KATIA OLOY

Senior Designer

Katia Oloy (she/her) has been a Senior Designer at the Animation Lab since 2019. She hopes that her contributions bring comfort and a sense of feeling understood to anyone out there moving through a hard part of life. Visual mediums were there for her when she was a kid and felt alone, and again as an adult. Katia draws inspiration from mid-century design, Mary Blair, Gerome, Mucha, and John Tenniel. In 2016, she won Ink Wars, where artists battle for sixty minutes on eight-foot canvases armed with markers and a blind theme. At the Animation Lab and Media Labs, she supports the entire team as a generalist. Katia works on visual development for most Media Labs projects, Animation Lab merchandise, games, and everything in between. Her favorite thing about the role is the variety of work, and the people she gets to contribute to and support. Everyone is a joy to work with, the creators are so talented, and it’s never boring! Katia’s always willing to try something new and learn about new technology, so BuzzFeed felt like a great fit because the Lab is always experimenting and has no fear of making mistakes in the process of creating something wonderful. Looking to the future, she foresees AI optimizing the unsexy parts of the artist’s job (administrative and grunt work) so that artists can focus on crafting a better final product. 

Katia’s favorite workflow shortcut is clip masks. She’s not gonna sit and mask something by hand if she can clip to a shape! Her advice for aspiring animators is, “Don't give up. I've nearly quit the creative world several times because it was hard to find work, and I've spiraled into depression between gigs thinking I was worthless. Keep creating, keep trying. And give yourself rest days.”

Katia lives in Los Angeles, California. Her favorite thing about it is the diverse cultures and variety of people. She feels lucky to live somewhere people spend a lot of money to visit for vacations, and hopes that in coming years we see more celebration of the unique flavors that make the city so special. Katia’s personal obsessions are true crime (she’s read a few John Douglas books on his work at the FBI Behavioral Science Unit), World War II, podcasts (OLOGIES IS AMAZING!), and Gyaru subculture. She plays Overwatch for a few hours everyday, her favorite video game is Final Fantasy VII, and she’s just now clearing Level 8 in Beatmania IIDX.

Find Katia on Instagram @katiadesignsthings, on Twitter @katiaPSD, and Twitch @HoneyBeeInnNPC