Introduction

I spoke with Anastasia Spruill – an exceptionally talented and skilled rig artist and animator, who lives in South Carolina, USA. Stasia is an EDAPT friend, beta tester and has made some significant contributions to the development of EDAP Tools v.7.

It was extremely enjoyable to learn more about her animation journey and hear her thoughts about a wide range of topics of common interest. Below is part one of our long conversation.

Interview with Anastasia Spruill (part 1)

Hi Stasia!

We've spoken quite a lot in the last couple of years, but our conversations have always revolved around specific technical and creative challenges, so it's great to have this opportunity to learn more about your background and your animation journey.

Since there is so much to talk about, I decided to separate this interview into two parts – the first somehow more general and chronological, while in the second one we'll focus on technical stuff and rigging specifics.

Let's start at the very beginning.
What were your favorite cartoons when you were a little girl, and which is the first one that you remember seeing? Did you prefer shorts or feature films?

Well, to be honest that’s really tough for me to choose! As a kid, if I heard there was a new cartoon airing, I’d be there right in front of the TV day one to watch it! To be honest though, I basically was watching anything on Cartoon Network, Toonami, Nickelodeon, Kids WB (which eventually turned into 4Kids), Fox Kids, and Disney Channel. In terms of the ones that had a major impact on me, I’d have to say Pokemon, Sonic X, The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, Digimon, Dragon ball Z, Avatar the Last Airbender, and Yu-gi-oh!.

It is hard to say what was the first animation I remember seeing… When I was younger, I was “babysat” by the TV, so I don’t really know what it was. If I had to take a guess, I think the first one I remember seeing was Disney’s Mary Poppins, which was half cartoon half live action. Funny thing is that movie for a long time had me convinced cartoon characters were real and that I just hadn’t met one yet.

As for which I prefer shorts versus films, I personally love both! In general, I like series the most. Roughly 30-minute episodes spanning over a few seasons are my go-tos, but if it came down to just one-off shorts versus films, I think I like films just a bit more. In general, it’s because you spend more time with the characters, and it leaves a longer impact on me comparatively. It’s probably also the same reason I like long series spanning over seasons!

What about comics?

I ADORED comics as a kid. As I mentioned, I watched a bunch of cartoons, so that was my first introduction to Spiderman, X‑Men, and Batman. I specifically watched the 90s versions of all of them, which then had me reading comics! I used to read specifically Wolverine and Spiderman ones when I was young but then branched out to more of the Marvel, and DC universes. Not sure if this counts, but I also delved into mangas and a bit of Archie Comics (specifically Sonic the Hedgehog) as I grew older. I eventually found myself in the graphic novel territory when I got into college with The Walking Dead and Fables.

As a kid did you see comic books as a separate, unique art form or just as a still, printed extension of the animation world?

I’ll be honest, I’m not sure if I did or not. I just felt it was another way to experience new stories and learn about the characters I saw on TV. I guess I was a bit nerdy and just wanted to learn more about the characters I admired!

When did you start drawing? Are there other artists in your family? Did you have interest in other art forms from an early age?

I started drawing when I was just a lil gal, roughly around 5 years old. Sadly, though I was bullied and discouraged by my peers and some teachers. The kids around me would make fun of me, and some of my teachers would say, “Be more useful, art isn’t a good choice for a career." or "Go be a doctor or lawyer!”. After a hiatus of drawing, I luckily met some great friends that encouraged me and eventually educated me that people actually draw cartoons for money. After my first year of high school, I put all my heart and soul into art. I knew from that point I wanted to be in animation.

I do have some other artists in my family. My grandmother used to paint and would hang her paintings all around her house. She used to take me around the house and tell me about each one. She was more of a background painter. I remember she used to tell me she never wanted to make a clean sunny day as her painting. She found more stormy backgrounds gave something more interesting for us to look at. As for my mother, she actually wanted to be an animator but life happened. She was an artist back in the day. The funny thing is she never told me until I brought up that I wanted to be an animator. My mom and grandmother would help me with many art projects for school when I was younger. My grandfather wasn’t an artist in the regards of painting or drawing, but he was an English and German professor. He was my go-to for all my papers and helped me define my writing style. I didn’t realize it till I was older and after he had passed how much his advice on writing and structure had impacted me as a storyteller.

