Abby Kemp, BYU class of ‘25 and Copper Hills High School class of ‘21, poses with her Collegiate Emmy award for Best Animation Series. (Photo courtesy Abby Kemp)

Copper Hills High School 2021 graduate Abby Kemp recently won an Emmy Award. 

She and a group of 30 other graduates of BYU’s animation program were awarded the 2025 College Television Award for Best Animation Series. Within animation circles, the award is known as a Collegiate or Student Emmy because it is organized by the Television Academy Foundation, which also awards the Primetime Emmys.

But winning a Collegiate Emmy from among hundreds of competing schools is no less exciting than winning a ‘real’ Emmy. Kemp still got to walk the red carpet at the Sivan Media Center in Los Angeles, hold the golden trophy and pose with the 18-foot Emmy statue in the Hall of Fame Garden.

“Happy would be my overall reaction, if I could say one emotion, I felt just overwhelmingly happy,” Kemp said.

The award was for the short film “Love and Gold,” which Kemp and her peers made for their senior capstone project last year. Project films are typically five or six minutes long but the students put in extra time to fully tell the tale of danger, adventure and romance.

Seth Holladay, professor of animation at the Center for Animation at BYU, said the students’ extra time and persistence to animate an additional three minutes resulted in “beautiful execution,” a clear storyline and well-done characters, environment and effects.

Holladay said Kemp was dedicated to the film’s success. “She was always cheerful and determined to figure things out, even if they got a little trickier or frustrating or the solutions weren't always clear, she would stick with it to find solutions to make her stuff work on each of the shots that she was assigned to work on,” he said.

All the computer programming, physics and animation classes Kemp had been taking to earn her degree — computer science with an emphasis in animation — came together for the capstone project film.

“She was able to use both the computer science knowledge that she had, along with her artistic knowledge, to put the two together to create some fairly intricate visuals, which was fun to watch,” Holladay said. 

Kemp worked in the visual effects department on physics-based simulations for what she described as “anything that moves that isn't a character, like magic, lava, explosions, rocks, snow.” Her artistic renderings had to replicate the natural movement, physics, weight and velocity of the elements.

One of her favorite scenes she animated involved exploding ice. “I really love breaking things, generally speaking,” she said. “And there's this one shot when a big dragon bursts through an ice waterfall and the ice chunks go everywhere. That was really fun.”

Kemp’s animations took 18 months of working 40-60 hours a week.

“Each shot is like two to three seconds, but just for the effects on my end it could take 20 to 40 hours for each of those shots,” Kemp said. “So it's a lot of work, and to see it on a film and be recognized, it feels like both an honor and also rewarding, like all those sleepless nights finally paid off.”

“Love and Gold” also won Best Animation Film and Outstanding 3D Short in other film competitions in addition to the College Emmy, which was BYU’s Center for Animation’s 22nd Emmy in 23 years. Because of BYU’s reputation of excellence within the industry, it is not uncommon for studio representatives to visit the campus.

 “It definitely seems like a lot of studios are really eager to talk to BYU, to interview students,” Kemp said. “Towards the end of our film, we were visited by Sky Dance — that's the new studio that John Lasseter is over.”

Holladay estimates the placement success rate for animation grads is 60-70% most years, with students going straight into jobs with big studios such as Disney, Pixar, DreamWorks and Sony. He said those students who really make the most of their capstone project experience, which is set up to mimic a real-world environment, are the most prepared to step into an animation job.

“Not every school has exactly that collaborative environment where you're encouraged to work together across departments to create a big film,” Kemp said. “That industry simulation is exactly what helps.”

The teamworking skills Kemp gained from her capstone project was her biggest takeaway.

“There's lighting, there's effects, there's characters, there's the environment, modeling, story — we're all in these separate groups but we have to make one cohesive film, and no one really gets more say than someone else,” she said.

Just like a real animation studio, each morning began with "dailies" in which the group discussed each other’s work in detail. “Everyone just says everything they don't like about it, or everything wrong, and it's not meant to be mean — it's just a critique,” Kemp said. “They're only trying to make the movie better.” 

Due to Kemp’s experience as a ballet dancer and a rock band guitarist, she is accustomed to critiques. So even if it meant she had to redo something or start over, she didn’t take the feedback personally but just accepted it as a learning experience.

Even before the awards began rolling in and the big names in the industry took notice, Kemp was proud of her work on the film and reflected on what she had accomplished since graduating high school with no animation experience. She hopes to someday land her dream job — creating visual effects for Star Wars films.

Despite the doomsday predictions that AI will take over film-making, Kemp isn’t worried about her future in animation. “AI can't even draw a hand with five fingers consistently,” she said.

Holladay confirmed AI is not impacting students’ ability to secure animation jobs in the film and video game industries.

“They're working to make AI a tool for artists, because artists’ vision isn't AI's vision, and that artists’ vision is a key element,” he said. “AI will help speed things up right now, but it certainly isn't able to approach the complexity of storytelling or make shots link together. There's a long way to go.”