2020 is over, clearly one of the worst years in American history. In the middle of a traumatic start to motherhood that coincided with a global pandemic, I was incredibly lucky to have the opportunity to really dive into intensive soul searching. And I learned a lot. It taught me that my actions and artwork were not clearly translating to my actual goal. By resolving this fog around my Art Goals I have been lead to discovering A New Hope not just for myself but for the world. Let me explain.
There are a lot of paths to becoming a self-sufficient human being. It can happen at any point in your life, at 15 or 21 or 35 or 52. It takes a significant amount of work and luck to find that special balance and it has eluded me for a long time. But because of 2020, I have managed to get one step closer. I am not saying that if you feel lost you have to follow my exact path. Just, maybe, you’d like to explore what happened to work for me.
First was figuring out my Why. Why do I make art? Why do I get out of bed in the morning? I read “Find Your Why” which really is a practical book to help you understand the narrative you tell yourself about yourself: your wants, your dreams, your desires, what you think you are worth. It does a great job of helping you find what parts of life truly inspire you best and help you come up with a concise way to explain it for yourself and others. From this I realized that my major Why is To model radical global appreciation through visual storytelling so that we can all live better lives in the real world. Sounds nice right?
But finding my Why wasn’t enough. What I discovered is beautiful but there are a lot of other steps in between where I am now and where I need to be to fulfill that Why. That’s when I realized that my initial dream of becoming an Animator at a massive studio was off. I love animating and I love being part of a story but I’m relatively new to animation. What has actually fueled me the most has always been characters. So the Second step was admitting to myself that I need to focus on Character Design.
“But Alyssa,” you say, “how does Character Design relate to that lofty Why about living better lives?” Each blog will explain this better and better but the simple response is that YOU are a character. You have spent your life coming to love and hate and ignore characters in all types of media and regular life. As I dive deeper into Character Design, it is my hope that each character I come up with will channel parts of life that I hope we all wish we could see: a climate activist that succeeds in reducing carbon emissions; a dancer that makes it to the stage with her favorite pop star; an immigrant to a new land that forces her community or industry to respect her different perspective. There are infinite configurations in life and we deserve to see more than what we have seen, both real and imaginary. And I intend to design them.
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