Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Verdiana Belinda. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alright, Verdiana thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Let’s jump back to the first dollar you earned as a creative? What can you share with us about how it happened?

I remember back in high school, when I opened my first booth for one of the biggest convention in Indonesia. As a teenager who lived in a country where creative industry wasn’t really seen as a real job, I was surprised that people would actually walked towards my booth to buy my merchandise designs. It was one of the most memorable memories of my first ever time seeing my passion would be somewhat useful and I could make a profit out of it.

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?

My name is Verdiana Belinda and people usually just called me Belinda or Bella. I’m a 2D concept artist based in New Jersey and graduated from Moore College of Art and Design with Bachelor of Fine Arts focusing on animation and games art back in 2022.

I grew up in Indonesia with my grandma and surrounded by my uncles, and their children. My cousins were the ones who introduced me to video games and I used to watch cartoons a lot on tv. I would also went to the church library to read and borrowed comics there and from there, I realized I wanted to do something like concept art or anything related to game industry when I grew up. It was actually hard to persuade my family at first due to the stigma of being an artist as a main income source, especially when I told them I wanted to go to art school for my bachelor degree. My mother who had lived in the US for basically throughout my life didn’t have that much money either so when I flew to the US to live here with my mom, I tried to do numerous jobs to be able to go to art college. Thankfully I was already doing art commission for couple of years before I came here, so I continued on that, while also working part time job in retail. It wasn’t easy at all, waking up at 4am to catch the train and back home at 2am 5 days a week while working on the weekend. But I realized that I really want to pursue my career, and I want to work in the art industry. I did managed to graduate with Bachelor of Fine Arts focusing on animation and games art at the end which somehow surprised me for I was capable to start on my journey as a concept artist.

I focused more on 2D concept art designs which contain character designs, world building, environment art, etc. However, thanks to the college, I also managed to study 3D art which helped me to create environment art in such media. From the college as well, I learned the basic of game engineering which helped me to build a playable game using numerous of game engines despite of me focusing on art more, game development is something that I had been curious as well so of course it helps a lot. I also gained some soft skills that can be applied too because of the experience I gained from working on retail which is customer service and I think this is one of the most important soft skills that we need to be able to work together with clients and to help them get what they really are looking for.

Nowadays however. I’ve been learning to make PNGTuber and Vtuber models which is really popular around the game and pop culture communities, and I know that i

Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?

Yes, and I have been introducing them to people who just started their journey to the creative industry. First is to go to local libraries, and find anatomy books. Second would be don’t be scared to do still life painting using whatever object we could find around. And one but not least, is to always try talking with artists who have been working in the area way longer than us and to ask tips or just a mere critique for our artworks.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

As what I have described before, I used to live in Indonesia, I grew up there until I graduated high school and move here to be with my mom. When I grew up, there was no game studio in my original country, and art was seen as a hobby that even my uncle himself told me it wasted my time to do art. The stigma was so bad that they didn’t let me be more interested in the art world and told me to be more realistic with how the world is, which means go to school, then go work in travel agencies just like how my uncles and cousins are. I actually went to a Tourism Vocational High School due to this matter, until the moment I had a chance to open my own booth for this huge convention and I realized, I will do fine in art industry. Since then I tried my best to follow my dream by doing lots and lots of commissions, and even (this is a small secret I kept from my family) working on art college student assignments and being paid to do so. I don’t really have many goals in life, but what I do want is to finally able to open up a small game studio in Indonesia one day to let people who grew up like me to be able to work in this kind of industry and to let them have a chance to collaborate with AAA studios from the US. I have a huge privilege to be able to go to college here in US and not everyone has that chance, so I really hope that by using my privilege, I could gain tons of experience to work here in the States and to share it with people in Indonesia one day and to crack the taboo about how and what creative industry is.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://verun.carrd.co/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/verun_97?igsh=NmwzanRrbHh4NzJu&utm_source=qr
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vbelinda?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=ios_app
• Other: https://artistree.io/ve5