Animation student Rachel Clinton shares her journey
Written by Vinay Ranganathan, Photographs courtesy of Rachel Clinton
Rachel Clinton is a rising fourth-year and animation student here at SCAD. With multiple “Avatar The Last Airbender” figurines and a whole room her dad has filled with “Star Wars” memorabilia, it’s not hard to see why she chose this pathway. From a young age, Clinton consumed a lot of animated entertainment that began to inspire her. She’s also had other passions as a child that helped influence how she thinks about animation today such as music and sports.
“First off, my dad is a huge star wars fan so I grew up watching it. By doing music, I learned about timing which is big in animation. I also did sports so, I had to spend time thinking about how the body moved in different ways. When watching “Avatar The Last Airbender,” I watched the behind-the-scenes stuff for it and I was like ‘Oh my god, I can do this as a job’,” Clinton said.
As a result, Clinton said that she decided to go with that. Initially, she knew she wanted to do feature films, however that changed as she began her animation classes at SCAD.
“When I grew up I mainly saw myself doing feature films, up until I got to SCAD. Professor Warmen, my first animation professor, teaches a Game Animation class that only happens once a year and it’s one of those classes that you have to apply for. They look at your portfolio to decide. I got accepted. I tried it and I really fell in love with it so I kind of see myself going down to the game industry.”
That class helped her get an internship, at High Moon Studios, a game company, where she remotely works now. Clinton will always be grateful for Professor Warmen as he played a big role in helping her prepare her portfolio which got her the internship she’s at.
“There’s gameplay and cinematics, which is similar to feature film, but what I’ve done so far is actual animations you’ll see during gameplay, so I’ve done shoot reloads for a first-person shooter, walk and run cycles, fighting combos, stuff like that,” Clinton said.
Clinton also took it upon herself to take her first animation modeling class this quarter to enhance her skills.
“I’m really proud of the project I did for Prada’s class [pictured above], core principles: game art. I’ve never modeled anything before this. I could barely model a suitcase, but I’ve learned so much this quarter. I had never touched Unreal before this and I had never done textures. I forgot how to use Photoshop because I had done it a lot in high school, but I had never used it in college, so I’m really proud of the work I did,” Clinton said.
