Min Waiburi
Illustration 2024
Throughout her life, Min grew up with characters in movies and TV shows with incredible storytelling twists and great visual characters with worlds that gave her the ambition to take the career path of working towards the goal of becoming a creative artist. After leaving school, she pursued her dreams by developing her art skills and studying Animation & Illustration at Newcastle College, completing her diploma. She then applied for a degree at The Northern School Of Art, learning more about alternative professional practices, skills, and industry standards while developing her art style and portfolio.
Her creative ideas are influenced by cartoons like Gravity Falls, Steven Universe and Over The Garden Wall while also being inspired by games like Pokémon, Animal Crossing, Kirby, and Mario. Although heavily influenced by cartoons and games for character designs, her story-writing inspirations come from movies like Alien, Lord Of The Rings, The Hobbit, Lilo and Stitch and Spirited Away. Having a big interest in these genres of Fantasy, Sci-Fi, and Horror gives Min her imaginative thinking for new illustration ideas.
Min uses Procreate, Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop to create high-quality illustrations while also developing visual storyboard concepts for animations and creating characters and environments. She specialises in Adobe After Effects and Photoshop for animations while using rigging techniques and software like Spine2D, Unity, and Toon Boom. She has experience and knowledge with 3D model making using Cinema4D, Nomad Sculpt, and Blender. She’s a creative individual who can quickly pick up and learn new skills, constantly adapts to teaching herself, and promptly problem-solves.
For her Final Major Project, she created an identity and portfolio for branding by producing a personal project with a specialism for character and environment designs. She taught herself new skills to develop her personal project at a professional level to showcase her horror puzzle platformer game "Monument Dream”, representing Mental Illnesses through visuals, animation, and illustrations. Developing her personal practice of professionally presenting her game assets, character sheets and emotes for industry-standard design work. Bringing her game into development by creating stylised in-depth characters, stories, game trailers and even a mock-up of the game's physical collector’s edition packaging, collaborating with Harry Brady–Stott (stotties via Instagram) on 3D printing to bring the 3D model of her main character to life. This project is the foundation and start of Min’s professional practice, launching her indie online Animations & Games studio SLEEPYFERRETSTUDIOS on Instagram.
Min is now taking on the career path of applying for animation and game studios. She aspires to work within a team of creatives with a passion for designing projects, aiming to create immersive experiences for people who can relate to characters with good representation and stories while making connections on a personal and emotional level with audiences through games and movies.
You can contact and visit Min’s social media links to view their portfolio and learn more about her indie studio and upcoming personal projects.