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

Alright, Killamari thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear about the things you feel your parents did right and how those things have impacted your career and life.

This one’s really important to me, cause culturally most Asian Americans don’t have parents that support the idea of being an artist. Usually it’s a “You want to be what? No that’s stupid, you’ll never make money or be successful.” I lucked out with this because both of my parents have always been supportive of my art and the idea of me pursuing art as a profession. Being a father myself, I will always appreciate that they always 100% supported my need to be an artist, and I will be just as supportive if not more, in whatever my girls want to explore.

One other thing my parents did right, and it’s one of my earliest memories of being an artist; was my mother came home one day with a huge sketch pad. I was 3 or 4 at the time. The sketch pad was as tall as I was, I will never forget that. It was this larger than life surface, 100 pages, of pure opportunity. To this day one of the best things that has ever happened to me and I actually still have that book.

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

Well my name is Killamari, my close friends call me Rod, and people who don’t know me mess it up and call me Ben, which is my last name. I’m a multi-disciplinary artist, with a love for sticker art, character design, noodles and cartoons. I create both digital and physical medium art, but my favorite medium would have to be spray paint. You have to move quickly with spray paint, so it’s a nice go go go feeling when you’re working with it. Walking home from school I would admire the graffiti on the walls, even though most of it was territory stuff and less about making art. Despite that, kid me thought it was mad cool. As a kid I used to tag CKC709 around DC/VA/MD. I did that for a while but my letters are garbage so I switched my focus to characters. Painting characters is my comfort zone. I love painting murals but I got my start professionally as an illustrator. My first gig was a comic strip I worked on for a local paper in DC. I did all my inking digitally, in Adobe Flash, back when it was still called Flash. Weird tool of choice, but I was studying animation at the time, so I was really used to the software and it’s drawing tools, even though it was meant for motion graphics and stuff like that. I remember because I was creating the artwork digitally, the client thought that I wasn’t putting in the work, like this dude really thought I just pushed a button and the computer did all the work. Lesson one, clients don’t know shit about art.

While I was studying animation, all my freelance work was in illustration. So towards the end of my degree, I decided I wanted to be an illustrator instead. But when I switched it up, and decided to study illustration instead, I got my first gig in the animation industry. You gotta roll with the punches and take what comes your way sometimes. I continued working as a freelance illustrator while I worked at the animation studio. I spent the next 12 years working as an illustrator and animator, working my way up to character designer, and then character design director in my final years at the studio before moving onto the next thing. Character design was definitely my favorite part of the animation industry, and even in my personal work. I love coming up with characters and developing their personalities. Trying out different variations of a character, designing their props, and apparel, all that is really fun to me.

As cool as making cartoons can be, I definitely was getting itchy for some physical painting. I couldn’t tell you what year it was now, but at one point while I was working at the animation studio, I decided I wanted to get into murals as well. My first paid mural was at a pizza joint called Liberty Pizza. Def go check em out, the pies are great. I think that wall took a couple weeks, with tons of help from friends, and I learned a lot from that first wall. 30 ish murals later, and I’m still learning something new, every time I do a wall. I just wrapped up a 5 story wall, with the homie Arah Kang, and I gotta say it’s the mural I’m most proud of. It’s one of the tallest walls I’ve done, I got to do it in celebration of AAPI Heritage Month ( Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage month), with a fellow Asian American artist, have it represent a Viet/Khmer character, which is my heritage, and get to take my wife and 2 daughters to see a wall with a character that looks like them. Representation is everything, and I’m so thankful to have been able to provide that for my girls, and to others.

Murals are dope, art is everything, representation is everything.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

I used to think I didn’t have a goal when it came to my art, other than trying to make a living off it. Or maybe the goal was just always a moving target. But lately, in attempts to grow and be a part of, what I feel is relatively new for the Asian community, is solidarity and representation. At least in my personal experience, I feel like the Asian community has a lot of catching up to do when it comes to showing up for each other, and supporting each other, and working together and on top of that, doing the same for other people outside of our communities. Right now that is my goal. To meet, support, and to collaborate with more Asian creatives. And to provide representation that I didn’t have growing up, so that my girls know they belong here and don’t grow up feeling like outsiders in their own country.

Alright – so here’s a fun one. What do you think about NFTs?

There’s always going to be haters, scammers, honest people, curious people, and innovators all existing in the same space with anything you look at. It doesn’t matter what I say, people are going to make up their own minds about it and go bitch or praise it on social media. Welcome to Cosco, I love you.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.killamari.com/
• Instagram: @thekillamari