We recently connected with Laura Walsh and have shared our conversation below.
Laura, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today When did you first know you wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally?
I knew I wanted to be a professional artist pretty much my whole life. As a kid, I spent all of my free time drawing- on placemats while out to dinner with my family, in the margins of my notebooks during class (we’ve all been there), and when my family got our first computer, I’d stay up until the wee hours of the morning getting my first taste of digital painting using MS Paint.
That being said, it was pretty clear to me and anyone who knew me that I was going to be an artist when I grew up. However, it wasn’t until I started college that I knew what that career path entailed. Having grown up in a small farm town in rural Connecticut, my concept of what a successful artist looked like was very limited. Before I started college, the only career path I could conceive of was selling my work in galleries. Of course, the inherent risk in this option left neither myself or my parents feeling very optimistic about my future. Once I started taking illustration and animation classes at my local community college, my outlook on life began to change.
In the three years I was there, I met so many people who helped me to expand my scope beyond pursuing fine arts and simply hoping for the best. I had one professor who’d worked as a Games Animator for Atari in the early 80s, another who’d provided illustrations for several children’s books, and yet another who’d helped to design packaging for Stride gum- all of them having held these amazing careers that I’d never even considered as possibilities.
The advice I received from my professors, compounded by my innate love of all things creative, was what ultimately drove me to pursue art as a career. Looking back now, I realize that both of those factors were necessary in getting me to where I am today: the guidance from my teachers to set me in the right direction and my lifelong passion for art to fuel me when I was having doubts. Without either of those, I likely would have just settled for the easy path.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
My name is Laura and I am a nonbinary Background Painter working in TV Animation!
I’ve dreamed of working in animation ever since I started college in 2013 and after several years of exploring various creative industries, I am very fortunate to now be living that very dream.
Growing up in what I affectionately call “the-middle-of-nowhere-Connecticut”, I didn’t start out with dreams of working in entertainment. From age 16 all the way through college, I worked at the same local grocery store that many kids my age worked at and for the first four years I had little to no direction on where my life was headed.
It wasn’t until I began classes at one of the nearby community colleges that I discovered I could actually build a stable career out of being an artist. Between guidance from my teachers as well as from my partner who also works in animation as a Storyboard Artist, the possibility of becoming a professional artist became more attainable with each passing day. After graduating with my Associates Degree in Visual Arts, my partner flew out to meet me and- with my Grandma’s hand-me-down car packed as full as can be- we drove the 3,000 from Connecticut to California in the span of just over three days.
Admittedly, things did not start out as peachy as I’d hoped. The first thing I realized upon moving to a new state was that moving is expensive. Very expensive.
Despite being fortunate enough to live with my brother and his wife rent-free all throughout college, the several thousand dollars I’d saved while working at the grocery store had been completely eaten up within a month of me living in California. This sudden lack of funds compounded by homesickness and imposter syndrome made my first few weeks in this strange new place feel like one giant (and expensive) mistake.
Not wanting to admit defeat before I’d even truly started, I immediately began searching for work and- as is the case for many in “desperate times call for desperate measures” scenarios- I managed to secure part-time work at a local arts and crafts retail store. As anyone who’s ever worked in retail (or any service industry job) knows, the work can be incredibly soul-sucking. Without dwelling too much on the subject, it goes without saying that working late night shifts at a very popular crafting supply store and barely being able to afford rent and groceries was not the “big art career dream” I’d been picturing.
Luckily, I was able to find a new job as a graphic designer and receptionist at a local sign shop just a few months later. By far, this has still been the job that’s required me to do the most talking with customers and- looking back now- I can honestly say that I’m grateful for the experience. In addition to learning how to talk on the phone, this was also my first chance to demonstrate my artistic skills since moving to California.
At this same time, however, my partner was interning as a Story Artist as Walt Disney Animation Studios. Despite how proud and happy I was for him, I couldn’t help also feeling jealous and would regularly compare my seemingly meager position to his amazing achievement. Sure, I was technically doing art as a career, but it wasn’t exactly what I would call fulfilling work.
