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

Rigatoni, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. I’m sure there have been days where the challenges of being an artist or creative force you to think about what it would be like to just have a regular job. When’s the last time you felt that way? Did you have any insights from the experience?

I consider myself to be extremely happy with my current creative career! I get to be my own boss and there’s no one to tell me that I’m running my business wrong. I can sit back and relax and draw the day away. A lot of my work is made with pure joy and not with a whole lot of stress or thoughts like, “Does this even look good?!” These days I post and sell my artwork through social media, and I’m fortunately treated with a lot of kind and positive comments that reinforce my confidence as an artist.

I don’t spend a lot of time wondering what it would be like to have a regular job at this stage of my career, simply because I (other than working retail jobs as a young adult) used to work at an in-house gaming studio as a concept artist for nearly two years! I got to experience the average 9 to 5 for a while, and I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t love it either. I felt as though I could have been doing more with my career as an artist, but at the time, I wasn’t too sure how I could have made that leap that would take me to the position I wanted in life.

When my prior job finally decided to let me go (the company was financially failing, and was I was ultimately replaced by A.I.) I had felt this heavy weight come off my shoulders but was also met with a bit of fear. I had lost my full-time job, and all I had was my tiny business selling these critters called “Pipapeeps”. A part of me was scared that my small business was not going to pull through and help me stay afloat, but my family encouraged me to take the risk and make it my full-time job! And I couldn’t be any happier than I am now!

Rigatoni, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Much of my work now is based around a small fictional creature I created during my high school days that I call “Pipapeeps”.

I first doodled them when I was a young teenager to keep it as a silly doodle I would share with my friends or write in my school notebooks. These little critters are loosely based on my dog, a small white, sassy Bichon Frise.

After graduating high school, I would continue on with my endless doodling in my college lectures, and at some point, I would share them with my best friend, Amber Synett. We made our way into Europe on a summer study abroad to Italy, and I wound up at Les Gobelins in Paris, France by the end of it. I was there for their short course in animation and I sneaked a little pipapeep in one of the classrooms. (I doubt its there anymore, but I’d like to pretend its still there!)

Towards the end of my college career, we both thought it would be funny to hand-make a bunch of pipapeep stickers and stick them everywhere in the University of North Texas’s College of Visual Arts & Design. I believe it was from that point on I wanted to spread pipapeeps as far as I could, anywhere I went.

After graduating college with a B.F.A. in Drawing & Painting, and New Media Art. I decided to go on a bold adventure to Japan alone (and with no Japanese skills!) for an internship position for a fashion brand called “Yukihero Pro-Wrestling”. It was there that I continued to share my pipapeeps with my boss, and my new friends. They told me they were cute, and I received a lot of joy hearing that from people in a different country. That left a strong impact on me which only made me want to draw them more! While working at my internship, I received a life-changing email from Cambridge’s School of Visual & Performing Arts, saying that I was accepted into the Master’s course for Animation & Illustration. I had to wrap up my internship and make my way into the UK, and again, I was met with the same positive reaction.

“These things are so cute!” And again, I would draw pipapeeps in my notebooks while half-listening to very dense and important lectures.

Now I have to be clear, I loved drawing pipapeeps, but I did NOT think that pipapeeps were ever going to become something I heavily relied on. I wanted to be a talented animator of some sort the entire time, and I did my best to dabble in software like TV Paint and Maya to try and build a unique demo reel. (Much of which didn’t have a whole lot of pipapeeps.) When I had made it to Cambridge I did have it in my mind that I was going to become a professional animator there, and that I would learn how to present myself for interviews and finally land my dream job in a studio in the gaming or animation industry.

But all of that came to strong stop when one of my tutors encouraged me to abandon that path and figure something else out. I don’t think he was initially impressed with the portfolio I had coming in. I was heartbroken at the time, but it was for the better. I recall after that had happened, I continued to mindlessly doodle through my stress and disappointment in my notes and the same tutor looked over my shoulder and insisted that my thesis should be around pipapeep, and that these pipapeeps should become my whole portfolio, and inevitably my whole life.

Imagine how shocked I was to hear such a crazy thing! But at the time, I took his advice (thank goodness I did) and I ditched my previous goal and just painted on rolls and rolls of brown packing paper pipapeeps of different shapes and sizes. Eventually I began writing lore, little booklets, and stickers, and I created the pipapeep Instagram account as a part of my thesis and silly creative project.

When Covid struck I unfortunately had to leave the UK and finish my master’s online and return to the United States where I would continue to draw pipapeeps every single day in my parent’s house. It was from that point on I would slowly and carefully grow pipapeep into what it is today. And I couldn’t be any more thankful for the long and on-going journey!

Today my paintings, works on paper, collages, animations, and my merch designs can all be witnessed on tiktok and on Instagram! (@pipapeep) Where I take both digital and traditional commissions, and run an online shop where pipa pals (what I call fans of pipapeep) can purchase many of my works and merchandise. Last year I had sold 418 pipapeep artworks through my website, and through local galleries that would welcome pipapeep with open arms.

My creative mission is to simply spread joy through pipapeeps and artistic mediums. and have people enjoy the work that I put out. There isn’t a whole lot I could say about pipapeep itself, as it’s form is very simple and it’s purpose is pretty surface-level as of right now. Pipapeep is entertaining, cute, and be placed into anything. My most popular paintings are small 8″ x 8″ canvases with abstracted colorful backgrounds that contain at least 1 pipapeep on the surface of the canvas doing something plain or silly. Like for example, sleeping in a field of flowers, or hugging another pipapeep, or eating eggs. Things you and I could do in our daily lives. Aside from paintings, I also make hand-made collages from materials I collect on my international travels. The collages are similar to the paintings in that the pipapeeps are doing average things. The animations are more based akin to a combination of memes and pet-care in which many of the videos posted are of my rotoscoped hands petting and feeding the pipapeeps.

How did you build your audience on social media?

In September of 2021, I was attending my cousin’s wedding, and I had a tiktok account that I was obsessed with. At the time, I had perhaps less than 300 followers, and I had been posting a lot of videos of myself drawing pipapeeps in a small plain notebook. At some point I decided to rotoscope myself poking a pipapeep, and the little pipapeep becomes angry. The video is very short, and it had some K-Pop music in the background playing. I recall finishing the video and downloading it to my phone and then my family and I drove out of town for the event. The day before the event, I posted my little video and closed the app and thought nothing of it. The night before the wedding I opened the app and was shocked to find a little over 12,000 followers had followed me within a day. My parents kept asking the next day, “whats the number look like now?” “How is it growing?” And as soon as we drove back home I immediately made more videos similar to the one that exploded in popularity, and the rest is history!

My best advice for those wanting to grow their social media following is this: just be yourself and have fun with what you’re making. Following trends doesn’t always pay off, and sometimes people just want to see something new and different. When you start off making content, it should be about passion and fun and creativity! I did not think at all my short video of poking a fictional creature was going to get any attention at all. You just never know what the public will like!

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

For myself, the most rewarding aspect of being an artist with this kind of support and following is that almost every day I am greeted with such lovely and kind comments from pipa pals who genuinely enjoy seeing the pipapeeps I post. To me, this is an artist’s dream come true. To truly be seen and appreciated by people. What better feeling is there?

Contact Info:

• Website: https://pipapeep.shop/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pipapeep/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZhBzbZ85jeyv27RufniJSA
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@pipapeep?lang=en&is_copy_url=1&is_from_webapp=v1