Mikaela Arnold is a digital artist living in the Tampa Bay. She has been interested in electronics ever since she was in elementary school. As a young child with HIV/Aids she was deemed to be terminal. Due to this, she was eligible to make a wish with the Make A Wish Foundation. Her wish was not to see a celebrity or go to Disney World but to have a Windows 95 PC computer. The computer brought new opportunities to her. Since then she has been glued to computers. In her early years she learned how to create using the computer weather it was a printing software, an activity game, or the original Sims video game.

            During middle school she attended Young Middle school and took part in the magnet program. This is where she developed an interest in creative writing and technology. She took part in a week-long day robotic camp in which taught students how to build and control a robot. High school is where her talents started to show. She attended Middleton High School and again studied within the magnet program. She studied digital design for three years, drafting/autocad for four years, creative writing, game design, web design, and Chinese. By the time she graduated she gained experience in the Adobe Creative collection, basic game logic, HTML, CSS, and Autodesk AutoCad. She was certified in Adobe Dreamweaver Cs4, Microsoft Office Outlook 2010, and Microsoft Office Powerpoint 2010 with the help of Middleton’s magnet program. During highschool, she taught herself how to use video editing software such as Sony Vegas Pro and Adobe After effects with the help of the youtube channel, TheNewBoston. She also explored 3d modeling software under the guidance of the modding community of Sims 2. She experimented with modeling clothes using Milkshape and Blender to use for the game. She also experimented with animation in order to create custom poses/animation for the Sims 2 game that would aid with Machinama-a form of video makeing that uses a game engine such as GTA, Second Life, and The Sims franchise. With these experimentations she gained experience with video editing, 3d animation, 3D modeling, and film making techniques.

            Mikaela attended Hillsborough Community College after graduating highschool going for a A.A in Art. She struggled during her drawing classes due to her physical weaknesses but as a result she worked harder to get through the class and passed. Her painting teacher worked to accommodate her disability and allowed her to use Coral Painter program on her computer instead of a huge traditional canvas. With this, she painted a beautiful landscape for class in which she later donated to the Children’s Aid Foundation for their silent auction. The piece was bought, and the money went to the foundation. After graduating from HCC, Mikaela was accepted to the University of Tampa. She originally went for a degree in Graphic Design but found out that it did not interest her. She tourn her major to Digital Arts. In this program she further studied her studies of 3D animation, 3D modeling, image editing, HTML,CSS, and started studying  2D animation techniques,Java,javascript, and digital photography. She has found that she is strong with 3d animation techniques such as character animation but still struggels with advance rigging. She is much better with HTML 5, CSS, and Javascript but would like to improve her skills. Due to this, she has gotten a volunteer position doing webdesign for the charity-Children’s Aids Foundation- which is a currant position. She is tasked with redesigning their webpage and is going to volunteer to be a photographer for one of their charity events.

            In the future she would like to be a freelance digital artist specializeing in video editing, web design, animation, and photography. She would like to travel to Japan for artistic inspiration as she loved the Japanese culture and would like to do work over there. She is inspired by Asian culture, anime, manga, and movies that are filled with CGI. She is also inspired by animale rights, disability arts