Photo courtesy of Rayna Buxton.

A recent Winfield-Mt. Union graduate could be the next Walt Disney.

Rayna Buxton, who graduated in May, is attending the California Institute of the Arts, nicknamed CalArts, to study character animation. Animation runs in the family, as her uncle Steve Jennings and her mother Kathy own Grasshorse Character Animation Studio in Winfield. Art has been a passion of Buxton since she was two years old, and her goal has been to attend CalArts, a school partly founded by Walt Disney. Buxton is one of about 45 people from around the world in her class studying character animation, but she’s already got the bonafides as her uncle Jennings describes how she’s helped on Grasshorse projects such as the upcoming television show Puppet Justice, “So Rayna started animating for us about two years ago. She did a lot of the facial animation on Roll Up (music video) for Fitz and the Tantrums. We did some pieces for the Iowa Department of Public Health where she did some spectacular animations that were included in that. Right here on the set (of Puppet Justice), all of this color pallette is Rayna. I went through and did the initial design for how things are laid out and I said, ‘Hey Rayna, how about you do a crack at the color work?’ And she came in here and this is what she did, so you’re kind of standing in it right here.”

Buxton has received several art awards in high school, and she received a few scholarships to attend CalArts, including a $21,000 Lillian Disney scholarship. Buxton shares why she is passionate about 2-D character animation, “It sounds cheesy, it’s like the thing that everyone responds with, but it’s just the fact that you’re just drawing all these flat images. They’re not actually moving but you just play it, and it’s just this awesome illusion that it’s just coming to life and you just watch it come together.”

She is the only Iowan in her class at CalArts. Buxton says she’s enjoyed her time so far in school, and she hopes to pursue a career in character animation, such as working on a television show.


Buxton selected the color scheme for the courtroom set of Grasshorse’s Puppet Justice.