We recently connected with Mina Kasimoglu and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Mina, thanks for joining us today. Are you happier as a creative? Do you sometimes think about what it would be like to just have a regular job? Can you talk to us about how you think through these emotions?

In the context of work, I can’t imagine pursuing anything that isn’t in the creative field, and a large part of that is because there are too many things I would want to be to confine myself to anything else. As an artist, I’m able to be everything at once. To me, it’s the best part of making stories. I navigate much of my life by imagining the different ways I can take aspects of my own and others’ experiences and apply them to a greater fictional narrative, so I do end up wondering often how a regular job would feel, what sort of knowledge you need to succeed in them, or even what the internal structure of working in that facility would look like. The one caveat is that its seldom myself that I imagine in those situations.

Though if I absolutely had to choose a separate career path, it would likely be something in the mathematics field, or law. I was curious about both as a child, and find the core principles of working in those fields very fascinating.

Mina, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Growing up, I wanted to be so many things. Over the years, I was between a nail technician, a mathematician, a lawyer, a neurosurgeon, and a million other things, but there were two things that remained consistent throughout that time: my love for RPG video games, and my short attention span. It wasn’t until right before my college applications that I realised there was a completely viable way of being anything I wanted at any given moment, and that was through art. My favourite narrative mediums like comics, anime’s, and video games that relied encouraged knowledge of different fields to be able to make the characters feel more grounded, and explore ideas in places you’d never have thought to see them in before.

As such, much of my work revolves around concept art. The preliminary process of testing out a large range of visual culture for character designs through the ideation phase, and working within the confines of any given context. I am incredibly privileged in the opportunities my parents provided me, much of which involved being able to experience an incredibly large range of different cultures, and it has undoubtedly informed my work in giving me ease to work with and adapt to concepts I may not be familiar with.

Looking back, are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

I would have really valued a little bit more clarity on gathering the correct resources for the specific line of work I wanted to go into. I had known from pretty early on that I wanted to work in concept art, and dabble into sequential work (in the format of comics or storyboarding) and my uncertainty about how to get started definitely delayed my improvement in those skills. Additionally, I don’t think it was emphasized enough to me how important my foundational skills were to develop. I never had any formal training in growing my technical skills, so it involved a lot of watching how other people worked and being in awe that they were able to understand space well enough to just place the shapes down. That certainly wasn’t second nature to me. I learned most through watching Sinix Design’s and Marc Brunet on YouTube, and Kim Jung Gi’s drawing timelapses for those base skills. I also definitely wish I took more advantage of the open studios for live drawings in college—the benefit of even one session is immeasurable.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

Definitely comparing the progress of my skills to what it used to be before. I’m not a particularly sentimental person when it comes to my work, so a finished piece doesn’t instill me with the same pride that I hear others talk about. A lot of the time, I feel that it’s my responsibility to get my drawings done and make it look the best that my abilities will allow. But I value looking at my old work, the things I believed were my best effort, and know that I’ve surpassed even that. It takes a long time for me to feel like I’m rewarded as an artist for that reason, I need to wait a while and earnestly work towards getting better before there is a notable improvement in my work, but when it comes, there’s a quiet sort of inspiration that surges through me. I think my art has a long way to go before it’ll be somewhere I’m satisfied with—part of me feels I’ll be chasing that satisfaction forever—but for a moment, it’s nice knowing I have the capacity to get there.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.minakasimoglu.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mi_ka0006/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mina-kasimoglu

Image Credits

Mina Kasimoglu