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Straight Ahead Scholarship Recipient: Aaren Ralph!

Shaping a Dress (working title) will be a short film about an early 19th century tailor going through the process of making a dress for themselves as a way of coming out to their family. T

image of Aaren Ralph. He is wearing a vampire costume with vampire teeth, a red scarf, a vest and white sleeves. He has his hair slicked up and is looking through his phone's camera that he's holding in his hands.

We are excited to announce the recipient of our first ever Straight Ahead Animation Production Scholarship and Production Residency!

Artist Bio

Aaren Ralph is a disabled animator and illustrator based in Calgary. He first started animating 5 years ago and has been in love with it ever since. He uses his art to explore queer and neurodivergent identity through different degrees of fantasy and loves to create characters that embody these experiences.I hope to use this opportunity to help the creation of my first animated short and to help make connections with other animators.

Project Summary

Shaping a Dress (working title) will be a short film about an early 19th century tailor going through the process of making a dress for themselves as a way of coming out to their family. The short will be a 2D frame-by-frame animation done digitally, with sketchy line work reminiscent of Disney’s Xerox era. My goals with the film are to develop my animation skills and to tell a light-hearted story based on my own experiences of making clothing as an autistic transgender person.