Inspiring Graduate: Alexis Bellotti (’26)
- Hometown: Kaukauna
- Degree: B.F.A. Animation & Digital Media
When Alexis Bellotti was searching for a program that matched her passion for storytelling, she found that UW-Stout was the only public university in the Midwest that offered an animation and digital media degree.
“I was drawn to the polytechnic nature of the university; the smaller class sizes and hands-on nature are suited to how I learn best. I also liked the small-town environment as I was worried about drowning in all the people that come with a big-city university,” she said. “It has been wonderful watching the program grow and flourish in my time here at Stout.”
Bellotti received her bachelor’s in animation and digital media from UW-Stout on May 16, among more than 1,000 of her peers. She was also one of 14 seniors who received the Samuel E. Wood Medallion, the university’s highest nonacademic honor for students.
She plans to continue her work with her short film “Jilly and Juno,” a tale of two young sisters living on a futuristic oil rig, one of whom pushes the other down a mysterious pipe, causing her to encounter a flower-cultivating robot.
“I hope to make an impact through the stories I can tell and the people I can support. The industry can be incredibly intense, but I find it is one of the most rewarding industries next to teaching,” Bellotti said. “Sharing a diverse range of stories and experiences is how we as people can come to understand each other and open minds to new people and ways of thinking.”
She is also applying for production roles in the Twin Cities, as well as California and Washington state. “Depending on how the industry changes with the use of AI, I may go for my graduate degree abroad in project management or the programming side of animation as I really miss math. I hope to retire as a professor and share my knowledge with the next generation of students,” she said.
Of this year’s graduates, 77.4% were hired prior to graduation, while 99% of recent graduates were employed or furthering their education within six months of graduation.
How has UW-Stout prepared you to work in your field?
Stout has prepared me for my future through giving me a broad range of education within the animation field, from both 2D and 3D animation, through project management skills and beyond.
My favorite experience, and the one that prepared me most, is my senior project “Jilly and Juno.” “Jilly and Juno” received grant funding from the university for the research elements, which allowed my team incredible opportunities we would not have been able to finance ourselves. This includes purchasing the software we needed and hiring a composer and live musicians. This project taught me about scheduling, conflict resolution, contract writing, production pipeline efficiency and more that I couldn’t have learned from lectures alone.
We attended conferences out of state, and I represented the project at the National Conference on Undergraduate Research (NCUR) with a presentation titled “Exploring Mixed Media Pipelines for Animated Short Films.” It has also opened doors through the film festivals it has been shown at and won awards at, both from those that I attended and those across the globe that were too far away for me to attend. These opportunities furthered my knowledge of and connections within the local community and the animation industry, and I am honored to have been a recipient of this funding.
I also completed my field experience on campus on a project called “Inga’s Farm Adventure,” which is a pilot episode for our client to pitch to PBS to be made into a full series. Although I was the youngest student there, being the only sophomore on the project, I took over the leadership role until I had to leave to study abroad in London.
What stands out about your UW-Stout experience?
Looking back at my time at Stout, the thing that stands out to me the most is the passion that every professor has for their subject and for teaching the next generation everything they know. They have inspired me to someday return to higher education, after I have made my own mark in the industry, to share what I have learned with the next generation of students so they are able to make their own mark on the world.
The other thing that stands out most is the incredible staff at the Student Centers who work hard every day to create a welcoming environment for every student at Stout, and the incredible passion both the student and professional staff have about nurturing an incredible student experience. With the Student Centers team, I worked as a training manager, video tech and animator.
From the event planners hosting the craziest bingo events, to Darrin Witucki’s commitment to composting, to the custodial staff keeping everything clean and always lending a hand or an ear to the students in the center (we miss you Donna!), to the design team making sure each poster is created with style, to the Event Technology Crew putting in 40 hours of work per person in three days for a 30-minute freshman welcoming event every year.
Each team works incredibly hard and in unison to bring an incredible experience to the students, and I want to extend a sincere thank you to all the students and staff who welcomed me into their crazy and amazing community during my time at Stout. I feel incredibly lucky to be a part of this amazing team, and I hope that I was able to perpetuate the welcoming environment.
How did your involvement impact your experience?
My involvement in the Student Centers was instrumental in making UW-Stout feel like home, and it drove me to become the best version of myself that I can be. It also allowed me an opportunity as a training manager to make my own impact and be that supporting person for the next generation of students to walk the halls of Stout, and I hope that care will live on through the students I trained, the students they will train, and the events they will all run together.
I was also heavily involved in Life Drawing here at Stout, being the monitor for Open Life Drawing for the past two years, and a regular attendee a year before that. As a teaching assistant for Life Drawing I, it gave me a freedom to my drawing that I otherwise would be lacking. The intensity of being an art student often means that the only drawings I am completing are for class, but Open Life Drawing allowed time every week for me to draw in the way that I wanted to.
What challenges did you face in earning your degree, and how did you overcome them?
I faced some financial challenges when earning my degree, as there were times when I was living paycheck to paycheck and working four jobs on campus to make ends meet on top of being a full-time student. There was also an issue with credits not transferring as expected, both from high school and from my study abroad, which pushed me to stay an extra year.
Both of these hardships taught me so much about life and overcoming challenges, along with the importance of taking breaks so as to not burn out. Sometimes the most productive thing that I could be doing is resting, and that is a lesson that I am still struggling to learn, although I have been much better about it in the last year than I have in the past.
What are you most proud of as you finish your degree?
I am most proud of my capstone project that I completed last year, and the community I built alongside it. It was an incredible undertaking, and the massive outpouring of support from the community was instrumental in the project’s completion. The short film turned out better than I could have ever hoped, and I learned key elements of production management from it that I will carry with me into my future careers.
I am also incredibly proud of my team on the Event Technology Crew and how they will continue on after I am gone. As a training manager there, I have had the incredible joy of training a wide range of students on both day-to-day tasks and advanced technology, and it has been immensely rewarding to be able to sit back and watch them now run events all on their own.
Is there anything else you’d like to share?
I would like to give a special thank you to all of the people I have met here who weren’t afraid to push back and speak up when they see things wrong, either within my work or within the world around them. The only way I was able to improve as a person and an artist here is due to those who aren’t afraid to give or receive criticism, and I am indebted to everyone who was able to give me that kind of guidance, even when it wasn’t pretty.
