Ashley Fletcher

Revision Path is all about inspiring Black designers, and my conversation with Ashley Fletcher is a brilliant example of why that inspiration matters. Ashley drops some serious knowledge on finding your creative community, pushing boundaries, but also the importance of taking care of your well-being.

Ashley talked about her current work, including her business Goods Made By Digitrillnana, and she shared how her educational journey helped her growth in understanding design. We also talked shop on a few topics, including the role of design organizations in 2023, AI and intellectual property, and more.

Ashley’s story will leave you feeling inspired and ready to take your design career to new heights!

Interview Transcript

Maurice Cherry:
All right, so tell us who you are and what you do.

Ashley Fletcher:
Hey, everyone. I’m Ashley Fletcher. I’m a graphic designer and illustrator based in Washington, DC. by way of Prince George’s County, Maryland. I have a passion for visual storytelling and designing with intention and alignment. I’m also the owner of Goods Made by Digitrillnana, an art shop dedicated to celebrating culture and art through greeting cards, art prints, and more. Maurice, thank you so much for having me. Listening to this podcast has been a beacon of light for my career.

Maurice Cherry:
Oh, wow. Well, thank you. I love to start off the interview that way. Wow. How’s your year been going so far? How’s 2023 been?

Ashley Fletcher:
My year has been great. 2023 has been a year of really Repivoting, I think, my creative journey. So I’m excited to see what this new process has in store. I feel like I’ve checked off a lot of boxes. Sometimes when you’re always working and just grinding things out, you don’t really realize, hey, I accomplished all of these things. Also, this is my first year. I’m a breast cancer survivor, so this is my first year without any surgeries. So I am looking forward to what 2023 has to offer as far as my overall healing and well being as well.

Maurice Cherry:
Oh, wow. Well, congratulations on beating breast cancer.

Ashley Fletcher:
Thank you. Thank you.

Maurice Cherry:
What plans do you have for the summer?

Ashley Fletcher:
This summer I am going to be working just a few more events. I’m trying to add a few more events for my art shop. So I’ll be at Broccoli City Festival in July. Super excited because the past years I applied and I wasn’t accepted. So it’s always beautiful to see when things start to align and check that off. And I don’t have any vacations planned, but I’m sure I’ll go to New York for one of these amazing, like, Brooklyn Museum art nights and some little local travel as well.

Maurice Cherry:
If you make it up to New York, you should definitely check out the Poster House Museum.

Ashley Fletcher:
Yes. Okay.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, I get their emails. I’ve done some events with them as well, but they always have really great exhibitions. I haven’t been to the museum itself yet, but I always recommend people to go there. So if you get a chance to check it out, you should.

Ashley Fletcher:
Yeah, I definitely will.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. Let’s talk a little bit about your current job. You’re a graphic designer at Brookfield Properties. Tell me about that.

Ashley Fletcher:
Yeah, so they are kind of a real estate house. They work with everything from logistics warehouses to residential commercials to commercial property. So I am a part of their in house team. It’s a fairly small design team in DC. They have about three designers in New York, I believe it’s four or five. And then we also have designers that are working remotely and all over the world as well. It’s an international company, so yeah, it’s been really cool. They have a beautiful office. They received some awards for the best eco friendly, sustainable office. So very beautiful space to be working in and really inspiring. Lots of windows that I love because working at my when I was freelancing, I was in the house all the time, not a lot of suntime. So it’s been a beautiful shift. And I create a variety of things from eblast variety of I just did some graphics for a Summer Sounds event that they have at their properties in Denver. So really wide variety of designer projects that I’ve worked on.

Maurice Cherry:
Oh, very nice. And so it sounds like you’re in the office then working. It’s not like a remote or hybrid thing.

Ashley Fletcher:
Actually, it’s hybrid. So I’m three days in the office and two days at home. Okay.

Maurice Cherry:
How’s that been for you?

Ashley Fletcher:
It’s lovely. I love it. After freelancing again, stepping back into the corporate world, I realized how much I miss being around people on a regular basis. So having that balance has been really beneficial to me, I think. And then also the balance of not having to worry about commute for work for those two days because commuting can also be pretty draining depending on how far you are from your job and things like that. So it’s a really great balance.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, that’s something I’m sort of weighing now that I’m back on the job market and looking because I’ve done remote work for so long and this is like before the pandemic. I’ve been working remotely since 2008. So it’s not that I am averse to going back into an office, but Atlanta traffic is no joke. I’m really trying to think of like, if I work somewhere in the office, is it going to be somewhere that I can not have like an hour long commute and that’s even if I take the train as opposed to driving or something like that. But it sounds like you’ve got a good set up, though, with the hybrid.

Ashley Fletcher:
I do. And thankfully my commute is very beautiful. It depends on the day, of course. Traffic in DC is pretty tough, but it usually doesn’t take me longer than maybe 45 minutes. On a rough day, maybe an hour, it’s really nice. And when traffic is sweet, it’s like 20 minutes it might take me to get home. So it’s very nice commute. I remember when I was working way back when I worked for the government and I was traveling, I think like 2 hours away and oh my gosh, I don’t know how I did it. I don’t know how I did it. I commend all the people that have to commute whether driving or taking public transportation. It’s tough.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. I’m right across the street from a train station, so it will be easy for me to get on the train. But everyone knows Atlanta’s mass transit is not the best. I’d say it’s probably gotten a lot better, at least in terms of the trains. I can’t say for the buses though. But I want to make sure if I do get back to a hybrid thing that it’s in a situation where I don’t have a long commute. It’s not going to take me forever to get to and from work because like you said, that part can be draining, especially if it’s not a good commute to get there, like, if you’re passing through a certain part of town or anything like that.

Ashley Fletcher:
Yeah, I had an interesting experience a couple of years ago when I was taking public transportation, and ever since then, I was like, I have to be able to drive to work because it’s so draining. You don’t know what kind of experience you might have that day on or off the train. And also for me, I absorb a lot of people’s energy. So having all of that various energy around me, sometimes it’s like, wait a minute. By the time I get to work, I’m like, okay, I need to decompress. I need some sage going on, maybe a little nap. So, yeah, definitely grateful. I think this job came at a time where a lot of things aligned for me. So if you are on the job hunt and you’re having a tough time, I just say manifest, write those things down that you want, that you’re looking for those qualities in that space, because those were deal breakers for me. So, yeah, definitely grateful to have this job come across. And the team is really awesome. Everyone is super helpful, friendly. My first day, like, the welcome, it was just so beautiful. So really grateful.

Maurice Cherry:
Nice. What does I guess, like, a regular day look like? Because it sounds like you’re working on a lot of different type of design things for the company. You mentioned e-blasts and a number of other things.

Ashley Fletcher:
Yeah. So we utilize Monday as a software for a lot of our projects. So I’ll come in most times, I know have an idea of what I’ll be working on, so just prioritizing those projects based on their deadlines. Sometimes I’m checking in with the marketing team, so our design team is kind of underneath the marketing team, so checking in with those requests, asking any questions that I need, kind of gathering that designer brief of, okay, here’s all the components to what I’ll be creating and what I need. And then I’ll just go in from there. A lot of our materials, because book build is pretty established, some things have been created already. So I might be going in and tweaking an already existing design. I might be creating something from scratch. Like, I designed some exterior and interior graphics for the Highlight Center in Houston. If you’re in Houston, check it out. It’s very nice. Lovely work. I’m really proud of myself for that. So I spent a lot of time sketching, carving out time in the day for research. Also, again, asking those different questions with the marketing team of things that they needed that I may not have gotten in the brief in ideation sharing that with my creative director and that process of ideation and revisions. So that’s usually what it’s like. They also have something called activated. And so they have various events throughout the office. One day we had, like, boba tea. They may have I think they have a Pride event. Actually, today they have a Pride event. So different various different events to get you engaged with other people in the office and the other tenants that are in the office. And Google is in their office as well. So it’s a cool way to engage and break up the work day. So, yeah, that’s usually what I’m doing, attending some of those events during lunchtime, getting some free ice cream, some free boba tea, and going back to the office and zoning into some of the deadlines that I have.

Maurice Cherry:
I mean, honestly, as you describe it, it sounds like the ideal type of sort of design position for where you’re at in your career. It’s open to the point that you can sort of work hybrid, but then you’re also working on all of these different types of things, so you’re stretching your skills in other ways. And the team is nice and there’s like, fun, engaging activities for you all to do. That’s good. That’s great. Actually, I wish a lot of designers kind of had that type of set up because it’s really fun. I mean, it makes work fun in that aspect because you’re not so keyed into the work that you can’t sort of know what else is going on in the company with other people and stuff like that.

Ashley Fletcher:
Right. And I think sometimes for people, that can be the difference from in house or being at an agency. One of my coworkers had shared agency life. It can be a lot more hectic depending on where you are. So definitely want to consider that when you’re looking for places to work.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. Now, before Brookfield, you were doing freelance design. Actually, you’re still doing freelance design. You mentioned that a bit earlier. Talk to me about that. Like, how do you juggle that freelance work with doing your nine to five work?

Ashley Fletcher:
Yeah, so when I first started at Brookfield, I had a freelance project that I was doing. And honestly, it was a little hectic because I was adjusting so much to being back in the office. I went from grad school right into freelance, and that was also during COVID So I graduated in 2020 in the height of COVID So it was a lot of different things were happening within the work industry. So now I’m able to kind of set some time aside and really just being intentional about my timing. Weekends, I’m usually working, and that’s okay. Sometimes I take a break, I’ll spend one day kind of doing letting things fly. So if I want to go hang out with my family or get pizza, whatever, just go outside and take a break. I definitely do that. I prioritize that, especially nowadays, that’s kind of priority of getting that break. But definitely timing. Like, I’ll come home some days if I have my art shop. So I’m doing a lot of work for that. I’ll take a little nap, maybe I’ll get home maybe around seven or something like that, take a nap, get things back started, maybe around ten. And depending on how my creative flow goes, I’ll end around one. Or I might keep going until I’m like, okay, you need to take a little nap before work. So it definitely depends on the project. It depends on how I’m feeling, my well being and everything. So if I’m tired, I’ll try to push myself just a little, but I got to get my rest because you create much better when you’re rested. So it’s been an interesting time. I’ll say adjusting with nine to five in freelance, but again, scheduling and being intentional with my time. So if that means I have to put my phone in a drawer so I’m not checking social media or being distracted by notifications, I’ll do that. Yeah, it’s very helpful.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. One thing with trying to make that balance is, I mean, of course you have your regular nine to five work. That’s the stuff you know you’re going to do, because that’s probably the most money that you’re making. You have your health benefits tied to that, so you don’t want to lose that. But I remember those days of trying to balance freelance at nine to five, and it’s not an easy thing to do, especially if your freelance work starts to outpace your nine to five work. Yeah, I remember when I was starting to do that, honestly, back then they called it teleworking, this was like 2007 or something. And they would say, oh yeah, you could work three days in the office, two days out. But then the two days that I wasn’t in the office, I never did work. I only did freelance work because when I’m at home, I’m thinking, okay, I can sort of juggle doing both. Because your mindset is just different in an office, I find, than when you’re doing it at home. At home, and this is pre-pandemic, of course, but at home you’re around your creature comforts: your bed, your couch, all this sort of stuff. And it’s tougher to kind of get into that work mindset. I remember even at the beginning of the pandemic when I interviewed folks just kind of asking them, how are you getting into work mode at home? Because it can be so difficult to do that. It took me quite a while to be able to juggle that, to be able to switch off work brain and go to freelance brain and try to balance those things. It can be pretty tough.

Ashley Fletcher:
Yeah, it can. And I think as designers, we’re constantly creating, we’re constantly problem solving. And I don’t think we give ourselves enough grace sometimes of multitasking with that. When you’re always problem solving, it can definitely create burnout. That’s why, again, for me, I’m going to take a nap. If it’s one thing that I’m going to do, I’m going to take a nap. And sometimes that helps and sometimes it doesn’t. In between working and starting with all my freelance projects, I think too, being honest with yourself about your time and also with the client. For me, I was working on a project, I started a project right before I found out that I was going to be hired for this new position. So I had to let the client know, hey, my schedule is definitely going to change. Some days I wasn’t able to check my email at all and having to pace that time, or some days I would be working really late and so I’m scheduling emails and check ins with clients to go out the next morning. And then not to mention for me, I had a lot of family stuff happening at that time too, like dealing with aging grandparents and family members that can also wait into your time. So I just had to be honest with myself and say, hey, okay, this is where we are. And also therapy. I have an amazing therapist. She’s like, you should spend some time not freelancing and take a break. This month I think is like the first month that I’m not actively seeking freelance work and hopefully that I’ll be able to shift a little bit back because there’s definitely a lot of projects that I’m interested in doing. But yeah, she told me, she said you need to take a break. You need to go ahead and just enjoy this new chapter a little bit before you continue and get back into work.

Maurice Cherry:
If I can give just a tiny bit of advice there. If you get to the point where you can sort of see that you have enough money to hire an assistant, like a virtual assistant, do it. Do it and just have them do basic tasks like responding back to messages. Like for me, responding back to emails timely was always the thing that kind of caught me up. It was like, oh, I forgot to send this. And I sent maybe something a little too late. If you can afford it, do that to handle the smaller mundane tasks that you can sort of take off your plate so you can then focus on the creative work.

Ashley Fletcher:
Yeah, I suck at that. I definitely agree. And I can’t wait until I have evolved. The practice has evolved and I can do that as well.

Maurice Cherry:
So I want to learn more about you and about your journey as a designer. So we’re going to kind of take things back to the beginning. Are you originally from the DC area?

