Kayla Rae Whitaker

“This is what working in what amounts to a rat’s nest for the past decade has done to us, I think, looking at our reflections in the mirror. Ten years in a piece-of-crap studio in the armpit of Bushwick with full view-and-sound of the JMZ train, giving ourselves humpbacks craning over our drafting tables, Camels drooping from our mouths, passing expired packages of Peeps back and forth in the dark. The work has made me forget how to act like a person. We’re not fit to go out and socialize with the fancy people, all Cheetos-stained hands and dilated pupils.”
― Kayla Rae Whitaker, The Animators

“(T)he tones: bombastic, intense. The fruit of the hours Mel spent nerding out over her color key game, a massive shade chart occupying the screen of her desktop Mac, aiming for that grainy, ghostly seventies neon, the look of K-tel record sleeves and Colecovision graphics. After all, isn’t that the future we envision for ourselves: all brighter colors and dramatic graphics, everything at its ultimate zenith?”
― Kayla Rae Whitaker, The Animators

“Our Kotex commercial airs the same week the article is released. We were hired to design something “pad-centric” when "Nashville Combat" was in postproduction and we were subsisting on lentils and six-packs of PBR. We were instructed to steal some thunder from tampon usage with a “fun, light-hearted spot” showcasing the company’s new Super Light Close-to-You sanitary napkin. “Isn’t that a Carpenters song?” Mel said after they approached us.”
― Kayla Rae Whitaker, The Animators

“We sank into a cozy little vacuum, Mel and I, watching. I don’t know if it was the cartoons themselves, or watching them with Mel, but that night was the closest I had felt to knowing what I wanted from my life. She was the first person to see me as I had always wanted to be seen. It was enough to indebt me to her forever.”
― Kayla Rae Whitaker, The Animators