CLARKSVILLE, TN (CLARKSVILLE NOW) – Claire Layne was one of the first students in a then-new animation program at Austin Peay State University in 2017.
“They had just recently built their new art department here and I was one of the graduating class for this new animation program that they’re trying to implement.”
Today, Layne’s animated short film Sagiso has been accepted into 18 film festivals internationally.
From anime fan to animation artist
Originally from Buchanan, Tennessee, Layne loved animation from a young age. “I grew up watching Dreamworks and Pixar films. My childhood was a lot of Ghibli movies, Disney films, and things like that. I think all of that played a collective role in how I wanted to make this film.”
Sagiso is a 2D animated film about what happens when a young Japanese girl enters a Shinto shrine and a spirit follows her home.
The characters began showing up in her sketchbook in 2016, and Layne further developed them and the story through her coursework. It took about a year and a half to complete the project once she got started.
Layne used several programs to complete Sagiso, and working through the pandemic created some hurdles. “I was working remotely from home, which was a new adjustment. I was used to these huge Mac laptops that had all of these programs on it, and everything had to be downscaled to my little laptop from 2017. It was breathing really heavy, all of the RAM storage was at capacity when I was trying to make it.”
She released the film in May 2021.
Awards and honors
So far, the film has won the Distinction Award from the Three Acts of Goodness International Micro Film Contest, a Taiwan-based online film festival. It’s currently in the running for the Grand Off festival in Warsaw, Poland.
“They (the Grand Off Festival) are offering to cover accommodations for me and another family member for a weekend,” Layne said. “They have a gala where they are encouraging students and people to network.
“I was one out of five in the animation category,” she said. “They have people from all over the world. I’m the only American in the group, which I thought was cool.”
Animation process
Everything has to start with research, Layne said, and she loves that part of the creative process.
“Then actually doing rough sketches and character design,” she said. “Storyboarding is like purest form of filmmaking when you’re trying to figure out what would the camera angles be. After you do the storyboarding, you can actually begin animating. Then it goes into clean line work … then you go into color. That’s the most time-consuming part.
“Everything you’re looking at is layers upon of layers of pictures,” she said.
The best ways to follow Layne’s work are on LinkedIn at Claire Layne, or on Instagram or Youtube at aesthetical_claire. She is available for commissions as an animator or storyboard artist.