Animations from 23-24 Recap
The 2023-2024 school year was a remarkable one for animation at Atascadero High School! The talented Animation Ninja Family clinched first prize in the high school animation category across California. Additionally, our inaugural film festival showcased two outstanding student animations, and AHSstudent stop-motion creations garnered over 4.04K subscribers.
Below are interviews, links, and photos showcasing their incredible works. Enjoy exploring their creativity!
Interviews with the State-wide CCCL Winners of 2024!
Jonah Sullivan’ Jocelyn Muneton and Sophia Kinnear.
Last school year, students Jocelyn Muneton, Jonah Sullivan and Sophia Kinnear won first place in the Animation category in a state-wide competition called Creative Careers Creation Lab. Here are their interviews regarding their project!
What are your thoughts on animation?
Jonah Sullivan : “I think animation is the coolest thing that people can do and its history. And having all of these animation projects of my own, it gives me respect for the passions of animators with their commitment for their time-consuming process. The amount of work to produce a simple show. The scheduling, the voice cast, editors. Having hundreds of animators producing the same looking drawings that fit together like a puzzle piece still amazes me. It’s such a cool art form and there’s so much possibilities.”
Jocelyn Muneton: “ I like doing animation because you can do a lot of it. You can control the whole process. You can be your own director.”
Sophia Kinnear: “In my opinion, animation is a beautiful medium of Art. I am a very visual and imaginative person, and always when reading or listening to a story, I see it as an animation in my head. I admire so many animators such as Hayao Miyazaki, who are able to make their stories so alive and realistic.”
What was the hardest part of this CCCL project?
Jonah Sullivan: “Deadlines. Coming up with a solid idea to realistically do as a group. When we were all planning about it we all kinda over-scoped the idea and we all had a collective realization that this would be a lot of work. I remember spending everyday after school animating and planning dates to record lines and scheduling times to animate. At the same time I was dealing with rehearsing a musical play for my school so it was a major multitask. It was very stressful but I am very proud of what we were able to make.”
Jocelyn Muneton: “The deadlines made it hard. I had to do my own part of the animation while managing school and homework on the side. We had one or two months to work on it but it was still hard.”
Sophia Kinnear: “Honestly, when I was completing my CCLL assignments, the hardest part was time management. It’s one thing to say you’re going to make an animation. It’s another to sit down, plan the story, script the story, animate a rough draft, animate the final draft, add sounds and voices, and edit it. And all over the course of a month.”
What was your initial reaction to earning first place?
Jonah Sullivan: “It felt pretty good. I didn;t know we were going to win. When everybody’s submissions had been released, like everyone made all of these character sheets and sprites for video games, we had created a (almost) ten minute long animation. I felt like we were gonna win because we put a lot of effort into it. We didn’t follow what they instructed us to do, but it was fine in the end. I’m just so glad it’s finally over with.”
Jocelyn Muneton: “ I was kinda surprised. Cuz I didn’t see anybody else’s and what they did and I felt like the rules were unclear and felt like we didn’t have a chance to win. I’m glad we won because it took forever for us to take the whole animation.”
Sophia Kinnear: “When I got the news about me being in first place, I was so happy. I honestly didn’t really think that I was even gonna be on the podium. I knew there was gonna be good competition. I just wanted to try my best. ”
What do you plan to do after high school?
Jonah Sullivan: “I don’t have a huge plan but I want to try to go to some school that has an animation program. Maybe a trade school. I do want to be in the video-game industry. I just think video-games can bring a lot of opportunities involving art and be able to experience. I do want to animate for a TV show or series.”
Jocelyn Muneton: “I just want to be somewhere in the entertainment industry.”
Sophia Kinnear: “After highschool, I plan to get a Masters in Astrophysics and apply to be an Astronaut. Then after that office of work, I want to retire and become a high school science teacher.”
Jack Karan, Junior, Class of 2026. Is mastering stop motion animation and has plans on creating his own 3D characters who will be animated to tell student stories
What was your process?
“I get my props and everything.I sit down and usually go off-script and improvise. I get a general idea and go with the flow because stopmotion is a time consuming process. And I like to have a nice clean space to work on stop motion.”
Why did you make this?
“It can take a few days if I am not working consistently. If I work from morning to night, I can get it completed in that time. After a while of working stopmotion I would stop and get a break because once I get tired, the quality of the animation would decrease because I want it to be done, which isn’t the way to go.”
What was hard about it?
“One thing that is hard about stop motion is that it is a tedious process that involves a lot of scheduling for better lighting of the day to make sure everything is in the right place as the previous shot and camera position. And do it again and again.”
Do you have any inspirational figures?
