Melissa Spearman is a graduate of the Academy of Art University in San Francisco California.

 

As a student, Melissa worked as a Lead Producer at StudioX while majoring in Animation & Visual Effects. The first film that she worked on while performing this role, Strawberry Mansion, made it into the first completely remote Sundance Film Festival in 2021. Prior to enrolling at AAU, she was also an online student at Jefferson State Community College in Birmingham, Alabama.

 

Melissa’s love for animation began at a very young age. She began drawing as soon as she discovered how to hold a pencil and use it to make marks on paper. Her love for creating sketches quickly went digital when she was introduced to a computer and the Corel Draw program. Her avid interest in animation developed as a result of her desire to someday be able to share her own original characters and stories.

 

Being a homeschooled and online student her entire academic career has helped Melissa to achieve a well-developed ability to look for solutions to her artistic challenges. Although she can initially appear to be shy and reserved in person, Melissa loves to connect and work with artists who are passionate about their craft, and she is very rarely intimated when it comes to realizing her own artistic desires on her computer. As a result, Melissa has acquired a thorough working knowledge of remote production environments and many of the programs and apps being used by today’s leading digital artists.

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Melissa currently works as a part-time Production Assistant at Future House Studios while pursuing her long-term entrepreneurial goal of starting a virtual animation studio of her own.