Hello! My name is Conner Kirsch, and I’m an aspiring screenwriter and story artist from Woodstock, Georgia. I’m a junior at Georgia Southern University, studying writing and animation, and I’m the president of the university’s Creative Writing Club and the Animation and Illustration Club. Be it digital illustration, narrative fiction, or simple comics strips, I love putting a story to page or screen.

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Growing up just outside of Atlanta, I developed an affinity for writing and drawing at an early age. Throughout grade school, I placed as a nominee in the Georgia Young Author’s Fair on multiple occasions, and I was always the kid who had a small comic in the process of being drawn in my notebook. In middle school, I joined the local Junior Reserve Officer Training Corp Preparation program, and I quickly rose in the ranks to the position of squadron commander. I spent five years between JROTC Prep and JROTC in high school, and I learned how to effectively work with and direct large groups of people through interpersonal skills and effective communication. I also completed my high school’s career prep program in engineering, and through that I developed the active problem-solving skills that are necessary in the real world and in a professional team environment. While it may seem that ROTC training and engineering as are far removed from animation as possible, I’ve found that the lessons I’ve learned from those experiences are constantly helping me advance in my work and make me an effective member of a production.

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Since arriving at Georgia Southern, I’ve been producing personal content and working closely with other student filmmakers; I have accumulated many producer and art-related credits on a number of short films. Two of the shorts I’ve worked on were Jury Award winners in Campus Movie Fest’s 2017 Spring Tour, and during CMF’s 2018 Spring Tour, I wrote and animated my own Jury Award-winning short, which went on to screen during ASIFA-South’s animation block at TERMINUS Conference + Festival. Currently, as I begin the second half of my post-secondary education (through which I’ve maintained a 4.0 GPA and a President’s list standing), I’m looking to the independent animation studios in Atlanta to find a production house to call home after I graduate. Until then, I’ll be writing, drawing, animating, and telling my own stories, as making things is my ground state.