Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Alyssa Winans. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Alyssa, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

I’ve been fortunate enough to work on a variety of meaningful, challenging projects alongside a host of creative, thoughtful co-workers. However, the most meaningful project to me was a personal one, because it opened the door to the artist I am today.

I was feeling artistically lost in 2014. At the time, I was freelancing for game companies and theoretically doing illustration jobs, but no illustration jobs were really coming in. I was below the poverty line, and had serious concerns about whether I could continue to pursue art as a career. This wasn’t a new thought; it’s a tough industry, and my art wasn’t where I had hoped it would be at the time. Since I wasn’t getting much client work, I did try to spend my time on personal illustrations.

Just for fun, I made a little profile picture of a rabbit-like character I’d created back in school. It was nothing fancy, just a little digital drawing of a character in a gondola. Somehow, there was something special in how that piece turned out. Something about the mark-making felt personal and unique. My spouse noticed it too, and suggested I do a series. I did four more pieces in that vein, each featuring the character exploring a new place. Throughout the series, I feel like I uncovered much of how I work today: an emphasis on color, scale, and mark-making. I went on to create a whole portfolio with this new approach that lead to where I am today. I still think about how one drawing and one piece of good advice unlocked a whole career for me, and count myself very lucky.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

This is a bit embarrassing to admit, but late in my high school years, my first art “work” was submitting designs to internet t-shirt contents. I enjoyed working off the contest prompts and (very occasionally) seeing the fruits of my labor printed, and I ended up continuing that to some degree by studying illustration in college.

Post-college, I worked in games for a few years as a variety of things, production artist, concept artist, and a whole host of odd art jobs for a mobile game. These days I create art for Google’s homepage as a day job, and freelance making fantasy art covers in the evenings.

I am proud of both recent bodies of work, but it’s a strange set of worlds to experience at once. I do much more collaborating with other creators and different stakeholders, non-art tasks, and project management during my day job. I also have more technical and topical guidelines. Conversely, I work with more abstract or fantastical narratives in my personal and book work. Overall, it’s a nice blend of structure and imagination, which I don’t think is a bad description of the current direction of my work. One thing that’s consistent regardless of whether I’m wearing my corporate or fantasy hat that I love using strong colors to communicate ideas and tone.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

It was a bit of a journey for me to be hired full-time at my current job. In early 2015, I saw a tweet that the team was looking for contractors. I decided to send in my portfolio, and I was asked to come for an informal interview. They ended up hiring someone from another internal team, but they sent some freelance my way for the next six months. I did my best on that work, although once they asked me for a 9-frame animation of a bunch of shipping crates being crushed. Not an easy task! I must have done a good job, because they eventually reached out and said they needed another contractor, and asked me to come work on-site for a year.

During that year, I was passed over for several other full-time openings on the team. It was challenging at times to admit to myself that I was being compared to these other artists and wasn’t measuring up. However, I was surrounded by an incredible team, and I decided to use the time to improve my skills as much as I could. I grew a lot that year, and learned more than I set out to. Even the experience of working at a large company was useful. At the end of the year, when I had just about given up on joining the team, someone left the team, and they decided to use the opening to hire me full-time.

It was unlikely many people in that position would have given up, so I don’t think my resilience in that situation was unusual, but I am grateful that I decided to stay optimistic and use the opportunity I was given to its fullest. I don’t know for sure, but I do think that my attitude was a large factor in the team deciding to keep me on.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

I think there are a number of ways society can best support a thriving creative ecosystem. One easy one is to support the artists that make the art you like! This could be by buying prints or original art. Even verbal support helps! Compliments, support, recommending artists you like to friends or family, can all help those individual artists.

From a more big picture perspective, it’d be great for more people to seek out a better understanding of different art roles and ethical pricing and payment. The internet is an incredible resources, and you can learn a lot of about the creative industry even if you yourself are not a creative. Learning how to appropriately value art and understand what you might be asking of an artist will lead to more satisfactory artist-client relationships from both sides.

Lastly, I think it’s important we recalibrate what we perceive “art” as. It’s true that we most often think of art in museums, or more modernly maybe something you buy to hang on your wall, or pin to your jacket. But so many things in the world are created by creatives. All the shows and movies we consume, the products we buy and use, the clothes we put on our body. All of this required artists and designers to come to life. Being able to look around our lives and seeing the hard work of artists all around us can help broaden our horizons and understand that “artist” is a crucial occupation for our modern world.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.alyssawinans.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alawinans/?hl=en
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/AlyssaWinans