Last week, junior Grace Abercrombie’s animated film “Illinois Smith” won 2nd place in the 6A Digital Animation category at the UIL Young Filmmakers Festival. Abercrombie traveled to the UT Austin campus on Feb. 22 for the contest, where she met other participating students and watched their films. 

“There were only three of us from Seven Lakes who had made it to State, but it was fun to see everyone else and speak with other people,” Abercrombie said. “I’m a total stalker, so I had already seen a lot of the other digital animation entries when I got there. It’s fun to meet the people who had made the things I’d already seen and get to be like, oh my gosh, we have the same really niche interest.”

Abercrombie worked on her film from June 2022 to January 2023. It was also a project for her third period class with Mr. Kolkman, in which all of the students create their own film for the UIL Young Filmmakers Festival. 

“Mr. Kolkman had spoken to me about it last year, and we’d looked through previous State advancing films,” Abercrombie said. “He was just kind of like, hey, do you think you could do this because I might make a class for it. And I was like, I’d love to do this, it sounds really cool. So I actually started this project over the summer.”

Gallery // 2 Photos

Photo provided by Grace Abercrombie

She said the title of her film is a spoof on the movie “Indiana Jones,” although she has never seen it. 

“I feel like someone named Illinois, just in my head, doesn’t have the same image as Indiana because [Indiana] just sounds cooler,” Abercrombie said. “My idea was basically just, what if it were Illinois and then Smith because that’s another basic name. And so he’s maybe not as cool as Indiana Jones, but he’s still gonna go on this little Indiana Jones-style thing to go rescue rosina sapphire and Beatrice Otter.” 

Abercrombie used Adobe Animate to create the film. She learned how to use the program while taking Digital Arts and Animation as a freshman and then Animation I as a sophomore. 

“Anyone who’s worked with Adobe Animate, I think, can share in my frustration with the program,” Abercrombie said. “But I’ve been using the program for three years now, so I hate it a little less.” 

Before “Illinois Smith,” which lasts about three minutes, Abercrombie said the longest animation she had ever made was seven seconds long. 

“I was so excited [to win] because this [was] my first time doing anything like this,” Abercrombie said.

At the UIL Young Filmmakers Festival, she said she noticed that many other entries were created by a team of eight or nine people, but “Illinois Smith,” for the most part, was a solo project. 

“I was proud of myself because I was the only single-person entry that had made it,” Abercrombie said. “I like that I was able to have control over everything.”

Abercrombie did receive help in one major way, though – she reached out to two theater students, senior Bob Beathard and junior Gaby Melendez, for assistance with the voices of the characters. 

“Bob actually does all of the male voices, [and] when you watch it, you’re going to be impressed,” Abercrombie said. “The first time I spoke to him about it, he immediately had a voice ready to go for Dr. Peppercorn, and he just started doing it. I just sat there and was like, this is great. This is actually perfect. I had ideas, but I now know that they are all bad. This is the best idea. And I’m really thankful for Bob and Gaby and their participation in this project because they really do add so much to it.” 

Abercrombie said all of the effort she put into the film paid off in the end. 

“I did spend a lot of time on this. I had people in the winter being like, hey, go hang out. And I’d be like, no, actually I cannot make any plans until January 18,” Abercrombie said. “It was nice to see that something I’d put so much work and energy into get recognized at that level.”