Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Alexandria Neonakis. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Alexandria, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today If you could go back in time do you wish you had started your creative career sooner or later?
I think social media has brought a lot of positives but one of the major negatives it has spun up for everyone, not just creatives, is the idea that if you don’t get started right out of school you’re falling behind. The focus tends to be on the success stories not on the failures. So when you see the 16-20 year olds finding success in their creative fields, it lends to this feeling of “too late”. The other factor that sees this discussion rear its head constantly on places like twitter is that every year, new young people are joining who were not part of those conversations in previous years. So we’re seeing a constant influx of new talent showcasing how young they got started, while those of us who are older and have been at it a while aren’t always pointing out the age we found success. I have been working in games since 2007 but only became a full-time professional artist at the age of 32. I personally feel that was the right time for me. All the previous years I was able to make a living working in the field I wanted to be in, while also learning and growing in my chosen area. I didn’t have the pressure of trying to make ends meet, it was more about finding the space and the time in between to work on my portfolio.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
My name is Alexandria Neonakis, I’m a multi-disciplinary visual artist originally from Nova Scotia Canada, currently living in Los Angeles, California. I work primarily in games and entertainment as a concept artist where I use digital mediums to design characters and their costumes. I also illustrate children’s books, card and board games and toy designs. Projects I’ve worked on include The Last of Us and The Last of Us Part II, Uncharted 4, and the books I’ve illustrated have been with publishers like Simon & Schuster, Random House and MacMillan. For personal work I generally do landscape painting digitally and traditionally. All of my work tends to be illustrative but more naturalistic than stylized, with my inspirations and color pallettes coming mostly from nature. Because I have a versatile work history, I tend to bring a lot of that into all of my projects. Though children’s books and video games are fairly separate, the things I learn from either of those industries ends up being applied to each other and all of my other works.
What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?
Being able to share the results with friends and family. I have a 3 year old niece who is into all things cat and animal related, so I actively seek out animal projects so I can share them with her. It’s extremely cute and very rewarding to have her looking through a book with her parents saying “Alex drew this”. There is no number of social media followers or likes that compares to that feeling. I can sort of get the same thing from games when I get to share them with cousins and my brother. It’s fun to watch them play through and notice little details and easter eggs.
Have you ever had to pivot?
I started my journey in games as a UI designer and artist. It was rewarding, but it wasn’t the thing I was most passionate about. I wanted to be more involved in the stories, and particularly with characters. So at the age of 32, 10 years into my career, I decided to shift. It was a slow transition. I started by first doing work on my own time to show to the creative director and character lead on my project that I was interested and capable. I took feedback from the team on things I should work on, and spent time after work on personal projects and taking night classes to hone those skills, all while continuing to share progress with the team. After months of this, the creative director gave me some tasks to do, and that snowballed. After about a year of doing part time concept tasks alongside my regular UI work, I worked up the nerve to ask to switch over full time. it required me to find my UI replacement, get them trained up and help them out during the transition period. All in all it took a little over 2 years to fully move from one role to the other, but I’m lucky that i was able to do it internally at the same company, within the same project.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.alexneonakis.com/
- Instagram: alexneonakis
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandrian/
- Twitter: beavs