Maya Edelman, visiting assistant professor of film/video and BFA Animation ’08, won the 2024 Outstanding Individual Achievement in Animation Emmy Award for her work on color design for the short animated documentary More Than I Want to Remember. The winners of the 75th Creative Arts Emmy Awards in juried categories were broadcast live at a ceremony on January 6 and 7 in Los Angeles. The juried categories include Animation, Costume Design, Emerging Media Programming, Hairstyling, Makeup, and Motion Design.
More Than I Want to Remember tells the harrowing story of a family in southeastern Congo that becomes separated following a bombing. The narrator, 14-year-old Mugeni, seeks to reunite with her family and her quest is conveyed through lush, dynamic animation full of vibrant colors. In addition to her work on color design, Edelman was also the film’s animation director.
The award marks Edelman’s second Emmy. In 2018, she was part of a Pratt team that won an Emmy for Outstanding Motion Design for animation work on an episode of Broad City.
Edelman is a prolific illustrator, animator, and director, having worked on more than a dozen film and TV projects, as well as with clients such as The New York Times, Pop Sugar, Zagat, and UCLA. Since attending Pratt as a student, New York has functioned as her creative base.
“Here in New York, you can take the subway and see a million interesting faces,” she said in a 2018 interview on Medium about her career. “There’s boundless inspiration in this city. I’m drawn to telling the kind of stories that describe reality without explicitly saying that things are what they are. Stories that leave room for the imagination.”
Edelman currently teaches two courses in the School of Art. The studio “Dreams, Memories & Hallucinations” delves into “the realm of moving image art (film, video and animation) that depicts our interior lives,” while “Fx, Tricks + Pix” explores “motion design, audio, effects, masks, and typography, primarily using Adobe After Effects and similar post-production processing software as tools bridging the creative gap between live-action and animation.”
The Emmy Awards are administered by the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences and recognize excellence in various areas of television. A full list of awardees is available online.