Rachel Young is a creative type. She likes to tell stories. She likes to explore new perspectives and even worlds. She particularly likes the thrill of living vicariously through fictional characters.
You might think that Rachel would make a great filmmaker or actor, but as she says, "I'm too shy to act on stage myself." Fortunately, her major in digital media has given her a way to express herself without having to be the center of attention.
Rachel chose Drexel's Westphal College of Media Arts & Design, because, unlike the other schools she'd visited, "the program teaches you everything — the design parts and the programming parts — and then lets you decide which path you want to follow." Her focus is on 3D animation, but she also minors in fine arts, "because it's fun to shift gears and work in a 2D format."
Her intellectual curiosity and willingness to try different things has paid off in a very big way, because she recently completed a Digital Comics co-op with Marvel Entertainment. "Even though it was more graphic design than animation, I'm really glad I did it, because I was surrounded by artistic individuals who looked at design with an entirely different eye, giving me a different perspective on the way I created things."
Rachel tells us her favorite superhero is Spider-Man, because "he isn't necessarily the strongest hero, but he's smart and kind of sassy, and he cares about the people he interacts with." That sounds a lot like her take on a career in art. "Even though it's really easy to get discouraged, you have to learn to stick by the work you've done, because if you work hard, people will realize you have potential, and they'll reward you for your hard work by giving you opportunities to showcase those skills."
Her ultimate goal is to work on movies and television shows for an animation studio. Something tells us that, armed with her own ambition, her Drexel education, and six months at Marvel on her résumé, it won't be long before we'll be seeing her creations flying across our screens.