Founder, Animator, and Member-Owner
Adrian is an Asheville native, graduating from A.C. Reynolds in the Buncombe County school system. He studied media arts and animation at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, receiving a Bachelor’s of Science in 2003. In the following years, he researched business models to find the ideal form for an animation studio, while gaining experience creating game and promotional art and animation for Merscom Games, Playdom, and Disney Interactive. Most recently, he was an animator at Soup 2 Nuts studios in Boston, for the last 26 episodes of Word Girl.
Adrian started We Animate Things in order to create the sort of community and environment that he found altogether too fleeting in conventional animation studios. In an industry rife with corporate buyouts, outsourcing, suppressed wages and squelched creativity, We Animate Things is intended to be an oasis where artists, musicians, animators, writers, and others can safely enjoy creating works they really care for, while relaxing into a community they both create and can expect to remain for the long term.
Adrian is an animator by trade, with familiarity in both classic and modern animation methods. He brings an understanding of the art process for multiple technologies – whether hand drawn animation, digital Flash animation, 3D character animation, or motion graphics. He’s an open-source enthusiast, gleefully adding free/libre software to his repertoire whenever appropriate, working frequently in Mypaint, GIMP, Audacity, Inkscape, and Blender.
Adrian hopes that We Animate Things will become the seed that creates a brand new revolution in animation production, and beyond – spreading daily democracy, real ownership, humane employment, and long-term community to everything it touches.