International Animator Draws In UC Students

Scoop

23-07-2025

Press Release – University of Canterbury
Michaela Ternasky-Holland, who specialises in creating installations and animated films using emerging technology such as artificial intelligence and extended reality (XR), is in Aotearoa New Zealand for the Doc Edge Festival, where her international …
A New York-based Emmy Award-winning director has shared her industry insights with UC students during a rare Christchurch visit.
Michaela Ternasky-Holland, who specialises in creating installations and animated films using emerging technology such as artificial intelligence (AI) and extended reality (XR), is in Aotearoa New Zealand for the Doc Edge Festival, where her international installation Kapwa won an Immersive Impact Award.
On her first visit to Christchurch, Ternasky-Holland met with a group of Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha | University of Canterbury (UC) Digital Screen students yesterday ahead of speaking at a Kōawa Studios-hosted Beyond the Screen: The Future of Immersive Storytelling industry event last night.
She told the students that when she started out, she didn't know how to code and didn't have an engineering background. 'I really have a storytelling background and a people skills background.'
She encouraged them to be flexible and open to new opportunities. 'I think a lot of my career has not necessarily just come from me being in the right place at the right time, but also me treating people with kindness and respect, no matter who they are, and not even realising that would open up doors of opportunity for me in the future.'
Ternasky-Holland began creating her own VR documentaries in 2016 and since then she has created, directed, produced, and edited a number of social-impact focused XR projects, installations and animated films, including a new episodic animation series, Echoes of Legend, available on YouTube, and her Emmy-award winning VR documentary Capturing Everest.
She says globally the art of animation is changing rapidly and AI offers tools that can help speed up the animation process by supporting artists and storytellers, rather than replacing them.
'If we can utilise some of these generative platforms to do things like frame-by-frame animation or in-betweening the animation, or even helping us get started by filling in background and environment and some lighting – all the things that really take that extra time and energy and budget – then we can have more storytellers and more character designers, background artists, just be able to focus on making good work, versus being stressed about finishing it. That's where AI really sits at its best.'
Ternasky-Holland says generative AI cannot replace the skill of human storytellers. 'We can make really cool art, but if they don't have the amazing characters, storylines and plot points that we are inviting the audience to experience alongside the art, then we're just making beautiful photos and beautiful imagery, we're not actually making stories. So I think that's still very resonant.'
UC Kōawa Studios Director Sam Witters says it was fantastic to have someone of Ternasky-Holland's calibre and international experience at the Beyond the Screen event, which was part of Kōawa's sponsorship of the Doc Edge Documentary Film Festival.
'Michaela is an amazingly innovative, creative filmmaker who is using cutting-edge technology in her work. Our Bachelor of Digital Screen students learned so much from meeting her and the panel event was really inspiring.'