For our Earth Day animation project this year, we brought together 9 interns from MetWest High School who learned the basics of Adobe Illustrator and After Effects to design and create our animated PSA. It’s time to meet these inspiring and talented young people!
The Student Animators:
Kevin Gonzalaz
- MetWest student having fun on the job.
Bio: Kevin is a senior from MetWest. Kevin likes to be with his girlfriend, do video production and learn new things on the web.
Kevin says, “Every stage of the production is key and on that software, we had to trace our hand-made drawings, create scenes and characters to have them be digital, add color and soon import onto Adobe After Effects.“
Hector Verduzco
MetWest student Hector Verduzco working on a scene in Illustrator.
Bio: Hector is a sophomore at MetWest, what he enjoys is drawing graffiti, playing sports and hanging out with friends.
Hector says: “Its an animation addressing many of the global problems that we face on a daily basis and the steps we can take in order to make sure that we stop perpetuating this horrible cycle of global warming.“
Karen Perez
MetWest Karen Perez student having fun on the job.
Bio: Karen is a freshman at MetWest, she enjoys listening to music, playing around with friends and texting on her phone.
Karen says “ What I learned during the project was how to use illustrator and learned more about climate change… and what change we could do to help prevent …floods and saving species of animals.”
Samaiyah Zareef-Mustafa
MetWest student Samaiyah at KDOL.
Bio: Samaiyah enjoy cooking, drawing and gardening.
Samaiyah says “Also, everyone had a lot of ideas about the video but we all had a chance to express ourselves and contribute equally…I can say that everyone enjoyed themselves and is pleased with the final project.”
Pancho
MetWest student at KDOL working on grocery scene.
Bio: Pancho likes to do graffiti, work with Adobe illustrator and listen to music.
Pancho says ” taught us things by steps so we can not only do the video on time, but get new skills and learning new things every time we came“
Guayo Cartagena
MetWest student Guayo making faces.
Bio: Guayo enjoys fiddling with Final Cut like Folk do with Fiddles. He also enjoys puns and is a fan of the Hip-Hop genre. He also enjoys basketball.
Guayo says “It is only with a unified effort that we can begin to shave off many of the effects global warming brings to beard of our planet.”
Dontae Sharp
MetWest student at KDOL
Bio: Dontae is a sophomore at MetWest, he loves to play basketball, likes hip-hop music and loves to do engaging activities.
Dontae says “The problem is learning about climate change has been hard for me, just like a lot of other teens who have taken interest or heard about it. Its hard to actually picture the effects that we have on the climate and our world…Green house gases stay in the amosphere for hundreds of thousands of years. Knowing that we make cars and other engine based machines which produce a lot of co2 and other green house gases has opened my eyes to our problem with producing too much green house gas.“
Francisco Palma
MetWest student working on room animation.
Bio: Francisco is a freshman at MetWest, he enjoys playing FIFA 2013
MetWest student Lawrence at KDOL
Bio: Lawrence is a senior at MetWest, what he enjoys it to run track, sing and act.
Lawrence says “I feel as if we put all of the information that we wanted people to know but to also give them solutions to fix the problems that we as a community should see and understand how it will affect the word we live in.“
The Mentors:
Jake Schoneker
Bio: Jake is the Program Director at the Media Enterprise Alliance at KDOL-TV and Executive Producer of Muse Video. He’s a graduate of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and an experienced multimedia storyteller. His work has appeared on the PBS NewsHour, the Washington Post, the AFP and the Phnom Penh Post.
What Jake says “It was a real pleasure getting to work with such a talented group of young people on this project. From the beginning concept to the final animation steps, everybody put their mark on the final product. As a video artist and someone who’s concerned about the climate, I’m so excited to be part of this project.“
Kevin Kuo Bio: Film & Animation, Sports, Music
What Kevin says “A challenging project to achieve both narrative and stylistic creativity.”
