We were lucky to catch up with Maria Prussing recently and have shared our conversation below.

Maria, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.

For as long as I can remember, Ive always loved drawing. In school my favorite projects were always the ones that involved creating art or stories. A core memory I’ve always tied back to wanting to pursue art professionally was one day in middle school, there was a local art contest my school was holding. Of corse I joined and created something I was very proud of and was certain I would win at least something if not first place. Once the results came out, I ended up winning first place! One of the judges came up to me and my mom who was there at the time to not only congratulate me but stressed to my mom that I absolutely needed to pursue this as a profession or I would be wasting my potential as a young artist. Having an adult tell me that it was possible and encourage me struck me to my core so much that I decided that from then on out I would try to take art more seriously so I can work my way up to a professional level. This was always just a hobby for me but the thought of being able to draw and create stories for a living excited me knowing it was now a possible dream to attain.

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

Hello! My name is Maria Prussing and I am in my first year of attending CalArts as a character animation major. I think my journey on how I got here was a pretty long one because it took me a total of 4 years to get accepted into this highly competitive program. I knew that this was the one and only school I wanted to get into because if I was going to attend an art college it had to be the best of the best, and CalArts is one of the top schools for film and animation. Even though all 3 rejections I kept reminding myself that this is what I wanted to do in life and that I had to keep on going. And through a lot of hard work (and red bulls) I got into my dream school to start my journey into working in the animation industry. My specific interest of studies and what I like to work on in the future is becoming a storyboard artist. I think with all my life experiences that I’ve been through up until now I’ll be able to channel this into fun and unique stories for audiences to connect with. What I am most proud of is my current growth as an artist the past couple of months while attending CalArts since i’ve been able to evolve my style in a way I’m not use to and drawing faster while having more fun exploring new ways to express myself. I hope you can look forward to more work from me in the future, I’m excited to share funny and relatable stories with everyone in the near future!

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

For me, It’s very rewarding to now be able to work on cool projects and assignments with so many skilled people I’m surrounded by. Never have I ever had an experience like this and I have to thank CalArts and my friends for it, I wouldn’t be where I am without them.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

During my last attempt of applying to CalArts It was very hard to muster up the courage to re-apply after 3 rejections. But I came to the conclusion that after the last rejection that nothing was changing progress wise so I decided that I would apply to an animation summer “boot camp” to get myself into gear. I was scared at first because all the teachers had experience at working in the industry and that my peers wouldn’t like my art, but it turns out that all the teachers there were supper suportive and all my classmate (who I’m still friends with!) encouraged me along the way. After I finished the class I worked on my portfolio non-stop and it was a very grueling process, I had to really push myself to keep going. I even attended a portfolio review and the person who looked at my work said I should stop applying to CalArts because I should be in school already with my skills. But that just added more fuel to the fire that I absolutely had to get in to prove to them I would accepted, and now here I am!

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