Olivia Burns

Illustrator, animator, and artist of many kinds.

Graduated with a Bachelor's Degree in New Media from University of North Carolina at Asheville in 2025. Absolutely love to experiment with color and vibrance!Experienced with:
- Illustration
- 2D Animation
- 3D Animation
- Video editing/Motion graphics
- Character Design
- Game DesignProficient in:
- Procreate
- Autodesk Maya
- Clip Studio Paint
- Blender
- Adobe After Effects

Illustrations

Animations

When Crabs Fly, 2025.

Pebble the crab washes up on a beach one day and spots a seagull flying overhead. Filled with the dream to fly, Pebble has to find a way to overcome her wingless dilemma and take to the skies.

A Star Adrift, 2022.

In a word filled with shimmering stars, a lone creation struggles to belong.

The Gumball Dilemma

Devised from a challenge to make an interesting story about a person who is trying, and failing, to get a gumball from a gumball machine.

The Box

A person stumbles across a mysterious box.

Tape to the Rescue!

Reva rips her drawing.

For you!

Laurel gives you an apple!

pop musik!

A short, silly animation of Misty to M's song pop musik.

Crafty Clay

A student's clay project learns of its fate in the oven and decides to escape!

ONION RING

A practice in lip sync animation using a popular clip from the streamer Jerma985.

Laurel Turnaround

A turnaround animation of Laurel to have her character design seen in the illusion of 3D.

Cubibibibism

My take on an animation trend featuring the song Cubibibibism, using my 3D model of Skipper.

Storyboards

Rainy Day Encounter

Nirvana stumbles upon a crying girl lost in the forest.

Wrong Potion

A lone witch is faced with a unique problem.

Face Your Fear!

A sequel to Wrong Potion, the witch and the cat-turned-frog go on an adventure to get an ingredient for an antidote.

3D Modeling

Akito Recreation

Skipper

Character Design

Video Editing / Motion Graphics

Editing Reel

I have 10 years of editing experience, 8 of which you can see directly on my Instagram account where these videos were pulled from.

Game Design

Smoky Horizons

A VR game created in collaboration with Sheldon Marshall which focused on forest fires, and was apart of a panel and Q&A at the Asheville Art Museum.

This piece was created in Procreate, featuring my original character Misty. I sketched the pose from scratch, wanting a sassy, active feeling in which she’s leaning forward. I made careful use of line weight so that the viewer’s focus was pulled to certain features. To further emphasize the liveliness of the drawing, I colored the piece with vibrant pinks and blues, using color theory to make unusual shades seem normal, like her bright pink skin. For the background, I wanted it to be simple yet fill in the empty space behind Misty, so I added some small scribbles, speech bubbles, and paw prints that filled out the rest of the page.

To celebrate Hatsune Miku’s anniversary, I decided to redraw a previous piece of mine that I liked the concept of, but wasn’t completely happy with. I posed Miku with the intent to keep the original idea of her inviting the viewer to sing with her, and this time I added a microphone that she leans towards us. I used perspective to create the illusion of depth in the microphone, a visual indicator of that invitation from Miku. I colored this piece using a color shifting brush, taming the different shades I got with each line into one cohesive form that encourages the viewer to look closer and see each individual stroke. Overall, I wanted this piece to feel fun and exciting, with a composition that feels like Hatsune Miku is looking beyond the border of her canvas.

This piece is of the character Jinx from Arcane, a product of my love and appreciation for such a fantastic show. I wanted to match Jinx’s manic energy and the scratchy, wild feeling in her theme song Get Jinxed. To do this, I posed Jinx very dynamically, having her paint graffiti beneath her, full of little details and easter eggs from Arcane itself. I scribbled color onto her, a messy mix of various shades of purple, pink, and blue that all come together when looking from a distance to create one cohesive color. I wanted this piece to be very vibrant and intense, so I used color theory to really make the pink and teal of Jinx pop, alongside her wide eyed, crazed expression.

When Crabs Fly is an animated short that was created within a one month period. I handled every aspect of its production, beginning with conceptualizing it and forming that idea into a pitch to my peers. After pitching my idea, I created a storyboard that was then turned into an animatic to time each shot. The animatic was plugged into Rough Animator, where I did all of the animation on 2s at 24fps, and then flat colored every frame. I took the finished animation into After Effects, where I composited my shots with the background, added shadows, and incorporated in the sound design.