Today we’d like to introduce you to Kelly Light

Kelly, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?

I can think back to my childhood and I just knew, I wanted to be a cartoonist. I never thought about having to make a choice to pursue art or not. My parents never tried to dissuade me. They supplied paper and and pencils and pens and later art classes after school and the opportunity to go to art school. Sometimes I think art chooses the person, not the other way around. Making marks and images and characters is part of who I am and how I process this crazy life. Professionally, I studied illustration at Syracuse University and minored in film, only to have access to the animation stand camera int he basement. I was hired by the professor in charge of the camera who had a small animation studio in Syracuse, N.Y. David Hicock and Animotion, Inc. taught me so much. How to animate, how to set up shots, how to think cinematically, how to design characters and I witnessed the struggle and gumption it took to make a life and a living – drawing. I moved to Los Angeles after college graduation to attempt to break in to the industry. After a few years, I followed the guy I met in college back to the east coast. I walked away from so many promising opportunities for one promise, marriage. In that moment, I pushed aside lifelong goals and dreams, for a man. It is my sliding door moment of life that I replay often. The divorce that happened 23 years after made me dig deep to find the strong independent young women I had been until the age of 24.
Back on the east coast, I worked in independent animation studios as a freelancer but answered the open call for cartoon licensed merchandise artists in New York City in the mid-90’s. I wanted a stable income and as an in-house staff artist with medical benefits and the ability to pay NYC rents, I could start pretending to be an adult and we could marry and buy a house. I loved drawing all of the most beloved cartoon characters of all time, in the beginning of the decade long career. Bugs Bunny and Mickey Mouse, Snoopy and Kermit the Frog, Fred and Barney and Betty Boop… every day, I drew the characters that had turned me into a cartoonist. I was pretty great at that job and rose through the ranks in that niche industry pretty fast. I witnessed the birth of Photoshop and trained on the colorful first IMac computers. The digital age of art was ushered in and that meant the first wave of loss of freedom as a character artist. In the short time I had been drawing these characters, there were restrictions placed drawing them. We went form using animation model sheets, guides on how to draw characters, to digitized style guides. These were almost like paper dolls on the computer screen. You could switch out parts of the characters. It was not drawing anymore. I became an Art Director. I stopped drawing to tell other artists what to draw. I was miserable. I left cartoon merchandise art almost completely except for one freelance contract with Disney. I deiced to create my own little character and had a baby. I was now a suburban Long Island Mom who missed drawing. I attempted to freelance for four months after having a baby but diapers and deadlines do not mix. When the baby was 18 moths old, I would spread newsprint all over the floor and put a big fat crayon in the kid’s hand…. And we would draw for hours! Being a Mom would be a singular transformative experience. You both lose yourself and find a new self. I also found children’s books. So many children’s books I loved as a child had cartoon art. Richard Scarry’s busy busy towns and Dr. Seus’s kooky world and PD Eastmans’ Go Dog Go! And Clifford and Harold and that purple crayon… all cartoons. In my Mom years… I read so many books and started to think, I could do this.
When my child was five and went into full day kindergarten, I started my pursuit of publication in children’s publishing. I took a night class in NYC, an intro to children’s book making. I joined SCBWI, the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators and began the long journey to getting published, first as an illustrator of other people’s manuscripts and then as an author/illustrator of my own books.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?