Ashley Fletcher:
Yes, so I’ve lived in Maryland pretty much all of my life. So yeah, I’m Maryland through and through. Went to high school in Maryland, went to college two times in Maryland, so yeah, Maryland, DC native.

Maurice Cherry:
Did you grow up around a lot of design and everything as a kid?

Ashley Fletcher:
No, I didn’t. But I grew up around a lot of entrepreneurs and creatives. So my mom is a hairstylist, and I think sometimes we don’t give our hairstylists the credit they deserve as far as being creative. What she does and creates with hair is amazing, from cuts to color. So seeing her seeing her as an entrepreneur, navigating having owning her own salon. My father also was in the carpentry industry when seeing him navigate and just creating things with his hands. My grandfather is a fine artist. He’s also a jack of all trades from cooking. There’s so many paintings in my grandparents house that he’s created. He’s upholstered chairs. So I’ve been surrounded by creatives without really knowing. And a lot of the times that I spent in my mom’s hair salon was looking through Black hair magazines and publications. So I spent a lot of time unknowingly around ingesting design without really knowing.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, hairstylist. And I would say also, like, seamstresses. I’m gendering it by saying that, but, like, people that can sew and everything. Yeah, top tier people really like underestimate, I think especially probably hair more than than sewing. But, like, yeah, everyone’s got to get a cut. Everybody has to get their hair done at some point for something that’s a very lucrative I mean, it’s a lucrative thing, but it is something I think we can kind of in our community probably take for granted a little bit.

Ashley Fletcher:
And the community that they bring, especially Black hair salons and barbershops like, it’s a sense of community there. They’re using our hair in a sense, it’s like a bleak canvas. You might have some different scalp situations going on or different things with hair loss and all types of things, and they’re supposed to create something out of that. You can’t get much more creative than that. And it’s a lot of risk with what they do. They cut your hair wrong or you don’t like what they do, you might lose a client. It might create a tough relationship. So my hats are off to what they’re able to do day in and day out, using their hands.

Maurice Cherry:
Now, you mentioned going to college in Maryland. You went to Salisbury University, and you majored in graphic design. Since you kind of grew up around all these creatives and entrepreneurs, did you already sort of have a sense like, this is what I want to study, or did you kind of fall into that once you got to Salisbury?

Ashley Fletcher:
So I fell into that after I got to Salisbury. So in high school, I took a yearbook course for juniors my junior and senior year. And my junior year, I went to yearbook camp, and I was introduced to the process of design thinking again, I was collaging and really looking into fashion magazines. Like, I loved Vogue, all of those magazines, the models, just the visual storytelling from that. And so your book introduced me to this thing, like, oh, you can create a design and a publication on this program, and it’s printed and what the print process looks like. And I really loved it, and I thrived in it from the interviewing, interviewing different people from high school, and photography. I really loved photography. I took a photography course in high school, so by the time I got to college, I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. I was like, well, I kind of like marketing, so I’ll just do business administration with the track in marketing, I realized there’s a bunch of accounting courses and a lot of math involved. I said, okay, let’s be real with yourself here about what you really want to do. And so I started to think about how much joy your book brought me, like being able to wear these multiple hats of one day you’re shooting and take capturing moments, and then the other day you’re dabbling in copywriting and creating captions, and then you’re dabbling in creative layout and design. And I called my mom and I said, I think I want to design magazines. I don’t know what it is who does that, but I think that’s what I want to do. And so I looked through the mass head of some magazine, I don’t remember which one, and I found the title graphic designer, and I had a title to put with the thing. I checked if my school was offering any art or graphic design, and they did. That’s some alignment right there, because it could have been a whole different situation. And I switched. I was like, if I’m going to spend four years learning, I want to learn something that I’m interested in. So I switched to graphic design with the minor in marketing.

Maurice Cherry:
Nice. How was your time in general there at Salisbury? Like, once you switched over, do you find that they really kind of prepared you as a designer?

Ashley Fletcher:
I don’t think…so. I went to Salisbury — it’s a PWI — and their population at the university of Black students was pretty small at the time. So of course you have the nuances with that. And then I started in 2010. For me, the design industry was completely different than where it grew. By 2014, in graphic design one, we were sketching things on paper. Then we had to color it with colored pencil, then put it into using the light box, and then putting it into design software. So curriculum was very early on of those kind of foundational processes. So by the time I graduated, because for me, I felt like there was a lack of mentorship in the curriculum and preparedness. I don’t think I was prepared at all. I think sometimes with certain schools and structure and curriculum, if you’re not a stellar designer off the bat, some people might not nurture their skill set or say, hey, let me help you find your way. And there was actually an incident that I had with an instructor that he had said something really racist towards another student for a design. We had a design critique and it was just like really off putting. And so when you have those different nuances and situations and you can’t connect necessarily with your instructors, it’s very hard then to rely on them for help and for them to see you as just a student that is trying to just make a living out of this. And also, I think that the pace of Salisbury is a different pace from DC that I’ve experienced. And so people are enjoying life out there. It’s not too far from the beach, they’re chilling. It’s a very chill vibe there compared to how the design industry is now. So all of those things I left school not really knowing where to go, what I wanted to do in design. Again, at that time, there were a lot of traditional forms of design. Digital design wasn’t really a thing. Yeah, so I graduated and I worked at a beauty shop cosmopros that my mom frequented for all of her hair supply needs. I worked there for a few months. I was a winter graduate, so I worked there for a few months, and then I got a job as an administrative assistant at a medical association. So, yeah, definitely didn’t get a job right off the bat or really know what design looked for me outside of what I was learning in undergrad. I will say though, I did gain a lot of experience. I did designer for a lot of the organizations on campus, like MPHC and some of the other organizations that I was a part of. So I was able to create and explore what my design practice looked like, what I wanted to create outside of classroom assignments. And I think that was really beneficial to where I am now.

Maurice Cherry:
I was just talking for the last episode I did was with Kevin Tufts. He’s a product designer at Facebook. And we were sort of talking about kind of the time period that you were in school, like early two thousand and ten s and how it felt like design really took this abrupt shift into digital and product at a time when I think a lot of us prior to that were learning about more traditional design, like graphic design, visual design, web design. And then overnight that became product designer, UX designer. And you’re like, wait a minute, what? You thought you knew one thing and now your title is different and sometimes it’s the same skills, sometimes it’s not. Like, I can imagine. Certainly if you’re in school at that time, like, yeah, you get out and you thought you were learning one thing, and then you try to look for jobs and everything is different than what you thought it would be from what you learned. Yeah, I can certainly empathize with that. That whole time period was I’d. Say probably from 2006 to 2012. There were so many changes happening in design because of technology. Also, the browser was becoming more of a tool that you could use for design and less of just a presentation for a design. Right. Like, you could now do things in the browser and you have new tools coming out. I think this was around the time I want to say this was around the time, like Sketch or maybe like another web based tool really started to come about. I don’t know if Figma was around.

Ashley Fletcher:
Back then, but yeah, I think Envision was one.

Maurice Cherry:
Oh, yeah, InVision. Yeah. So you had this kind of shift from the Adobe style of these extremely expensive, extremely complicated pieces of software because they started to go subscription based. And then in response to that, people are like, well, we’re just going to make something that you can do in the browser. I don’t know if Sketch was in the browser, but it was just such an interesting time because the tools were changing from what industry standards used to be to these new things. And again, the titles were also changing. I feel like when I look back at that, that was a very tumultuous time in design that it was hard to keep up with what was going on because innovation was happening so quickly.

Ashley Fletcher:
Yeah, and graduating in the midst of that when you still are trying to learn this new thing, like four years, learning something that goes by really fast, and depending on your curriculum, depending on who your professors are and their skill set, their skill set could still be in a certain decade of design. And now they’re like, okay, everybody, let’s rush. I remember buying my first Adobe software when you had to buy the CDs and you couldn’t share the CD code or whatever the little access code was to now, like subscription. I remember how much of a big deal that was and just the shift that was coming. It was really tough. By the time I got to MICA, it kind of advanced, too. And so I was with a whole new cohort of people that were ready to create design in this new way. And so I feel like Salisbury was really an exploration of what design is like, a really rough exploration of, okay, these are these different tools. This is layout. But MICA really set the foundation and kind of solidified it for me. Yeah, that 2010 period. Now, even now, we have content creation now, which also shifts the media in which we’re designing for. And so, I mean, Apple is going to come out. They just dropped their latest thing, and that’s going to shift the medium in which we’re creating and the scale and the size and the resolution, all of that matters when you’re thinking about and understanding the tools that you have now.

Maurice Cherry:
During that time that you were like you said, you’re working in this beauty supply shop. You were working as an admin assistant. How were you feeling about doing that kind of work? Like you mentioned before, going to Salisbury, and you spend all this time studying for your craft, and then you get out and you’re not working in what you studied. How did that time make you feel?

Ashley Fletcher:
It was definitely an adjustment process. I think also dealing with I talk about this a lot amongst my friends and family, like post grad depression as an undergrad, when you go from being in this community of people and then you move away from that community of people, that’s such a shift. Like your friends. Like, I had a best friend, she lived in New York, so I didn’t get to see her unless we came to see each other. So that sense of community for me, shifting in who you are when you grow and you’re living on your own in a town or in college, that’s a completely different person from when you were living with your mom in high school. And so going back to that, there’s all these different changes. But I think I knew that what I was doing was just a placement of like I knew that my career was going to be bigger than what it currently was. So having that administrative assistant role, I used to always when computers first came out, my grandma, she had a computer, I would always play like, oh, I’m working at an office, or things like that. And I think it works for the logical I’m a Virgo, so really scheduling, organizing those things I love, I kind of thrive in. So it wasn’t a miserable place. It was also a great company to work for. Again, it was a small organization, but they had just a lot of different things to cultivate community there. And I was able to I was in that role for a year, and then I moved to their meetings department because I guess I was doing so well in assisting with the events that they did. It wasn’t miserable. I always knew even before graduating Salisbury, I was like, okay, I’m graduating. Here are my options. I could go back to school and go to grad school, and I kind of knew a little bit about Mica. And so by the time I had that full time administrative assistant position and then into meetings, I was like, okay, you’ve been here for I think it might have been year two. Now, what are we doing next? Because you can get complacent here or you can take that leap. Just like you took the leap from business administration, which felt comfortable, to going for design. I told myself, you didn’t take that leap just to give up or to just kind of settle for this current position. So I applied to go to MICA and I got accepted.

Maurice Cherry:
Nice. Tell me about what that was like. I’m pretty sure that was much different from Salisbury?

Ashley Fletcher:
Yes, it was much different. First of all, I must say that my love for Baltimore, oh, my goodness, it’s such a beautiful place to be, a beautiful community to grow. Of course, part of my time was spent in what they call like the MICA bubble. So the bubble of the art community in school there, but during, just constantly inspired by other creatives. That was something that I loved and really propelled my understanding of what a creative practice looks like and how other people are creating. So it was beautiful. I did a post Baccular program, and then I did the MFA program. So when I first applied, I applied to both, but I was accepted into the post baccalaureate. That program was phenomenal. I grew so much. It was just one year, but I grew so much in that one year of my understanding for design. I think by that time, I was a much different person than when I first graduated. I had started to really focus on mindfulness practices, and I was being mindful of the soaps that I was using and the food that I was putting in my body, and also having this awakening of learning about African American and Black artists and designer. And so I learned about Emory Douglas there. He spoke at Bowie [State] University. And I got to meet him and just really teaching myself the history that I wanted to learn, because I was, again, very intentional about that. It’s like, okay, I have this skill set. I know what this is. I’ve looked through Meggs Book of Graphic Design history, and I don’t see any Black people, but I know we’re here. I know I’m not the first graphic designer, so let me do the work to teach myself. And I think a lot of us do that. We have to teach ourselves a lot of our own history. Thankfully, now things are very different. You could pull up TikTok and you have a whole video on designers, fashion designers, whatever you want to learn, you can learn. So, yeah, it was a beautiful time of exploration, being around other designers that had different backgrounds, like a lot of people had. They were science majors. Not everyone had a design background. And so we all brought different perspectives to what we were creating, and it was really good. The curriculum also was just it’s a night and day from my time at Salisbury and my time at MICA. Again, the design industry was very different at that time, too. I started MICA in 2017. So again, two different eras of design. I’m forever grateful for that experience. I’ve blossomed so much and added so many things like motion graphic to my skill set. I remember there was a workshop that we would have different workshops throughout the year. And we had a workshop on after Effects. And I was like, what is this? I thought I got away from math. What are all these numbers. What is this interface? I was completely intimidated. But by the time I started the MFA program, I took a motion graphics class because I realized these target commercials. This is motion graphics. This is how you can use design as a tool in a different medium. It doesn’t have to be traditional print or anything like that. So I wanted to learn how to do that. I wanted to add that to my toolkit and my skill set. I spent a lot of time that first year learning about publication design and these methods that I was drawn to that drew me to design in the first place. Salisbury, at the time that I was there, I don’t think that we learned a lot about the foundation of layout design. And so I was able to get that at MICA. So I spent a lot of that first year exploring that.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, I mean, it really sounds like MICA just kind of re energized you as a designer and kind of put you on the track that you needed to be on to get to where you’re at now.

