BOOM! Comics releases a life story for all artists and transformed into this graphic novel in I Moved to Los Angeles to work in Animation.
Yep, you heard me right, this is actually a real-life story of a life work as an artist. And this is actually for this year’s Christmas Wish List. At first, when I saw the post on Twitter, I wondered how does one artist survive in this world transformed into work as a professional artist. Even though, when this book showed up, it shows how animators get a lot of hassle to find a job and work as an animator. If you don’t know any of the life of an animator or if you’re new to this, then I’ll explain: in this world today, America has so many animation studios even famous ones like Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, Disney, Dreamworks, and etc. Even so the only place that you get to work as an animator is in Los Angeles where Hollywood produced so many famous movies like Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse or any Disney movie that you can think of, so many productions spend so much money to make these movies where animated or live action and at the end, you’ve been given such a fortune, it’s all animator’s dream come true. However this book is actually based on real life where everything has a few ups and downs, it’s more like New York with all the MTA fare hike, oh and that goes for the rent too, and somehow this book will actually be a learning experience to the aspiring animators to know what life looks like in the real world.
So the plot of the story is that it took place in the 2010s where everything is in harmony, then everything changed when the hikers attacked the innocent and forced them to work overtime or moved out of their cities. And then got a job for animation in LA after a few years of struggles for finding a job. An artist named Natalie Nourigat tells the story about her life as an artist, even though in the physical book, she seemed to be skilled enough to make comics for Boom! But I guess this almost looks like I’m reading an illustrated biography of her, just like Yoshitaka Amano’s biography book, the holy grail of artists. If you think that drawing is that easy and intended that anyone would give them a job for that, I’m sorry, but the harsh reality and truth is that in the world of artists, making art is never that easy, to begin with, even in this world, people barely accept artists who are skilled enough to work for their industrial work. I always tell myself that because more than anything I have to do my best for that even if I’m skilled enough to get a job or give more love for making art to the viewers.
So back on this comic, Natalie is from Portland, Oregon, and somehow she used to enjoy life as always even drawing comics for a living and has big dreams to travel abroad. Well, it almost seemed like I’m talking about Avatar The Last Airbender intro lines about harmony and the attack of the Fire Nation. Anyway, the struggle began when all of her art friends moved to L.A., so she plans to see for herself and life in L.A is beautiful for anyone to move there, the downside is that she needs a job in animation to live there, and actually, no one said that this could be that easy.
The author gives the readers so many rules of what is life in L.A and how applying for a job in animation works. One of my friends are learning animation, but clearly, I have never seen one of them or any grateful soul of an SVA student worked in animation before. This is how we actually think people in the 20s about this, even though if aspiring artists graduated with a B.F.A, they should understand this struggle. And this actually took place like 3 or 4 years ago when she got a job at L.A, and she’s proud of it, but the downside is that everything is a gamble to all artists. You’d expect that you get some experience to apply for a job like animation, but they have the guts and sweat to apply yourself in. If you’re still in college and don’t have a freelance job like that, that’s okay, because young artists have in mind to connect other people who can support each other for their work, join an art club. Social media would be best, even though most of the artists went on Twitter now, because of the serious problems on Tumblr, all the artists disappeared from there and moved to one of the biggest social media to grab some audience. Sorry, I’m getting off track, but please respect and support artists people.
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention at the beginning of the book shows that she studied Japanese and business in college, and got a job as a freelance artist after graduation. Even for that if she’s actually a skilled artist and became an animator, maybe she will someday meet Hayao Miyazaki. But this book is actually a guidebook for amateur and aspiring animators to know what is working as an animator in L.A looks like. And as for that you sooner or later know what good life feels like. However, other than American animation, I’m curious about Japanese animation, how do they manage to create a good anime series of a story and art. But going through with the story of this book, it seemed to be possible to know that you are not the only one who struggles for something like finding work as an animator or an illustrator.
So the life at L.A is great for her, even in the big city there are a lot of tourist attractions, much likely in New York where Times Square is surrounded by tourists and New York natives. But in this book, Natalie just pursued her dreams as an animator. And who cares if you’re too old to work as an animator because it doesn’t matter about age. This is just a how-to guidebook like all the other books that I know, like Scott McCloud, How to Draw Manga, and all the others is actually a learning experience to artists. However, getting other books like comics and art books is actually a learning experience to me to know about the story and the art, however, all of it is all for the project that I’m trying to make, because artists need to have an inspiration over this. The art of this book is all monochrome with pink on every page of this book, I guess her favorite color is pink after all and decided to color every page, but sometimes, she adds some other colors for the panels. Her drawing style is just like you’re watching some decent cartoon show on Cartoon Network, but yeah, believe it or not, she’s into that. And all these kind of interactions that she had in her experience for living in L.A is really a handful, just to know the readers to have the slightest idea of what life is like over there. In conclusion, her story was great, and all of this is based on real life, where everything goes like rolling a die and get a good number. The story is really an important guidebook for artists and animators to know how you will live in the real world. If you rather learn something to know what working as an animator looks like then this is for you.
Newsdesk