Samantha Morris Looks toward a Future in Animation

New Anderson Artists Guild member Samantha Morris just graduated from the Savannah College of Art and Design in Atlanta. She majored in animation with a double minor in storyboarding and drawing.

Early influences included tracing pictures from coloring books and playing video games with her dad and brother. She especially enjoyed mythology/fantasy type games like The Elder Scrolls and Assassin's Creed.

Her initial goal is to get into environment design for video games. This includes drawing landscapes and background layouts and will probably require a move to Atlanta or Los Angeles. Her ultimate dream is to direct animated films.

Her coursework taught her how to do line work, color, and rendering for animated films and video games, most of it done on the computer though sometimes she would draw on paper and then scan the artwork. Her senior thesis included doing everything for a short film (1 minute, 44 seconds) from preproduction, concept and background drawings to production of the actual animation to post-production. “It was so challenging and such hard work,” she said. “Then when I finished, it was like wow, I just really made this thing that people can watch and enjoy.”

She also creates graphite and charcoal figure drawings and portraits as well as digital portraits and landscapes. She describes her style as “realism meets stylized animation.”

She joined the Anderson Artists Guild for the community. “I want to get my work out there and to meet new people in this area I can connect with and get to know,” she said.

For more information about Morris, visit https://sammorris133.wixsite.com/website-1.