Ashley Fletcher:
Yeah, it definitely did. And also the amount of resources that they have. Their career development. Yeah, the career development department, they are super helpful. They help you find jobs, they help you cultivate your portfolio, build your portfolio. They have so many tools of here’s how to interview that they update and keep updated. And so having access to those resources as a student and as a graduate and an alumni, it’s so beneficial. We need those tools, especially, again, as Black designers, where we may not have representation or we may not see ourselves in certain industries. And I think we deserve mentors. We need mentors at every step of the journey. And so they were really a lifeline for a lot of those things of preparing for your portfolio, your resume. They have full templates that they update in different scenarios. And those things I didn’t receive from Salisbury at the time, from my program or the university. I can’t say that those things are whether they’ve improved or not, but yet having access to those various resources. Baltimore is also just a great community for artists. There’s so many different resources and grants. And I had exhibited my work at my first art exhibition. I never would have thought, like, oh, I can show my work here. I don’t have to create art. It doesn’t have to be on a canvas. I don’t have to pull out a paintbrush, but I can actually showcase my work. That was also the first time I ever sold artwork. So I was introduced to new forms of art and showcase my art in different ways. They have something called the Is. It the art market? Mica art market every year. And so this big thing around holiday season, the Illustrator department, they have this big set up so students can sell their artwork. There’s different vendors from the community as well as alumni. So I created and sold my first art print and stickers there. And so that was kind of the birth of the art shop that I have today. So, yeah, getting introduced to all of these different means of showcasing your design and your art, it was really a great time.

Maurice Cherry:
Wow. Yeah. Sounds like MICA was transformative in many ways for you.

Ashley Fletcher:
Yeah, it definitely was.

Maurice Cherry:
You mentioned resources, and we sort of had this conversation a bit before we started recording, and I was like, let’s save it for the show. Another resource that is available to us as designers are design organizations. There’s AIGA. There’s the Graphic Artists Guild, IDSA, et cetera. What are your thoughts on sort of design organizations now? Because you’ve said before again, this is before we started recording, but AIGA DC, for example, was a big help for you.

Ashley Fletcher:
Yeah. So in between kind of that shift before MICA and while working as an administrative assistant, the meetings, I was like, okay, I need to be around the people. Where are the designers? I will say give credit to Salisbury. One of my professors was like, you guys need to join this. You need to join AIGA. It’s only however the membership was, it’s only $5. You need to join. You need to join. And in my mind, I’m like, well, I don’t see Black people in this class. I don’t even know if I want to enter another space where I’m like, okay, here we go. That kind of thing also very much an introvert, so maybe my introvert self was like, speaking of, oh, no, I have to go talk to more people or join a group with other people. But that later came back because I listened to revision podcast. Thank you very much. Thank you. Because you guys definitely found me and helped me to just figure out where to go. And I think one episode you were talking about AIGA, and that is a resource. And so I was like, okay, let me look this up. And so I went to one of their events, and I think AIGA DC has been a great resource for me. I was able to apply for a scholarship while at Mica. They also have various events like DC Design Week. And so I was able to do a pop up shop with them, with my art shop. So I think depending on where you are, the different chapters might be a little different. But AIGA DC has definitely been an amazing resource for me to find my way, figure out what places I could work, what different career paths other people had and their journey, and just connecting with other designers. Also, more recently, I was a part of Designers Ignite, and so that was during COVID but it was an opportunity for designers to Black Designers Ignite. It was an opportunity for us to talk about our work, our progress, where we are, and for us to get paid for speaking. So that was an amazing resource. I think COVID and post COVID brought about a lot of different design organizations that I found that I could connect with versus before, it was just AIGA. DC, or AIGA in general, not even DC. And that felt a little bit more corporate for me at the time. Again, the design industry had a major shift early on. Some of the things and practices, they seemed a little, to me, outdated, a little closed off. But as time has progressed, I think AIGA has been a great resource also. It’s an online resource, but brand new website by under consideration. I think that’s the proper umbrella, but they’re a great resource for anything branding, branding, identity, visual identity. So different online resources and communities I’ve been able to connect with. So if I didn’t get it from one organization, then I was able to kind of navigate to some of these other organizations to find the resources and just to connect with the people that I felt that represented me.

Maurice Cherry:
For people that have listened to the show, I’ve kind of mentioned AIGA a lot over the years. I’ve volunteered for them, things of that nature. I really do wonder in general, about the role of design organizations for the modern designer. I remember this might have been, I guess, maybe about right before the pandemic. I know that there was a lot of talk with AIGA about them not really considering UX designers as designers, and I feel like I think the organization started to come around on that. But there have been a lot of topics recently regarding AI art and sort of the encroachment of technology into the creative space and what that means for creatives in general. And I’ve seen honestly, a lot of our modern design organizations have been kind of silent about it. I think I might have heard the most from the graphic artist guild. I know that they do some regular events, but, like, AIGA has been silent. I don’t know if IDSA has said anything or any other types of organizations. I would love to see our designer orgs in general, just be more proactive and talk about the things that are happening in the industry instead of just taking dues and maybe having a monthly webinar. And this is no shade to anyone in particular, but I would love to see them just be more in the community and proactive in that way, because it sort of feels like, especially with AIGA now, them I will single out. I remember when I was volunteering with them and there was this big push for us to get more Black students, really more HBCUs involved with student groups. And it’s like, yeah, but the parameters around a student group might not apply for HBCU, because for a student group, you have to, I think, be within 50 miles of a regular chapter. You have to have at least ten students that are studying design. And then I think a professor has to be or had to be, like, a sustaining member, like one of the top membership levels. If you did those three things, then you could have a student chapter. And I’m like, well, that might be prohibitive for an HBCU that’s like, not near a city or there’s not ten students in the program.

Ashley Fletcher:
There might be two, right?

Maurice Cherry:
Like, it’s prohibitive. And so we were trying to talk about getting them to sort of lessen that for HBCUs, and then they were like, well, if we do it for them, we have to do it for everybody. And I’m like, well, do it for everybody. But I mean, the reason that they didn’t want to do that is because it boils down to finance. If they know each student group is getting at least a minimum amount of money that goes back into the organization, all of that stuff, it’s all somewhat self sustaining in that way. So in that respect, I don’t know if our design orgs are equipped at the moment to really do that. I would love to just see more of that in general, because I don’t really see a lot of it now. I feel like they’re being pretty quiet and reactionary instead of really like, speaking up about how this affects our industry, how sort of these things affect our industry.

Ashley Fletcher:
Yeah, I think we definitely because they hold this title of being a guild for graphic designers and artists, we also expect them to lead some of the different changes and to kind of push to the conversation, to push the changes to advocate for us, especially when it comes to AI. I would have thought with Photoshop releasing this new AI feature that’s going crazy, that they would connect, the two organizations would come together and say, okay, here’s what we have on this. Here’s what this tool is doing, here’s the information, or here’s the discussion that we can have around this. Maybe they are having it. And I don’t know, because, again, I’m not within these organizations, but we definitely want and we talked a lot about the shift that happened in design from 2010 to 2017 or even 2014. I think being in the midst of that and helping designers, maybe it’s a thing of understanding the core audience. A lot of young designers rely on them or may go to them to help them in these different moments of their career. And so if these practices and things are outdated, you’re going to lose those people that really do at the core need your assistance. Like, HBCUs should for sure be supported, especially given how eager a lot of the companies were to highlight Black stories and Black voices and oh, now we have all of these different initiatives to support HBCUs. Well, we want to see that applied across the board, and not just for a short period of time, because we already know that we’re dealing with so many barriers and checklist, stipulations, whatever when it comes to even getting hired for a job. Because let’s be real. Like, the hiring process and those practices are still very challenging. And so if our own organizations that are for us aren’t helping us get over that hump, aren’t leading the conversation, aren’t pushing and encouraging these companies and HR hiring practices to change and shift as design is changing and shifting, what’s really the purpose? What’s going on? I think COVID thankfully shook a lot of organizations and things and practices up. And I think companies need to be doing those checks and balances on a regular basis, not just every decade or natural disaster. We need to be doing these things on a regular basis and having these conversations so that your organization can sustain itself and the culture of design and where it’s headed. Yeah. AI. I don’t even want to talk about it. Don’t understand just the overall checks and balances. I have not used the Photoshop tool. I will use the Lasso and the pencil tool till I can’t no more before I begin swapping out backgrounds with different stuff, until I don’t know. I don’t fully trust it right now. But just like with other things, we evolve and we grow. So I’ll look forward to the day that I actually test out that tool.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, I haven’t downloaded I think it’s like a beta version of Photoshop that allows you to kind of it’s similar, I guess, to content aware fill, where it will automatically generate part of an image or something. I haven’t done that yet, but we’re certainly seeing AI filters being a big thing if you’re on TikTok, if you’re on Instagram. I mean, even augmented reality stuff, I guess, kind of maybe ties into this a little bit, like stuff that Snap has done with filters and lenses and stuff. But it would be good to hear from our design organizations. They’re just kind of thoughts about this, even if it’s like drawing a line in the sand or something. Because I know that it’s only going to be a matter of time where people who are not designers will generate AI art things and then try to take them to designers for edits or changes or something. And I feel like there needs to be an industry wide line in the sand that says, we are not doing this. Absolutely not. Like, it needs to be something that is across the board. Yeah.

Ashley Fletcher:
In a way to protect your intellectual property as a designer. I think there was one app that everyone was using and it was putting together all these really cool pictures on Instagram. It’s like, okay, but where are these images being pulled from? It’s being pulled from the Internet. Somebody had to create bits and pieces and is now creating this beautiful picture of you. So I think the music industry has started to set some parameters around AI because they’re using Drake’s voice on a Kanye beat.

Maurice Cherry:
Oh, yeah, I remember that.

Ashley Fletcher:
Things like that are happening. So, yeah, we also, as designers, want to need to start having those conversations too, especially when it comes to our intellectual property and how our work can be protected and what our new design process will look like when we are working within AI generated art.

Maurice Cherry:
Well said. Well said. What advice would you give to someone out there who’s kind of hearing your story and they want to kind of follow in your footsteps? What would you tell them first?

Ashley Fletcher:
I definitely say take the risk. I think through these different moments of my journey, it really resulted in me taking a risk. Like just going with it, going with what I wanted. Sometimes I would say, oh, no, let’s play safe and let’s try this. No, go for what you want if you want to, especially in the age that we are in now where you can directly reach people. I know people say this all the time, but it really does matter. Your moment can change from night and day just by you sharing your work, sharing your design process. It can be an ugly design process. It doesn’t have to be the final product. But sharing how you think through creatively different works and things like that can be the next step that you need to elevate and pivot your career and your dream career, or your dream creative journey. Not even just a career, but your dream creative practice. So I think definitely go for it. If there’s something that you want to do, if it’s something in your heart that you’re like, oh, I don’t know how you’re putting all these limitations, just do it. Just take the first step, because I promise you, everything else is going to fall in line. I would have never thought that by me switching my major and being in love with yearbook and magazines would now lead to where my career is now. Everything that I do is fulfilling it’s in alignment with who I am. So really just take that risk. And also knowing again what your values are and what kind of work you want to be creating, what type of clients you want to work with, and manifesting that. Speaking of into existence also, I think trusting that journey and process and being okay, that it can get a little messy. It can not be like, for me, I was out of work for a very long time when this just this past year, to the point where I was like, I don’t know, I was kind of burnt out a little bit from freelance. I don’t know what I’m doing. I really don’t want to work full time, but just not really knowing what that next step was. But it’s working out for me. Things aligned. I got a job that I really loved. I love there’s so many different things that I prayed on and manifested on and just really started to be intentional about the things that I was asking for and not playing. Don’t play yourself small. You got to think big. You really do. Like, whatever you want to achieve in this lifetime, if it’s aligned, it’ll definitely work out. So just really take those steps. I think also asking not being too afraid to ask for help, sometimes I forget that, hey, it’s okay to go and reach out to this person. If you don’t know how to do this thing, like using that network and community that you have because you have it for a reason, whether it’s an old teacher or an old classmate, you just never know. Don’t be afraid to ask for that help, especially with someone who didn’t necessarily have mentors or someone consistently guiding me through this creative process. I’ve just been like, okay, I want to do this. Let me try it. Let’s see how it works. Like, I want to create an art shop. I don’t know what’s going to happen, what’s going to come of it. Well, now I’m in four stores and I’ve sold my artwork internationally. There’s so many different things of taking that leap, but also asking for help along that journey, like, don’t be afraid to do it. The worst that anybody can say is, no, can’t help you, or I don’t know the answer. That’s it, I think. Yeah, just really taking that leap. Also getting your creative practice in order in your creative process, I think that’s something that I didn’t realize until later on down the line, especially after being in Mica and the rigor that is grad school and being diagnosed with breast cancer. I think I was like, oh my gosh, did I work myself to the bone? What is going on? How was I not paying attention to my body during this time? And so really figuring out what creative practice works for you, what that looks like. Fletcher it’s taking a day off throughout the week to go explore, to go be in nature, to go on a road trip or a trip somewhere, if you can just invigorate your creativity, taking rest from working in general just so that you can take care of your well being and your health. The nature in which graphic design lives in, it’s a fast paced environment where people essentially want you to be robots of just working around the clock and churning out these designs. And not everybody can work in that type of creative environment. So really figuring out how you thrive creatively, what things work for you, whether it be your meal prepping to your intake of media and content, what things are really going to get you in a good space to create and inspire you. That’s something that I think is really important for us to have. We can be burnt out so quickly of just always consuming media, content, everything. And then we do that. Within our own practice. Sometimes you don’t need to research for 3 hours with design. Sometimes just give yourself ten minutes to find what you need and be intentional and then go and create. Go and sketch it out. Yeah, I think that it’s really important. Design School doesn’t teach you about the business of design. So if you want to be your own boss, if you want to dabble in different things, you might not get that from Design School. So you’re definitely going to have to teach yourself some of those practices. And so again, having a creative process in place that keeps you a little structured, having the schedule that, you know, okay, today I’m just going to do administrative task. I’m just going to dedicate this day to responding to emails and then you have the rest of the week to create. Coming up with that kind of structure I think really helps. I found myself during my freelance journey getting off the rails a little bit, like I was spending too much time at home. I was burnt out because I was working around the clock, then trying to find more work and trying to update my portfolio, all these things. So it really helps to have that structure a little bit.

