May 8, 2011
Nina
Paley started out as a comic strip artist, including
for Fluff and The
Hots, as well as her own alternative weekly Nina's
Adventures.
In 1998, she began making independent animated
festival films,
including the controversial yet popular environmental
short, The
Stork.
In 2002, Nina followed
her then-husband to Trivandrum,
India, where she read her first Ramayana.
This inspired her first feature film, Sita
Sings the Blues, which she animated and produced
single-handedly over the course of 5 years on a home computer,
featuring the lost music of jazz vocal legend Annette
Hanshaw.