It has not been a smooth road. I am fairly positive, the creative path never is. My journey has been a series of starts and stops. Now, at the cusp of 54, I have enough distance traveled to see clearly where and why some of the things that happened along the way, produced the results that they did. Fresh out of art school, I lacked a strong sense of confidence in my skills. I was all blind eagerness without the patience to dig in and get good. I took the “no’s” as doors slamming permanently in my face. Failure felt like a daily occurence. It took about five years to shake that mixed up belief system. I started in animation, my dream. I left that dream and mourned it’s loss for a long time. Over twenty years later, everything I learned during that time is still with me and I know the worth of every good experience and every mistake. Finding yourself humbled, a bit lost yet still rediscovering your need to create is that crucial pit stop and engine jump you need to find out more about yourself. I switched careers to cartoon licensing and learned to draw the best cartoon characters ever created. I had, what is in that profession, a smattering of successes. Drawing Intellectual Properties belonging to the biggest companies taught me professionalism, communication and presentation skills, how to take feedback and revise, and definitely how to recognise when I leveled up as an artist. I had worked my way up to being an Art Director in NYC for cartoon licensed products. This almost decade long career shift saw me get married and have a baby. I surrendered to diapers and deadlines not mixing well and stopped working for five years to raise my child. Having a baby is not an obstacle. Being in a toxic marriage is. I had no help but did have a lot of him screaming and a physical attack because the baby cried. So many abused women stay because they see no other option and because the fear is real and they are conditioned to stay and believe they have no value. So did I. Raising my child, however, may be the most impactful time on me as an artist. I grew exponentially in my capacity to love and raised my child with infinite creativity and slowly and imperceptibly became fierce and formidable inside. I decided when my child went into kindergarten to pursue publication in Children’s books. Seven years later, I had shown my kid, who shared my attic studio making art with me, that if you believe in yourself and work very hard, you can achieve your goals. I signed eleven book deals in three years. I began to have success in this industry and I also became very busy. I was Mom, wife, life and everything coordinator from six AM to dinner and from the hours of seven PM to two AM, picture book author and illustrator. I signed a big deal and had a very successful book that started a series. I went on a forty day nationwide book tour. I felt like I had stepped into who I was always meant to be, a creator of my own cartoon character that connected with kids. Little did I know, my husband was concurrently online dating and met someone and was waiting to to tell me he was leaving just as my career was soaring. He announced he was leaving and left and took everything, every penny, abused us with the legal system for five years and never spoke to me or his child again. There were many compounded traumas including my father’s sudden death and a dog mauling my drawing hand and the care of my very understandably in pain child and mother. My children’s book career was shelved with publisher’s not wanting to be caught up in a messy long personal legal battle. This was the hardest struggle. I considered not working as an artist anymore. The spark, the joy, the feeling of wanting to make art or of people wanting to see my art… it all disappeared. I felt nothing. It was safest to not allow feelings. How do you make art if you feel nothing? I describe what happened at my lowest moment as being similar to when you are underwater and you need to take a breath but you are a definitely in too deep. You start frantically swimming up, feeling like you won’t make it. When your face breaks the surface… you are gasping and devouring the air. When you make that choice to come back up, you need air, you need art, you need life and nature and other creatives and you need to make something new. That’s where I was in 2019.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?

I am a cartoonist. I draw in a cartoon style based on all of the cartoon content I have ever taken in. I love line and I love shape and I love humor. My work is character based and I specialize in creating for children. When a kid feels like they know my characters and think of them as friends, I am successful in my work. I am most proud of my series Louise Loves Art that published from 2014-2018. I have recently experienced some high schoolers who excitedly ran up to me to tell me that they read my books when they were young. It was an awesome experience. I have been told that what i do well is draw with a lot of life. My drawings look like a candid snapshot of something that is actually happening in the cartoon world I have created.

Where do you see things going in the next 5-10 years?

Children’s Publishing has been in serious flux since the pandemic. There were highs and lows and so many changes. There was a sudden demand for more books with so many children stuck at home. There was so much pain, unrest and ugliness in the world. Children’s publishing takes care with what is produced for children. It felt very much like books became very serious and very careful and were antidotes to the mess outside of the walls of kid’s homes. Publishing offices closed and staff relocated out of the usual major cities. When the world opened back up, the industry was certainly different. Many chose not to return to positions in house and many new hires happened. New smaller publishing houses were born out of demand. Many new agencies were started. And an unbelievable amount of creatives decided to enter the world of children’s publishing. The pandemic downtime allowed many artists’ to turn their attention to a dream they never had the time to pursue. The effect of the marketplace is staggering. So many more voices promoting and trying to find their place on the book shelves. The online algorithms seem to change every few weeks, just when one thinks a promotional flow has been re-established. Enter Artificial Intelligence. Although A.I. is being felt the most in film, video games, fantasy art and animation, it is also coming for children’s books and comics. The debates are heated on usage being ethical or not. I have my own very strong opinions on it’s mode of creation, and scraping. I bristle at it’s usage and the new momentum to teach the usage in prominent art schools as another career in the world for creatives. There is one thing everyone can agree on, it’s here and we all have to wrestle with it.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://kellylight.com
• Instagram: @kelight
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kellylight
• Other: agent : [email protected] Elizabeth Harding @ Curtis Brown, LTD.

Image Credits

All copyright Kelly Light