We were lucky to catch up with DeVanté Givens recently and have shared our conversation below.

DeVanté , thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.

After I graduated college and COVID was still rampant, I was unemployed for at least 4 months. Of course there was some panic, being a recent graduate, I knew I was not going to get into the field I originally wanted to be in, due to everything shutting down. Thankfully at the time, my first commission came with a ton of work to do for them. This would be characters for short film and manga, merchandise or just promotion, anything to help pay for my cost of living. Despite being stressed about my situation, doing art for others was a very satisfying outlet that didn’t feel like a job at the end of the day. The more commissions I did over the course of that year, I just knew from that was the sign that being a freelance character designer was the right fit for me.

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?

I’m DeVanté Givens, a freelance character designer based in Washington State. I started Artworks by DeVanté in 2020. I realized there was a severe lack of representation with black characters in animated shows after the mid 2000s. Shows like Afro Samurai and The Boondocks, was essentially all we had in media that we can confidentially say looked like us. To me, I feel like that’s just scratching the surface on African American representation in animated media, so I wanted to take it a step further. While I want to create characters and stories centered around the Afro American experience, I also want to develop stories that isn’t typically shown, like fantasy or sci-fi stories. Currently, there’s discourse on the type of characters African Americans can play in movies and tv shows and it is even prevalent in the anime community as well, when it comes to cosplay. I believe by creating these characters and different stories, there could be a renaissance where black characters are there for the next generation see themselves in. While I do character design is for myself but I also take on commissions for indie or personal projects. What really excites me the most is when I can visual those characters for my clients and make their ideas come to life. My main goal, when taking on commissions is to translate the ideas onto the screen as accurate as possible and I do that by researching themes and similarities and apply it to my designs. The best feedback I received from clients is how meticulous I can be with my designs and it’s definitely a quality I’m most proud of. At the end of the day, I want everyone to know, Artworks by DeVanté is here to help create the characters that you want, so you can tell your own stories.

Looking back, are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

I was incredibly late to to using Pinterest. Pinterest is, without a doubt, my most used resource for getting art inspiration. When I was first started creating my own character designs, I thought all my answers for inspiration were only going to be in semi-expensive artbooks but the moment an art friend introduced me to Pinterest it was an eye opener. For new artist who haven’t discovered Pinterest like me, this site has everything art, whether it’s character designs, themes and poses.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

The biggest lesson I had to unlearn was that everyone was considered competition in the art field. The idea was put into my head by my fall quarter instructor when I attended the Art Institute. Obviously, the school is shut down but this mentality of making art enemies instead of friends stuck with me for a while and really impacted my growth as an artist. I strongly encourage artist to find an art community to help grow as an artist. We all want to see each other win and are happy to support each other.

Contact Info:

• Website: devantegivens.net
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/artworksbydevante/