The Year I Moved to LA for Animation
My 2018 Year in Review: starting my first job at Dreamworks and settling into life as a new animation artist
At the start of 2018, I officially moved from my childhood home in Virginia to a tiny apartment in Westwood LA, with nothing but my sketchbook and a couple suitcases of belongings. Just a couple months before, I had been offered a job as an artist on a Netflix show being produced at Dreamworks TV called Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts, and with that I was ready to begin a whole new life direction in a very short span of time.
My boyfriend at the time was incredibly gracious to let me move in, and it eased my mind so much knowing that I wouldn’t have to navigate living in a new city all on my own. It was my first time living independently aside from college dorm life, and although the living situation was a bit tight, it was incredibly affordable and it wasn’t long before I started to settle in.
Our apartment was just a short 7-8 minute drive from Sawtelle, a Japanese residential neighborhood with one of my favorite main streets in LA, boasting a collection of amazing Asian restaurants, art galleries and shops. We would often pop by there for a bowl of ramen, or to grab stationery and drawing supplies at Daiso. The UCLA campus and Westfield Century City mall were both quite close as well, and I have some fond memories of watching films at the AMC and historic Fox theater, and going out for late-night meals.
By the end of the year, I was living in another apartment in Glendale just a short drive away from work, exploring the city and enjoying life as a young artist on my own for the very first time. Join me as I look back on 2018, my first year in LA and the very beginning of my journey into the world of animation!
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Dreamworks TV
Dreamworks TV Animation | February 20, 2018
Shortly after moving I started my first-ever animation job as a Color Designer on Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts. To this day it’s still an experience that I look back on with fondness - the general excitement of working on something meaningful combined with the jovial and offbeat vibe of the crew made it a such a joy to be a part of.
As a Color Designer, my main responsibility was to design color palettes for all of the characters, props and FX that would appear throughout the show. Different story beats would call for various lighting and color scenarios to communicate the setting and mood of the scene, so a huge part of my job was figuring out how to translate that feeling into the way the characters were colored. Here are a couple examples of my work on the show:
I worked on all 3 seasons from 2018-2019, leaving only when it was time to move onto my next job opportunity. I had such an amazing time, and you can read a full in-depth journal entry about the experience here:
Figure Drawing
Around this time I had just started getting into observational life drawing, and my boyfriend and I were constantly drawing in our sketchbooks everywhere we went.
One of our biggest hobbies as artists in LA was to go figure drawing at the various sessions hosted around town, at spaces such as Center Stage Gallery and Los Feliz Figure Drawing. Dreamworks TV even had free figure drawing sessions after-hours at work for employees, and I’d sometimes stay after for an extra hour so I could take advantage of it.
Typically a model would stand on a platform in the center of the room and hold various poses, starting with shorter 30 second and 1 minute poses and gradually upping the length of the pose until they hit around 15-20 mins near the end. Depending on which figure drawing event you went to, the model would either be nude or dressed in a fun themed costume. There would be built-in breaks for the models to rest, and these were usually opportunities for the artists to chat and check out each others’ drawings.
As a brand-new LA transplant, I met so many artists just from going to these sessions and casually chatting with people during the breaks, and it definitely helped to introduce me to the local art community.
Graduated from University
Carnegie Mellon University | May 19, 2018
I flew back to Pittsburgh that May in order to attend my graduation ceremony, getting my Bachelors in Humanities and Arts from CMU. I had technically graduated a semester early and moved to LA only 5 months ago, yet returning to campus made it feel like a lifetime had already passed. It was bittersweet seeing old friends’ faces again, knowing we were all going our separate ways for the time-being.
I remember my strongest emotion on graduation day being one of overwhelming relief: despite all of the uncertainty and self-doubt I had struggled with as a student, I finally felt like I was making progress with my life, and for the first time I was excited for what the future had in store.
