We were lucky to catch up with Stella Golden recently and have shared our conversation below.

Stella, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you share a story that illustrates an important or relevant lesson you learned in school

While I was in school I started off studying concept design but always felt like there was an element to concept design that was lacking. I always have loved writing and storytelling and even though storytelling is very important in concept design, I wanted to express story even more in my work. I then was approached by a few of my teachers who saw that I could write and make interesting stories and encouraged me to try storyboarding. One teacher in particular had sat me down and told me she really enjoyed the story I was creating in her class. My art work at the time was a bit lack luster but the story I was trying to tell shined through enough that she loved it and encouraged me to keep writing and to maybe try storyboarding. Ever since then, I’ve been storyboarding and have been able to fulfill what had been missing in my artistic career.

Stella, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I work as a concept designer and storyboard artist and have the privilege of being able to work in the entertainment industry! The type of work I have been doing lately has been stylized fighting character designs of my plants as well as storyboarding light hearted interaction sequences. My favorite types of storyboard work are acting and dialogue sequences that involve a lot of emotion that needs to be portrayed subtly and clearly. While my favorite type of design work is creating bombastic and exciting characters with big personalities and fun mechanics.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

When I graduated college, that’s when the entertainment industry started not doing so great so finding work had been a challenge. I had managed to snag some freelance here and there but the career I was striving for was a hard fight. But then I turned to teaching and have found a wonderful way to inspire young creatives who I can see myself in when I was their age. I have dealt with insecurity over my art in the past and when students come in feeling the same way that I did, I feel like I can be the type of support I wanted when I was their age and inspire them to keep going.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

For a long time, I stopped drawing for enjoyment and started drawing for the only purpose of improvement. However that’s a fast way to burn out and burn out I did. When I was on my way to graduating I had just suddenly decided one week that I wanted to draw for myself and not stress about it being perfect or interesting. I just wanted to make something that I thought was cool. That’s when I started turning my plants into fighting characters! I’m a big fan of Super Smash Brothers and love my succulents and saw a fun design experiment and it turned out that because I was having fun people received my designs super well! So the moral I found was I should strive to make every project fun for myself in some way.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.stellagolden.art/
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/_stardiac_?igshid=OGQ5ZDc2ODk2ZA==
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stardiac

Image Credits
Eric Ng