Meet Cas Isaac | 2D Animator

We had the good fortune of connecting with Cas Isaac and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Cas, what led you to pursuing a creative path professionally?
Art has always been something that came naturally to me. As a child, I couldn’t help but doodle photorealistic eyes in the margins of my school notes. As a teen, I exasperated my parents, who wanted their children to pursue realistic careers, by proudly proclaiming that I wanted to attend an art college. As a young adult now, I’m faced with the slow and painful decline of the animation industry, but can’t imagine being in any other field.

There is a special place in my heart for all things film – I could nerd out for hours over every aspect of a well-made movie: its visuals, cast, script, sound, everything! Animation, especially, is very important to me; I love drawing, always have, and I can get lost for hours in the rhythm of being so focused in a piece that I forget to eat or sleep. Art is an oftentimes thankless job — animation moreso than most other art fields — but nothing I’ve ever experienced in my life can compare to the feeling of creating something wholly mine and releasing it to the world. Despite the pitfalls of pursuing a career in a volatile field, I truly am in love with art, and with making art.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
I pride myself most on my ambition: my desire and drive to shoot for the highest ceiling possible — and my pragmatism: my ability to assess what is achievable and compromise. I’ve come to love animation directing work, and although it is challenging, stressful, and incredibly overwhelming, I love the burden of putting together a team, slowly but surely creating the pieces necessary for a film, and seeing the hard work pay off in the final product.

I’ve had my fair share of pitfalls; you have to come from somewhere, and you have to be inexperienced and bad at something to eventually get better at it, and I was definitely bad at both personal and team work when I was first learning. But I’ve learned that persistence and passion are key; you only do things for the first time once, the second time will be easier, and the third time faster. I’m usually the youngest in any team and friend group I find myself in, and I am by no means the best artist in these spaces, but I like to think that my excitement for every step of the animation pipeline and eagerness to improve and be better makes me a good teammate.

As for my personal art, one day I will learn to stray from my favorite color palette of blues, pinks, and oranges… but today is not that day!

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
I won’t lie: to me, Savannah gets boring after two days. The novelty of ghost tours and historic buildings wears off as soon as you sign a lease and begin to call this place ‘home’. However, the true joy of Savannah can be found in the people you get to know here; thanks to the presence and prominence of SCAD, the people you meet here can be incredibly interesting, diverse, and fun to hang out with!

I’ve had the most fun moments of my life hanging out with my friends in the most ‘boring’ of places; playing UNO in Starland Yard over half-eaten pizzas; wandering the streets of Broughton Street at night and basking in the warmth of its night life; discovering hidden gems of coffee shops such as PERC Coffee. You could even spend hours browsing and being a nuisance in Kroger if you bring the right people with you!

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
First and foremost, I’d like to dedicate this to my parents, who I managed to cajole into letting me go to art school, even though they don’t entirely understand what animation is and how it works. Somewhere out there might be a universe where their child becomes a successful doctor or engineer, but I’m really thankful that they put their trust in this one!

Secondly, I’d like to dedicate this to my Indonesian friends in Savannah, who have brought little pieces of home over to a foreign place, and who have become my closest-knit support system. I cannot begin to express how glad I am to have people beside me who came from the same dingy country I did and miss the same streetside food that I do!

Last but not least, I’d like to dedicate this to my animation peers in SCAD – particularly the Gift for Mama, Catnap, and Reverie teams, who I have had the time of my life working with. The success of an animation hinges on the success of their teams, and I’m absolutely honored to be able to learn alongside them!

Website: https://casnisaac.wixsite.com/portfolio

Instagram: cas.nisaac