ARTIST

Katie Tullis

From the time that she was born to her early teens, she was constantly challenged, by her mother's day care center, to creatively entertain kids on a day-to-day basis. However, she was unaware of how much this impacted her life, even after she had been faced with the challenge of what to do in college. Her love of illustration and animation in the early part of her life, lead to the choice to become an animator. Arriving at NIU her options were limited in pursuing animation to the School of Arts, design division.  With very little experience in the arts, she struggled early on, but soon found her place among the design students. Aligning her educational path to that of a Time Arts major at NIU, her skill focus grew towards studies in interactivity and animation. It was than after settling herself in her major and in DeKalb, IL, that she realized her passion and emotional need to entertain kids that made her decide she wanted to pursue in children's media.

Having found her place, Katie was honored as a dean's list student three times in the last three years. After graduation, she is looking forward to entering the market place as a new face to the world of animation and hopes to eventually become a high level animator working in children's programming.

"A Garden so Tall" is meant to show her love and want to be in children's media and her passion for 2-D animation. It is about the story of a young, ambitious girl whose goals are too big at one time, ends up trying to do too much, and ends up ruining the entire garden as a result.  The wise old tortuous who comes to see her garden advices her against the large garden but she does not take his advice until after the first garden has begun to wither.  In the end, the garden grows bigger and more beautiful, despite it being smaller than the original.  As a piece of animation, the artistic style is meant to be painterly, with a unique blend of color and flavor.  Conceptually, the piece is, "Not only to recycle the past, to give out a piece of advice, but also as a means of education to a wider, younger audience."