Interview with Storyboard Artist Vivienne Crews
To watch the full interview go to: https://youtu.be/8Gq3chEX2Yo
Laisa: Hello everyone. Today I have with us a special artist, and I’m going to let Becky introduce herself and Vivienne introduce herself.
Becky: Hello everyone. My name is Becky. I’ll be the American Sign Language interpreter today.
Vivienne: Hi everyone. Let me allow myself to introduce my name is Vivienne. I am a visual artist. I’ve loved doing storyboards for a long time. Since I was a kid, I started doing art probably about at age two. I started.
Laisa: Wow. Age 2!
Vivienne: Yeah. That’s my guess. That’s my best guess. I don’t remember exactly, but I’ve been doing it since that time, since I was a young child. At some point I did have, um, was involved with a small deaf class in primary school. And they were all deaf kids that were doing the design. It wasn’t a very long class, but then eventually I did transfer to an art school that specialized and focused in art, which was very exciting for me. And I think that started about in third grade, I started going to a mainstream and a hearing school. And so that changed a lot of my, myself and my experiences that I had. When I started, it was a very frustrating, I had to learn how to have a conversation at a young age with hearing people. So learning how to kind of quickly adapt and try to communicate through an interpreter. With teachers, even doing teaching ABCs, through sign language, the teachers, teaching them basic signs and words. So that was how I was raised. And typically I was just in a full hearing world for most of my exposure. I did go to a private school named SVA.
Laisa: New York city!!
Vivienne: That’s correct. Yeah. So I was focusing on studying and doing animation. Notice that I really wanted to work more on storyboard. That that’s where my passion was. So I graduated, but at that point I decided to focus more on storyboarding and that’s what I’ve been doing. And coming up with ideas and visualizing things, to be able to tell the story and through those storyboards, that’s really been my life so far, my life story to this point.
Laisa: Wow. Wait, so, okay. You started as a storyboard, like you started making drawings when you were like two years old in a deaf, only school that wasn’t specialized in art. Okay. But like, what about storyboard? Is that you like the most? Like what, why, why is it, is it the, like to tell your own stories or is it yeah. What exactly is about story board that connects with you and makes you happy?
Vivienne: Well, my strength tends to be expressive and emotions, and that probably comes from me being deaf and using my hands to communicate and relating people with facial expressions and with gestures. So that’s probably one of my bigger strengths as an artist, and that shows through my storyboards. You know, I really kind of just love having the visual imagery behind the stories that comes to life. That show that part, the creativity part that you can see as a story comes together because of course my strength is more visual.
Laisa: Oh, wow. That is so cool. Um, wow. Okay. And I know that you have, so from what I hear, you have a really great sense of space. Can you tell me a little bit about that and how you managed to create the camera? Um, the way that the camera moves, like, can you talk a little bit about how you were able to acquire those skills?
Vivienne: That’s a good question. Really. Being, you know, having starting with an image and not a word, how do I explain that? That’s really how I was born and raised. It’s when I’m doing things as an artist, I’m noticing that I tend to focus more on the picture and then studying and learning even a specific word in ASL. You see the picture of it first. So that’s at first when friends of this idea, when I was learning English, English is not my first language. My first language is American Sign Language. And of course that’s a more visual and gestural pictorial kind of an idea. So when you look at English and it’s text, you’re like, this means that thing. And that’s true for all of the English words. And then you. You can change those back into American sign language, but it comes a picture again, so that I, visual idea of that simplicity of showing something and understanding it conceptually through a visual means is a lot easier for me. And so then pulling that image from my head and putting it down on paper is again, another easier way for me to be able to visualize and understand things as opposed to written text.
Laisa: So, wow. That is amazing. Thank you for sharing that. So going to school, navigating the hearing world, what has been like one of the most difficult thing you have encountered, like being an artist?
Vivienne: So my perspective as a deaf artist, I think it’s really hard for me to get people to pay attention to just deaf artists in general. There are so many deaf artists who have skills and. And they focus on the disability as opposed to the skill that they might have. And it’s easy to get. It’s not as easy to get through and partner with hearing people because it seems that often hearing people have the mindset of, Oh, they’re disabled. I don’t know if they can do that, but it’s important not to focus on the disability, but to focus on the individual, to show what their skills truly are and not focus on the difficulty of communication. It can be difficult to have that communication, but to focus on their skills as an artist, that’s generally my perspective.
Laisa: Yes. I agree with you, Vivienne. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Anyways, I get excited about this because I’m an advocate for people. So thank you for sharing that. Yes, we need to focus on people for who they are. Everybody. We do hear that whenever you’re looking for people, you focus on what they’re bringing to the table and not on their disability. Cause that’s just an advantage that they have that you don’t have. Um, anyway, so let’s go on to, where do you grab inspiration for the stories and the illustrations that you create?
Vivienne: So first, my inspiration is Disney. Of course, Pixar is another one, obviously two most popular. But, um, I tend to do a lot of 2D design in my animation. I feel like that brings me a lot of information and inspiration visually the textile. I feel like it’s beautiful to look at. So I do have, have done 3D and it’s amazing. It’s great. It can be done so well and you can pull the audience in more and, um, and you can see even more of the stories and the idea with that as well.
Laisa: Wow. Well, yes, but I also want to know from, have you traveled like some personal, like besides like Disney and Pixar, like what personally inspires you to create, you know, like have you been outside the United States have trips like helped shape you or like, you know, things like that. I find like, More and more individualistic rather than what’s already out there.
Vivienne: Hmm. I haven’t had a lot of experience. Um, I had a lot of contact with other companies. I’m thinking, I think from my personal experience, I’ve seen a lot of different movies is. Uh, the GHIBLI studio, the spirit walk movies, uh, it’s very surreal. Those kinds of ideas. I like very surreal imagery. That’s kind of one example. You have too much experience, um, traveling outside.
Laisa: Oh, but that’s great. See, I got something out of you, surreal imagery. Okay. Okay. I see. Um, what, okay, so what would be an advice that you would give somebody. Who is that? And is pursuing a career in art or in the animation industry? Like what is an advice that you have followed or somebody gave to you or something that you wish you knew and you would like to give to somebody?
Vivienne: Oh gosh, I don’t have anything good right now. Good advice in general for people who would say don’t give up. Just keep trying, go for your dream, go for your goal. What do you want? If you care about it, don’t stop. Do what you want and keep working hard at it. Keep focused on that dream and catch it and you can become successful at it. And you’ll feel happy when you do it too, as opposed to hating what you want or not, not getting what you want. You have to love it. And that was what will give you happiness in the end.
Laisa: Yes. Keep going! That’s what’s going to give you happiness in the end. Powerful words by Vivienne. I want to thank you so much for being here today Vivienne and thank you everybody for tuning in.
