This post was updated Sept. 2 at 8:01 p.m.

Frame by frame, Abigail Alonso is bringing Native American representation to the screen.

In July, the animation graduate student served as a panelist at the 20th San Diego International Children’s Film Festival, held in conjunction with the annual San Diego Comic Convention. Showcasing six UCLA animation students, the program entitled “UCLA Animation Workshop: Celebrating 75 Years” consisted of a panel discussion followed by a screening of the students’ independent short films. Sharing her newest project “The Corn Husk Doll,” Alonso said she hopes to present a fresh perspective on representation and cultural identity in children’s entertainment, amplifying animation’s power of storytelling.

“I think there’s so much to be done in children’s animation, especially now … they’re watching something all the time, and there’s so much that they can learn from that,” Alonso said. “I know that I did most of my growing, my formative years, watching really good television.”

The panelists covered a broad range of topics, Alonso said, exploring how students maintain balance between their personal and academic lives as well as uncovering the inevitable challenges that animation brings. Fellow Comic-Con panelist and recent animation alumnus Isa Moreno said by being a part of the Children’s Film Festival, which was attended by families with young children, they hoped to give advice to the future generation of aspiring animators. With some of the panelists presenting family-centered narratives, Moreno said the program was especially meaningful as they were able to share their work with an audience that would resonate with it.

[Related: Students collage creative works, career opportunities through UCLA film festival]

As the only student who had also participated in the panel in previous years, Alonso said she was grateful to be sharing the panel with friends within the department as it represented a collective celebration of a milestone. The small cohort size of the UCLA Animation Workshop lends itself to a supportive environment, Moreno said, allowing for a sense of collaboration within a commonly independent art form. As the school year often parallels the production process of a film, the Comic-Con screening provided a welcomed opportunity for panelists to see the final products of their classmates’ work for the first time, Moreno added.

“We’re all deep friends, and we all root for each other,” Moreno said. “It was just a really nice experience to be able to be proud of each other’s work because we’ve all seen each other in the production process, and now we get to see each other reap the fruits of our labor.”

The productions screened at the festival were the culmination of the previous school year, Alonso said, as students are required to produce an animated film each year as candidates of the MFA program. Professors in the Animation Workshop emphasized the importance of storytelling through art, encouraging students to begin the filmmaking process with storyboarding, she added. With her artistic style embedded in children’s entertainment, Alonso said reflecting on her own childhood stories in the storyboarding process ultimately led her to the decision to portray the story of a corn husk doll, inspired by Choctaw folklore.

[Related: TFT hosts 2nd Asian and Pacific Islander Film Night featuring alumni productions]

Spurred by the lack of Native American representation in animated film, specifically within children’s media, Alonso said she hoped to present her cultural identity in a way that balanced historical accuracy with palatability for a larger audience. While producing “The Corn Husk Doll,” she relied solely on Native American artists to bring the film to life, including a Choctaw musician and Kiowa narrator, Alonso added. Growing up with “Pocahontas” as the most prominent depiction of Native American culture in animation, Alonso said she hopes to change the narrative within animated media, sharing stories that honor the cultures behind them.

“Especially when presenting the project, some people were kind of intimidated,” Alonso said. “This is nothing to be sensitive about. It’s just, I want people to see that we’re here, we exist, we have culture. There’s stories to be told about it.”

Alonso said it is important for children to be exposed to different cultures at an early age, and animation gives them that exposure as cultural elements, such as clothing and music, can be intertwined within its story. Animation graduate student Gina Whitney said a common bias that animation should not be regarded as serious filmmaking still exists because of its target audience of children. Addressing the recent rise in adult animated media, Whitney said this perspective is gradually declining as critics can recognize the value the art form possesses for audiences of all ages.

“It (animation) is just a medium for telling any story,” Whitney said. “It’s a fun intercession of painting and fine art and filmmaking, which I really love.”

Animation can be an isolating and intimidating process at times, Alonso said, as she sometimes feels challenged by the overwhelming demand of frames to be illustrated, in addition to temporary art blocks. Alonso added that because each second of the video is composed of 24 frames, the final product will typically consist of thousands of illustrations, which for student films are often done by a single illustrator. While the work can oftentimes be arduous, Alonso said she encourages aspiring animators to pursue their ambitions, emphasizing the importance of bringing life to untold stories.

“Sometimes, I get afraid that my dreams are too big or there’s something that I can’t accomplish,” Alonso said. “But to share these things and do things for other people, because it’s really something that I can give back to the community, that’s what I really want to do.”