We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Leslie Park a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Leslie, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What did your parents do right and how has that impacted you in your life and career?

My parents were a bit against the grain for first generation immigrant parents. Instead of minimizing the creative arts, they often celebrated it no matter how big or small it was. My mom had instilled in me a beautiful idea of chasing your dreams. “No matter how hard the climb was, if you believe in it and keep trying, you’ll get there.” It felt like undying hope. We struggled a lot financially as a family but this sense of “you can keep going” always felt like there would be a better day coming as long as I chased a dream. Whatever the dream was. And perhaps I was a bit naive about what it means to be an artist when I was young but sometimes you need that to combat all the anxiety. She made me feel excited about the future and excited to learn from others.

My dad was someone who was just all about loving someone. Regardless of if they were an academic genius or a drop out. He cared most that you were a good person at heart and when you love someone or something you love it with all your heart. So he never criticized or felt the need to put down anyone. If someone had a dream they wanted to chase, that was just bonus haha.

In hindsight, I’ve come to realize my parents were both creative people. My mom use to draw cute manhwa paper dolls with custom drawn clothing for me to play with after I saw a few in a magazine. I think I became more infatuated with her dolls than the magazine ones and I recall chasing her around asking for her to draw me another one and more clothes…. maybe even a dog haha. I’m sure I drove her crazy!

My dad is more like the MacGyver of the family. Almost anything was fixed by whatever was around us…. mostly out of tape. A loooooot of tape. Needed a wallet? Bam, tape-wallet. Needed a screwdriver? Give him a scissor, plastic bottle, and some tape.

I think the combo their two perspectives really instilled in me was the excitement of the future. Life of course was the biggest teacher about being realistic with choices, but it never burned out the feeling of joy when it comes to drawing and creative problem solving. I think all the fun anecdotes from life, along with all the ups and downs made me also want to be a storyboard artist. What better job could there be that combines my love of creative problem solving, sharing fun stories and drawing?

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

Of course! Hi everyone! I’m an episodic director for animation and storyboard artist in both animation and live action as well as a freelance illustrator. My bread and butter are storyboarding for animations and live action projects. My previous experiences were directing on Hailey’s on it! at Disney Television Animation, boarding for Farzar, Paradise PD and Housebroken at Bento Box Entertainment; freelance boarding for smaller animation studios across the states and internationally, as well as working in commercial as a shooting board artist and most recently an unannounced live-action feature.

I also freelance as an illustrator for motion graphic studios and automotive companies creating graphic illustrations for animations, internal UX concepts, and producing internal animation shorts.

I started out at Honda R&D as an internal visual designer working on several different future concept projects. My team and I got to write, storyboard, and create concept art for small live action and animation projects, as well as working closely with the UI/UX team. Every project was so different it forced me to think creatively and it really pushed me out of my comfort zone. But this made me excited for every project! I think of this time fondly as my “ground zero” for learning how to communicate with people in different disciplines. Learning to find common ground with engineers, designers, and stylist taught me how invaluable it is to learn each other’s vocabulary and understand the differences in communication.

This really helped me develop my soft skills which prepared me for directing and storyboarding. It taught me to lead teams and understand the subtext within scripts or notes. I believe soft skills are sometimes the hardest to learn but if you’re open to seeing every opportunity (good or bad) as a learning experience, it can absolutely be sharpened.

When it comes to working professionally I’d like to think I’m easy to work with and I love collaborative projects! I want to make everyone else’s job in production easier by making sure my job is done well. Plus, there’s no greater joy than learning from someone else while working together!

I’m proud of being able to be quick on my feet with changes. Call me crazy but the problem solving is the fun part! Often that’s how we get a serendipitous “Ah-ha!” moment.

Should a client need extra hands for a project to work in tandem with me I also have an arsenal of artist to call on who are also easy to work with.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?

I think often times the common misconception is that artist love to draw therefor it should be easy, quick, and free. Being an artist is still a career and a job and it should be respected as such. It’s like going to a mechanic and wondering why they won’t just fix your car for free since they love working on cars so much. Being an artist isn’t just “drawing” it’s a breath of things such as cooking, car designing, plastic surgeons, architects etc. Often times they’re their own business owner.

We celebrate people if they call themselves business owners but if we call them artist they’re treated like their less than when it’s the same risks. We invest in our craft, in our equipment, in our styles in hopes to creating a viable living. It’s not something you can fake either because you have to LOVE something to keep going back after every tumble to say “ok…let’s go again.”

Being an artist is hard and toiling work. It takes time to learn the craft and years to create your own style. It’s like…bodybuilding! You can’t fake muscles and strength, you just got to the gym and put in the work. And be prepared for the soreness throughout the journey.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

Ohh this is a hard one and I think there’s so many layers to this topic.

People often forget that artist are trained or experienced in creative problem solving. That’s really our biggest strength not just being a hand. We’re able to consider many different avenues of getting to the finish you’re looking for.

We’re also connected to other artist so if we can’t provide the service we’d be very happy to recommend someone else that may fit your goals and budgets. I believe this is the best way to make the ecosystem thrive.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://ressuri.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ressuri/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ressuri