About Me

Heya! My name is Sterling Whitaker, Im an aspiring concept artist, 2d Animator, and storyboard/animatic artist. I am currently a senior student at the University of Texas at Dallas, in which I am studying the many different forms of animation such as traditional frame-by frame, 3D keyframe, and stop-motion.

inspired by the styles of 90s to early 2000s Saturday morning cartoons from the great Animators such as Gennady Tartakovsky and Craig McCracken, my goal is to capture a sense of wonder with the viewers and give them an emotional connection with my work through the stories in my animations, while having even the frames themselves telling the story without words even necessary. (With this capstone being an exception of course for I had a funny script in mind for it!)

How I animate is usually through Photoshop, or Adobe animate, in which I draw each frame, either through program or drawing each frame by physically by hand, and then scanning, and placing them into photoshop and/or animate to which I then piece them together. Alone, my process may seem tedious, but the end results greatly outweigh the hard work put into it, as I meticulously focus on the expressions each character makes to their quirks and gestures to achieve that visual story telling aspect.

I have painted my way through art school during my early years in life, and through this, I have gained a better appreciation and passion for treating animation as a form of art. As a young child my strong desire to draw, animate, and create different types of media catapulted me to my main goal and passions, which are illustration and animation. I have also developed a love for creating acrylic and pastel paintings, in which I plan to implement and experiment into future designs and animations going forward.

Project Description

“Dr.Duppl” which will be a story about a mad scientist who tries to impress the ‘ethics inspector’ by using alternate reality clones!! its an Animatic with mixed media elements! 

What is one piece of advice you would provide to new ATEC students?

Never let anyone tell you what you can and cannot do, thats not for THEM to decide, that decision is for YOU!

What’s your favorite memory of ATEC?

Living on Campus