Maurice Cherry:
Wow, that’s tremendous advice. I almost feel like we can sort of wrap it up here. I don’t feel like there’s anything I can say that can trump that, but I mean…just to wrap it up here, where can our audience find out more information about you, about your work? Like, where can they follow you online?

Ashley Fletcher:
Yeah. So I’m online. If you want to follow me on social media, you can follow me on Instagram and TikTok and Twitter at @digitrillnana. It should be linked in the podcast. But that’s D-I-G-I-T-R-I-L-L-N-A-N-A. Think Foxy Brown “Ill Na Na” and digital design. That’s what that is. Okay, of course, online. My portfolio is ashley-fletcher.com, and then my art shop is digitrillnana.com. If you are in the DMV area, you can find me in local shops. I’m at the MICA Bookstore in Baltimore, Maryland. I’m also at Sankofa. You can find some of my art goods in Sankofa in DC on Georgia Avenue.

Maurice Cherry:
Wow. Ashley Fletcher, thank you so much for coming on the show. You don’t know this. You kind of inadvertently spoke a word into me with all that advice. That was some stuff I personally also needed to hear, and I hope that certainly the listeners will get that too. But your whole story of kind of persevering through not just kind of getting sidetracked in terms of your path to being a designer, but your perseverance and your creativity and your drive and your passion for this just completely shines through in everything that you’ve said. And I’m so excited to see where you go next in the future. It’s always exciting for me when I do this show and I talk to people that are so energetic and dynamic about the field of design and the work that they do, and I really feel like you’re an excellent representation for that. Keep shining, keep doing what you’re doing. And thank you so much for coming on the show. I appreciate it.

Ashley Fletcher:
Thank you so much. You just spoke life into me, so I appreciate it if you are listening to this podcast. Keep going, guys. Like, we got this. I’m so grateful to just have this opportunity to connect and just share some wisdom in a space that once inspired me. So Maurice, thank you so much for all that you do. Yeah, thank you.

Sponsored by Brevity & Wit

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Chris Dudley

Chris Dudley is an artistic powerhouse. He’s been a working artist for over 25 years, creating everything from children’s books to commissioned drawings (and he teaches art as well). His latest book, Lil’ Boogaloo Shrimp and the Clean Sweep is inspired by the iconic 80’s movie Breakin’, and features the OG Boogaloo Shrimp himself, Michael Chambers!

Chris gave me the rundown on the new book, and we talked about his creative process and what draws him to illustrating portraits and children’s books. He also spoke about growing up in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the benefits on staying there for his career, the keys to his longevity, his work with Hudson Dawn Publishing, and dropped some great advice on work/life balance and staying inspired. You’ll definitely be a fan of Chris after you hear his story — I know I am!

Interview Transcript

Maurice Cherry:
All right, so tell us who you are and what you do.

Chris Dudley:
Well, my name is Chris Dudley and I am the creative director for Chris Dudley Art. I really focus on art and illustration.

Maurice Cherry:
How has 2023 been going for you so far?

Chris Dudley:
Actually, it has been going amazing. The scope and range of projects that I’ve been working on have been just straight fun. The recent project has been Lil’ Boogaloo Shrimp and the Clean Sweep, which is with Michael Chambers, who’s famous from the breakdancing movies franchises, and it’s been amazing.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, tell me some more about the book.

Chris Dudley:
Yeah. Well, it’s, I think, the first book of its kind. Scoured the internet, and I haven’t seen a book like this. One of the first books I’ve ever seen that focuses on breakdancing. The premise behind the book is that it teaches kids responsibility and priority using breakdancing. And also, it highlights, there’s a shout-out of a lot of the actors from the Breakin’ movies, Adolfo Quiñones, Bruno Falcon, and sadly, we lost both of them recently, and just all of the main characters from the breaking movie, but also a lot of other individuals.

And in addition to having that subject matter about breakdancing, because a lot of people think it went by the wayside, but it’s still hugely popular and also, it will debut in the Olympics in 2024. And so, it’s still a huge thing. There’s a shout-out to the Olympics in the book. Actually, the final spread, everybody’s breakdancing in Paris with the Eiffel Tower in the background.

Maurice Cherry:
Oh, nice.

Chris Dudley:
Yeah, I haven’t seen a book like this yet.

Maurice Cherry:
Nice. Congratulations on that.

Chris Dudley:
Thank you. It also, if I could add, it’s more than just a children’s book, it gives kids a little bit of history about the background of breaking, its roots in New York. Also, gives some terminology of breaking, like what a freeze is, what a go down is. So, it’s a little bit more than just the story.

Maurice Cherry:
Nice. I remember this was back in 2005. When was I working there? Yeah, 2005, I was working for the State of Georgia here in Atlanta, working at the Georgia World Congress Center. And I remember we had just hired this white girl as a PR rep or something. And I mean cute, short, bubbly white girl. I was like, “Oh, she seems really nice.” And the weird thing, well, not the weird thing, but as I was talking to her and I asked her what her hobbies was and she was like, “Breakdancing.” And I’m like, “You’re a breakdancer? You look like a UGA sorority grad. Come on, you’re not a breakdancer.” And sure enough, it would be in a sort of weird way, but sometimes she would do moves just in the office just to show us that, “Yeah, I am a breakdancer.”

Chris Dudley:
Gotcha.

Maurice Cherry:
She invited me to a few events that she was breaking at and-

Chris Dudley:
Oh, nice.

Maurice Cherry:
It was so weird because sometimes we’d be in these board meetings, in a legit boardroom with chairman and stuff, and then someone’s like, “Oh, you’re a breakdancer. Why don’t you bust a move for us?” And I’m like, in a way, this is so embarrassing, but also, it’s like, well, at least you’re not asking the Black person to do it, so I’m not… Let me sit back and watch the show.

Chris Dudley:
Gotcha. That’s awesome.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. And I think you told me that part of what you’re doing with the book involves a crew or something here in Atlanta.

Chris Dudley:
Yes, they’re in Georgia. I think they’re near Acworth, the Rockwell Dance Academy. And it’s interesting that you mentioned that the young lady there was a breakdancer, but the Rockwell Dance Academy is led by Honey Rockwell and Orko. Honey Rockwell is a staple name as a B-girl. Actually, just last year, they were both inducted into the Breaking Hall of Fame. And so, B-girls definitely have a place as well. I mean, she’s one of the most well-known. She was with the original Rock Steady Crew in South Bronx, New York.

Maurice Cherry:
Oh, nice.

Chris Dudley:
Yeah. We partnered with them and we’ve got some things in the works. So, it’s really exciting to have that Georgia connection going.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, we’ll make sure to put a link to the book also in the show notes, so people can check that out. Aside from this new project, how are things different for you this year than they were last year?

Chris Dudley:
It has been just ramping up with projects. Last year, obviously, we had a steady flow of projects, variety. This year, the children’s books have just been packed. I mean, I’m booked out with children’s books, booked out away. So, it’s fun where you complete one project and then you can look forward to the next one. But I’ve got, I think, four or five that are already in the queue, confirmed. And so, I look forward to working with each of those authors as well.

Maurice Cherry:
Nice. I mean, with everything that you’ve got going on now, what does the summer look like? Is it more work or you got any plans?

Chris Dudley:
Yeah, a little vacation, a little relaxation I would do with the family for the summer. I’ve got three girls and my wife, so we’ll get a little relaxation in, but some work too. Especially with the release of this book, Lil’ Boogaloo Shrimp and the Clean Sweep, we’ve got some events planned this summer as well. Some here in Michigan with the Children’s Museum and another bookstore, and actually, a local breakdancing crew.

Actually, Michael Chambers there in Los Angeles, July 29th, I believe, he’s got an event with Barnes & Noble. So, I may be flying out there to support him on that. But yeah, we’ve got a lot going on this summer. Then coming out of summer, we look to get in, we’re going to be partnering with some schools to get the books into schools as well.

Maurice Cherry:
Very nice. So, you got a lot planned coming up.

Chris Dudley:
Yes, sir.

Maurice Cherry:
Let’s dive into Chris Dudley Art. I mean, you just mentioned you’ve got a bunch of these projects that are lined up. What does your creative process look like when you’re working on a new project?

Chris Dudley:
Yeah. Well, they all start similarly because we do a little bit of design work. We’ve designed some logos and so forth. We’ve got a team that does that. But also with the illustration, I like to start out old school with sketching. That’s how I learned to draw. So, that’s part of my creative process with every project, is starting out with sketching. I mean, I can go into the meat of doing a children’s book, if you like.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah.

Chris Dudley:
Okay. It’s basically we get a manuscript and it goes through an approval process. We don’t just take any manuscript. It’s got to… Just to be real with you, when I read the manuscript, if images start popping into my head, it’s a go. If they don’t, it’s probably not a go. And that’s just nothing against the author, but it has to resonate with me because it’s got to be a fun project that I’m looking forward to doing.

And so, from there, the manuscript checks out and we want to bid on that. From there, we will establish the illustration description. So, that’s what imagery is going to go along with what portions of the text, especially if it’s a children’s picture book. And once we nail that down, I’ll do sketches. And that’s where you establish the composition. Well, actually, prior to that, we design the characters, the main characters, and see exactly what they’re going to look like. Is it a eight-year-old African American boy, or does it have to be a little girl who’s three years old and she has a puppy?

So, we have to figure out the dynamics of the characters. What are they going to look like? What time period are we in? Are we in the 2000s? Are we in the ’80s, like with our recent book here? And so, we establish a character and then we do composition sketches of establishing what each scene is going to look like. And those get approved by the author along the way. So, they’re heavily involved with the creative process, so that I don’t just come up with the finished project and then hope they like it. They’re involved along the way so that there’s no surprises on either end.

Then from there, we go to final sketches. We start to flesh out this is exactly what this spot illustration or this full page or this spread is exactly going to look like and the details of it, if there’s need to be background and so forth. And from there, after the client approves that, we do the line work. That’s where we finalize it almost… Well, you’re familiar with how a coloring book looks where you have the simple black lines.

Maurice Cherry:
Yup.

Chris Dudley:
We finish out the book looking like that. That way the client gets to see, okay, this is exactly how things are going to look before we add color. In that way, any adjustments can be made along the way, if need be. So, they approve each process, and then we get into the color theory, because you can’t just throw colors onto the imagery. It has to make sense visually. Also, colors such as red is going to attract attention. So, you wouldn’t just arbitrarily use that just because you want it red. And sometimes, that has to be explained to the client as well, because they may think, “I want to paint this in a blue.” That, well, based on color theory, those won’t work with the composition.

Then we just move toward the formatting process, and then the text is added. And I take the text into consideration as well though when I’m designing the composition, so it doesn’t look forced later. I make sure I allow spacing for that. But yeah, that’s how we move through a project. Then from there, it goes to post-production, and then we have a book.

Maurice Cherry:
So, it’s way more than just art and illustration.

Chris Dudley:
Oh, yeah.

Maurice Cherry:
You’re really seeing it through the entire process, entire publishing process.

Chris Dudley:
Yeah, from concept to completion is what we’d call it. Yeah, from the initial idea to a finished book.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. I mean, you mentioned getting the clients involved with it. I’m pretty sure this is probably maybe not an exhaustive process for them, but how is it for them being able to see the book come together step by step like this?

Chris Dudley:
It’s amazing because it’s no secret most people haven’t learned the skill of being able to draw, let alone to illustrate, which is there’s a difference because with illustration, you’re telling a story with the imagery. And so, when you flesh out a character for a client, it’s so satisfying because they have it in their head, but they can’t see it. And so, when you can present that to them, it’s like, “Yes, that’s exactly what I want.” It’s just so gratifying for them. Then to see that character then doing things throughout the book, their eyes just light up. So, it’s a pleasure working with them and again, keeping them involved in the process.

Maurice Cherry:
Now, it looks like you do a lot of children’s book illustrations. What draws you to this genre?

Chris Dudley:
Well, having kids. Like I said, I got three girls. They’re a little bit older now into late teens, mid and late teens. But I actually spent, and actually people can go look at my website at chrisdudleyart.com, I spent about 15, 20 years doing almost exclusively realism. I mean very detailed graphite drawings. I did art shows and juried exhibitions and all of that. And so, I used that knowledge actually as I segued into, I still do some of that, but the children’s books, reading books to my girls. And I actually had to learn how to illustrate better. I knew it a little bit, but I had to really dive into it. So, I’ve been doing that for the past 10 years now, and it’s taken over really.

Maurice Cherry:
How do you stay organized with a lot of these projects? Because I would imagine as you’re saying this whole process, do you do just one book at a time? Are you juggling multiple books? How do you keep all of that managed effectively?

Chris Dudley:
Well, some of them will overlap a little bit, but it depends on what phase of the process. Honestly, for me personally, the most challenging part is the initial part, coming up with the concept of what the imagery is going to look like. Because once you’ve established that, you then created a roadmap for yourself, and then it’s just following the roadmap. It’s almost like plotting out your course somewhere. That’s the hardest part, where am I going to go with this? But then once you plot out the course, okay, now, it’s just following this path that I’ve laid out.

And there may be some tweaks along the way. And with that, it’s important obviously not to overbook. We’ve all heard the same under promise, over deliver. And so, really, we really focus on with my team, especially my assistant, not making promises that would be too difficult to even try to make happen. Then you’re disappointing clients. So, books, I won’t work on two or three at the same time, but they may overlap. Like okay, if I finish this portion, now I can maybe bring in, but they’ll have different deadlines. I don’t have it where they’re all due at the same time. Keeping it balanced, yeah.

