Zachary Tjong began creating ‘stick-figure’ animations when he was just eleven. “I guess I’ve always had an interest in animation,” he says. “What I loved about those simple animations was how you were rewarded for the time you invested. They weren’t for school or anything. It was just out of interest. I’d fallen in love with the animation in movies like Real Steel and Pacific Rim.”
It was painstaking work, but he was proud of the results. “I used a software called Pivot Animator. It had these models with pivot points, and you’d move them slowly, frame-by-frame.” YouTube was a favourite source of inspiration. “There was a community called Hyun’s Dojo. They specialised in stick-figures, and you could learn how to make them fight and things like that,” he says.
An even earlier inspiration for Zachary was his grandmother. He says, “I remember going to her house after pre-school. My Mum worked overtime, and she would pick me up from Grandma’s place. There was this one time we were watching a cartoon, and she just said, ‘When you grow up, be smart and make wonderful, beautiful things like this.’ Sadly, Grandma is gone now, but that memory has stayed with me.”
Finding a pathway to his dream degree
By the time he was in Year 12, Zachary’s heart was set on studying Bachelor of Animation Production at UTS. But when the time came, he missed out on an offer. He says, “When that happened, I started looking for other ways to get there. It had been my only choice. I think you can have five options when you do your HSC, but I only put one because I was so determined to do it. I was scouring through courses, and I found UTS College. Going through the course outlines, I saw that they offered a diploma that could be a pathway to my course.”
UTS College gave Zachary the opportunity he was looking for. He says there were other benefits besides opening the door to his animation degree. “I think the main thing UTS College provided me was independence. It’s entirely different from high school where they just tell you what to do. You learn to rely on yourself to step up and do the work you’re given. If you’re spoon fed all the time, you won’t know what to do when the spoon is gone.”
He also learnt not to fear failure. “I guess everyone has a little perfectionist in them,” he says, “but if you’re afraid to fail, you can put things off and then everything’s going to catch up with you. You can have a meltdown and find yourself scuffing about all night trying to do it all. So don’t be afraid to dive in because in the end, whatever you do is just a thing you’ve made. It’s not what you are.” His number one piece of advice is not to give up. He says, “Ask yourself, ‘Why am I in this course? Is it something I really want?’ If the answer is yes, that’s your motivation to continue. Even if it’s something as small as opening a document, those little things add up.”
Keeping his eyes on the prize
Learning to just ‘dive in’ to the work served Zachary well. He completed his diploma with the highest grade-point-average (GPA) in his group, achieving his goal of winning the Outstanding Graduate Prize. He says, “I’d done quite well in my first semester and so instead of slacking off in the next semester I decided to work extra hard and just see where it would go. I figured there’s no harm in trying for the prize.”
He lives with his parents in Sydney’s South and made sure to tell them the moment he got the news. “They were very excited,” he says. “They knew I’d been my room studying every day. It was great to win. I was feeling euphoric.”
Enjoying campus life at UTS
Having reached his study goal, Zachary is making the most of life on the UTS campus. He says, “I enjoy the interactions, especially with tutors and peers. I don’t really have a favourite place on campus yet, but I’m looking forward to spending more time with the 3D printers and CNC machines. I want to learn how to use them to see what I can make. There’s some fantastic tech at UTS. You could get lost in it.”
He’s still thinking about his future. “A part of me wants to make childhood movies like Toys or Cars,” he says, “but there’s another part of me that loves games. I’m interested in making something like that, or even making a movie out of a game. Games help people just chillax for a bit and we all need that. You can’t be on top all the time or you’ll just burn out.”
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