What role did cartoons play in your childhood?
I spent a lot of time with my siblings and cousins watching cartoons like Pokémon, Digimon, Cardcaptors, Arthur, etc. Sometimes my mom would buy cable and we’d watch old Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon shows like SpongeBob and Powerpuff Girls, but it never lasted long because she found those shows annoying and cable was very expensive.
I’ve had social anxiety for as long as I can remember and a lot of times had trouble expressing myself without hiding and crying. In the few situations where I was around kids my age, drawing my favorite cartoons was how I was able to communicate and make friends.
When did you decide to pursue art and animation professionally?
I think I found out animation was an actual industry back in 2009. I went to L.A. for the summer to visit my dad. He introduced me to one of his friends, April Eriksson, who worked in animation. She looked over my drawings, but they were still kinda rough. I had a lot to learn. Two years later I visited again and had improved. I was able to get back in contact with April. She taught me about the industry being an actual career I could pursue, and that I didn’t need a degree, just a good portfolio and strong foundational skills. She told me about alternative art schools like Concept Design Academy and The Animation Guild [American Animation Institute]. She said taking even one class from those places could help me improve tenfold.
Unfortunately, my parents were divorced, and my mom, who I was living with at the time, didn’t want me to stay in L.A. She was very, very religious and didn’t see that path as being a part of my future. I went back to Ohio and kind of erased it from my mind. In 2013, I finally got the courage to leave home. It was hard, and I was still in “the closet.” I moved into a one-bedroom with my first partner and started working at Earthworks, an urban farm. I really took to it, and when my program was coming to a close, I was offered a full-time position in Maryland as an assistant farm manager. Since I was living with my partner at the time who was also an artist, I was a little worried about what they were going to do if they moved out there with me. That’s when I remembered what April told me about animation.
For the first time in my life, I was able to make a decision for myself and my future. I weighed the pros and cons of both decisions (a guaranteed job or a long grind into an industry I knew very little about), and my partner and I headed to L.A.
You are self-taught. How did you educate yourself?
When I was seventeen I went to art school for about two months. I was miserable there. Teachers were rude, barely answering questions without a passive-aggressive attitude and telling me anime isn’t real art. That was a lot on top of growing up very poor and on government assistance; I felt uncomfortable surrounded by all these rich and upper-middle class kids with nicer clothes and cars.
After my little scholarship ran out, I was asked to sign for loans. I was tempted, but I dropped out. I ended up getting depressed but was able to find small joy drawing characters and chatting with friends online over MSN. My friends helped me improve a lot. It’s easier to practice drawing when you have people who can help motivate you.
I drew a lot of characters and role-played stories for my characters. I made at least eight drawings a day. After I moved to L.A. to pursue animation, I took a few classes at The Animation Guild. With my dad’s friend April giving good critiques of my art, I definitely started to improve, a lot more than I would have on my own. It’s really a privilege to have someone take the time and look over your work and help you understand why it doesn’t work and how to correct it.
In past interviews, you’ve talked of your love of old cartoons and wanting to create something with “no terrible racist overtones but all the cute bouncy charm.” Do you have any such projects in the works?
I have a project that I’m slowly working on called Froyo Knight and the Magic Scoop. Basically, it’s about a frozen yogurt sprite who finds a magical spoon that transforms her into the knight of her dreams. It’s my baby, and at the moment I’m spending my time exploring what the world means to me and focusing on what kind of story I want to tell.
I find a lot of cartoons from the 1930s have appealing designs and colors, aside from their racist caricatures. I think it’s very easy to draw a character and not make them look racist, but you know back then people didn’t care about that. For my Froyo project, I try to take the good and leave the bad in the garbage where it belongs. I would say in terms of the design/aesthetic for the project, I draw a lot of inspiration from the Little Audrey episode “Tarts and Flowers” and Disney’s The Cookie Carnival, as well as Cardcaptor Sakura and the work of Osamu Tezuka. I plan on making the project a comic or independent piece before considering pitching it as anything else.
At the moment, though, I’m working on season two of The Owl House. I’m a color designer, but would love to make the jump into development. A long-term career goal of mine would be to help set the style and initial designs for a series or game, but I’m not in a rush at the moment to pitch my own projects. I know it’s a lot of commitment, and right now I’m trying to spend as much free time as I can drawing for myself and spending time with the people I love.
You talk nostalgically about watching cartoons as a child. How does this affect your artwork and animation projects today?
Growing up I had a very rough childhood, being a Black/Latinx, femme and poor, as well as “baby gay”. There weren’t a lot of people in my corner. Watching TV could sometimes be a gamble when it came to seeing something joyful or upsetting. The older I got, the more aware I was of these things and how it affected me and how I saw myself. Despite this, though, there are times I can look back to my childhood and feel warmth in my heart: my younger self watching something appealing and colorful that expanded my creativity, enjoying a good story that made me feel things and process my own feelings, and playing a game with a world that I could lose myself in.
I look back at those moments, past the hurt and troubles of growing up, and see myself in my purest form, a small child taking a moment for themselves on this crazy planet. I think nowadays there is a lot of good content out there by people who may have felt the same way at some point, and I want to contribute to that. I want to make something that gives someone else that gentle feeling of creativity as well as inspire them to make something of their own.
While much of your original work is cute in style, your philosophy seems to be guided by social justice. How do you unite these elements, and are there any aspects of race, gender or sexuality that you would like to explore in animation?
I think if you’ve grow up as a “marginalized person” (person of color, LGBT+, femme, etc.)—basically anything aside from straight, white, cis male—it’s hard to separate social justice from your identity. It’s not like a tab in your browser that you can just close. Experiences with racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, etc. are with you even after you log off. You have to deal with things other people don’t think twice about, even in your most private moments, like when you’re by yourself watching TV or playing a game. Seeing you or people like you being treated as a threat, a punchline, something to be ashamed of—if you see yourself at all.
A lot of the media we consume comes from the same kind of people who have had the same point of view since television was invented. There are so many stories and takes on stories that can be told by people of color and queer creators, and not all of them have to be an after school special or focused on trauma.
In terms of demographics, creating diverse stories that both children and adults can enjoy is very possible. I think adult animation doesn’t have to just be about sex, random violence and toilet humor. It can also be about the very real diverse human experiences that we go through. How you show and tell those experiences is where the fun and creativity comes in.
As a queer creator of color, being able to draw characters of color and characters who love the same and other genders is so important. I think that can span across all demographics. I want it to be normal for shows to have a diverse cast—not just tokens. I want it to be normal for a Black person, a woman of color, a queer person and so many others to be the lead in a series without the sole focus being on their time coming out or their brush with racism. I want all kids to be able to see themselves and see that someone out there sees them. That they matter. Gay children, trans children, children of color, children who live with mental illness or don’t come from a middle class suburban family. These children all exist, even if the media they watch says they don’t.