That’s a good segue into the other art forms I was interested in. I did have a small interest in writing stories when I was young, but it developed in my late high school to college years. I also was interested in sculpting. I tried to take as many art classes as I could when I was in high school, once I realized I wanted to be an animator. Actually, not too long ago a family member of mine invited me to a pottery class and I hadn’t made anything with clay in years! Coming back to sculpting with my post college, and a few years in the animation industry was quite interesting. I looked at it way differently than I had when I was younger, like focusing on depth, and texture. Basically, applying all the art knowledge I knew into this fun little project. I’m planning on doing more sculpting projects in my free time when I get the chance! Another art form I was into, especially in high school and college was cosplaying. I used to thrift, combine, sew and make costumes for comic and anime conventions. I was never really good at it, but the fun was dressing up and acting as the character, probably the inner animator in me coming out, to be honest.

Time for a new updated Demo Reel! pic.twitter.com/jjVoKpKkva

— Stasia (@ASK_Animator) February 25, 2024

As you grew up and learned more about animation, did your tastes and sensibilities change? What are your favorite animated shows and feature films? Any particular animators and directors that you consider influential?

Oh definitely! I am still nostalgic about the shows I loved when I was younger, but I acknowledge that some of them are probably not the best shows on the planet. In terms of my favorite shows nowadays, well, they normally are ever-changing so I’ll give you a snapshot of my favorites at this moment! For series, some that stick out in my head are Bluey, Adventure Time, Primal, Gravity Falls, Samurai Jack, The Amazing World of Gumball, Smiling Friends and How Heavy are the Dumbbells You Lift. As for movies Mad Max Fury Road, Coco, How to Train Your Dragon 1 and 2, Kung Fu Panda 1 and 2, Prince of Egypt and Spirited Away are some of my top favorite films of all time. To be honest, there are so many series and movies I love, and I feel like they rotate in and out because I’ll remember other movies and series, and it’s so hard to just narrow it down!

One of my go-to directors I admire is Genndy Tartakovsky. His work, particularly Samurai Jack and Primal are so wonderfully done. Hayao Miyazaki is another director I admire for his ability to bring out beauty in the world. I cannot remember who told me this but some advice I had gotten as a creative in animation was, if you can only just listen to the show and get the same impact as watching then your product isn’t successful. I feel with these directors in particular, that statement reigns true.

As for animators, a lot of them are some of my friends and professors! The professors that had an impact upon me were John Webber, Troy Gustafson, and Greg Araya. They had guided me through my BFA and MFA at SCAD. John Webber had pushed me as an animator and had helped me develop my character acting skills. Troy Gustafson had nailed the fundamentals of animation deep into the crevasses of my brain, along with some effects animation principles. Greg Araya was the one that had helped me hone my technical prowess which is where I shined in the animation pipeline. On the non-professor side of things, I really admire Eric Pringle. I love watching his videos, breaking down on what he does in his own personal Flash/Animate files. They are truly inspiring to me.

As for my friends, some that really inspire me are my friends Natasha Cánepa, Maelene Naftzger, Jan Sorrentino. Natasha Cánepa is one of the hardest workers I know. She is amazing no matter where you put her in the pipeline. I admire her abilities in anything she puts her mind to but most importantly I admire how much effort and passion she puts into each project. Maelene Naftzger is one of the fastest and best animators I know. We worked on a short together called Bearly in college. Her animations are literally magical. They convey amazing depth and her timing is impeccable. I would gawk at her amazing frame by frame animation while I was teaching her tips on puppeting in Toon Boom. Jan Sorrentino is a self-taught artist that I connected with through Discord. I was a fan of his back in the day and saw that he had a server so I decided what the heck, why don’t I hop in and make some friends. We started chatting about our love/hate relationship with Animate/Flash. He has been a huge impact on me and my animations. To be honest, we still swap animation tidbits to each other.

How did you get into Flash and what was the path that led you to becoming an animation professional?

