Without a doubt the most eye-catching thing you notice when meeting Sommer for the first time, is her striking pink hair and rainbow fringe. This paired with her fun, bright style and bubbly personality, makes it no surprise that her creative animation space is filled with care bear plushies, anime figurines, and floor to ceiling pastel colours.
Describing herself as colourful, confident, and passionate, Sommer Redding is a 21-year-old animation student currently completing her fourth year of study at Swinburne University in Melbourne. Since creating her first animation in high school, she has been tirelessly practising and improving her skills. With four years of animation classes under her belt, she has found her unique style and produces weekly commission works for her dedicated client base.
“My style is 2D hand drawn animation. For me it looks more organic and it’s not always perfect. That’s where the charm of animation comes from,” Sommer says whilst playing with her pink braids. “I also usually draw in really bright colours so if you’re commissioning me I assume you want bright colours.”
Originally from Queensland, Sommer moved to Adelaide in her late teen years before deciding to embark on her animation journey in Melbourne in 2018. As a 17-year-old girl moving out of home for the first time, Sommer describes the move from Adelaide to Melbourne as daunting and filled with unknowns. However, armed with her iPad and stylus, Sommer refined her animation skills and steadily grew her social media fan base. Now in her final year of her bachelor’s degree, Sommer is a talented young animator with 4600 Instagram followers and 1,600 Twitter followers.
Sommer’s passion for animation started at the young age of five when she fell in love with cartoons. Sommer recounts that even as a young child she viewed animated tv shows as an art form rather than just a source of entertainment.
“I think everyone watched cartoons as a kid, but I also really liked drawing the characters. For me I really wanted to bring that joy to other kids when I was older and able to do it,” she says.
“It’s its own thing. You can’t achieve the sort of results you can anywhere else, only in animation. It’s unique in the fact that you can express and exaggerate things to the absolute extreme, where you can’t get that in static art or live action. That really inspires me that you can go to the absolute limit.”
When asked which piece of animation she is most proud of, Sommer was quick to reply that it was the pilot episode of an animated children’s program titled ‘Cosmo and Friends’, which she completed as her thesis film in 2020. ‘Cosmo and Friends’ is a show about a girl in space who uses colour to save the universe from darkness. This project resulted in Sommer leading a team of five people and reinforced that ultimately her animation goal is to work on the development team of an animated children’s tv show.
“My goal is to create something and have it be aired,” she says. “I want to be part of the development team of a show that gets picked up off the ground. Something kids watch and people want to tune in to every week. My goal is to someday be so far in the industry that I get to watch my creation be enjoyed by other people.”
Sommer’s advice for any up-and-coming animators is simple and something she tells herself regularly, “be confident and don’t take other people’s opinions to seriously because sometimes other people just want to get you down. Stay strong. Believe in yourself.”
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