Things seemed to be looking up, however, when- after over a year and a half of working at the sign shop- I was thrilled to receive an email offering me a full-time job as a Graphic Designer at Levi Strauss & Co. Not only would my wage be more than double what I was making at the sign shop, I hadn’t even applied for the position in the first place!
Looking back, there were so many warning signs that I completely missed.
It turned out that this “opportunity of a lifetime” was actually an employment scam, which seems so obvious now, but at the time I was so desperate to have a career that I felt I could be proud of that I ignored all of the details that made the offer so sketchy. To reference my favorite quote from BoJack Horseman, “When you look at someone through rose-colored glasses, all the red flags just look like flags.”
Thankfully, the scam was ultimately unsuccessful and I only lost about twenty bucks when I tried to deposit the faulty check my “employers” sent me to purchase equipment for my home office. Additionally, the silver lining I found through the whole debacle was that I was finally free from the sign shop gig. I was out of a job, sure, but at least I could put all my focus on finding something new.
By the following month, I was working as a full-time graphic designer at a prop studio in North Hollywood. Although I still felt like a bit of a failure for not working in animation combined with the shame of falling for the employment scam, this had been the closest I’d felt to being a professional artist since arriving in California. Not to mention I got to work on some pretty cool projects (large printed graphics for a Funko Pop store in Hollywood, designed and printed props for several Super Bowl commercials.)
However, this sense of security too came to an abrupt halt when the Covid pandemic hit. At just around nine months in, a major portion of our studio were furloughed with the option to do some freelance design work from home- myself included.
Once again, this threw a wrench into the fan (this time on a much, MUCH greater scale, of course) and yet, just like last time, there also came another silver lining.
Being stuck inside gave me the time I needed to start building my portfolio for the first time in months. I was also able to take this time to redesign my website and, as luck would have it, the day after I published my shiny new website I received a DM from the Art Director on Final Space asking if I’d be open to doing background paint for the series.
Having just been burned by a very similar job offer only a year before, I was skeptical at first. But after doing some more research and confirming that the offer was legit, I accepted. I was in. I’d done it.
Since then, I’ve been fortunate enough to continue exclusively do background paint for animation. Currently, I am working full-time at Titmouse on the new Beavis & Butthead reboot as well as freelancing for the YouTube series TheOdd1sOut.
Having worked in animation for almost two years now, I find myself regularly flipping back and forth between “oh my gosh I can’t believe I’m working on an animated TV show” and “just another day in the (home) office.” At the end of the day, this really is just a nine-to-five job like anything else. But it’s also making cartoons from nine-to-five.
Not a day has gone by since I first started on Final Space back in 2020 that I don’t stop and realize how lucky I am.
I know that what I’ve written here is incredibly lengthy and maybe a bit more detailed than is strictly necessary, but I do have a reason for it!
Even though I’ve only worked in this industry for a couple of years, I’ve already received several messages from college graduates and kids still in high school asking how they can break into the animation industry? How do they land their first gig? And truth is that there is no one way to break in. That entire autobiography above should serve as proof enough of that.
Every artist I’ve spoken with has had a different experience. Maybe some details overlap, but generally it boils down to two things: persistence and luck, and you only have control over one of those factors.
When looking back on my own experience, it’s clear that I’ve had a healthy dose of both. My persistence to do whatever it took to get to where I wanted to be- even if that meant spending all of my savings and driving across the country to live in LA- that would not have been possible if I wasn’t lucky enough to have the safety nets of both my family and my partner’s family to support me if I fell on hard times.
My tenacity to spend a month working on my portfolio at the start of the pandemic instead of frantically looking for work was only possible because I was lucky enough to have my partner singlehandedly shoulder most of our financial obligations during that time.
The reason for any of this to be possible is my luck of having white privilege, which has made life as a whole endlessly easier to navigate than those without it.
All of this to say that, no matter what your dream is and no matter where you come from, it is possible and there is no “one way” of achieving it. The best things you can do are to learn as much as you can about whatever it is you want to do and to surround yourself with people who want to help you and whom you can help in return.
And if you’re still stuck? Spite is one of the best motivators. Someone tells you “you’ll never be good enough to do ______”?
