We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Elizabeth Hunn. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Elizabeth below.

Elizabeth, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. When did you first know you wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally?

I’ve always been obsessed with making things, I would spend every lunch time at school creating booklets and drawings with my friends on some eternal mission to create my own magazines (although I’d always move onto a new idea half way though and ended up with a lot of booklets with only the first page finished!) My big inspiration was Lauren Child and I wanted to draw for children’s books like her when I grew up. I kept up with drawing all through secondary school but wasn’t sure how it would translate into a job in the future until I started looking at universities and was thrilled to find out you could do a whole course specifically in Illustration. From there it lead to finding out about all the wonderful ways you can work creatively and I’ve been working at making that my career since.

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

I’m Elizabeth, an Illustrator and animator running under the name DustandMarbles! I run an online store on Etsy selling stickers, bookmarks, prints and pin badges and I also have a YouTube where I post weekly featuring lots of art related rambles and art activities. I’ve been drawing as long as I can remember but studying Illustration at university was when my creative career properly began. Since then I’ve worked on some short animated films and a variety of illustrated portraits and commissions. I’m a massive video game fan, the Fallout series and Bioshock series being some of my favourites (I’ve got a bit of a soft spot for vintage dystopias) and love to create themed products and animations to show my love for the games. Despite my interest in all things spooky, I like to make illustrations that lean towards the cute side which can end up with some quite funny outcomes!

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

Going through university I got into this habit of trying to make work that would look commercially good, I would adjust my style to what I thought would sell and what looked most popular at the time, not necessarily the things I was most invested in. For a while it sucked some of the joy out of creating and lead to a lot of my work feeling very generic and bland.

It wasn’t till a friend pointed out to me that I should make the work I wanted to be hired for, the things I enjoyed, that I realised that making things I was passionate about created some of my best work. And because I enjoyed making it, you could tell and other people enjoyed it more too. One of my most successful pieces of work, an animation I made based on my favourite video game, has lead to most of my youtube following and 3 commissions creating more animations of a similar kind, all work I have thoroughly enjoyed!

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

I think for me it’s a couple of things. When I’ve been working on an animation for a while, particularly when it’s been a long time of making i bit by bit, that moment when I finally have a finished video to watch and it all comes together is so satisfying. There’s definitely something extremely rewarding about seeing all your hard work come together into something complete.

And then there’s the people, getting to share that work and seeing other people enjoying it really makes it feel worth it. Wether it’s working on someones DTIYS, a commission or an animation related to someones favourite media, it’s always a joy when people find something they like in it. I always find it feels like when you manage to pick out the perfect birthday present for someone and the almost relief when they like it.      

Contact Info:

• Website: www.dustandmarbles.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/dustandmarbles
• Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/elizabeth-hunn-559b86209
• Youtube: www.youtube.com/channel/UC3VRZk1mFnI6HPsLb1N_Cyw
• Etsy Shop: www.etsy.com/uk/shop/DustandMarbles