Picking up pen; Student pursues animation career

     Sophomore Sanaa Johnson has been animating since the summer of 2019 and is now thinking about how to make a career in the scene.

     Johnson has been interested in drawing since Kindergarten, which is likely what led to starting to work on animation. The first animation she has ever done was for a school project, and that is when she realized how fun it could be. “You can bring any characters you have to live, so I liked the idea of making up my own stories with it,” she explains.

     As of now, Johnson has been animating with “random/goofy videos of clips from gameplays or memes. I’ve been practicing animating lip-syncing too since it’s a lot more difficult,” she says.

     Johnson gets her ideas for animation from watching shows she likes, such as Gravity Falls, Pokémon, or Saiki K. She also takes heavy inspiration from story-time animation YouTubers like Jaiden Animations and SomethingElseYT. When she gets ideas she writes them down to practice them later. “If there are any ideas I get from these I take notes of them and practice animating, even if it’s only a couple seconds of animation,” Johnson says.

     For developing characters, Johnson will draw random things on the paper, and if it is something she likes, she’ll keep the design and build a character off of it. She also references popular cartoons. She will sometimes receive some help from her siblings. “My sister usually helps me come up with backstories,” she says.

     As someone relatively new to the hobby, Johnson is still figuring things out and gathering what she needs to effectively draw and animate. According to Johnson, art tablets are the best option for animation. That is why she is practicing on it. ”It’s difficult since the screen is only shown on a laptop, not the tablet itself,” she explains.

     She uses Inshot and Capcut to edit the videos she makes. There are also art gloves she uses to prevent smudging on the screen when drawing.

     “I’m hoping to get a career in animation or illustration, either animating on my own, [for] video game companies or for Cartoon Network,” she starts. “If I ended up working for video game companies, it would most likely be the idle sprite animations (ex. Street Fighter, Undertale, Castlevania). The drawings I try to do are more cartoon-like. So that’s why if I ended up working for Cartoon Network instead, it would probably be children’s animations or shows like Steven Universe.”

     Johnson has been most interested in YouTube animation. “I’m inspired by basically every YouTube animator I’ve watched,” she says. “It would be me being my boss and working at a pace that I choose, and it’s way easier to interact with fans than with working for a bigger professional company.”

     Johnson has developed a plan for how to figure out her animation career. “I think I want to start with trying to animate on YouTube to figure out what kind I want to do. If I end up liking to animate characters and their stories, then I’ll know if I want to work with Cartoon Network,” she explains. “If I end up animating sprites instead, then I’ll know if video games are better for me to work with. And if anything, I can just stick with YouTube until I’m bored or it dies.”