Jo Meuris, the Nevada State College professor who built up the school’s animation program, poses in a computer lab at the school in Henderson Thursday, July 28, 2022. Meuris recently served as a panelist on the 22nd Annual Animation Show of Shows Panel during the 2022 Comic-Con International convention in San Diego.
Wednesday, Aug. 3, 2022 | 2 a.m.
Clad in a Wonder Woman mask and fantastical armor that looked straight from a Dungeons and Dragons campaign, Nevada State College animation professor Jo Meuris took the stage at the San Diego Convention Center.
The scene took place last month at Comic-Con International: San Diego, an annual event that brings together fans and creators to celebrate comics and related art forms. Comic-Con conventions are known for hosting lots of cosplayers, so people regularly dress up as their favorite characters. In that vein, Meuris wore the Wonder Woman mask. She said wore the armor to “protect her heart” because she was so nervous about speaking.
She was so nervous that she doesn’t remember much of the “once-in-a-lifetime” event and panel late last month, but she can still hear the resounding applause from audience members that almost drove her to tears.
“Everybody started clapping … and they didn’t stop,” Meuris said. “I (was) just standing there, and they’re clapping, and I was like ‘They’re clapping for you, Jo.’ ”
For Meuris, the journey to the Comic-Con stage started with a horse named Aurora. That turned into an animated short film released in 2020. And the short film became the reason she spoke at the 22nd Annual Animation Show of Shows panel during Comic-Con.
Meuris leads the animation track in Nevada State College’s visual arts program, which is believed to be only animation house of its kind in Southern Nevada. She worked on “Aurora,” her self-produced film, for two and a half years with the intention of using it to apply for tenure at Nevada State College.
But the film “started blowing up last summer,” she said, after being shown at the Manhattan Short Film Festival about a year after its release. The film is about a young girl named Jojo, who learns important messages about friendship, love and growing up when she is separated from her horse Aurora.
“It’s a beautiful film, a great story,” said Ron Diamond, the creator and host of the 22nd Annual Animated Show of Shows. “It’s beautifully told, the characters are very, very compelling, and you feel the emotion of the story right to heart. It gives people lots to talk about.”
The project won an Award of Excellence for Children/Family Programming and an Award of Excellence Special Mention in Animation at the Accolade Global Film Competition, Meuris said.
Despite her successes in the industry, Meuris didn’t set her eyes on a career in animation until she was in college. She had grown up watching Disney classics, like “Jungle Book” and “Pinocchio,” as well as National Film Board of Canada projects on film reels that her father would rent from their local library in Montreal.
Known for doodling in her notebooks as a child, Meuris was passionate about trying to become a comic book artist, but she was discouraged by her high school counselor and entered Concordia University to major in medicine. She later switched into school’s animation program with the blessing of her mother, who knew Meuris was “miserable.”
When Meuris entered her first college drawing class and saw students sketching on their art pads, she said she knew “it was where” she was supposed to be.
After graduating and spending almost 15 years working contract-to-contract for the National Film Board of Canada, Meuris was hired by Nevada State College and moved to Las Vegas.
When she arrived in 2014, there were only a few animation classes at Nevada State, and her duties were split between being a professor and producing original short films for the college. That was when she knew that she’d be building the college’s program from the ground up, which “was something that was kind of attractive about the job” Meuris said.
“That’s cool, you don’t get to do that often,” Meuris said. “It was attractive to kind of, like, see ‘What is that like building a program? What does the ideal animation program look like? What could I imagine this as?’”
Meuris has been able to shape the program in various ways as the animation track’s leader. From creating a Dungeons and Dragons class that students loved to group project courses that “bombed,” Meuris’ believesthe administration at any other school wouldn’t let her “get away with” her experimentation.
“Nobody gets what you do, so it’s just on you, but at the same time, the support (at Nevada State College) is more just like encouragement to try things,” Meuris said.
The difficult part about building the program, according to Meuris, is that “there’s only one Jo.” Meuris said that the program didn’t have enough students to fill the existing courses when she first started, but it is growing at such a fast rate that she needs more animation professors to help her teach. She also has big dreams to further 2D and stop-motion animation at Nevada State College by advocating for dedicated studios that animation students can use to work on their films instead of the former-cadaver and computer laboratories they share with other classes.
“If you have that stuff, then a program can grow to be what it could be,” said Meuris.
Until then, she will continue to pave the way for animation students at Nevada State College, and start saving up for her next trip to San Diego.
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