Surprise graduates grab gold in Atlanta

Recent Shadow Ridge High School graduates Hunter Conditt and Rydon Inthasak had the opportunity to compete against fellow high school animators over the summer during the 2024 National Leadership and Skills Conference in Atlanta.

Their 30-second animation won them the National Championship, complete with gold medals. Shadow Ridge Career and Technical Education teacher Scott Kaczynski served as their advisor and coach during the competition.

The annual SkillsUSA event hosts high school teams from across the country, and showcases various personal, workplace and technical skills. For the Animation division, the day-long competition started with each of the 45 teams being given the prompt.

This year’s challenge was to create a story about toy cars racing on a track. It had to be 30 seconds long and consist of three separate scenes. Color, pixel resolution, and use of the industry standard of 30 frames per second were all taken into account by the judges. Then, the teams had only eight hours to design, model, texture, animate and render their submission.

Conditt and Inthasak agreed that teamwork played a big role in completing their award-winning submission on time.

“It took a lot from both of our sides,” Conditt said of their collaboration. “It was all made onsite, so it was a real quick deal where we just threw ideas out and made it work.”

Conditt made the majority of the assets used in the animation, but credits Inthasak with bringing it all to life. The duo relied heavily on what they learned from their animation teacher, Mr. Kaczynski. Both students had been in his class since they were freshmen.

While Kaczynski had taught them technical skills like lighting, texturing and rendering, according to Inthasak, the most important skill they learned was the art of storytelling.

“You can have a really good looking animation, but if there’s no story, then there’s no substance,” Inthasak said.

Kaczynski said he is proud of his former students, but he’s not surprised they’re gold medalists.

“Champions cannot be ‘one hour a day’ animators,” Kaczynski said. “(Hunter and Rydon) have always been self-motivated, going the extra mile and working on personal projects outside of the class.”

When they were announced as the winners, Conditt and Inthasak said they cheered until they lost their voices. Even their competitors from other Arizona schools could be heard celebrating their achievement.

While this may seem like the ultimate reward for four years of animation classes, they say their CTE experience has given them much more than a gold medal. Both Conditt and Inthasak are now launching their careers as commission artists who create 3D models for independent games, among other things.

They feel that CTE courses allow students like them to explore career options that they would never have considered before. Giving students practical, hands-on experience allows them to experiment with a wide variety of career fields.

“Nowadays there are so many ways to make money,” Inthasak said. “So I just think that it’s important that schools offer things like this to let kids explore.”