'I just found it really fulfilling'
Senior animation major Chelsea Dunham on the CMU Animation Showcase
Chelsea Dunham poses for a photo. Courtesy of Chelsea Dunham.
Chelsea Dunham has always had an interest in art. Her parents and relatives would purchase art supplies for her at Christmas and birthdays to support and encourage her in her artistic pursuit.
Now, years later, she is set to graduate Central Michigan University and begin her future career in animation.
Dunham originally came to CMU in hopes of joining one of Central’s fine arts programs. However, during her freshman year, she took an intro to animation class and had fallen in love with the craft.
“I think animation had always been something I wanted to do, but never had the opportunity," Dunham said. "Finally being able to take a class in it, I guess I just found it really fulfilling (in a way) that I wasn’t getting out of regular painting and drawing."
She switched her major to animation and has since worked on many projects during her time at CMU, including a bumper for Hell’s Half Mile her sophomore year. The project, called “Rise of the Phoenix," was one she worked on with other CMU students.
She also worked on short animations during her junior year, including “Pandora’s Box” and “Wrecked.”
Dunham spent the entirety of her senior year working on her senior project, “The Hunter.”
The plot synopsis of the animation is: “In a desperate attempt to survive, the deer and its fawn are cornered by a group of hunters. Both are killed and left to rot. Years later, the youngest hunter’s daughter hears a haunting call from within the forest. She is followed by the spirit of the deer, corrupted by loss and its search for vengeance.”
The idea for the story had come from Clarisa Reyna, another student in the animation program who helped work on the project alongside Jasmin Powell and Dunham. During the group’s junior year, they pitched potential senior projects where Reyna’s idea was chosen. Over the summer before Dunham’s senior year, they started working on developing the story for the project further.
The group’s animation has been be shown alongside other students’ projects in the CMU Animation Senior Gallery and Showcase. The gallery closes May 2 in the Third Floor Exhibition Area in Park Library. The gallery space is full of the work that has been put into the student’s projects, such as their concepts, storyboards and some behind-the-scenes looks into the process of animation.
The Senior Showcase will take place from 6 to 7:45 p.m today in the Sarah and Daniel Opperman Auditorium in Park Library. Attendees will have the opportunity to view the full animated short films that the students have been working on.
After the showcase, attendees may talk to the animators at a reception in the gallery .
Apart from Dunham’s group project, seven other animations will be shown, including “Dreadreign,” “Neighborhood Blues,” “The Wild Northwest,” “The Protector,” “Gnosis,” “Axie and Chad” and “Living with the Blackbox Family.”
In “The Hunter,” Dunham had helped with the project’s story development, story panels, environment design, and the initial character design. She says her largest contribution to the project was the character rigging, which is an animation technique used to move the characters in a way that is faster than the traditional animation method of redrawing each frame.
While Dunham says she is still trying to figure out her animation style as a student, she hopes that she will be able to determine it when she enters the professional world.
Dunham will graduate this week with a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree. She hopes to soon start working at an animation studio somewhere in Canada and to someday work on a popular series or movie, or to have a series of her own.
Anyone interested in checking out Dunham’s previous projects can do so at her website chelseadunham.com. To learn more about the CMU Animation Senior Gallery, contact the Department of Art and Design at their email artanddesign@cmich.edu or at their number (989) 774-3025.
