Katie Aldworth is a Los Angeles-based director and storyteller for animation.
She has years of experience directing cartoons and storyboarding for various animation studios in LA, (including Cartoon Network, Disney Television Animation, and Nickelodeon,) and has worked on both adult and children’s animation. She has the most fun working on storyboard-driven comedy shows.
As much fun as she has making jokes and coming up with goofy gags for cartoons, Katie emphasizes a focus on story above everything else. She makes sure there’s heart and emotion in every project she works on, and has as much fun telling a quiet and sweet story as she does constructing a hilarious action sequence. Emotion is at the core of Katie’s storytelling style.
Outside of work you can find Katie whittling, drawing comics, making renaissance faire costumes, going camping, and running Dungeons and Dragons games for her friends. She lives in Burbank, California with her wife.
My storytelling values:
Emotional arcs - Create a DRIVING FORCE for the characters and situations that challenges their beliefs. Learning from experiences and changing along the way.
Tactility - Make a world that looks and feels like you can REACH OUT AND TOUCH IT. Use visual language to highlight details in the environment (cutaways to puddles and rock formations, long slow wide shots to let the audience soak up the environment,) and show characters interacting with those elements as they move through the world.
Mood/vibe - find and hold onto a TONE and GENRE.
Tenderness - no matter how dire the circumstances, I want to take time to sit with the characters and their FEELINGS. We often lose these moments in fast-paced cartoons.