About | kyraanastasiaart

My name is Kyra, and I am an artist who specializes in matte painting, 3d lighting, and background design for animation. I currently live in San Francisco and graduated from Hampshire College in 2019 where I focused on 3d lighting and environments, as well as rendering/ compositing stylized animation. Collaborating with any size team is incredible and I also have a variety of team leadership experiences. Empathy is my foremost value.

Currently, I am a digimatte artist at Lucasfilm Animation where I get to paint and play with compositing every day, as well as help lead our overseas matte team, make concept art, technical fixes, 3d setups, participate in other departments like assets and layout, and learn from some incredibly talented creators. Shows include 3 seasons of Star wars: The Bad Batch, Tales of The Jedi, and many more in progress! Previously, I drew backgrounds for a series of cartoon Dolly Parton music videos, and before that I spent time at Octopie Studio in Los Angeles doing background art and visual development on a variety of shows, including TZGZ's Wildlife (It's a cute and raunchy show about post-apocalypse zoo animals). Prior, I was an art coordinator on Magic The Gathering: The Animated Series. This was a monumentally important learning experience where I got to see incredible, out-of-the-box 2d and 3d work on a daily basis. We had a small office where I mainly worked with and assisted the art director, project manager, and storyboard team as well as coordinating with overseas studios.

I have been drawing since the early days of crayon scribbling and am always discovering new ways to create. Art has the ability to inspire- whether that means to share a story, make a statement, or simply to make someone laugh. Visual communication is integral to and intertwined with culture, identity, politics, and learning. Perhaps the best part is that every artist and viewer has their own interpretation of what they are making or observing, and that art has the power to change the world (or not)! For me, art is language, it is air, it is necessary. Color and Light are especially intriguing to me because we can take what we see on a daily basis and make a heightened version of it not normally possible in life, yet still grounded in realism. Manipulating it to help tell our stories is an even more powerful tool. Studying the physics behind color and light is something I'm passionate about and constantly thinking about. It's fascinating to understand how we are able to see such complex beauty. Lately, I have been observing by doing Heavypaint and gouache studies.

While living in Los Angeles and navigating networking virtually, I've was involved with the entertainment arts community: so far it's been SIGGRAPH, Lightbox Expo, CTN, Women in Animation events and mentorship circle with Alyssa Zarate, a Gallery Nucleus show, Warrior Painters, Concept Art Association, as well as an environment sketching class with Ed Li at Concept Design Academy. It's been so inspiring to see an abundance of passionate, creative artists who live for their craft.