Faculty

 

G.B. Hajim is an award-winning independent filmmaker who has been directing, shooting and editing Hawaiian language dramas, animations and educational shorts for the past ten years. His film credits include the full-length “Hawaii Volcanoes National Parks”, which won a Silver Telly and the coveted Kahili award; “Pacific Passages”, which received the Golden Apple, the highest award for educational media in the U.S. and “Ka‘ililauokekoa” which won the Hawai‘i Filmmakers Award at the Hawai‘i International Film Festival. GB received his BA in Visual Arts from University of California at San Diego with a focus on animation and filmmaking and his MA in film production from California State University at Humboldt. Currently he is working on his own feature animated film: strange frame.

Kaulana Gilding has been a graphic artist for over 10 years, 5 of which were in 3D graphics and animation. Over the past 4 years he has worked in the mobile gaming industry as a 3D modeler, animator, Interface designer, and game designer. He has shipped over 20 titles for over 100 mobile devices in J2ME, Brew, and the IPod. He worked for local mobile publisher Blue Lava Wireless, #1 mobile publisher Jamdat Mobile, and #1 game developer and publisher Electronic Arts.

Meidor Hu has worked as a graphic designer and consultant across a broad range of design-related activities in the San Francisco Bay area before returning Hilo. She currently teaches traditional studio art classes and digital media classes here at HCC. Meidor received a BA from University of Hawaii at Hilo and an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. Her work on interdisciplinary projects has been displayed locally and in the continental U.S.

Violet Murakami is the Program Coordinator and Instructor in Digital Media Arts at Hawai’i Community College where she teaches courses in Image in Motion, Digital Arts and Intro to Visual Arts. After studying film and video at the California College of Arts and Design in Oakland, CA, she received an M.F.A. from San Francisco State University in Conceptual Design; an area that merges art, science and technology. She has worked as the Film Program Curator at the Exploratorium in San Francisco and has curated the Today’s Avant-Garde series, a program dedicated to showing challenging and original works of film and video art for the Honolulu Academy of Arts. Her films have been screened at the Northern California Women in Film Festival, Asian-American International Film Festival and the Ann Arbor Film Festival among others. She also works in video, installation and photography. Her work has been shown in numerous galleries and festivals, here, in the U.S., and internationally.Recently, she conducted a Summer Study Abroad class where she traveled with 12 UH animation students on a tour of Animation Studios and art schools in Tokyo and Osaka, Japan.

Jensen Nihei - Jensen has worked in the computer graphics for the last 10 years, 6 of which were in video game industry. He has shipped titles for Playstation, Playstation 2, PC, Gameboy Advanced, J2ME, and Next Gen consoles. He worked for Konami, and as Lead Artist at Mobicore; he is currently the Graphics Director for Scientific Consultant Services.

Sharon Ryba graduated from the City University of New York-Staten Island in 1997 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Communications with a focus on Media and a minor in Cinema Studies. She has been a versatile digital video editing and graphics instructor, artist, and consultant for various clients around the country. She has extensive experience teaching digital editing to a large range of corporate and private clients such as, WBAL-Baltimore and Lockheed Martin, curriculum developer and instructor for Aloha Workshops, Connecticut School of Broadcasting and Keaau Youth Business Center, and digital media consultant for Future Media Concepts, QVC, Dupont, MSNBC and more. Sharon's teaching experience has brought her to Hawaii Community College as a 2D graphics lecturer.