“A family friend loves to stop motion and does it really well and I just strive to be like him. He has a youtube channel. I see animations online and see how they all come together for everyone to see and it makes me want to do the same too. I am hoping to get more experience with stop motion and this influence helps me out as I go.”
What do you plan to do after highschool?
“I plan on doing Cuesta Promise and after that I’m hoping to find a good job and continue making stop-motion as a career path. I dream of making a long-form stop-motion film. “
Ian Kinnear, Senior, Class of 2025 took his interview with his dad and made it into an animation. He is creating a comic this year for the paper with Gabe Worley
What was your process?
“This character had been in my mind for a pretty long time. Gabe Worley (Ian’s good pal) had a character that inspired me. What happened was that we got to talking and we started making a whole world full of soot sprites that inhabited different pieces of silverware and kitchenware, so we also made a fork fencer, a bowl brawler, and a whiskey warlock and vodka vindicator. I wanted to make his design work in a potential video game. I thought this character could work mechanically in the game. The booze being a different mechanic in the world seemed like a very fun way to play. I used half of the Storyboard Pro and Adobe illustrator programs.”
Why did you make this?
“I had a lot of other character designs at the time of thinking of doing, but I wanted to try to express them at that point of time wouldn’t have worked very well. I felt like I hadn;t fulfilled their style yet and I wanted this project to be a fun project. So I thought this character would’ve been fun to design without causing too much emotional investment.”
What was hard about it?
“I am really not good at digital art. I am mostly a traditional artist. When I am a traditional artist, my line quality isn’t that good. It consists of stylized little lines that don’t really translate digitally well.”
Do you have any inspirational figures?
“Games like Hollow knight, Cult of the Lamb, Little Nightmares and the Soot sprites from the Ghibli films. And also Hayoa Miyazaki and Kei Urana.”
“I plan on going to Cuesta first and going to UCLA, and then I’m going for fire science and graphic arts.”
Diego S. Luna (DSL), Senior, Class of 2025 entered this video in the AHS film festival
What was your process?
“My process was full of a lot of thinking, like overall tone and the metaphorical hints to loneliness and isolation throughout the video. I probably listened to the song “Private Life” a good 43 times or so just to get a clear image of how to interpret the song into an animation involving storytelling, which was pretty interesting. I used a 5:5 canvas to further enforce the “cramped” feeling that the video suggests with the tiny apartment setting. The song was the backbone of the overall process because it was the foundation of how the animation would flow out too.”
Why did you make this?
“I’ve always wanted to make an animated music video ever since I was little. There’s just something about interpreting your favorite song in an artistic and storytelling way. Why I picked this particular song was because I thought it would be easy to animate a character secluded away in a small apartment and also for its deeper meanings of depression and social isolation. Plus, Oingo Boingo has a unique style of storytelling through its lyrics and I had to make an animation of one of their songs. It would be insane if I did not.”
What was hard about it?
“I have a little bit of knowledge on how to animate, which was difficult especially since this was my first ever full fledged animation on a program that I never used before, Adobe Animate. I didn’t know a lot of its features that would’ve made my life easier such as the camera and panning. The coloring was the worst part because I needed to re-color frame after frame after frame and this took longer than the lineart process.”
Do you have any inspirational figures?
“There are way too many inspirations to list but the top three of my biggest inspirations are Tim Burton, for the ideas he envisions, Jhonen Vasquez, for his style and color palette that he draws, and Hayao Miyazaki for his storytelling.”
What do you plan to do after high school?
“I’d love to go to a school dedicated to animation, character design and storytelling like CalArts. My dreams just consist of creating stories and characters for people to love in whatever way possible, such as movies, shows or graphic novels, like a director and writer. I think it would be neat, really.”
Elijah Santella, Junior, Class of 2026 entered this video in the AHS film festival
What was your process?
“My process for making it was kinda rough. I used a drawing pen and my school computer, I didn’t know about it until around a week before the due date so that was kinda rough.”
Why did you make this?
“I made it as a way to practice my editing and animation skills as I’ve only done shorter form content on my YouTube channel.”
What was hard about it?
“The most challenging part about it was definitely getting it in before the due date because I had to get the voice acting over Instagram and I had to spend a lot of time in my room.”
Do you have any inspirational figures?
“In terms of inspirational figures I watch a lot of animation YouTubers, but I don’t think I have a favorite.”
What do you plan to do after high school?
“After school I plan on making more ambitious and bigger scaled films for YouTube and if an opportunity for something bigger presents itself I’ll go after that.”
2023-24 was a great year for student animators at AHS, and we hope to see what the students of AHS create this year! Good luck!
Additional Animation by Jocelyn Muneton:
