Living in Color

Tiffany Ford started out as a design apprentice on the 2012 PowerPuff Girls’ special, “Dance Pantsed,” before moving on to Steven Universe as a color designer. “Since I was also doing a lot of personal comics at the time, I didn’t realize there was also an avenue to do storyboards,” she says. “So when I was offered an opportunity to do storyboards on Clarence, I was really taken by surprise, but I thought, ‘Why not?’” Currently a Supervising Director on CN’s Craig of the Creek, Ford talks here about a personal project, creating daily color blocks.

How did you come up with the color block idea?

I was interested in diary style artworks; things that are made daily to record or reflect what’s going on. This daily exercise of making art about my day turned into recording my outfits and colors I chose to wear that day. This practice evolved into daily color blocks: a simple representation of color trends and moods through the year. When lined up all together, I could see my personality and color moods change and stay the same.

You encouraged others to do their own color blocks through social media, #dailycolorblocks. What did you learn from that experience?

I learned so much about how art making is a conversation. Folks post their outfits, others respond with their own outfits, some folks got to know each other because of their common color block stories. It was cool how people made it their own thing and made color blocks work for them.

How did that collaborative environment influence your own work?

Color blocks helped reinforce my style of working, especially on my own projects—which is to allow ideas to come naturally and try not to force something that isn’t working. My own personal color blocks felt the best for me when I was not being perfect about it. While always aiming to provide quality work for my jobs, it’s helpful to have an understanding that sometimes things can be presented as a work in progress. Color blocks really helped me understand this.