Gat Powell

There is a question that haunts me whenever I introduce myself, it usually comes right after I tell someone my name. There's a fleeting moment that passes before they look at me with a quizzical expression and ask, “what kind of name is Gat?”

I wish I had a fantastic story to tell you about how it came to be, but I don't. Its just a short for Gareth.

Having grown up for all of my youth in the small UK town of Wednesbury. A pokey little rundown place, somewhere between intangible maze of towns bridging the gap between Birmingham and Wolverhampton.

This industrial and somewhat grim location, saw to it that I spent most of my childhood in a state of escapism, drawing and writing to pull me away from reality. Which incidentally is something I never really grew out of it.

My life so far has seen me evolve from a daydreaming child to… well, I guess evolve is the wrong term to use, I just carried on being a daydreamer and got taller.

After leaving school I studied Graphic design, then proceeded to have a limited success in that career path. During my early twenties I tried my hand at a string of creative fields including Exhibition design, Signwriting and even comic book artist.

What I discovered about myself was that Art and Storytelling are my two major passions, so animation was really the ultimate way for me to combine them. In 2007 I returned to Education and studied Animation at the University of Wolverhampton. Upon graduation I was fortunate to be employed as Animator on a web based education program for the company Forward For (2010). Later that year I had my first Animation Short “The Irregular Memoir of Everwill Neverwas,” screened at the Flip Animation festival.

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