Help me pay for storyboard classes

My name is Melissa, I'm a story and animation artist currently based in upstate New York.

I graduated art school in 2016 as a cum laude, and I worked really hard the whole time. A few years after, while trying to land my first job in the field, I discovered that my skills were severely lacking, because my animation education was not good.

After some heavy research, which included flying to Atlanta for a week to talk to animators in person, moving to LA for 3 years to learn about the animation field, taking workshops and networking online, I finally discovered a way to make enough money to pay back the debt from this terrible art school:

Become a storyboard artist.

Storyboarding combines the things I love- drawing and storytelling, along with filmography. Although I graduated college in 2016, it wasn't until late 2018 or so that I decided this would be a good career path for me.

Now it is 8 years since I graduated school.

To make ends meet, I have been a nanny to children (which I currently am doing), worked in a children's museum, worked at a call center, a cancer clinic, a dermatology office, and worked off of trucks to stock grocery stores.

All along, I have taken night classes in storyboarding and have taken up freelance work to supplement the low-income jobs. Most nights I get 6 hours of sleep if that.

Although I'm getting tired now (I'm 29 in 2 weeks) I think I'm almost there, because I was able to land a mentorship spot with Netflix last fall, and I received a test and interview from Warner Brothers a couple years ago ( I didn't get the job, but it was a good experience!).

This year, I want to take some storyboard classes again, but I can't afford it without going into debt.

I considered making more money through freelancing again, but to be honest I don't have the bandwidth for freelance right now because my current nanny job takes a lot of my mental energy.

I am asking for your help to pay for a couple of storyboard classes and a portion of credit card debt that's there from when I took classes before.

Your help would allow me to continue my journey of learning, and would give me peace of mind that although I'm still living paycheck to paycheck, the future is bright because I'm advancing myself.

To see my work and current portfolio, head to https://www.melissamcindoe.com/ .

Thank you!