DAN ANTHONY KELLY

3D Animator

Dan Anthony Kelly (he/him) has been a 3D Animator at the Animation Lab since 2022. He was the most engaged in school when he created videos, websites, or animations. It took him until senior year of high school to realize that he could make a career out of that. “Why do parents tell their art-inclined children to be ‘architects’? What makes you think my doodle of someone sniffing their own fart will translate into a building that won't collapse?” Dan’s motivation is to make people smile and remind folx that we're all in this shit together. At the Lab, he works as a one-person 3D pipeline. He models, rigs, and animates 3D videos for various animation channels, including Weird Helga, The Good Advice Cupcake, The Land of Boggs, and Chikn Nuggit. He enjoys floating through the different shows and collaborating with each team. 

Dan’s workflow shortcut is realizing that sometimes it's just about putting in the hours, and after a lot of practice doing that thing, your years of experience becomes a workflow shortcut. Also though, learn those hotkeys, and write/record scripts or actions for repetitive tasks. His advice for aspiring animators is, “You probably learn more by following through with every idea no matter how bad, but I think it’s also OK to know when to stop unfinished work if it’s no longer exciting you. It’s OK to quit and fail. You don’t have to publish every false start and experiment gone wrong.”

From Indiana, Dan now lives in Seattle, Washington. His favorite thing about Seattle is the parks and surrounding nature outside the city; the Pacific Northwest is a wonderland for foraged food. Dan thinks dogs are great. He likes mushroom foraging. He can't decide if calling it "disc golf" is more or less dorky than "frisbee golf," but he definitely thinks we should start calling the one with a club "ball golf."

Find Dan on Instagram @dananthonykelly, on Twitter @dananthonykelly, on TikTok @dananthonykelly, and Tumblr @dananthonykelly.