Then we filter in some other relatively smaller projects in there while I may be working on a book, like a one-off illustration or a design project. But I like to really focus on that client’s project, so they get the attention that it needs.

Maurice Cherry:
And it’s important to note, as you’ve alluded to, you have a team. So, this isn’t a one-man operation.

Chris Dudley:
Exactly. I could not do it by myself. I did in the past. Obviously, it was just me. I started, well, way, way back before it was Chris Dudley Art when I was 18, 19. And it was just me, invoicing and trying to figure all this stuff out. But I realized later is that it stifled creativity, doing all of those other administrative tasks. Now, I still do some, but by and large, I want to save my brain for the project.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. I think, as you said, starting out on your own, you want to try to do everything or try to tackle everything because you’re just starting out. You want to establish yourself. But eventually after a while, in order for you to really be able to go further, you have to give up some control. You have to build a team. It’s just a necessary part of being able to scale the work that you do.

Chris Dudley:
Exactly, exactly. Yeah, it’s necessary.

Maurice Cherry:
Let’s switch gears a little bit here and learn more about you. You talked a bit about starting out. You were born and raised in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Tell me about what that was like.

Chris Dudley:
Yes, it was fun. My interest in art started very young. I had a couple of cousins that drew a little bit. One was just phenomenal, phenomenal artist, and it amazed me that he could do that with a pencil. And it wasn’t daunting like it may be to some people. And in school, I always drew. I remember back in, I think I was maybe in kindergarten or first grade, and a little weed of mine, it was like a stalk of grain or something that I drew, it got accepted in the children’s exhibition at the Grand Rapids Art Museum.

And so, it’s like that was a “first juried show” and it was accepted. And so, it’s going to be on display Downtown Grand Rapids at the Art Museum. And so, when my mom took me down there to see it and to see it displayed, it was just awe-inspiring. They had the artwork separated by grade level. So, mine was in the first, second-graders. And I remember walking and seeing, I remember the stuff like it’s yesterday, seeing the 12th graders. Obviously, their art advancement was far beyond my level, but it was so amazing that it was possible, and it just sparked that that’s possible. I didn’t have the skill to do it, but it didn’t deter me. It made me understand that’s possible. I can get to that level. And so, that’s where it began.

Maurice Cherry:
And it sounds like your family also really supported you in this too.

Chris Dudley:
Yeah, family has always supported me. Even teachers, I joke about it now, they would let me draw in class as long as I did my work, obviously. But yeah, I’ve had a lot of support over the years.

Maurice Cherry:
How has it been working and cultivating your career in the same place where you grew up? I feel like a lot of folks we have on the show may have, of course, started out one place and then ended up moving somewhere else, and that was where their career or their work flourished. What does it mean for you to still be in your hometown doing this work?

Chris Dudley:
Well, it’s taken some time. I started out with, it was Dudley Graphics actually, when I was 18, 19. And I was doing T-shirt designs and it was all by hand. I didn’t know graphic design or how to use a computer or anything. So, I was drawing things and even drawing lettering and so forth, and later rebranded. Actually, when I improved my drawing ability, I was okay, but I wanted to learn how to draw much, much better. And so, in my 20s, I said I want to learn this and really buckled down and improved my skill, but had obviously some success with that, dealing with some businesses and so forth.

But later, that’s when I started doing juried art shows. And I felt that if I could get into a juried art show, that somewhat vetted my skillset. Then some of these were hard to get into. They were hard to get into. So, that gave me a little boost of confidence. Then figuring out how to make it sustainable, like you said, in your hometown and doing projects with companies. I actually did a whiteboard animation with a pharma, very large, I can’t say the name, but pharmaceutical company. And so, finding avenues then how to make it sustainable.

And I was able to explore a lot of different avenues of art. I mean, it was design. It was drawing. There was a little bit of animation work with some of that, but to make it more sustainable even here locally. But then things did branch out where I started getting a little attention from those outside of Michigan. I worked with an author actually in Georgia, and just some throughout the States. And that’s when it’s like, whoa, it opens you up to that global market.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. Do you think it’s been a benefit to you to still do this work in Grand Rapids? Have you thought about, “Oh, well, what if I was in New York?” Or even in Detroit, if you stayed in Michigan?

Chris Dudley:
Yes. I found it as a benefit because it puts me in a position to, it sounds cliche, but to give back, if you will, to the community versus when you move away, you’re not in touch with that local community anymore. So, I’ve been able to be in contact with local artists that I know and local authors, because I work with a lot of authors here in Michigan. So, to be able to meet them in some instances face to face, you can’t replace that. It’s worked out. It’s just worked out for me to stay here in Michigan and still have some of those connects outside.

Maurice Cherry:
How big is Grand Rapids? I’m trying to think population wise, how big.

Chris Dudley:
Ooh, offhand, I guess I should know this, right?

Maurice Cherry:
No, no.

Chris Dudley:
Actually, it’s the second… I didn’t know I was getting a geography lesson here. It’s the second-largest city, obviously, behind Detroit. I mean, it’s growing too. It’s continuing to grow. Yeah.

Maurice Cherry:
No, I mean, I’m curious about that because I’ve had folks that are on the show before that aren’t in these big metropolises. They’re in smaller cities like Raleigh or Grand Rapids, like you mentioned. I think I talked to another illustrator in Detroit. Oh, his name escapes. I think it’s Sean Bell or something like that. But talking about the benefit or one inherent benefit of being able to do this work in a smaller community, I won’t say small, but smaller than a big city, is that in a way, because you grew up there, people know you, so there’s that sort of reputation. But also, you help serve as a beacon for the next generation to see that what you’re doing is possible where they are. They don’t have to move somewhere else or go somewhere else to achieve-

Chris Dudley:
Exactly.

Maurice Cherry:
… the kind of success that you’ve achieved.

Chris Dudley:
Yeah, exactly. That is the key. And a lot of it is about developing your skillset, really getting your work seen. And so, with the internet and so forth, I’m not old, but I grew up without the internet. But now, you have these different vehicles that you can use to have your work seen really all over the world.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. Before we get into that, I want to stay a little bit in the pocket of Dudley Graphics because I think it’s important for our audience to really hear about what it was like to design really before personal computers and Photoshop and all that sort of stuff was really a thing. Tell me about your early career of Dudley Graphics because that was roughly between what, ’96 and 2005, 2006, something like that.

Chris Dudley:
Yep, exactly. Yeah. I started out, man, I was 18 and I became a broker with a T-shirt company and I was doing the designing. And like you said, it was all by hand. I mean, it was freehand drawing. Then I would ink it and I would take actual ink drawings to my screen printer to get the camera ready, iron it and so forth. And so, if I had to make an adjustment, it was all by hand and cutting and pasting and whiteout. I did not know how to use a computer. I didn’t have one. So, it was the early days.

I remember when I first got a computer and trying to learn it, but I didn’t really have the correct software. Then had thought, “Okay, how do I input something in my computer?” So, I had to try to learn a scanner and it was crazy. One thing that really helped, I actually worked at a Kinko’s, which later became FedEx Kinko’s, and which is now FedEx office. And I got a lot of training actually in graphic design and just how those things worked. And that really helped me with launching Dudley Graphics.

Again, it was just in the design and T-shirt realm because my drawing ability honestly was, I would say, above average, but above average was to be average person who doesn’t draw. So, I had a ways to go as far as learning how to draw better. And that’s what prompted the rebrand, is I felt, “Okay, my skills are way better than they were. So, I can go with this art thing.”

Maurice Cherry:
Oh, you took me back there with talking about Kinko’s. I remember that fondly.

Chris Dudley:
Okay, yeah. Yep. Yep.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, during that time, I was in high school, right around that time. I was 18 in ’99. So, a little bit later than you were, but I did come up also in that time of life before the internet. I mean, computers actually when I was a kid were almost like a toy.

Chris Dudley:
Exactly, yeah.

Maurice Cherry:
At least that’s how they were marketed or pushed. It was like, oh, this is the fun thing you do at school in your free period or-

Chris Dudley:
Exactly.

Maurice Cherry:
It would be VTech. The company VTech had all these personal computer things. I had this big thing called a Precomputer 1000 that had a one-line screen on it. It had a full keyboard, but had a one-line screen and it had a handle on it so you could carry it with you. I think my mom wanted to throw that thing out the window because it could also make sound. And so, I was learning sound because I also grew up playing music, being a musician. So, I’m learning how to play sound and code on this thing. And I know she wanted to launch that thing out the window most days.

But I say all that to say it’s so different now when you look at schools. And even, I think, just the general conversation around technology for children and designs. It’s certainly something that people try to push their kids into as a viable career field or a moneymaking thing or something like that. Really back then, especially for Black folks, there was not a lot of examples. You had, what, Dwayne Wayne on A Different World. Maybe somebody that was featured in Black enterprise if you had a subscription. So, there wasn’t a lot around, oh, computers are a thing that you can use to build your career. It wasn’t a thing. And I feel like for listeners they should, especially younger listeners, it just wasn’t a thing.

Chris Dudley:
Yeah, it wasn’t. It wasn’t. I think, what is it? What would you say? 2000s before, I think, when the internet came out for everyday people and people still didn’t have a computer in their home. Whereas now, most people do. But you think about to have grown up or have grown up at a time where that you didn’t have internet at home, you didn’t have a computer at home even. So, totally, it was a different era.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. Or if you had an internet at home, it was via mail order CD.

Chris Dudley:
Yeah, AOL.

Maurice Cherry:
You get a AOL CD. You get a NetZero disc in the mail or something like that. And that’s what you use-

Chris Dudley:
Exactly.

Maurice Cherry:
… to get on for like… I remember getting those things and it’s like a thousand free minutes.

Chris Dudley:
Exactly. Oh, my gosh. Yes, I remember that too. Then you’re waiting five minutes to connect, just listening to that dial-up sound.

Maurice Cherry:
And it ties up the phone. So, if someone’s on the internet, someone also can’t be on the phone in the house.

Chris Dudley:
Exactly.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, it was a whole thing. So, I used the computers at school and I learned it at school. I designed my high school newspaper, for example, and we used PageMaker. We’d use a double PageMaker.

Chris Dudley:
PageMaker.

Maurice Cherry:
And I know we started off trying to use Quark and those-

Chris Dudley:
Yeah, QuarkXPress.

Maurice Cherry:
That software would come with these big… I mean, these instruction manuals could choke a horse. It would be so thick, and it’s like a textbook. How am I supposed to read through all this to figure out how to use this software on this thing? And eventually, we’re just like, “We’ll just do it by hand.” It’s just easier to print and cut-

Chris Dudley:
Exactly.

Maurice Cherry:
… and copy and all that sort of stuff. So, I know what you mean about having that not necessarily on the job training, but you learned through application. You didn’t necessarily go to school for. You learned by doing or you learned by working almost like an apprenticeship in a way.

Chris Dudley:
Yeah, definitely, definitely. And along with that, just to add briefly, is that in that manner, you learn what you need because all these programs, obviously Adobe Photoshop, it’s so deep that even the experts don’t use everything, right?

Maurice Cherry:
Right.

Chris Dudley:
But I think a lot of us artists and entrepreneurs may… It can be daunting, but you may realize that I only need five functions from this program to run my business. I don’t need to know all 5,000 and shortcuts and all that. And so, it’s really finding what you need, and okay, that’s all I need from this program. Then it’s worth it for me to have it to run my business.

Maurice Cherry:
Right. And the chokehold that Adobe and Macromedia back then as well, the chokehold that those products had on the burgeoning digital design industry cannot be understated. I never thought I’d see a day where Photoshop is almost not derided, but I know a lot of designers now will use Figma over Photoshop. There was a time when they would use Sketch over Photoshop. I never thought I’d see a time when Photoshop would fall out of favor because it was everywhere.

Chris Dudley:
Yep, yep. And also, I think a lot of people are still upset about the subscription model. But I guess I get it. You get the updates. You don’t have to come up off of $900, which a lot of people couldn’t back in the day anyway. Or they’re working on old versions of Photoshop and there’s, like you said, a lot of options now. I do a lot of illustration in Procreate on the iPad Pro.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. I think Adobe knew that their software was being pirated left and right. I didn’t buy Photoshop until the subscription came out. Everything before them was some cracked version off of LimeWire or Kazaa or whatever that I hoped would not give my computer a virus. And sometimes, it would. But that’s how I ended up learning because I was like, “I can’t afford.” Even when I had my business, I was like, “I can’t afford the cost of this. I’ll still use this cracked version because it works. It does what I need it to do.” Like you said, it does the five things-

Chris Dudley:
Exactly, exactly.

Maurice Cherry:
… I need it to do. Why would I pay this astronomical amount of money for this piece of software if I can’t use every single part of it?

Chris Dudley:
Yeah, exactly.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. Now, you’ve been a working illustrator in this industry now for over 25 years. For you, what have been the keys to sustain that longevity? We’ve talked just now about how technology has really changed the game. How do you still keep current and maintain yourself in this industry?

Chris Dudley:
First thing is skillset. When it comes to art, you have to have the skillset and it’s not… Obviously, no disrespect to anyone, but a lot of times people think about art as it’s just a feeling and you just express yourself. And there are some aspects of art that are that way, but there are rules and fundamentals that you learn. Composition, you have to know anatomy. There’s so many things and you have to learn that stuff before you can just venture off and draw your feelings if you want to say. And so, I really focus on that skillset, learning those things.

Also, art is a different pursuit in that everyone else has to be… They understand that I got to be good at it first before someone’s going to hire me. If you were a baker, I got to be able to bake cookies good first. So, you’re going to be baking a lot. If you’re a singer, you have to show that you can sing. If you’re a writer, you have to write the book. But oftentimes, artists, some artists, new ones anyway, feel, “Well, I want someone to hire me to draw something.” Well, you have to show them that you can draw.

