We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Cas Rodriguez-Miranda a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Cas, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?

Art, to me, was always a matter of messing around until you got something. Even as a kid, I’ve always liked telling stories and making stuff up as I went along until I was sitting on something I felt was good to share with those around me, and the process hasn’t really changed. Sure, making art nowadays is a little more complex than sketching comics on the margins of my notes in high school, but at the end of the day I’m still messing around until I get something, same as it ever was.

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

My name is Cas Rodriguez-Miranda, although most recognize me by my handle CASUALRAD, and I am primarily a mixed-media illustrator, while also doing work as a musician, voice actor, sound designer, character designer, director, writer, rapper, singer, and far too much for anyone sane to willingly partake in at once. Regardless of the medium, however, everything I make is an authentic reflection of who I am and what I am feeling, and I strive to keep that as consistent as I possibly can.

How did you build your audience on social media?

Social media is an unruly beast made up of various strangers attempting to figure out what the mysterious overlord known as “The Algorithm” prefers and/or dislikes, which could be dependent on the time of day, who you follow, who follows you, the usage of certain words, the type of things you talk or post about, et cetera. If there is one thing, however, that is truly reliable throughout any platform you use, it’s that the algorithm favors a consistent stream of uploads, which means that the more regularly you make things and put it up for the world to see, the more the system pushes you to more people. This is all to say, as long as you keep making what you wanna make and putting it up when you can, you’re bound to do well. How well truly depends on too many factors to even count but, well overall.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

Seeing how people interact with the things I’ve made and what they take away from it is truly the most rewarding part of my job. I love seeing the connection they make with whatever I make, and in a way it forms a sort of knot that ties us all together, me the creator and they the patrons, into an eternal link of processing the art before them in whichever way they can. To me, that sentiment is priceless.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://casualrad.pb.online/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/casualrad/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/CASUALRAD