We were lucky to catch up with Johanna Taylor recently and have shared our conversation below.

Johanna, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you share an important lesson you learned in a prior job that’s helped you in your career afterwards?

While I was in school getting my art degree, I worked on-campus jobs as a graphic designer and a motion graphics artist for various departments. There were many days at work where I would walk in, and my manager would tell me that they needed something elaborate made for a client, and part of my job was to just kind of… figure out how to make it happen, whether that meant me learning new software, a new workflow, watching tutorials, asking an expert for their input, or studying new design techniques.

I learned that as a creator (especially in the freelance world), you will always find yourself learning new things and new methods on the fly, and that’s part of the journey! It’s important to be open to feedback from trusted peers, and stay curious and willing to improve!

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

I am an illustrator, concept artist with a BFA in Animation, story artist and comic creator. An abiding love of Zelda, Lord of the Rings, Fire Emblem, and Dungeons & Dragons inspired me to become an artist with a passion for fantasy, magic, and collaborative storytelling. I am an avid player of tabletop RPGs and contributed artwork to The Venture Maidens Campaign Guide and other RPG-based publications. My debut YA graphic novel, THE GHOSTKEEPER, comes out July 2024 with Penguin Teen, and my previous clients include Lion Forge Comics, 2CGaming, and MIT Press. I create comics, concept art, character designs, prop designs, and illustrations for books, indie video games, TTRPGs, and graphic novels.

My background in animation and storyboarding informs my artistic style in unique ways. I create illustrations and characters who are expressive, dynamic, and memorable in their designs. My style skews quite stylized, with vivid colors and immersive scenes full of background details that tell a story. I am always very interested in the ways small character quirks can inform their personality in just one image: what they are wearing, how they are sitting/standing, what are they doing, and what their facial expression tells the viewer about who they are. There is so much story and emotion that illustration can evoke, and my experience in animation and storyboarding breathes life into a more static form of art, which creates an interesting creative challenge for me! I set out to create work that would look right at home in an animated series, and for clients, I help provide the solution for who their characters are, what their story is, and why their audience should care about them.

As for my comic work, I draw a lot of inspiration from the topics of mental health, and the ways people cope in a hostile world. I make comics that combine heavy emotional topics with humor, and stories that create light-hearted spots in dark places. I also love the potential of the comics medium to tell stories in ways that impact readers who they might not otherwise resonate with.

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

Being a freelance artist means running your own business (a business of 1 person, even), and that is a demographic of entrepreneurs that gets very little recognition and financial support. But the main thing that I wish society understood more is that when they invest in the talents of an artist, they’re not just buying a finished image; they’re buying the efforts, time, and care of a professional tradesperson to help realize their vision, whose effort and collaboration is an investment in its own right. We live in a world of “content”–artwork divorced from its context, from its creator, and from its meaning, because it’s set up to be consumed and discarded to make room for the next “content.” When artists and creatives are paid well for our work, that is less energy we can spend worrying about desperately making ends meet, and more energy we can then devote to creating art for our clients’ projects.

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

I spent a lot of my time in art school and beyond drawing what I thought studios and clients wanted to see from me; drawing subject matter that I thought would get me a prestige job at Pixar, Disney, etc. I was taught that my portfolio had to be what people wanted to see, or else I would not make it as an artist. Lots of figure drawings, children, and modern people in modern society, etc.

The turning point came when I started playing Dungeons & Dragons in 2018, and fell in love with drawing my and my friends’ D&D characters and the various adventures they were up to. My artwork improved drastically, because I was drawing something I genuinely enjoyed: high fantasy. In turn, the audience who liked that sort of subject matter found me and it led to me finding illustration opportunities in the TTRPG industry. And from there, I have found passion in all kinds of different subject matter: science fiction, horror, contemporary fantasy, Victorian aesthetics, and even found renewed appreciation in those “modern” scenarios that had been very difficult for me to draw years earlier.

All that to say: don’t draw what you think people or companies want to see in order to get hired… draw what inspires you and brings you joy in the creative process, and it will attract the people who want to hire you because they love your work as much as you do! Enjoy making art, and the right audience will find you!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.johannamation.com
• Instagram: @johannamation
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/johannamation/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johannataylor1/
• Other: Bsky: https://bsky.app/profile/johannamation.bsky.social

Image Credits
Johanna Taylor, Kimberli Johnson