And so, I think a lot of artists don’t have enough of a body of work to show for someone to hire them, so that’s what I… I didn’t want to do that. And early stages I went through were, okay, you want someone. Then I realized that, no, you have to be drawing and producing things so people can see that you know how to do this thing. And when I took that approach, things really just really started to take off. And it can’t just be your practicing. You need to do a project from start to finish. People can see that you can do that, the highest level you can do at that time. And so, that’s what’s really helped me.

Maurice Cherry:
So, working in public. Like they say in math class, show your work. That’s what’s really been a big key for you.

Chris Dudley:
Yeah, yeah, and being able to show that you can. It’s not waiting to be asked to do it or waiting to be hired to do it. And that’s what a lot of artists do. Again, no other industry is that way. You know that you have to have this skill at a high level before someone’s going to ask you to do it for pay. But sometimes, artists just wait. I’m waiting for someone to hire me. I’m just sketching in my sketchbook. Well, no, do a project. Even if you “hire yourself” to do a project, show that you have the chops to do it.

Maurice Cherry:
How has tech impacted your work? Of course, we’ve talked about Photoshop and things like that, but lately, over the past almost nine to 10 months now, the conversation has largely been around generative art and Midjourney and DALL-E and all this stuff. Yes. How does that, if at all, incorporate into your work?

Chris Dudley:
I have switched over. I’m almost… Well, I still draw because I love the tactile aspect of just traditional media. Actually, I’m going to be teaching a paint class this week, but the majority of the bulk of my work is digital now. So, I’m drawing on a tablet. And with regard to art, that’s… Well, if I could add, one funny thing to me is, in the art community, drawing hands because of their nature is difficult for just about every artist starting out. And so, one hilarious thing to me is that AI art can’t draw hands either, and that’s something…

I knew someone who, well, just recently they produced a book. And I said, I’ve looked at it like, “Wow, that’s a nice image.” But then I started, just from my trained eye, started to break away. No, this is AI. Again, not to discredit it, but I could tell right away it was AI produced. Then I looked at the hands and they looked atrocious, like claws. And I was like, “Oh, yep, I was right. That’s definitely AI.”

And so, I don’t think, I don’t see it as a battle per se, but I use digital aids, if you will. Sometimes, I’ll even create a scene with poseable characters if I’m looking for a certain pose. And I might take a picture of that and then use that as a reference. So, I’d use some different aids, but I think you have to have the skillset. The tools can’t make you an artist. So, you got to have the skillset behind it. People can’t think, “Oh, hey, I’ve got Midjourney now. I’m an artist all of a sudden.” No, you still need a certain base of knowledge and ability to be able to then use those tools to actually create art.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. I was watching some video. I think it was from Wired, and it was an AI artist detailing their steps. And it’s all writing for the most part because you have to get the prompts specific in order for the thing to generate and all that sort of stuff. And it was fascinating to see it come together, but it didn’t feel like art. It didn’t feel like the creative process, especially with something as I think intimate as hand drawing something. There’s more that goes into it than, I think, just a technical skill. I mean it’s creativity. It’s emotion. There’s a lot of specifically, individually, intrinsically, fundamentally human things that go into the creation that the computer just can’t do. It can maybe-

Chris Dudley:
Exactly.

Maurice Cherry:
… try to replicate it from other sources. And of course, there’s been talk about how these engines crib from other artists, but it’s not the same. I find a lot of AI art has a specific look. It’s like heavily shadowed and it’s a very specific look where I’m like, “Yeah, that’s AI.” It doesn’t feel like it’s from a person because people’s art styles are so varied and different.

Chris Dudley:
Exactly. And it’s very static as well, and some of it’s… I mean, obviously, you’ve got a trained eye to be able to see that but not to, I don’t want to sound condescending, but to a person that just says, “Oh, I like pretty things,” but they’re not into art or know, they don’t know art, they could just see an image and, “Wow, it’s a pretty image.” But if you’ve got a little bit of a trained eye, you can realize, “Oh, it’s okay. It’s nice. But it’s a static image. There’s no emotion.” Like you said, you could feel that it doesn’t have that human element to it. It’s just produced. It’s like a mass-produced restaurant versus a high-end restaurant or that little mom-and-pop shop that puts love into the meal. So, you can tell the difference.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, like a McDonald’s hamburger is going to be different from-

Chris Dudley:
Exactly.

Maurice Cherry:
… the Smashburger place or something like that.

Chris Dudley:
Exactly, exactly. And there’s a reason that there’s always going to be that Smashburger. Yeah, you have the McDonald’s customers, but there’s a lot of people that says, “No, I don’t go to McDonald’s. I rather pay a few more dollars for a real burger.”

Maurice Cherry:
And I think, for you, because the work that you do involves the clients in the process from start to finish, it would almost feel like introducing AI into it, one, sort of cheapens it in a way, but then two, I could see how it could make the client think, “Wait a minute, I could do this myself.”

Chris Dudley:
Yeah, exactly. Definitely could, definitely. And I don’t think it’s going to… Who knows with technology, but there’s just what I see certain elements that AI just can’t do. You have to be able to, just with what I do with illustration, you have to be able to change the POV. Am I going to go with a bird’s eye view or worm’s eye view? What about the expression on their face? And AI can’t do that now. They can’t take a character and then put it through all these emotions and all these angles and add these other el-… You can’t replace the human element, like you said.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, AI can’t get inspired.

Chris Dudley:
Exactly.

Maurice Cherry:
It can’t get inspired from a work or a piece of music or a feeling. It just tries to recopy and regenerate from whatever it’s been fed into their model.

Chris Dudley:
Yeah, yeah, definitely.

Maurice Cherry:
So, we spoke about just social media and these platforms and stuff. How do you approach marketing and promoting your work? Are there specific strategies that you found to be pretty effective?

Chris Dudley:
I really try to let the work speak, but also letting yourself be known as well. Because people do, that’s something I realized, they do like to know the artists behind the work. So, periodically posting a picture of yourself with the art and so forth, or even doing a little video or something. Everybody wants, I want a million followers and so forth. But then I started realizing I don’t need a million followers. I’m booked out with work, and I don’t know how many I had on Instagram. I don’t even think a thousand, but I’m booked with work. I have more work than I can do.

And so, that really changed my whole thought process of… Then I don’t want to be putting all my energies or time just into social media when I want to put that into the creative process, and it has worked for me. It has worked. I focus on my skillset and focus on putting projects out and more work comes. And so, I think having the presence though, obviously, is so crucial. Having a website, I think, is very valuable because it really gives a place where this is your work and you’re not competing for attention on social media platform, but then you could have those platforms that direct people to your site as well.

So, I think it’s necessary in today’s age, especially with the visual aspect of doing art, but focus on the work though. Don’t spend all of your time social media marketing, and then you forget to actually be producing artwork.

Maurice Cherry:
Right. Because the followers don’t necessarily translate into work. It may translate into visibility.

Chris Dudley:
Exactly, exactly.

Maurice Cherry:
Into more eyes on it, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that… And also, you may be attracting the wrong type of clients or the wrong type of people.

Chris Dudley:
Exactly, exactly.

Maurice Cherry:
The tire kickers and the low ballers and stuff. They see what you do and they don’t get the value in it. They just see it and think it’s something that could be potentially easily replicated.

Actually, going back a little bit to the AI conversation, one thing I thought that was super interesting is when people started getting those AI art, AI generated avatars out, how many people were, I guess complaining, but they were like, “Wait a minute, you paid for that? You paid for that? You paid how much for that?” Some people. Well, the cost wasn’t what it would cost you to actually commission an artist. It was much, much, much cheaper, maybe $5, $8.

Chris Dudley:
Exactly.

Maurice Cherry:
$20.

Chris Dudley:
Exactly.

Maurice Cherry:
For several images, not just one image. And it was so funny seeing people like, “You paid for that? You paid money for that?” I’m like, “If you were to pay an artist to do it-

Chris Dudley:
Exactly.

Maurice Cherry:
… you would pay the artist. Do you expect it to be free?”

Chris Dudley:
Yeah. Oh, man, that’s a whole other story too, because art is no other industry, well, maybe photography possibly, but no other industry do people expect you to work for free because people think it’s just maybe some God given talent so you’re supposed to share it for free. And there’s times, obviously, where you’ll be giving with your skillset. But you don’t go to a mechanic and say, “Hey, if you fix my car, I will tell all of my friends that you’re a great mechanic and that’s going to get you some more work.” But people do that to artists all the time. It’s hilarious, man. It’s hilarious.

Maurice Cherry:
I’ll tell you from doing this show, they do it to podcasters too. They’re like-

Chris Dudley:
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Maurice Cherry:
“Oh, you’re just talking to a mic. All you’re doing is just press and record. That’s it.” No.

Chris Dudley:
Exactly.

Maurice Cherry:
There’s so much more that goes into it.

Chris Dudley:
Yeah, they don’t see the art behind it.

Maurice Cherry:
Then when you try to show them, they feel like, “Oh, well, this is too much.” Once they get an idea of what the process is and how it is a skilled thing, then it turns them off. From then, it’s like, “Well, now you know.”

Chris Dudley:
Yep, exactly. And to speak to what we’re touching on, that’s what, again, versus just I want to become a social media marketer, that’s what has gotten more work, focusing on the work and then the relationships that I build with my clients. And when we onboard a new author and they see what’s involved, they see what you’re doing to bring their vision to life, that has gotten me more work than marketing on social media.

And so, that’s when it’s that shift of, “Hey, I’ll post and I’ll talk about stuff.” Plus, I’m not a salesman per se, so I’m not trying to hard sell, “Hey, come buy my book.” No. Here’s we created this book. It was a fun project. You can look at it a little bit. And people have bought from that versus me trying to hard sell them. And with regard to more work because then that author speaks highly of the experience they had working with you. That has gotten me so much more work where I have other authors call so and so.

I just finished up a book with Erica Flores, first time author. It’s been an amazing process. That has led to more work. And so, focusing on the skillset, and obviously, your working with clients far exceeds just trying to beg people to buy your products online.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, I 100% agree with that. And also, because if you’re focusing on social media, as we’ve seen fairly recently, these platforms can change at the drop of a hat. If you’re busy trying to chase the algorithm, if you’re busy trying to market or make your work fit into whatever this opaque algorithm is in terms of visibility or something like that, it takes away from the work. I think we certainly see it with people that create content for video, like YouTubers, TikTokers. It’s a lot to try to figure it out. And even on maybe non-video platforms like Twitter or Instagram, Instagram is still pictures, but a lot of Instagram now is video.

Chris Dudley:
Yes, it is. It is.

Maurice Cherry:
Then with Twitter and this Twitter Blue, they’ve changed the weighting of how people see your work unless you pay for a subscription. The platforms have gotten so, I don’t want to say unreliable, but they certainly have gotten so caustic and to the point where you can’t really depend on those to get the word out or to get the work out.

Chris Dudley:
Exactly.

Maurice Cherry:
It helps. It still is a megaphone, but you can’t depend on just that to be the thing that propels your work or propels you into whatever the next level is.

Chris Dudley:
Definitely. And that’s why, like I mentioned, having your own website is so crucial. And again, I started before the internet. Well, not just before the internet, but when the internet was starting out, it was before all of the social media platforms. And so, I had a website even way back then. Whereas I see a lot of artists now that pretty good work, but they don’t have a website, and it’s just shocking to me. And they think, “I’m just going to get all kinds of work from Instagram.” Maybe if you were in the inception, but if you’re starting out right now and thinking, “I’m going to start an Instagram and get all kinds of work” and you don’t have a website, it’s not going to happen.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. I know even from just trying to reach artists or folks to have on the show, it’s always tough to get them on if they don’t have a site, because even if I send them a DM, the way that the filtering is, they may not ever see it, if I send them something on Instagram, if I send them something on Twitter.

Chris Dudley:
Exactly.

Maurice Cherry:
If they even allow you to send them a message, and it’s like, “Well, do you want people to contact you or not?”

Chris Dudley:
Exactly.

Maurice Cherry:
What’s the point? Yeah.

Chris Dudley:
Exactly.

Maurice Cherry:
How do you balance your artistic pursuits with your personal life and responsibilities? You mentioned your marriage. You’ve got three kids. How do you balance all of that?

Chris Dudley:
Well, again, with booking, I don’t just accept any and all projects. I’d be with a privilege to be in that position where I don’t have to take all work that comes my way. I can be a little choosy and making sure that I’m prioritizing that time with my wife. We just hit 25 years.

Maurice Cherry:
Congratulations.

Chris Dudley:
So, that’s a huge milestone, and with our three girls and prioritizing that time. I love doing this. Obviously, there’s a monetary component to take care of my family and so forth. But I often think about too is that there’s time that I can’t sell a client. That’s for my wife and for my family, but then often think, but the time that I do sell you, if you will, you’re not paying just for that project. You’re paying for the time I’m not being with them.

And so, when that clicked in my brain many years ago, that changes your margin, that changes the value of what you’re offering. And time to ask me to not be with my wife and my girls, like I said, some time I can give you, but the time you’re going to take from them, it’s worth something to me. So, it’s got to be important. That’s why the project has to resonate with me. So, that’s how I really keep that balance.

Maurice Cherry:
That is so deep. That is probably one of the deepest things I’ve heard on this show, and I’ve been doing this for 10 years.

Chris Dudley:
Wow. Wow.

Maurice Cherry:
No, seriously. It’s like you’re not just paying for my expertise and time; you’re paying for time away from the people that I care about. That’s deep. Wow. That resonated with me. Thank you. Wow.

