We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Rawb Huerbin. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Rawb below.
Hi Rawb, thanks for joining us today. Can you recount a story of an unexpected problem you’ve faced along the way?
I’ve always dreamed of working on videogames. I didn’t think it would be a possible future for me, at least not in my 20’s. I think a lot of nerdy artists share this dream. Actually working in the entertainment industry, though, is not all it’s cracked up to be. I made a lot of great friends in the industry, and almost all of them have been laid off. It’s always been a risky industry, but especially now it’s super unstable. Frankly, it sucks when a project you pour your heart into never gets released. I think artists chasing the dream can set themself up to be taken advantage of – you could land a great job and a year later you might be out of work, and have no ownership over the IP you worked on.
I have a background in Psychology and worked for about 5 years in mental health research. In that industry, my positions were grant-funded and I would know years or months ahead of time when my position was ending. My bosses would sit down with me in-person and talk about our options to possibly extend my position or look for new ones. At my game job, I found out 10 minutes before I got laid off. From what I understand, this is common not just in games but all of tech.
I would like to see this industry change. I’d like to see it unionized. I know the IATSE has had talks, but I think it might need to happen on a smaller scale first. For example, IGN recently created their own union. They’ve faced a lot of difficulty and pushback from IGN’s execs, so we need to make sure we’re supporting these small unions. If more smaller unions succeed we may see some change, hopefully.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
Hi! I’m Rawb, I’ve worked as a professional Art Director and Character Designer in the games industry, and I self-publish comics. I dip my toes into a little bit of everything; directing, user interface, level design, writing, and recently I’ve taught myself coding so I can make my own indie game, The Tennis Academy.
As an Art Director at Whitethorn Games, I had a small part in shipping Calico, a magical girl cat cafe sim, which I’m really proud is my first game credit. Not only was the team amazing, but it was delightful watching young black girls at events plopping down in front of the TV and shouting, “Look mom, she looks like me!!” and playing for so long their parents would get tired. I admire that game and Kells and Andrew’s vision for it and hope I get to be a part of more projects like that.
I also art directed an RPG at Whitethorn called Whalefall. This was the biggest project I’ve ever worked on, and my first time leading a sizeable art team, and it was a huge challenge I’m proud of myself and the team for succeeding at. Being in an upper level role at a game studio, I focused a lot on diversity and representation. Not only did I fight for including more identities in our game such as trans and disabled characters, I’m also proud that I hired a diverse and extraordinarily talented team of artists. (Shoutout to you guys if you’re reading this <3) Now, I’m working on my own projects, including an indie game The Tennis Academy, and a graphic novel on the backburner Magical Hazel. I love writing and storytelling, and taught myself how to code so that I could keep telling stories in my own way. I think that stories are powerful - they give us joy, hope, and wisdom - so I want to make meaningful stories that will resonate with people. I’ve been drawing and telling stories ever since I was 5 years old! I would draw little storybooks of my stuffed animals, and I didn’t know how to write so I would tell my grandmother what to write, and then I couldn’t read either so she would read it back. I was an only child, and spent a lot of time in my room, so creating stories was my main source of entertainment. I went on to keep drawing, taught myself Photoshop at 12, and my grandfather gave me my first drawing tablet so I could draw digitally. I am incredibly thankful to have had my grandparents’ support, as well as my mom buying me those little artist kits and colored pencils. Art was always my go-to hobby that was always there for me, and ever since I could watch cartoons I knew I wanted to do that for a living. I love art. It can be whatever you want. It’s always there, no one can take it from you. You can communicate with others and make the world a better place with it.
Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?
I want to keep creating stories that are impactful, and represent the people that enjoy them. I want to uplift diverse creators, and I want artists to own and benefit from the IP that they work on.
I want to innovate and create new standards in the indie game sphere; one example is accessibility. When I worked on Whalefall, I worked closely with the UX Lead Britt Dye to create the first large-scale indie RPG that would be fully accessible to the blind community. Our idea was that we could create an industry standard to make games blind accessible – if an indie team can do it, then AAA would have no excuse. I’m going to try to continue that work with my own game, The Tennis Academy. It’ll be even more of a challenge since it’s an action game, but well worth it if people who ordinarily don’t get to enjoy that genre of game can play.
We’d love to hear your thoughts on NFTs. (Note: this is for education/entertainment purposes only, readers should not construe this as advice)
They suck lmao
Contact Info:
- Website: http://rawbherb.art
- Instagram: rawbherb
- Linkedin: http://linkedin.com/in/rawbherb
- Twitter: rawbherb
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/@tennisacadrpg
- Other: Wishlist The Tennis Academy on Steam:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/2921530/The_Tennis_Academy/
Image Credits
Rawb Herb
Whitethorn Games