REBECCA CROSE
Roblox / UTampa Alumna
Friday, Nov 7th 2:00-3:00pm, Charlene Gordon Theater
Rebecca Crose began her career at Iron Galaxy Studios, working on console ports for Dreadnought and 7 Days to Die, gaining hands-on experience in production and cross platform development. She is now Senior Manager of Developer Relations at Roblox, where she helps developers connect with internal engineering, product, and operations teams to accelerate projects. Rebecca has also produced large-scale events, supporting creative, technical, and production roles, and is passionate about helping creators turn their skills into careers in gaming and interactive media.
Your Skills, Your Path: Building a Career in Games
Rebecca’s talk explores how the skills you gain in animation and other disciplines can lead to exciting careers in gaming. Rebecca Crose shares her journey from digital arts student to working in traditional video games and supporting tools for developers at Roblox, highlighting creative, technical, and production roles. Learn how to build your portfolio, strengthen soft skills, and discover opportunities beyond traditional animation.
RICARDO BERNARDINI
Tentara Studios
https://tentaradigital.com/
Saturday Nov 8th 5:00-6:00pm, Charlene Gordon Theater
Ricardo Bernardini is a Creative Director, Animator and Motion Designer with over 25 years of experience creating award-winning content for Disney, Netflix, HBO, EA Sports, and Discovery. His work bridges storytelling, design, and visual effects to craft emotionally driven experiences across film, television, and themed entertainment. He is also the founder of Tentara Studios, writer and director of the award-winning live-action short film 9-2 Mars, and creator of Angal Tentara, a transmedia saga blending mythology, philosophy, and fantasy with human emotion.
Framing the Invisible
Lessons from Live Action That Breathe Life into Animation
In this session, Ricardo explores how years of directing and designing for live action have profoundly influenced his approach to animation and motion design. From lighting and camera movement to emotional pacing and performance, he reveals how the language of cinematography can transform animated stories into living, breathing experiences. Attendees will gain insight into bridging both worlds—learning how to animate not just motion, but intention, rhythm, and feeling.
SHENGWEI ZHOU
Assistant Professor, University of South Florida (USF)
Sunday Nov 9th
Shengwei Zhou is an assistant professor in animation in School of Art and Art History in College of Design Art and Performance in University of South Florida. He combines organic materials with a wide variety of digital forms to create multi media animation and films. His representative work are SHe, Art Is Dead, Let’s Fall In Love, and Perfect City series. His animation and films has been selected and screened in many prestigious film and animation festivals including Hong Kong International Film Festival, Shanghai International Film Festival, POFF shorts Black Night Film Festival, Florida Film Festival, Dellas International Film Festival, London International Animation Festival etc.
Presentation:
The speech mainly focuses multimedia animation practice combining tactile animation with visualization of dreams and memories. And how tactile animation & installations could be a representative form to process individual and collective trauma. Shengwei Zhou will mainly use his on going animation series Perfect City as an example to illustrate his methodologies of animation creation.