Her main medium being 2D digital animation, Emalisa Tejada enjoys practicing in this medium to bring to life stories. Her style mainly depicts semi-realistic cartoons in character proportions, colors, and backgrounds. Due to her desire to relate stories to individuals’ lives and provoking the mind to ponder, she focuses mostly on characters in their design and their growth in their adventures. She has been influenced by the teachings of traditional animators, such as Donald Bluth, who taught that adding darkness to his work lets others feel the light that exists. She also believes in the importance of storytelling and art reaching both these points for audiences’ maximum enjoyment and fulfillment. Most of her individual work is structured around topics of individual reformation, cultures, forgiveness and growth with the genres based within fantasy and drama. Currently, Emalisa is studying at Arizona State University in her final year for a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Animation and is beginning her professional journey into the art field. In her present career, Emalisa works as an illustrator for a children’s series still in production and as a muralist. She lives in Glendale, Arizona, and hopes to progress her career into the animation world. Believing the world needs more stories and art to be shared and viewed, she would like to participate in making animated television series and movies. She is open to other types of work, such as comic illustration, murals, and other artistic opportunities.