For as long as I can remember, I’ve been crafting stories and characters – whether it was the mermaids that lived in the river behind my family’s cottage or the kingdoms hiding away in my basement. However, the problem with playing pretend as a child is that as soon as you’ve finished acting out a scene, it’s gone. Whenever I tried to recreate that magical feeling that came with slipping on someone else’s shoes and stepping into a different world, it was never quite the same. There are stories and scenes constantly playing out in my head and animation and illustration give me the means to record them and translate that feeling into a medium that I can immerse myself in all over again and share with the world.
This desire to be someone or somewhere else has extended into everything I do. I love sitting down and reading a book from cover to cover within a day or two, or putting in headphones, turning out the lights, and letting myself be swallowed up by the immersive worlds that video games create. Not only do they give me that magical, unrepeatable feeling, but they inspire me to think of new ways to approach what I produce and give me new ideas to make sure that the characters I create come to life.
ABOUT ME
My name is Mikayla Stock. I graduated Columbus College of Art and Design in 2018, where I majored in Animation and minored in Creative Writing.
I've been drawing ever since I was a child but started to take it more seriously in early high school, taking art classes at a local center in addition to school classes and scouring the internet for every source of inspiration I could find. Eventually I started taking classes at Schain Studios every week. My decision to study animation came from my desire to bring my artwork to life.