Here is my 2024 Junior short film MotherHide! Made in four months I explored the complex relationship between a corrupted mother and her daughter through the lease of surrealist horror.
Submitted it to a couple festivals and can final share online!
I’m shocked these never got posted but here’s a good chunk of concept art done for my film
SHAMDEMONIUM! The first drawing was immediately after taking a very sharp turn in direction for this film and the later drawings/animations show its original plan.
I loved the idea of a post apocalyptic pirate ship with various designs and personalities but I struggled to put the pieces together. After a strike of inspiration not much concept art followed as I dove head first into the animatic! #conceptart #animation #studentfilm
A spotlight on the wide steps of my process! The animatic was a full minute shorter than SHAM ended up as and you can see how things were extended. The line animation in the middle took about 4 months to finish, but the remaining 4 months of the project was spent getting that final polish!
#animation #2danimation #studentfilm
This is a collage of some of the backgrounds made for SHAMDEMONIUM! There ended up being around 70 total backgrounds made for the film but I picked out those that took a lot of time and care.
Comb through and dissect the process bc I don’t remember making most of these lol
#studentfilm #animation #backgroundart #artprocess
A HUGE THANK YOU TO @nfftyfilm for the honor of winning Best Student Music Video! It was an incredible experience. Tho jet lagged and tired from my morning flight the news of this award was deeply appreciated and I couldn’t have been more excited. This feels like a perfect ending for this long festival journey and I can’t wait to finally share SHAM in a couple months!!
Thank you @coops_mcgoops@mishipiku for the pics (ANIMATION SWEEP!!)
#filmfestivals #nffty #animation
I am so proud to finally announce that SHAMDEMONIUM will be showing at the 2026 National Film Festival for Talented Youths! It will be making its Washington premiere as a Jury Nominee for the Music Video (Student) category.
Thank you @nfftyfilm for this honor, I can’t wait to to be in attendance
Music featured by @dandeacon
#animation #studentfilm #nffty
@kcaianimation recent graduate Grace Rathbun (’25 Animation) / @graceannimation says she’s intentionally slowing down her development process, spending more time refining her characters and their designs before diving into the animation stage she first fell in love with.
“I always start as big of a picture as you can go,” Rathbun says. “I start with the genre, and I think about the setting, and my characters. And then I move into colors and lighting. And then the last step is when I actually think about what the character looks like in the scene.”
“Because animation is, unfortunately, the final part of these things that I like to work in, even though animation is what I want to do in the whole process.”
This is wisdom learned during the creation of SHAMDEMONIUM, her KCAI senior-year film now screening at festivals and earning enthusiastic feedback. But it didn’t start there. “The original pitch was beyond rough,” she says with a laugh. “The majority of my classmates, while we were studying it, didn’t exactly know what’s going on. But I knew going into it that I wanted it to be as professional as possible.”
As she moves forward with new projects, she reflects on the approaches emphasized at KCAI. “I’m really broadening how I start things,” she says. “The way I like to see it is like a pyramid. It doesn’t work if you’re building it upside down.”
“You have to have a solid, large, base, and then you work yourself up to the very fine point,” she says.
#kcai #animation #studentanimation #indieanimation #behindtheanimation
Grace Rathbun (’25 @kcaianimation ) / @graceannimation reflects on her creative process behind SHAMDEMONIUM, her KCAI senior-year film now screening at festivals and earning enthusiastic feedback. She approached the project sequentially, carefully considering each move frame by frame.
“I would look at the drawing I had done, and then I would think about what would interest me in that moment, and what I thought would be really cool to animate at that time. That’s how every shot started to become a little more dynamic, a little more interesting, a little crazier,” she says.
When developing a project, she now spends more time focusing on her characters, building the world around them. She believes this approach creates a more compelling narrative, allowing environments to flow naturally as the characters move through them. She also values seeing how her personal animation style evolves with each film. In SHAMDEMONIUM, two contrasting settings play a central role, and she intentionally used color to heighten the visual and emotional differences between those worlds.
“I was very excited to have a very purple character, weirdly enough, because I knew I was going to toss her into a world full of reds and yellows,” she says. “I wanted it to be a film where it confuses you in a good way.”
In her current practice, she is intentionally slowing down her planning process. She knows herself well enough to recognize how eager she is to jump straight into the animation stage which is the part she finds most joyful.
“I think about my goal,” she says, “whether I want to practice a specific movement, focus on backgrounds or composition. I consider which stage of the animation I want to emphasize, and I ask myself what would feel exciting if I were watching a movie and saw this moment in a trailer.”
“You just see what’s in front of you, and you make the best of it,” she says.
#kcai #animation #studentanimation #indieanimation #behindtheanimation
