Student Testimonial - Nataliia Karhapoltseva
"Body mechanics knowledge from WS3 helps me to create more believable animation for game cycles and cinematics."
"My main struggle was feeling uncertainty during animation. Literally, like "Is this pose the best? Does the hip work in a natural way? How to work with your fingers? What about face at all? How should I move the brows?" And so on. With all these thoughts I started to look at some courses in late 2015 year.
I've started to look for a good mentor. And have found an iAnimate podcast with an interview. It was just great! I have listened to almost all of Feature's mentors and choose 3 of them that I liked the most. And just joined their classes one by one!”
“Body mechanics knowledge from WS3 helps me to create more believable animation for game cycles and cinematics. Knowledge about acting from WS4 helped me to find my dream job in Ukraine. It was an animation studio that was making a full-feature cartoon movie. And also WS4 helped me to overcome professional burnout. I have used knowledge from WS5 while I was working as TeamLead and Animation Supervisor. It really helps me to make grounded notes and explain what isn't working in a scene. Especially I remember Jacob's phrase "Less means more!"
And finally, knowledge about "polish" from WS6 helped me to find another dream job and even my next project of my dream! It was Agora Studio and the "Love, Death and Robots" project.“Hard to say. Maybe I would be just some senior animator and never attended projects like "Stranger Things", "Love, Death & Robots", "Fantastic beasts" and so on. For sure I wouldn't do lectures about animation for donation as I'm doing it right now” Nataliia said if whee she’s now if she did not join iAnimate.
“Well, it's easy! Firstly choose your mentor. And then just join his classes! It's totally worth it!”Nataliia’s advice to aspiring animators.
Nataliia Karhapoltseva has been working as an animator since 2012. Her last position in 2020 was Animation Supervisor. Nataliia was responsible for layout, rig support, creating keyframe animation for human and creatures and over mocap animation, sequence continuity, problem-solving, creation and development of the animators' team as well as leading her team from layout to the best animation result. Nataliia worked as a Senior Character Animator at Agora Studio. Then, she started to become a volunteer in Ukraine doing live streams and lectures about animation for donation.
Nataliia Karhapoltseva took the following Feature Student Workshop at iAnimate with the instructors:
- Feature Animation 3 with Paul Chung (Tiny Island Productions)
- Feature Animation 4 with Stephen Melagrano (Steamroller Animation)
- Feature Animation 5 with Jacob Gardner (Agora Studio)
- Feature Animation 6 with Tal Shwarzman (Pixar Animation Studios)
