Norma V. Toraya — or Crankbunny— came to Wheaton on Thursday, Oct. 25, and gave a talk about her career as an animator and artist. The event took place at Ellison Lecture Hall and began with Toraya showing a few examples of her work in video animation. Some had to do with advertising, like a bagel commercial, and others were independent projects, like counting the last 31 days until 2017. Overall, there was a great selection of practicality and creativity for the crowd to see.
Toraya is skilled in her work, as she can implement 2D and 3D visuals. She even taught herself to use different art mediums and perfect her animations. For lessons on craft, Toraya cites Youtube and community build spaces. She also explained her work ethic, in how she focuses on creative ideation, and that commercial work can be draining and time consuming. With this point, she emphasized how everyone needs to take a break; They need to be free of work and do activities for themselves. When she realized this in her own life, Toraya ventured into the world of paper and illustration.
Her freedom started in making how-to books, pop-up cards, paper toys and puppets as well as custom printing. She presented her work in this genre to the crowd. One example was a paper toy robot that lit up, which cued her topic of interest in mechanics. She also discussed her self-published book, The Secret Society of Paper Cuts; It was a total success in creative liberation. However, she went back to animation once she grew bored of illustrations.
One of the last thoughts Toraya shared was that social media is a great place for collaboration, where people can meet and work together and learn from each other.