Meet Allie Mehner | Animator & Cute Critter Enthusiast

We had the good fortune of connecting with Allie Mehner and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Allie, we’d love to hear more about how you thought about starting your own business?
I’ve been doing conventions and making my own merchandise very casually since 2009-ish, and thought, if I wanted to continue making my own merch and keep doing conventions, I might as well make it a more official-type thing!!

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
Since before I could remember, I’ve always loved drawing cute animals. It’s been the one constant in my life!! My career in animation has been a little all over the place! I went to college in NYC, and upon graduation, worked at Titmouse, Inc. (NYC) for a number of years. First, I did animation clean-up there, then moved onto animation. My husband and I moved to LA in 2018, where I worked with Titmouse, Inc. (LA) on more projects, doing both animation and character design. When 2020 hit, I was between jobs, and struggling mentally (as we all were). For fun, I decided to make my own personal animations while searching for work. In April of 2020, I made a silly loop of a frog dancing and shared it online- and it blew up out of nowhere. Continuing the wave of positive feedback, I made more animation of the silly frog doing little dances, and folks seems to love ’em! Due to the success of these silly vids, I got to design and kickstart an array of colorful frog plushies, based on my little dancing frogs. Following the success of my frog videos, my good pal Kyra enlisted me to work on her own short internet series, Chikn Nuggit, through Buzzfeed! I got to work on Chikn Nuggit for a while, which was a blast, before choosing to pursue my own business. It’s been a couple years since then, and now I’m making weekly animated “Frog Fact” videos, featuring the same little frogs. It’s been a lot of fun!! Not quite how I thought my career would go, but I’m absolutely enjoying it!!

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
Oh dang! Well, being a nerd in LA, obviously we gotta go to Little Tokyo! There’s so much great food there, and wonderful stores to check out. I’m horrible when it comes to planning, honestly– usually let the visiting pal choose what they wanna do! Or we just play video games at my apartment, haha. OH– but I’ve been enjoying going on walks around the Hollywood Reservoir- def a fun recommend if you need a nice walk outdoors!!

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
Oh absolutely huge shoutout to my family! They have always been very supportive when it comes to my art, and I literally could not be where I am today without their support from day one.

Website: grind3h.shop

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/grind3h/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Grind3h

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6POBZgx7akzckBXSroLZnw

Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@grind3h

Image Credits
Allie Mehner