Heya! I'm Maïa

About me

My name is Maïa Grenier-Chamberland, I am 26 year old artist with 5 years of experience in the animation industry behind me. I've had a passion and love for drawing for as long as I can remember.I actually remember the first "real" drawing I signed. A marker drawing of a horse, a brown one. The sun in the corner of the page. My name at the bottom, and my age, which I struggled to write down. The memory is clear as day. My mom had it hanging in the kitchen. I was 6 and a half. I lost the habit to sign and date drawings very quickly, unfortunately, but what I never lost was my love for art, drawing, and animation.The realization that giving life to ideas with drawings was not only a thing I could do, but also a thing I could be PAID to do, came upon me when I was 14 or 15, in art class. We had to create a multi material montage of our future job, and I didn't know what to do. And then I thought well, I do love to draw. Someone's got to make those movies I love. The Dreamworks and the Disneys. So I titled my art piece, "The art of making my ideas move".And then came the second half of my highschool life. More doodles and drawings on the lined school papers, on the sides of homeworks, hunched over at the back of the classroom. Then came senior year, the excitement and the fear of moving on to a new part of your life. Luckily, my hard academic work and my biologically ingrained need to draw everyday proved good enough for me to get accepted in the Illustration and Animation program at Cegep du Vieux Montréal.I met my people there, made friends, consolidated the thought that this is what I was meant to do. Being surrounded by fellow creatives spurred me on. Together we learned, we struggled, we shared feedback, we improved on our craft, and then, after a full year of painstakingly working on our own short student film, we graduated. (I am glossing over the production of my movie, as there is conveniently a whole section dedicated to it on this very website. You are free to visit it later, if you are so inclined).As I was saying, I graduated. I then barely had the time to catch my breath, to rest a bit, before I was thrown into the industry. In 2019, the industry was booming. Productions, projects, series, movies... an endless pool of jobs to choose from. I settled on Tonic DNA, a studio with a good reputation, which I had visited along with classmates a few months before for a class at school. I fell in love with the people, with the place, with the projects. Of course I moved through the transition of being a student to becoming a professional artist with grace (I did not. I was insecure, scared, doubtful of my abilities, tired... I started unfairly comparing myself with people who had years of experience, years to work on their skills and craft. I watched friends seamlessly blend into it with ease, filled with envy. Thankfully after a few months of that, I got over it, and came out stronger.)I am nothing if not honest, and my 5 years in the industry were not all sunshine and roses. On more than one occasion I reconsidered my place in this world, questioned myself... Only to realize, looking at the road I traveled, how much I had changed, how much I had improved, how differently I approached things I thought I knew with new skills learnt directly from my supervisors and colleagues.Learning doesn't stop after leaving school, that I knew. What I couldn't imagine was how much more to this profession there was. How much work animators and artists put behind things taken for granted. For series, for movies, for games, for ads I saw on tv, for indie projects, for personal projects I used to watch on youtube, for small ones and for big ones...And I love being part of it. I can't wait to see what the future has in store for me.

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I love storytelling in illustrations, driving out emotions from a single painting, evoking wonder and meaning from a few well placed lines. My style evolves like flowing water, mirroring the way I keep changing, learning and growing too. I am an artist who revels in the simple things, and finds beauty in every part of this world.

• Backgrounds
• Characters
• Illustrations
• Animations

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NOCTURNE

Baki goes in search of the final moth he needs to finish his collection.

Nocturne came when the summer of 2018 ended. It was the dawn of third year, we were about to seriously start pre-production, and I was lost. My original first idea did not resonate with me all that much, despite working a lot on it. It didn't represent me as much as the idea of a magical firefly-illuminated forest did. The character design was not as appealing to me as the floating green frog boy I could see so clearly when I closed my eyes.It was also an idea that floated around in my brain for a few years before it took shape. Moth hunter it was called. Nocturne, in french.Baki took shape as a quick sketch that I showed to my teacher at the time, when I asked her if it was possible to change my demo."It will be hard" she said.I knew it would be. And it was hard, but the motivation and love for my film helped making the whole process much easier.One of the first things I quickly learned was how important good planning was. I tended to make things up as I went, but that would make working on such an important project very hard. I am an organized person by nature, so I took to that habit fairly easily.
It also became clear to me what I preferred doing, and what I really did not. Sadly, despite my love for storytelling, it is one of the things I think lacks in my movie. It's a direct result of my lack of interest (and, let's be honest, my struggles) when it comes to storyboarding. Animating, while not my favorite thing to do, was pleasant enough and was satisfying to me. Seeing how the drawing starts to move, how a rough blob becomes a whole character, how timing influences the whole thing. Animating the butterfly in straight ahead, versus animating Baki with carefully planned poses, was an experience I definitely did enjoy.And now, many years later, I can say I am still proud of the work I did on my movie. There are many things I would change, a whole storyboard I would rethink. Scenes I would approach from a different angle. But I am happy with what I did, and where this movie led me.

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