Chris Dudley:
Yeah. And with that, if I could just compound on top of that, it’s where, obviously with projects, you’re not paid in hourly sense, but a lot of people understand the concept of getting paid hourly. So, if you ask the person that, would you not spend time with your family for five bucks an hour? Most people would say no. And so, if you just keep going up the ladder with the amount, there may be a threshold where people would think about it. But that starts to help you to appreciate that there’s a value add there. That I’m not just going to not spend time with my family and exclusively give mental and emotional energy to your project for any amount. No, there’s a value thing to that.

Also, like we touched on earlier, I forget the book that I read, but they said that don’t spend time doing something that you could pay someone else minimum wage to do. Obviously, when we’re starting out, and that’s what has almost changed my brain. And that’s what made me, like we talked about earlier, we put together a team. And I’ve got assistants and people that handle that because it just doesn’t make sense for me to do something that I could pay someone 10, 15, 20, 30 bucks an hour to do when, my time, I could be doing something that makes way more than that. You get what I’m saying?

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah.

Chris Dudley:
Yeah, it doesn’t add up. But a lot of people think, “Well, I’m giving away money. I can keep that.” Yeah, but your time is a non-renewable resource, so you got the time that you do sell, it’s got to be at the right price.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, and I think that becomes even more important, especially when you have a family, when you start getting older, when other members of your family start getting older. There’s no amount of money that can buy that time back.

Chris Dudley:
Exactly, exactly.

Maurice Cherry:
When you look back at your career, is there a particular moment or a particular experience that stands out to you the most?

Chris Dudley:
Man, I have a few. And one, I would say, is when I get an award at a juried art exhibition here at Downtown Grand Rapids. That was a very nice privilege. And like I mentioned, starting out with Dudley Graphics, and my drawing ability was not up to par by any means, any stretch. And so, to work hard to improve my understanding of light and shadow and composition and all of that, to get to the point where to be accepted into the juried exhibition again. And you’re paying to have your artwork reviewed and they can just send a no. To get accepted, to get the award, to have my work purchased and so forth, that was a milestone where I felt, “Okay, I’m pretty good at this.” Then it really gave me the confidence that I can take this to other levels.

Maurice Cherry:
What’s the most important lesson you say you’ve learned throughout your career as an artist?

Chris Dudley:
Again, sounds cliche, but to truly stay humble. Humility is something that can slip away. And that’s why I say it’s stay humble because it can be a constant fight for all of us. You’re this imperfect person, but to really strive to maintain humility and never stop learning in your craft. And so, even when I meet with clients now, I tell them, I say, “Yes, you’re hiring me because I have a skillset that you don’t have, but I want to do what’s in the best interest of the project, not what’s in my best interest.”

So, if you have an idea, even though you can’t draw, please tell me. If you can defend your idea, because I’m looking at as an illustrator, I need to be able to defend my choices that I make artistically that, oh, the composition is this way because of that, that way because of this. But if someone shoots an idea to me and I realize that your idea is better than the one I had, hey, let’s make the change to make the project better.

So, that humility, even the face of you have a skillset that someone else doesn’t have, but that doesn’t mean that they can’t suggest something that’s better. So, that’s what I really strive for. And never stop learning. I feel like I’m decent at drawing and I’ve been learning this craft since I was a little kid. And some days, it feels like I can’t draw. Like, “Man, what are you doing?” And other days it’s like, “Oh, you’re pretty good. You got this.” But yeah, never stop learning and never think you just got it down.

Maurice Cherry:
Now, all of your daughters can draw too. Is that right?

Chris Dudley:
Yes. I jokingly what they say, joking but not joking. I made them learn how to draw, and there were times with each one of them. My oldest is almost 20, almost 20, 16 and 15. And they would see me drawing and I would teach them how to draw. I didn’t tell them that it looked good when it didn’t when they were young. I didn’t crush their feelings, but if something was off, I told them. I didn’t just put it on the refrigerator just because they drew it type of thing.

There were times with all of them that there were tears. And I would ask them, “Do you really want to learn how to do this?” And with tears in their eyes, each one of them, it’s like, “Yes, I do, daddy.” And it’s like, “Okay, you see that the eye is crooked. How do we fix it?” And it’s helped them to really grow. And if I could share just a brief story with that.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah.

Chris Dudley:
When I was teaching my oldest how to read, it dawned on me that this is hard because if you can picture this, you know how we write, the kid learns how to write the alphabet. What I did was, so to make an A, there’s three lines that you use to make an A, right? Then there’s one line and two bumps to make a B. And this curve line to make a C. So, what I did was I wrote an A, but I kept all the lines. Just imagine doing the first line on this part of the page. Second line over here. And I did the whole alphabet that way on a piece of paper and it looked like a jumbled mess.

But then I thought that I’m asking my daughter to figure this out, learn how to put the lines together, so that they can make all the letters. Then we asked them to learn the name of the letters, the sound of the letters, how to put them together to make a word, how to put those together to make a sentence, a paragraph, and then you got to do it with math. And I thought, “Man, learning how to draw is easier.” Then the thing, Maurice, is that there’s no reference for that. They have to learn it though.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, you have to.

Chris Dudley:
And so, when it hit me that, okay, if you can learn how to read, how to write and how to do math, you can learn how to draw. Then this is a soapbox of mine, but I won’t belabor it. But when I realized that, I realized, okay, my girls can learn how to draw. They’re going to learn how to draw at least the basics.

And another thing, at a class that I got to teach, and I’ll keep this short, is that I told someone, they said, “Well, no, it’s just a talent.” I said, “Well, yeah, you can have a little bit of ability, but it gives you maybe a one to three out of a 10.” But I said, “We make kids for 13 plus years learn how to read, learn how to write and learn how to do math. Everything else is optional. If we made you from kindergarten to 12th grade, you had to draw every year and you were tested on it, everybody would leave school knowing how to draw at least decently.”

But if your kid said, “Ah, it’s hard.” You say, “Okay, quit. Let’s try and play saxophone or try soccer.” But if your kid says, “I’m struggling with reading,” you’re going to learn how to read and we make them do it. And so, that dawned on me. I was like, “Okay, my girls will learn how to draw.”

Maurice Cherry:
I really like that way of looking at it. And you’re right. I mean, as kids we start off with, I think, a lot of applied art education. In kindergarten and whatever, there’s finger painting, there’s drawing and there’s coloring. I remember being in elementary school and we would get these sheets of paper that have it’s blank at the top, and then there’s lined rules at the bottom for writing. And you had to draw something at the top and then tell the story at the bottom of it.

I actually still have them. I still kept all of my mine from being a kid. But the older I got, I remember art stuff just kept getting phased out, phased out, phased out. I had taken gifted courses. I think they called it enrichment back then, but they were gifted courses. And it felt like those were the only times when I got to do something that felt creative because everything else was towards some specific application. Like you’re learning English to learn how to read and how to write. You’re learning math for those applications and stuff like that.

And just the older you get, even if you are really into art and drawing and stuff like that, it’s increasingly treated as a hobby and not as also a fundamental thing to understand. It’s just the world that we live in because as you alluded to, well, you didn’t allude to this really in the interview, but before that we talked about this, everything is designed. Everything that we use in the modern world has went through some lens or filter of design in some capacity. The chair we sit in, the clothes we wear, the picture we write with.

Chris Dudley:
Exactly.

Maurice Cherry:
All of those are designed. And because we interact with these designed things on such a regular basis, almost on a subconscious basis, we know when something is not designed well.

Chris Dudley:
Exactly.

Maurice Cherry:
We know when this pen is bad or this shirt doesn’t feel right. We know that. We may not have the language for it, sort of speaking what we talked about with English and math and stuff, because that’s not really taught to us as we get older.

Chris Dudley:
So true. So true. And I remember someone asked me, “Oh, what do you do?” I said, “I draw and do illustration.” And the look on her face. And she said this to me, man. She said, “You might as well have told me you could fly. You can draw?” And she was just so shocked. And I’m like, “Yeah, I’ve been drawing and learning this for decades.” But what I’ve found is that artists, well, specifically with visual artists, we’ve done it before there was any incentive to do it. And so, that’s what I think makes it so amazing.

It’s like when someone sees someone that can do back flips and do all this stuff, but they’re not in the Olympics, they’re not getting paid. It’s like, “Wow, how did you learn how to do all that?” They did it because they loved it. And another point I’ll make is that it shows that, if you’re given the right incentive and you can do it because of the right incentive, that shows that you could do it all along.

I’ll use the example sometime. Usain Bolt, fastest man. He’s run the 100 meters in 9.58, I think it was. Now, if someone says, “Hey, I need you to do that in a year. You need to be able to run a sub-10 100 meters. I can’t do it. Right? There’s no amount of money. I can’t do it. But if someone says, “Okay, I need you to learn how to draw by next year decently and I’m going to give you $10 million.” What happens? You start practicing every single day. And guess what? At the end of the year, you’re going to be pretty decent at drawing and get that $10 million, which means you could do it all along, but you didn’t have the incentive.

Yeah, so as artists, we learn. We love it, so you learn how to do it and then later, you make a few dollars from it. And it seems amazing because most people, like you said, they veer off that creative path. Then you get older where you need money, and then I haven’t learned how to draw, so no one’s going to pay me with the skillset I have now. So, I got to go work over here and make some money. But yeah, it’s a awesome thing. Everybody can learn how to draw, but it’s cool being one of the few in the world that can.

Maurice Cherry:
Do you have a dream project or something that you love to do one day?

Chris Dudley:
Dream project? Well, actually, one of my dream projects is a book that I wrote. The book that I just finished up, I’m the author and illustrator and the collaborator with Michael Chambers. He’s featured in the book, but I’m actually the author and the illustrator of the book. So, it’s my book per se. But my dream book, actually, I wrote a couple of years ago, and I have just got around to illustrating my own work. This one is called Duddles and the Big Dilemma, and it is a book about that very thing we just discussed about learning to draw and how everybody thinks it’s magical, but it’s more work than just talent.

And it’s amazing to me is that in the book and it explains it, no one says you’re just an amazing gifted plumber or an amazing gifted carpenter or you just naturally know how to whatever. But when it comes to the arts, people want to put this fairy dust on it. Whereas, what is it, I think Malcolm Gladwell is in his book Outliers, he said that you’ve never seen someone who is good, but they haven’t put into practice, in the work, deliberate practice.

And so, that’s one of my dream projects is to finish that, the illustrations for it and really get that book out there. It’s called Duddles and the Dilemma. Well, I won’t want to give a lot away. I’m going to finish this project probably within the next year or so, and there’s a series to the book as well. But it’s about him realizing that it’s not all fairy dust. You got to put in work to learn to draw. It’s not a magical thing, and that’s just the truth of it. And a lot of people don’t want to believe that, but I wish there was just a download that gave me all this knowledge that I’ve learned over the last 30 plus years. I wish it was that easy, but yeah.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. So, to that end, what do you see as the next chapter of your career? What do you want to do in the next five years or so? What do you see yourself?

Chris Dudley:
Yeah. Well, more books. Right now, as I mentioned, we just launched the book with Michael Chambers, Lil’ Boogaloo Shrimp and the Clean Sweep. And so, I see the direction of doing more art talks and events with kids. We are actually partnering with a nonprofit here locally. I mentioned about the breakdancing school there in Georgia, but there’s one in Colorado that we’re going to be touching base with. And so, I think that’s going to really be exploding. We’ve already talked to Rockwell Dance Academy about a book project, and so, that’s on the horizon. And in the next couple of years, just more books. More books, man.

Maurice Cherry:
More books. Well, just to wrap things up here, Chris, where can our audience find out more information about you, about your work, about the books? Where can they find that information online?

Chris Dudley:
Well, my website is chrisdudleyart.com and that’s where you can see my portfolio, my body of work and anybody can reach out and contact me directly through that. But my books are available through hudsondawnpublishing.com that I’m connected with, hudsondawnpublishing.com. And that’s where all of the books that I’ve illustrated are available. And that’s been awesome being connected with them. I actually designed the logo. And my oldest daughter, she launched the publishing company. She put a team together. I was joking around about it, designed a logo. She launched it during the pandemic. Got with an artist and made a book and got it out. And I was like, “Wow.”

Maurice Cherry:
Wow.

Chris Dudley:
And so, since then she has worked with, wow, probably 10 authors. I’ve illustrated a lot of the books, but she’s working with, I think, five new authors right now and that’ll be on that site. So, yeah, it’s been awesome. She has printeries. It’s established printeries locally in Michigan actually, in the west and east side of the state. Got warehousing. So, she’s taken that to the next level beyond what I ever thought that could be.

Maurice Cherry:
That’s amazing. It’s a whole family operation. It’s a family affair.

Chris Dudley:
Yeah, definitely, definitely. Yeah, hudsondawnpublishing.com.

Maurice Cherry:
Awesome.

Chris Dudley:
And actually, the recent book, you can read the intro of the book right there online.

Maurice Cherry:
Okay. Yeah, we’ll definitely put a link to that in the show notes.

Chris Dudley, I want to thank you so, so much for taking time out and coming on the show. I mean, it always warms my heart to talk to people that have been doing this kind of work for years on years on years because the longevity in just this industry is something that you don’t really see from Black creatives. You can get burned out. We can get discouraged, et cetera. And it really feels like you have found a method and a calling and a passion in this work, and you found a way to not only sustain it for yourself, but also for your family and for the community that you’re in.

I think that is something that is super inspiring. I think any artist wants to make sure that their work has an impact in the world. And most certainly, I can tell just from your passion about it and how you talk about it and just the quality of the work, that you’re making an impact in the world with everything that you do. So, thank you so much for coming on the show. I appreciate it.

