Animation Basics (Fall 2025)

Two, month-long, 2D animation projects covering the 12 principles of animation in Clip Studio and Maya.

Project 1: Ball Bounce & Flour Sack — With no prior experience in animation timing or squash and stretch, I challenged myself with difficult concepts: two spinning balls and a quadrupedal flour sack.

Project 2: "Salem" Group Animation — A one-minute animation accompanying a TED Talk voiceover. I animated the alien abduction-to-sleep paralysis sequence and the TV monster, developed color palettes for each time period depicted, colored the entire animation, and edited the final cut in After Effects (including sound design). This was my most labor-intensive project of the semester—and a major opportunity to sharpen my color sense and collaborative workflow.

Tools: Clip Studio, Maya, After Effects

UI Mockup (Fall 2024)

A game UI concept for an exploration game seen through the eyes of a humanoid creature adapted to a deep-sea environment. Key features include a heat-vision mechanic (displayed as a mini-map on the left and a body-heat diagram on the right, where each limb's color indicates blood/heat loss) and a diegetic quest system—a thought bubble showing images instead of text (e.g., a volcano icon when your objective is to reach a volcano).

This was my first experience creating visual mockups for games, and it deepened my understanding of effective UI presentation and pitch design.

Tools: Procreate (assets), Figma (layout)

A fly in my backyard (Fall 2022)

A study in observational drawing. I typically draw animals and environments from imagination, so I challenged myself to work from life—sketching this fly on a leaf in my backyard. I composed the image around the surrounding foliage (in both spatial arrangement and color complexity) to emphasize the tiny fly within a jungle of leaves.

Tools: Gray tonal paper, colored pencils

Self Portrait (Fall 2022)

Self portraits are as liberating as they are scary. This was my first attempt at a self portrait and I was definitely feeling both in the process. I paid special attention here to capture the lighting and angle of the shot. My hair often looks orange in the light, and I wanted to capture that color here. 

Tools: gray tonal paper, colored pencils, blending stump