It was a combination of Zach Rich and Greg Araya that had gotten me into Flash/Animate! I was in my freshman year of college and a few friends of mine invited me to this Adobe Flash/Animate Lessons Club, which was ran by a man named Zach Rich, and I figured I might as well go I have nothing better to do on my off day. Afterwards, I started to hang out with Zach and a few others and we had a movie group that would go out to see movies together each week and we would go to dinner afterwards and critique them. This had me pushing myself as creative and thinking how I could apply these critiques from these movies into my own works, plus I learned a new program on the side. On my normal days of school I’d be learning Flash/Animate from Greg Araya. One of the projects I had the pleasure to work on with Greg and a bunch of other students was for Adobe actually. (SCAD Students Collaborate using Adobe Animate) I had made the Dinosaur animation in the video. So I couldn’t escape Flash/Animate on my work days nor my days off.

When did you discover that you had talent for structural thinking and took interest in developing the skills of a professional 2D rig artist?

Around the same time as Zach’s lessons. I was taking Greg Araya’s Digicel I class which was a class that taught Adobe Flash/Animate, and Toon Boom. I was starting to get engrossed in the technical side and I remember I was constantly asking questions and pushing what I could do in those programs. After I took Digicel I logically wanted to take Digicel II. This time the class was run by another professor I mentioned earlier, John Webber. We were tasked with taking a children’s book made by the illustration department and transforming it into an animation. It ended up being a short called The Chimney Sweep. We decided to go the route of Toon Boom rigging with some frame by frame animation sprinkled in. I didn’t make the rigs for the project, but I was one of the people to go to when the rigs broke. I started to find my niche of learning how to problem solve and delve deep into the rigging side of animation.

What are some of the exciting projects you have been a part of in the last few years?

I have had some great projects I worked on! Some of my favorites were Baldur’s Gate 3 (The Greatest Foe, Launch Party, Christmas Gift and most recently released Modding Mayhem) shorts, Ryan’s World (Trick or Treating at a Haunted HOUSE!, Red Titan Superhero Dance Battle!, Pirate Ryan found Treasure on a mystery Island!, Pirate Ryan Battle and Hunt for Treasure!) shorts, Game Grumps’ GG Animateds to fill The Void™, Cult of the Lamb: Doom and Shroom, a shot for Saberspark’s Bluey reanimated, Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friend’s reanimated and some shorts for a YouTube channel called Dtoons. I also have more to come that I can’t reveal just yet!

What are the daily challenges of being a Lead Rig Artist in a long-running production? Do you have any interesting anecdotes to share?

At the start it was just updating all the rigs to a standard. The puppets ranged from different qualities over the years. To be honest, since there are so many rotating characters and different costume changes there still is work to be done! I basically had to help organize 5+ years of rigs to what we have now. So usually, I want all the rigs to have the same quality, no breakage of joints, same amount of mouth, hand, blinks and feet shapes, systems to add more custom mouth, hand, blinks and feet, having all the characters’ sizes be proportional to each other in a line up, making sure all EDAPT features work, etc. A lot of it is making sure swapping from character to character animation wise should be smooth and have little culture shock between them. Luckily my coworkers are great, and they report any abnormalities for me to fix every production. I get them fixed up for that production, then I update any other version of that character for future uses. Luckily for me, as each production goes by less and less fixes need to be made.

One thing that we always must do for each production is to dress our characters up to the theme of that short. So, I am most proud of getting our characters to a point where swapping and rigging costumes on top of their base rigs have become so much faster and easier. Obviously, some costumes need a little more TLC when the designs get more complex.

Along with rigging I am the technical person, so if Flash/Animate breaks I’m the go-to person. My most common solution is to close and reopen Flash/Animate. However, there are more complex situations where I need to go digging into the file, whether it be an export setting, a parenting error, a shape tween error, a filter error, you name it, I’m the one that troubleshoots it.

One funny anecdote that happened at my job was that my director, Laura Gaddini, didn’t realize there was a rigging problem till I came into the picture. I had pitched EDAPT early on before I was considered the Lead Rig Artist, and she just let me play around in the rigging sandbox. I recorded videos of me animating with base Flash/Animate and EDAPT, then put them side by side timed and it was incredible. The time it took to complete the same actions ranged from a 50% to 95% difference in speed. Once I had shown her that, she wanted me to put as much time as I could into implementing EDAPT into our production. It was difficult, however, because we needed to still create shorts, while updating the characters and on top of that training my coworkers. So, when I started updating the rigs each production, I had introduced new concepts and tools in batches so as to not overwhelm the animator. We are still in the process of updating our rigs, especially with the new EDAPT version. So, my next goal is to introduce the new tools in batches for our productions going forward.

