Darlene Hadrika and Scott F. Hall, longtime faculty members in the School of Visual Arts and Design, will retire this semester.
Darlene Hadrika has served as Research Associate at UCF for the past 18 years. Born and raised in Orlando, she earned her MFA in Theater, Film and Television: Animation from UCLA in 2010. Hadrika has over twenty-five years of industry experience creating 3D computer animation for various short films, television shows, commercials and feature films.
For over eight of those years, she worked as a CG Animator at Walt Disney Feature Animation, where she animated a number of computer graphic elements on the feature films Mulan, Lilo & Stitch, Brother Bear, Tarzan, and Fantasia 2000. Before joining Disney, Hadrika worked at a number of studios in Southern California, and Atlanta, including Universal Studios-Hollywood, Rhythm & Hues, NBC, Lorimar, Rick Zettner & Associates, Novocom, and Crawford DESIGNefx. Over the years, she has animated commercials for AT&T, BASF, Coca Cola, and Culligan Water, and graphics for Cartoon Network, Weintraub Entertainment, Lockheed Martin, Chevrolet, TNT, NBC, the 1996 Olympics, and the Fernbank Science Museum among others. Her personal work includes the independent short animated films, Spring Blanket and Dentophobia.
Hadrika joined UCF in 2005. She has taught a number of traditional and computer animation classes in UCF’s Visual Language/Character Animation specialization and has been involved with every class production since its inception.
“As a researcher and as a creative, Darlene is a true artist,” says SVAD director Rudy McDaniel. “Her forays into animated storytelling with our students pushed the boundaries of the type of work that can be produced with small teams of students over compressed periods of time. She explored new techniques in visual language, pioneered new strategies for teamwork and for boosting team morale, and brought a strong sense of aesthetics and environmental animation to her students’ work. It is not an easy task to let students find their own way through complex problems while still providing a sense of safety and support, but she always managed to walk that line gracefully.”
Hadrika directed the class of 2008 production of Ladybug: Action Hero and was the directing faculty advisor for the animated short film productions of Box Forts and Flower Story from the class of 2012, Celestial and Yours, Mime, and Ours from the class of 2014, The Moth Effect and Farmer Glorp from the class of 2016, Tiffany and Serpendipity from the class of 2019 and Ceramic Rabbit and Tippy Topper from the class of 2022. She was on numerous MFA in Animation and Visual Effects thesis committees and was a faculty advisor for the eleven-minute film based on Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 “Pastoral” called A New Light by the MFA Class of 2022 students. She was also the advisor for the student chapter of the UCF ACM SIGGRAPH club.
Scott F. Hall, professor, joined UCF in 2000. Hall works in luthiery, music, sound, sculpture, video, still images and more. His video art has been exhibited worldwide in festivals, events and on TV. His work in sound and music, recorded since the mid-1980s and featured in numerous exhibitions, events and radio broadcasts, is available on dozens of digital albums and one vinyl record. Hall’s sculpture, sound, video and still images have been cited in four books and added to college, university and institutional collections such as the Kentucky School for the Deaf, Lock Haven University, Casoria Contemporary Art Museum in Naples, Italy and the Rubell Museum.
From spring 1995 to summer 2022, Hall taught 23 different undergraduate and graduate level art and design courses in 248 sections as adjunct, assistant, associate and full professor in Sunnyvale, California, in Alfred, New York, and in the School of Visual Arts and Design at UCF.
“At UCF and in SVAD, Professor Hall’s influence has been profound,” says SVAD director Rudy McDaniel. “For over two decades, he taught many different generations of students, many of whom found great success in academia and industry. Outside the class, he was a major contributor to our research and creative activity with his international recognitions and creative, interdisciplinary collaborations. The high caliber of his research was recognized through the receipt of RIA awards and other external recognitions over the years.”
Hall studied at the University of Hawaii, University of Florida (AA in liberal arts and sciences, BFA in sculpture, magna cum laude) and Washington University in St. Louis (MFA in sculpture). His honors include induction into the Phi Kappa Phi Academic Honor Society, grant funding for postgraduate sculpture study in Scotland, exhibition best-of-show and purchase awards, an annually renewed funding award for creative work (UCF RIA, 2011-2022) and two honorary doctorates granted as the result of nomination by students. As well as professor, Hall’s employment history includes experience as a professional musician, assistant preparator for three art museums, co-fabricator of scenic sculptures for Orlando, Los Angeles and Paris theme parks and freelance 3-D computer animator.