Michelle Gorski is a computer animator by day and an aspiring comic book artist by night. Thanks to God’s gifts of grace and caffeine, she has also started the long process of writing her first graphic novel. She is currently residing in Portland, Oregon with her wonderful husband and evil kitty.

Stephen McCranie: Reading your story for Parables Volume 1 makes me feel all warm inside. What inspired you to do a story about a young orphan girl?

Michelle Gorski: It was just a character that I started doodling. I drew a little girl with birds all over her… I don’t know if I was inspired by anything more than my doodling.

S: So right now you’re doing computer animation up in Portland, Oregon? Where do you work? What projects are you working on now?

M: I work at Laika as a computer animator, and right now I’m working in the visual effects department on Coraline, the stop motion feature that’s going to be released next year.

S: What’s it about?

M: It’s based off of a Neil Gaiman book. Henry Selick has adapted the screenplay. It’s about a little girl who finds a secret door and goes to a parallel universe. But not everything is as it seems…

S: So you’ve worked on Ant Bully, Jimmy Neutron, and Veggie Tales… Your employment history in the animation business seems a little familiar. Have you worked with fellow Parabler, Sarah Messinga? Do you know Chris and Rena Fowler?

M: Yeah, actually I sat next to Sarah when I was working on ant bully. Me and Sarah and Rena used to hang out all the time.

S: Cool. I met them at Comicon. They’re quite an excellent group of people.

M: Yeah, I wanted to go to Comicon this year, but I couldn’t find the time.

S: So, next question. When did you become a Christian, and how has that inspired your work?

M: Well, I became a Christian when I was seven. I grew up in the church and my family was very faith-based. We lived three houses down from the church. It was a small community, everyone knows everyone, everyone goes to the same church kind of deal.

How it inspired my work is– I’m really inspired by nature. I feel like that’s God’s creation, and that’s where you see creativity in nature, you know, how trees are formed and how things grow and how animals interact with that. Everything works together. That’s actually one of the reasons we moved up here, to Portland.

S: What made you decide to go into computer animation? I’ve done a little animating in Maya before, but I got wrist problems from all the clicking so I’ve stopped since then.

M: I’m really not that much of a technical person. I actually went to school for traditional animation; I loved those movies growing up. I think there’s things that only hand-drawn animation can capture.

But once I graduated it was hard to get a job without computer skills, and my husband was already a computer animator so he said, “I’m going to take you into work, and you’re going to sit down at a computer and learn how to do this.” He took me into Big Idea, where he worked, and I made a bunch of peas hop and Larry bounce around. And at the time they were looking for some new animators and they said, “hey! that looks pretty cool” and I got a job!

But there are still things that I’m learning in it. And it’s nice to be able to ask my husband all sorts of questions.

S: So, recently on DrawerGeeks, one of the topics was a star belly. And I read in your blog that you have a star tattooed on your hip. So this is sort of the silly question of the interview: how did your friends get you to get a tattoo?

M: Yeah, me and my three roommates from college all met up in Madison, Wisconsin and we got star tattoos to mark the occasion. We always drew stars on everything; it was sort of our trademark. So we decided to all get matching star tattoos.

The one I got I actually did it with white ink, because I chickened out at the last minute and wasn’t sure I wanted a tattoo. Now I really love it and I want it filled in with a darker ink so it shows up better. I’d have to be absolutely sure I’d want it if I were to get another tattoo, though.

In two weeks, tune in for an interview with Sally Thompson!