Happy Halloween!! To celebrate I wanted to share my Animation Reel from Ryan's World "Trick or Treating at a Haunted HOUSE!" I was the Lead Rig Artist. I also animated these shots!pic.twitter.com/DMbCoBmSXy

— Stasia (@ASK_Animator) October 31, 2024

You are much younger, so you probably don't remember the glorious days of Flash, when the best, most stylish TV cartoons of the 2000s and even some feature films were made in Flash MX and Flash 8. To this day my most favorite is Flash CS6. Since the name change, Animate has been terribly mismanaged and has suffered a lot of reputational damage.
What do you think about the recent feature and workflow updates in Animate? To me all of that looks like self-sabotage.

Funny you mention that. I do remember some! I was super young but some of my favorites from the early 2000s were Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends and Mucha Lucha. I loved some of the later 2000s/early 2010s like My Little Pony Friendship is Magic, Dan Vs. and Motor City. I also was into a lot of the early Flash/Animate animations online in Newgrounds and early YouTube. Some that stuck out to me were Eddsworld, Egoraptor’s work, and Oney NG’s work.

I could be here all-day ranting about the changes that have been done to Animate… I have beef with their parenting system, and warping system personally. These tools could be great, but they cause my files to crash more often, my animations glitch, parenting will make my renders glitch even though the preview is completely fine, parenting will sometimes make my symbols fly around the screen with no rhyme or reason and make my libraries a mess. From my perspective, the way Animate is presented is for more one-off motion graphic-based animation rather than a full series production with multiple characters that interact. In general, I feel I am fighting with the program almost on a daily basis. I do love this program and I do appreciate that Adobe does listen sometimes, for example when animators were calling for an envelope tool like Toon Boom and Moho has, however, it is subpar in comparison. I’d rather just frame by frame animate than try to fight the tool. I was extremely disappointed in Adobe’s last update. The biggest highlight to me was that you could make your interface a bit darker. I want this program to be better and, thankfully, you guys make this program better! Don’t even get me started on the lack of an update this year…

Due to my involvement with EDAP Tools, I haven't had the time to explore alternatives, but I find the Moho demos that I see to be very appealing, and they seem to be doing many things right. I know that you have broader experience and overall view of the field.
What are your expectations about the developments on the animation software front? Will Toon Boom's dominance be challenged by Moho? Will Flash be able to regain some of its lost territory?

Oh yes! I try to dig deep into any rigging software I can get my hands on. I am still new to learning Moho, but from what I see Moho has a good chance of challenging Toon Boom in my opinion. Especially with the cost difference as well. It’s a bit more accessible than Toon Boom. It still is a bit early for me to judge what Moho’s drawbacks are but comparing it to Flash/Animate it is in a whole other league. 

That being said, can Flash/Animate regain its lost territory… Flash/Animate on its own? No way. Flash/Animate with you guys, I think EDAPT might be able to regain ground for Flash/Animate with your tools. Your new update has made me excited about animating in Flash/Animate again. I am so excited to act like Milt Kahl and do as many head swaggles as I can! 

Besides your interest in animation, do you have any other hobbies or side projects?

Yes, I do! I actually workout everyday! Five days of strength training, all days I do cardio. Fun fact: over the past 2 years I had lost about 110lbs (around 50kg) and gained a bunch of muscle. I am into cooking/baking low-calorie meals so I can still eat tasty treats but still be leaner. One of my particular hobbies in the cooking field has been ice cream making, and baking in general. I also play Dungeons and Dragons from time to time. I love playing video games. I help out at my local church and aid with the junior church there. I also do tutoring for animation as well. Gotta spread the good animation knowledge around.

Is there anything I forgot to ask, but you would like to add?

I guess another thing I might add is that I do have a love for teaching myself! I also do private tutorings for people on my Wyzant page, and it is truly amazing to see other artists grow and learn. I have pitched EDAPT to a few of my students there so hopefully there might be an influx of people learning EDAPT. Other than that, I’m just glad I can share a bit of my story out there for everyone to hear. Thanks so much for letting me talk with yall!

Thank you very much, Stasia!
We will continue our conversation in the second part. ∎

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