Victor & Valentino BG Paint Freelance
During my internship at Cartoon Network in 2017, I had the opportunity to meet Diego Molano, the showrunner of a new animated show in development called Victor and Valentino. Shortly afterwards in 2018, the show reached out to ask if I’d be available to do some background painting for an episode. My full-time job at Dreamworks primarily revolved around Color Design, but BG Paint was absolutely something I knew I’d love to transition to. I loved working with characters for sure, but the aspect of background painting that appealed to me was the idea of getting to use color, lighting and texture to establish a full scene as if it were a stand-alone illustration. I took on the opportunity, and ended up painting around 12 backgrounds for the show as a freelancer.
Here are some of the first official background paintings of my career, which ended up airing on April 27, 2019 as part of the Chupacabra episode, Season 1 Episode 11.
Disney Dream Destinations: A Disney Travel Poster Exhibition
Gallery Nucleus | August 4 - 19, 2018
For those unfamiliar with Gallery Nucleus, there is an incredible gallery in Alhambra that features the work of artists in the animation, comics, games and illustration industries. Every year they do a variety of group gallery shows centered around a specific theme or piece of media, and in 2018 I got an invitation to participate in an official Disney exhibition called “Dream Destinations.”
Each artist was asked to pick an iconic location from a Disney film and illustrate a travel-poster advertising the setting. I picked San Fransokyo, the fictional hybrid city that Big Hero 6 is set in, and had a blast attending the opening show and getting to see my art on a wall for the first time.
You can read more about the experience here:
Naruto Tribute Exhibition
Gallery Nucleus | November 10 - 18, 2018
Along with the Disney exhibition, I also participated in a Naruto Tribute Show at Gallery Nucleus in November! I wasn’t able to make it out to the opening night for this one, but I stopped by a few days later to check out all the beautiful artwork. A fun fact about this show is that it was the first-ever officially licensed Naruto exhibition in the USA!
You can read more about the experience here:
CTN Expo 2018
Gallery Nucleus | November 15 - 18, 2018
Back in 2018 before the debut of Lightbox Expo, the one and only animation industry convention in town was a yearly event called CTNX, and I had the opportunity to table there along with my friend and fellow Kipo coworker James Lien. I had a small selection of prints available for sale, while James was selling a variety of zines, stickers and pins. With how quiet the Artist Alley was, it was easy to tell that the show was probably not as popular as it had been in its heyday - but even so, I ended up having a lot of fun, mostly because it was an excuse to hang out with my friend for a couple days in a row.
As I had also previously only tabled at Tekko, a more typical kind of convention, it was so cool to be at an event where everyone from the exhibitors to the attendees were all there specifically because of their passion for animation art!
You can read more about the experience here:
In Review
As 2018 came to a close, I remember feeling so lucky and blessed for how much had changed about my situation since the same time two years ago. There was a distinct point in time in 2017 where I was ready to give up on my dreams of pursuing a career as an artist, and yet here I was, living and working in Los Angeles at a major animation studio, with plenty of time to explore the city, eat delicious food, and draw in my off-hours (truly the dream!!)
Looking back on it now, I think that this was one of the only years of my career where I genuinely had a healthy work-life balance. In the years to follow, I would end up working on bigger projects and taking on more responsibility, which I definitely don’t regret doing, but sadly it would come at the detriment of losing so much of my energy and desire to spontaneously explore and do fun things for the hell of it.
In 2018, LA was a sunny, beautiful, never-ending sprawl to discover, and I feel like I truly made the most of my first year in the city by experiencing so much of what it had to offer. By the end of the year I felt truly settled in, and although I was still navigating young adulthood, it felt like all of my goals and dreams were falling into place at long last - and for that, I’ll always remember 2018 as one of the formative years of my life!
Previous Year in Review (2017):
I love these posts Kat! It’s so amazing hearing first hand what the experience was like. :). I think I met you IRL at that CTN too!
These are always so inspiring, thank you so much for sharing your experiences!!