Advantageous or vivacious? When you’re Jenna Liesman, you can be both. Designing eye-catching graphics has been her role as a Design Apprentice and a Visual Arts Animation major. When faced with a challenge—designing and animating the graphics for this year’s senior class—she uses all her resources.

When Adobe Illustrator didn’t work, she changed her approach by deep diving into research and choosing avenues that appealed to her. Messing up does not stop Jenna’s creation. She believes failure is crucial to learning —bouncing from Adobe Illustrator to Digital Collage, and using her talents to compile mood boards and assets allows her vision to come to life.  

Working as a Design Apprentice for more than a year and a half, she holds great responsibility for The Loading Zone, and a Corps favorite, Senior Sendoffs. 

“Anything animation related! Animating robot characters for the Loading 
Zone [our PBS buffers] for sure, as well as coming up with “the look” and 
motion style for [Senior Sendoffs].” 

Working with other Corps students reminds Jenna that collaboration is more than getting a task done. It is a deeper understanding of how their brain functions and how to work efficiently within their team. Jenna loves hearing from multitalented people all over the world and their involvement in stop-motion. 

Outside of the Digital Corps, Jenna is a proactive and diligent worker as the only stop-motion specialist in her major. Jenna has high accolades, and her skills prove it. She was the co-leader of her cohort for her short-film class project; nominated based on leadership, vision, and growth mindset, she was offered the director position by her professor.

“I was nervous, scared, lost, but the support from the other cohorts allowed me to grow into a smart, reliable person. My soft skills improved, and I got experience talking to other team leads.”

When you’re as talented as Jenna, animation is more than making objects look like they are moving. The studying, replication, and enhancement of objects is what Jenna appreciates from animation. Her superpower is translating physical objects into something that moves. 

After a year at The Corps, she accepted a summer internship in stop-motion animation and got experience in a director role shortly after. She gained skills in time management, fostering engagement, and self-management. 

“Time management was a big one, especially using it at the Corps, choosing what task you want to take first. It is important to be able to switch your brain to work mode and to collaboration mode. Being able to balance creative time within work and time to yourself is hard, especially from my internship to my director role to working at the Corps.” 

Outside of being a star director and energetic designer, Jenna enjoys her free time by putting the life in work-life balance.  When she thrifts, she loves finding eye-catching pieces—just like her work. Jenna is also musically talented, and in her free time, she rocks out on her cello. She enjoys water coloring to unwind and excursions with her partner… and she fits in some YouTube binging.

Her strive to understand the work she produces on a deeper level separates her from other designers. Putting her creative touch on every project she finishes as a well-rounded and kind-hearted artist will be hard to fill. We wish her the best of luck, and have no doubt she will be successful!