A Dream in the Works: Animation Success

A Dream in the Works

F or Andrew Valdez, digital animation has always been an interest of his. From a young age, Andrew loved creating animations. It wasn’t until he decided to start a YouTube channel that this interest grew. Andrew began creating animated introductions for his YouTube videos, which is where he initially realized his passion for animation and motion graphics. When Andrew began attending Shadow Ridge High School as a freshman in 2016, he learned of the Computer Animation program that the school offered. “When I got to high school, I saw Shadow Ridge had a program for [animation], so I immediately decided to take it,” said Andrew. The Computer Animation program is a four-year program focused on the basics of digital animation and motion graphics. Andrew excelled through the first two years of the program, which included Computer Animation 1-2 and Computer Animation 3-4. These initial courses teach students basic components of animation including 2D animation, programming, 3D modeling and texturing, character rigging, and motion capture, among others. Once students get to the third year of the program, Computer Animation 5-6, students are really given the creative freedom to explore and excel on their own. “Towards junior and senior year, we got to do our own thing. We would meet with our teacher and he would critique and give us his input, and we could go back and redo or add anything we needed to,” said Andrew. With this creative freedom sometimes comes challenges for many students, including Andrew. “When we started working on our own projects, I had a hard time coming up with things I wanted to do,” said Andrew. Drawing inspiration for a project proved to be rather difficult, and it took some time and effort to come up with ideas. This caused him to lose some motivation, but he was soon able to pick it back up. Despite the few difficulties Andrew experienced throughout the course of the program, he credits Shadow Ridge animation teacher, Scott Kaczynski, for helping him through. “Mr. K really helped me by guiding me through,” says Andrew. “I was able to always ask him about my work, and he was always able to be constructive about it.” During the spring semester of Andrew’s senior year, schools were suddenly forced to close due to the growing COVID-19 pandemic. Adjusting to this new normal proved to be a challenge for many students, including Andrew. Instead of letting it get him down, he decided to try and make the most of it. During all of his down time at home, Andrew found himself thinking and reflecting on his future, and his desire to to pursue his passions and doing what he loves, which for him was animation. Andrew has dreamt of pursuing a creative career involving digital animation in some way. He doesn’t see himself in a corporate “desk job” necessarily, or doing something otherwise unenjoyable. This is where the motivation behind his recent project titled, ‘No.1 Worker, No.2 Artist’, came from. ‘No.1 Worker, No.2 Artist’ is a short film that Andrew created based on main character James, leaving his artistic life behind, for a new, more mundane and ordinary working life. “I wanted to show that No.1 you are a worker, but No. 2 you’re also still an artist,” says Andrew. The film begins with James sitting down at his office desk hard at work, when one of the pencils on his desk comes to life, seemingly trying to get James’ attention. The film goes on to depict the conflict James feels as he knows he needs to focus on his work, but also still misses his life as an artist. “I really just wanted to tell the story and remind people not to forget what you’re really passionate about,” says Andrew.

In this screen grab from Andrew Valdez’s animated short film, “No.1 Worker, No. 2 Artist,” the main character sits at a computer before encountering an incident with a pencil.

Though just over two minutes in duration, the short film in its entirety took a rather long time to complete. “I started creating the characters in March, which took about a month to model,” says Andrew. Modeling the characters is the process of actually creating the characters in digital 3D form. Once Andrew finished modeling the characters, he moved into rigging them, which is essentially the process of creating the bone structure for the character so that they can be moved and controlled. Once the characters were ready, he began the lengthy process of animating the entire film which took a few months to complete. When the animating was completed, then came the finishing touches, which included creating and perfecting each and every sound effect in the film. From the sound of the ticking clock, typing on a keyboard, the motor of a pencil sharpener, and even the sound of footsteps, each sound had to be added and balanced to really tie the film together. “All that was left was sound design, which was a lot harder than I thought it would be. It was very time consuming,” explains Andrew. Nearly seven months after Andrew began the planning stages of his short film, he could sit back and take a deep breath knowing after all this time, his project was complete. Andrew’s short film was created in Blender, which is a computer graphics software used to create varying animations and motion graphics. Each year, Blender hosts a conference bringing together motion graphics artists from around the world. Due to COVID-19, their 2020 conference was held virtually. They asked animation artists to send in submissions to be featured. Andrew saw the opportunity and thought it would be a great way to get his work out there. To Andrew’s surprise, his short film was selected and featured in the online conference among many other artists from around the world, including some industry professionals. “I thought I maybe could just try it and see what happened. I guess they liked my idea. They accepted it and it was put in the showcase and everyone got to see it,” explains Andrew. This was a great accomplishment for him and something that will help motivate him moving forward. Andrew is excited to continue practicing and learning as much as he can about the field of animation. Since graduating from Shadow Ridge High School in May 2020, Andrew now attends an online animation school, as well as Grand Canyon University where he is studying to get his degree in Digital Design with an emphasis in Animation. Andrew hopes to continue learning and building his portfolio so that he can be prepared for a job in the animation industry. Andrew says it would be a dream to be able to work as an animator for one of the big animation studios such as Pixar or DreamWorks. He mentions that it would also be great to work for a video game company or even an advertising agency doing animation work. However, no matter what Andrew decides, the sky really is the limit. According to his teacher at Shadow Ridge, Mr. Kaczynski, he’s got what it takes to be successful in this field. “Andrew is awesome,” exclaims Mr. Kaczynski. “He’s self-motivated. He has the eye, and he searches out what he needs to do, which is something I can’t teach. You either have it or you don’t, and he’s got it. It’s pretty exciting. I can’t wait to see what he does with it.”

Watch Andrew Valdez’s short film on YouTube by scanning the QR Code with your phone’s camera.