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

Songe, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. When did you first know you wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally?

I have been drawing since I could hold a pencil. When I was young, I always thought I would be an architect because that was drawing, right? I took an architecture elective in high school and found it a bit too restrictive for me. After that I spent a few years floundering, which included intermittent homelessness. When I was 20, I sort of thought “I suppose I should do something productive with my life.” And knowing that I did have a skill of sorts, I took steps to get myself into art school. Once there, I looked at what my options were, in terms of making a living.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

It’s actually kind of hard to pinpoint exactly what my industry is. I’ve done a lot of different things over the course of my career. I have done book cover illustration, storyboard art, 2D animation, sequential art for comics, album cover illustration, visual effects and compositing work, motion graphics… I think that having experienced some of the chaos of my early life put me in a mindset of never saying no to anything I was capable of doing that was thrown my way.

My first work out of college was doing motion graphic work on a couple of documentaries, “Say it Loud: A History of Black Music in America” for VH1, and the feature “The kid Stays in the Picture”, chronicling the life of film producer Robert Evans. The latter was pretty widely acclaimed, and so I am proud of having contributed to it, though I would say it’s pretty far removed from what I really enjoy doing. But it helped me to continue to do similar work, which helped pay the bills as I pursued more traditional visual art.

Ultimately, I am primarily a draftsman and a painter. For a while I was painting book covers for Random House UK. That was a mostly horror fiction in the YA market, and that was a lot of fun. Who could complain about getting to paint pictures of monsters for a living?

After returning to America after 7 years in England, I got back into animation, which I was also trained in in school.
Most recently, I have created 2D animated intros for TV shows. I’m probably most proud of the animation I did for “Sherman’s Showcase” on IFC and AMC. That animation included a character that I designed, which I occasionally see out in the wild, on people’s t-shirts. There’s something very satisfying about seeing people wearing my work and having people tell me that they are fans of my work. Is that slightly narcissistic? Who knows.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

It’s always nice to think that I get to sit inside drawing and painting for a living. Making stuff up. It’s not always an easy path, but it’s incredibly satisfying when clients are pleased with the work that I do. I also like cooking for people. I will serve them and sit there with a big dumb grin on my face, waiting to see if they like the food.
I get the same satisfaction from happy clients.
“I made this and someone likes it!”

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

I think that the main thing is understanding that practically everything that we see in our world was created with an artist’s influence. You hear people say things like “I don’t get art.” Or they will scoff “Ugh, artists.”, like, directly at me.
But an artist was involved at some point in just about everything around us.
The rug in the dining room, the mugs from which we drink our morning coffee. The books that we read were laid out by graphic designers. All of our clothing was designed by someone.
And that’s just visual art.
No one doesn’t like music.
I think we all get art, and we all appreciate it in our own way, as it surrounds us, as it adorns us.
We should learn to celebrate it and not be intimidated by it.

Contact Info:

• Website: songeriddle.com
• Instagram: @songe_riddle

Image Credits
Songe Riddle