It wasn’t long ago that Tristan would talk at great length about his dream of becoming an animator. At the time, he was just getting familiar with digital art and creating illustrations on an iPad. Over the past two years, Tristan has consistently worked to develop his animation skills. Using the Procreate app, he has made significant progress creating animated artwork.

Most recently, Tristan created an animation for the Good Sports group exhibition at Access Gallery. The 47-second piece combined 10 individual animations, each representing a different sport, with sound effects. The sports included basketball, baseball, soccer, bowling, golf, fishing, hunting, swimming, track and volleyball.

The process began with Tristan deciding which sports he wanted to animate. Working two days a week for several months, he steadily moved the project forward. As part of his research, Tristan watched videos of each sport to better understand how the athletes moved and how the sport worked. This was especially helpful in the swimming animation, where the swimmer moves across the screen. Tristan also worked with staff to record and add his own sound effects, along with commercially available sounds.

Before creating the Good Sports animation, Tristan completed an animation commissioned by Access Gallery. Welcome to Access Gallery featured both animation and narration by Tristan.

He began the process by meeting with his client, the Access Gallery staff. Through that conversation, Tristan gained a better understanding of his role as the animator for the project. He then worked from a storyboard created by staff. After several months of creating the animation, Tristan recorded the narration with staff support. Tristan and staff edited the final piece together, including his original voiceover.

Tristan has made significant progress, but his goals extend far beyond these first projects. He hopes to create full-length animated movies, and he is only getting started. His unique imagination, combined with his drawing and animation skills, makes his work fun and entertaining to watch.

Tristan says he likes animation because it is cool, and he wants to work on cool things. His inspirations include Walt Disney, Chuck Jones, Chris Sanders, Chris Buck, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Stephen Hillenburg, J. G. Quintel, Pendleton Ward, Gábor Csupó, Andrew Chesworth and Aaron Blaise.

Some of his favorite animated films include the Rugrats movies, the SpongeBob movies and Disney films. Above all, Tristan loves The Simpsons.

His current goal is to become a computer animator using programs such as Blender and Adobe Animate. As Tristan says, “I like what I like, and I do what I like.”