Prove them wrong.
Have you ever had to pivot?
The most notable pivot I’ve had to make in both my career and my life as a whole was moving to California. Having spent the first 22 years of my life in a town with just over 11,500 people in it, the idea of moving to a city with a population of nearly 4 million was ludicrous.
In case you’ve never been to Griswold, CT I can tell you with confidence that it is nothing like Los Angeles. First off, there are more trees than people in Griswold, to the point that you’ll likely have a forest growing between you and your next door neighbor’s house. There’s no such thing as a five-lane freeway in Griswold. It rains more than twice a year and there are some days where it’s not even sunny. And for the most part, in Griswold, everybody looks like me.
As scary as it was to drive 3,000 miles from the only home I’d ever known, the thought of spending my entire life in that one small town is even scarier. That’s not to say that I don’t love my home town, of course. Not a day goes by that I don’t miss the place I grew up and all of the family and friends I left behind there. But ever since I moved to LA, it’s become startlingly clear how much of the world I could have missed out on.
One of the great things about living in a big city, or even just visiting, is realizing how much you don’t know. The foods you might have never tried, the music you may have never heard, the people you never would have met- all of this as the reward you get for stepping outside of your comfort zone.
Change is scary, but it’s also necessary for personal growth. I am extremely privileged to have been able to make the major life change that I did and I am grateful for the fortitude it’s given me to go out and have more life-changing experiences.
What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?
When I first realized that I wanted to be an artist professionally, I knew that dream went beyond just drawing pictures for money. I think I speak for most artists when I say that creating art is more than just an action, it’s making a connection. It’s finding a way to communicate with others through a means other than words.
As a kid I never liked talking much, but I did enjoy listening to others. Because of this, my back-up plan in case the whole “art thing” didn’t work out was to become a psychologist. Fortunately for me, I discovered that working in animation could allow me to combine both my love of art and my love of helping people.
Animation- be it a TV series, movie, video game- always comes down to telling a story. Stories about exploring new worlds, overcoming personal struggles, finding true love, standing up to one’s oppressors- all of these shared life experiences are what bring people together. People from all different backgrounds with wildly varying upbringings can always turn to stories for guidance and inspiration when the rest of the world is in short supply.
I’ve been an introvert for most of my life and, growing up, I found it difficult to make friends that I felt comfortable enough opening up to. I worried that I was too weird for the other kids, that they wouldn’t understand the personal struggles I was dealing with so I’d never fit in. Instead, I began to find connections with characters from my favorite books and cartoons at the time. Watching them overcome their own insecurities and grow as people inspired me to grow as well.
When someone would invite me to come sit with them at lunch, I wouldn’t immediately go looking for an escape route to be by myself. And when they’d ask me about myself and my interests, I felt brave enough to give more than just a surface level answer. Slowly but steadily I built confidence in myself and actually began to enjoy the company of others. However the greatest feeling was when I discovered that my friends also looked up to fictional characters for inspiration and guidance, just like I did.
It’s tricky because sometimes, as a kid, you grow up in an environment where you don’t have any good role models. You may have your parents or guardians, older siblings or teachers, but that doesn’t always cut it. As someone who’s part of the LGBTQIA community, I count myself lucky to have met several queer people who served as role models for me in my teens as queer representation in the media wasn’t exactly positive at the time. Thankfully, the normalization of queer characters and the push for positive representation has improved since then, but there’s definitely still a long way to go- which is where my mission lies.
My experience as a white, middle class, nonbinary person is a grain of sand in the desert of “people who need to see themselves in stories.” There are so many other stories that aren’t for me to tell, but if I can have a hand in bringing them to life then that is all the reward I need. One of the beautiful things about working in animation is seeing how many people- from all walks of life- can come together through the shared love of telling stories. My goal as an artist working in this industry is to continue to support and uplift the stories of those who’ve yet to be positively represented in media, especially for younger audiences.
Contact Info:
- Website: laurajeanwalsh.com
- Instagram: instagram.com/aspentri
- Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/laurajeanwalsh
- Twitter: twitter.com/aspentri