Born and raised in Orlando, Darlene 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, Darlene 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.

She earned her MFA in Theater, Film and Television: Animation from UCLA in Spring, 2010. Since 2004, 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. She 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, and Tiffany and Serpendipity from the class of 2019.   

Currently, she is the main faculty advisor for the Class of 2022 Character Animation films, Ceramic Rabbit and Tippy Topper.  She is on numerous MFA in Animation and Visual Effects thesis committees and is a faculty advisor for the eleven minute film based on Beethoven's 6th symphony The Pastoral called A New Light by the MFA Class of 2022 students.  She is also the advisor for the student chapter of the UCF ACM SIGGRAPH club.