Megan Kelly
San Jose State University

Neighborhood Roots

Biography: Megan Courtney Kelly is a student at San Jose State University, majoring in animation. She started working with traditional 2D animation and has just recently started getting into 3D animation. Megan has worked with fellow students on two films, Neighborhood Roots and Stoopid Movie, which have both recently won in festivals. Megan is proud of the work done on both of these films and considers the students who worked with her like a second family. Upon graduation Megan hopes to do animation for feature and personal films.

Objective: The objective of the Neighborhood Roots project was to utilize current technology in producing a story about a group of protesting environmentalists that prove their bark is worse than their bite, while retaining the aesthetics of a “traditionally” hand drawn project.

Tools used: Adobe® Photoshop® was used for taking scanned drawings and adjusting levels, coloring images, creating alpha channels to “knock out” backgrounds, resizing files, and also for painting of backgrounds. Adobe Premiere® and Adobe After Effects® were used for camera moves and composite to time, export to AVI. Adobe Audition® was used for sound editing and effects, and Adobe Encore® DVD used for the DVD project.

Back to 2005 Adobe Design Achievement Awards winners.