Article by Kathryn Odgers
Video by Eden Tenty & Kathryn Odgers
A new club has been introduced to Minarets this year that will be the first of it’s kind here on campus: the AAC Club. The Animation Club is for everyone who wants to try out something new or experienced animators wanting to show the world their skills. While the club will be mostly focused on skill-building creating an atmosphere for animators here on campus, one of their major goals will be animating a full-length animation for Dr. Daniel Ching, principal at Minarets. The club will be meeting every other Wednesday in room 309 during lunch!
The club was formed by senior Kira Huff who created it as her SLE, or Senior Legacy Experience project, as part of her passion for animation she wants to pursue as a future career. “I know a lot of kids have been interested who have been interested in that subject and have talked about it, saying “Oh we need an animation class” or “Oh we don’t have an animation class” but we are starting the Animation Club for that purpose to give people those opportunities to work on those types of projects and get something in their portfolios if they want to pursue that kind of thing when they grow up,” she says. The main focus was to give students an opportunity to do animation and learning key communication and collaboration skills, saying, “I feel like being able to teach people how to work with others how to collaborate, juggle responsibilities and communicate, can recreate that sort of environment that an animation studio would”.
Kira has been passionate about animation when she was around nine years old in 2013, first designing on her Nintendo 3DS with the Flipnote studio application until she later evolved to her Wacom Intuos S drawing tablet. “It all kind of started in 2013 which is when I actually started getting into animation. I’m pretty much self-taught except for my Grandpa who taught me a little since he was a commercial artist, and he taught me a lot about drawing and coloring”. She considers herself a cartoon kid such as Disney and Universal who have given her inspiration to start animating. “Cartoons create childhoods” Kira stated, “They’ve helped people, inspired people, and people have a really amazing gift with that”. Animation can express lots of emotions with a completely different medium than real-life, and to her, it’s an important part of growing up and art expression.
Over the years she has tried various different art styles over the years from traditional, tweening, stop motion, and other forms, but has been attached to her cartoon style which was inspired by different online cartoon artists. She has grown a lot since her novice days of animating, focusing on improving anatomy and posing of her characters into more challenging intermediate animation. Although it wasn't until her Slickrock submission in 2017 that got her more attention around school, even the attention of Dr. Daniel Ching for her animated episode SLE idea.
The club has gained a lot of attention from students who are eager for the newly established club, even though Kira didn’t believe there would be a lot of attraction toward it initially, “I didn’t expect to have a lot of support as this is a first time club but we actually got ten members on our first meeting which is pretty incredible! I’ve heard from a lot of people who think it’s a very strong SLE idea and that makes me really happy because animation is my passion and I wanted to do something that would give back to the people here”. Currently, the group meetings are focused on the introduction to animation and each member’s different abilities and getting more comfortable in the group, although Kira aims to have different departments such as animating, voice acting, etc. for their future project idea proposed by Dr. Daniel Ching. She hopes to eventually create a full length animated episode for Dr. Ching, who has been pursuing the idea of an animation clip for the past several years. “I need to get some ideas from Mr. Ching who has had an idea for the cartoon we’re going to create, which but we want to keep it simplistic and unique without it being corny or childish. The story will be based on a superhero comics style, which is what Dr. Ching was going for and together will create a superhero arc plot.
With the animation club, she hopes it will help other animators to come out of their shells, including herself, and create a new community and opportunities for them as well saying she hopes by creating this club she can help boost students’ self-confidence in their work and get out of their shell because they are talented and creative people who have the potential to show their abilities to create and inspire others. Everyone is welcome to join as there are many different positions open that are not exclusive to only animating, such as voice actors and scriptwriters. The meetings are bi-monthly on Wednesdays in Mrs. Gamble’s room, 309, during lunch. Check your emails for more updates and for the next meeting date. The club hopes to see you there!
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