from boards and color design to art directing and directing on shows ranging from Jellystone to SpongeBob SquarePants. SHE'S GOT THE BEAT STORYBOARDS AND ALT-ROCK FIND COMMON GROUND IN THE EVOLUTIONARY CAREER OF SINGER-SONGWRITER KALI FONTECCHIO. 10 KEYFRAME A F T E R H O U R S