Chris Dudley:
Well, thank you for having me. It’s been such a privilege. I truly appreciate and look forward to touching base with you soon.

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If you know how to deliver excellent creative work reliably, and enjoy the autonomy of a virtual-based, freelance life (with no non-competes), check them out at brevityandwit.com.

Isiah Xavier Bradley

Isiah Xavier Bradley was born to be an artist, and you can really feel his love for the craft just from spending a few minutes chatting with him. The Seattle-based illustrator loves all things comics related, and his body of work is filled with superheroes, aliens, mages, and all kinds of other fantasy figures.

We talked about some of his creative projects, and we spoke for a bit about diversity in the fantasy illustration space, as well as how he approaches storytelling through his art. Isiah also shared his story of growing up in Philly, getting inspired by his father (a painter!), and finding creative community both online and offline. Isiah is looking to achieve great things and grow as a professional illustrator, and with his enthusiasm and talent, he’s well on his way of making that happen!

Interview Transcript

Maurice Cherry:
All right, so tell us who you are and what you do.

Isiah Xavier Bradley:
Hi, I am Isiah Xavier Bradley and I’m a freelance illustrator and comic book artist.

Maurice Cherry:
How has the year been going for you so far?

Isiah Xavier Bradley:
It’s been going wonderful. It’s been wonderful. It’s been unsuspected, but just wonderful accomplishments have been happening. Recently, I was at the Western Hotel and was doing an event with two other artists and we were hired to do a 10-minute painting of Seattle’s like landscape of the space needle and the mountains, and of course, we had to include someone drinking coffee in there because there’s nothing but coffee around in Seattle everywhere, but yeah, that was one of the events that I recently did about maybe two months ago, and that was just amazing fun. I didn’t think that was going to happen. It was like I get caught off guard about like how many wonderful things just happen out of the blue. It’s like you don’t know when it’s going to happen or what’s going to happen, but with all the work, just paying off and networking and pursuing, it’s just this year has been a wonderful surprise of many things I got a chance to experience and to do and people to meet. It’s been awesome. It’s been an adventure-

Maurice Cherry:
Nice.

Isiah Xavier Bradley:
… seriously. Yeah.

Maurice Cherry:
Do you have any plans for the summer?

Isiah Xavier Bradley:
Oh, goodness. Well, right now, I’m going to be going to see my friend later in this month to Las Vegas. I mean, I know it’s not exactly summertime, but it’s close enough. So, I’m going to go see her. We’re going to work on some storyboards together. Besides that, I plan on spending as much time as I can outside painting and enjoying the fresh air because in Seattle, it was just way too cloudy and I needed some sunlight, but that’s it so far for now.

Maurice Cherry:
When you look back at this time last year, how would you say you’ve changed or how have things changed for you over the year? What’s different? What’s new? Anything like that?

Isiah Xavier Bradley:
I would say my mindset has definitely been changing. Last year it was like my art was still, like my career was still growing and I was getting more people and more companies to hire me, which felt really good, but also I had to work on my mindset about what success was and about how my career is growing. For being an artist, there’s no chart to show you. Like when you meet a goal, there’s like no reward or some outside source, especially when you’re a freelancer, to say, “Hey, yes, you made it. Yes, you did it,” and everything and that was something I had to get used to because it was like I’m my own boss. I have to be the one to do that for myself. So, that way, I can acknowledge the work. I was doing the hours, the hard projects, the tight deadlines, or I had to change my mindset to recognize the accomplishments I was doing and also to be completely self-aware and present.

That’s another thing. I was working out more and I’m working out more now this year. I was realizing that physically, like they always wanted to make characters like toned and skinny and muscled, and realizing how that had a negative effect on people and it’s including myself because I was like, “I need to show that beautiful is all different types of shapes and sizes.” Beauty is diversity. That’s like with my character, Sandra. Actually, I was inspired by Lizzo because I was watching Lizzo and Lizzo was just this beautiful, powerful, thick queen and I wanted to create a character that was like that. So, I created a character called Sandra. She has this huge ice ax and she’s just around this really cool character that just doesn’t take nothing from nobody and it’s her own person and as I’m talking to you now, I’m looking at the poster above my desk and it’s like all my diverse characters. I have Native American. I have Mexican. I have Black, Afro-Latina, and different types of body types, and I just feel like that definitely contributed to how I was thinking differently last year and this year and how it affects my artwork now.

With that experience, it definitely helped me become more of a better artist and more in touch with myself too, about finding that beauty about myself too. So, now I’m able to take that and put it into my art.

Maurice Cherry:
You touched on something now that I actually wanted to discuss a little later, but we can jump into it right now. Is representation, and I’m using air quotes over representation because that’s such a broad spectrum of what that could mean, but is that something that you feel like has to be a part of your work? When you think about your individual identities, do you feel like I need to put that into my work in some way?

Isiah Xavier Bradley:
Absolutely. I think it’s important. For example, Ariel, that was a huge debate just because of the color of her skin, but the people that I saw, like Black little girls and Black women seeing Ariel being a Black mermaid and having that such powerful, positive enforcement, I’m like, “Yeah, we need to have more of that. People need to feel like they can do that too,” and sometimes people just need to see that like I did. Like for X-Men, Storm, that beautiful Black queen goddess. I love her so much of the X-Men. She’s great. She definitely was an icon for me and diversity and acknowledging that I was like, “I have to make sure that I represent more of that, bring that out more into the world so that way people of color can feel beautiful too and people with different body types can feel beautiful too.” It’s just like diversity is absolutely needed because it’s all around us and it needs to be accepted.

It’s something that’s so natural and for it to not to be celebrated as such, it hurts and especially towards our younger community, our younger community needs to know that, yes, you can do this. Yes, you can be that. I dream of a future where everyone is just represented equally and accepted and loved. So, we can all just create beautiful things because imagine what we could create if all of us were just getting along together and just sharing our beliefs and whatnot, but we don’t have to agree on it, but it’s just something that could be so beautiful. So, absolutely diversity needs to be in my work. Absolutely. The more weirder, the more unique, the better. I just want that. I yearn for it.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, there’s that adage that goes like, “You can’t be what you don’t see,” or something like that and I think certainly along the lines of illustration, animation even, there’s been such an explosion at least over the past decade or so where we’ve seen Black and brown artists, queer artists, et cetera, that are creating works in those images and putting it out there in a way that… I mean, some stuff has even been on streaming series and things of that nature. You started to see such a huge explosion of this diversity through the medium of illustration or animation over the past 10 years and it’s really been something to see because along with that, there’s also all these other stories that can be told because it’s coming from people with these different perspectives or because the characters are not the average white character, et cetera. There’s just more opportunities and possibilities for storytelling.

Isiah Xavier Bradley:
Absolutely, absolutely, and I feel like some companies or people would just be nervous about tapping into it too, because it’s change and people can be very scared of change, but it’s like we need that change. We need it. Even though it’s scary, it’s like we need it because it’s like we can’t keep repeating ourselves over the years over and over and over. No, we need to have that change right here, right now, so that way in the future we can have a better opportunity for everyone and then everyone can just feel that self-love more and capable. Absolutely.

Maurice Cherry:
Let’s talk about your work as a freelance illustrator. What does a typical day look like for you?

Isiah Xavier Bradley:
Oh, actually, it’s weird. My mind likes to play tricks on me and what I mean by that is sometimes I’ll wake up in the morning and I will be ready to go. I’ll just jump right into it. I’ll just get up and brush my teeth, maybe splash some water on my face or take a shower, or I’ll just wake up and I’ll just go to my art desk and start painting out of nowhere. I feel like those are my go-get-it days. Today is definitely one of those days where it’s like, “Okay, I’m going to go ahead and do my work and be focused,” which is like I made that conscious decision to go into that. So, I would wake up, make a list because for me, I can’t think of things in my head of what to do. If I do that, I easily get overwhelmed.

So, I have to make a list and that list keeps me organized and not only that, but checking it off actually makes me feel like, “Oh crap. I’m actually getting stuff done. I’m actually doing it,” and it’s like, “I’m not going to focus on how long it takes me. I’m going to focus on getting the goal done,” because once I get that done, it’s going to feel really good. Then I can go on to the next one and then I’m just like, “Yes, I’m doing it.” On off days, I wake up and I have no energy in the morning and I have to wait till 12 o’clock for my whole body to feel that full awareness. It’s like, okay, I’m ready to make art and I think that’s why it’s so important to be self-aware because if you can be completely self-aware and present about how you’re feeling physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually, that you will be able to conquer yourself.

You’ll be able to be like “I know what you’re thinking,” and be like, “I know what to do.” It’s like if I’m at home and I’m trying to work and I can’t focus, I know to remove myself from that space into an outside space or a completely public space where I can focus and get things done. So, it’s about doing that work and realizing what works best for you and for me, it can just flip. It can be vice versa, but I’m working with it. It’s been doing wonders for me. I’ve been able to get more work done, especially from working from home because you could get so easily distracted, distracted by video games, distracted by cooking food.

I mean, I love food, but also I got to do my work or movies and whatnot and I think as long as you’re completely self fully aware, you’re good and breaks. I always try to take a break after probably between hours or every other three hours perhaps. So, I’ll take a small break or I’ll just get up after 15 minutes, after I realize that, “Hey, my focus is slipping. I’ll just get up and walk around, stretch my body out, just get it physically active, walk away from the project and maybe go for a walk outside,” and then I’ll come back and my mind is refreshed and I might be able to point out some things I didn’t notice before. So, yeah, it’s all about just knowing how your body and your mind think and just utilizing that for your advantage. That’s how pretty much my take goes. Natural chaos. I like to call it natural chaos.

Maurice Cherry:
I mean, I think you touched on something that a lot of people probably like at the start of the pandemic had to come to grips with when working from home is that it’s tough to work from home. It takes a lot of discipline to not fall into just doing something else. Like you mentioned, I could play video games. I could eat. I could do whatever. I could watch TV, whatever, but knowing that you have to get the work done is it’s a challenge. It’s a challenge and I think for a lot of people when the pandemic started, that was something they had to come to terms with. One, I think it’s just outfitting their place to be a place to work because the office is the office. Home is home.

Now, you’re bringing the office to your home. How do you make that happen? It’s a process to get to that level where you can feel like you can really wake up in the morning and get into a flow state and get work done at home. It’s harder than I think a lot of people realize.

Isiah Xavier Bradley:
Especially when you’re own, you’re your own boss too. You have no one looking over your shoulder. You are completely free. You get to decide exactly what you do and how you do it and it’s a blessing and a curse because you’re like, “Dang it. I need to focus.” So, that’s why it’s always good to know yourself, to be like, “How do I function? What can I do to make sure that I am actually getting work done?” It’s so easy to fall into that trap and being a freelancer is more than just one job. You have multiple jobs. You’re the manufacturer. You’re the producer. You’re the advertiser. You’re the financial budget person. You’re the stock person organizing your area, make sure you have enough materials and whatnot and all that.

It’s like you’re playing multiple roles. I don’t think many people realize when you’re playing freelancing, you’re literally your own army unless you are hiring somebody else to help you, but it’s hard times. Not everyone can be affording that, but if you also have that capability to do that stuff by yourself, then go for it. Just make sure you’re giving yourself breaks and affirmations. Affirmations are really important for sure.

Maurice Cherry:
Now, you do a little bit of everything from comic books to trading cards. What does your process look like when it comes to approaching a new piece of work? What does that look like?

Isiah Xavier Bradley:
I usually like to feel it out. Like what is this image going to convey? What is the vibe I’m trying to give it? Because doing illustrations, and any kind of illustration, sketch cards, book covers. It all leads down to storytelling and it’s so important that you recognize body language, colors to evoke mood, the perspective, the layout of the image. Everything adds to the story. So, I try to keep that in mind while I’m looking for references and I try not to spend too much time on references because I find that you could spend a lot of time looking up references and then you lose too much time that you could have used for the project.

So, I try to do at least an hour of references, or under, and then I just go in there and do really quick, bold sketches. I think that doing bold sketches allows you to develop your idea much quicker and gives you a bit more of a confidence booster. It’s like I know what I’m doing. I know what I want to go for and it just helps you move things along in a much more progressive kind of way and afterwards, after thumbnail is chosen or making a discussion, depending on the client, sometimes clients have notes about something they would like to have changed, or sometimes you’ll just get lucky, which thankfully I’ve been very lucky where I’ve had customers where they’re like, “Oh, it’s perfect. Keep going.” I’m like, “Great.” So, I’ll just go onto the next step and I’ll do a loose sketch.

Back then I used to do sketches where I would just go from very loose sketch to a very, very tight sketch, but nowadays, I go from a loose sketch to half tight sketch because I like to add more details with the color. So, after I’m done doing a tight, but not full-on sketch, I like to do a quick color filling, and that quick color filling allows me to play with the color and see what works, what’s more powerful that serves the image in the story and then after I get approval for that, I just go in there and start painting it like I would traditional art. I don’t know if many people would do it this way, but I like to stick to three, four layers max only because I was raised by my father to do traditional art and when I went to art school, I learned digital art and then it took me a while to feel comfortable with digital.

So, I took that mindset and the way I used traditional paintings, I took that method and applied it to digital and now that I have less layers and I’m working on it like I would traditional, it actually turns out much more the way I would want it to. Yeah, it is weird. I think it’s just because I was just so trained for so many years. I was doing traditional art way longer than digital. So, that’s programmed in my head, but it worked nicely for me. I really like how my digital artwork comes up now. I still do traditional, of course, because I can’t let that old-fashioned love go. That’s my first love, traditional watercolor, acrylic color, pencil, love all that. I would just apply that method and it would just work nicely for me and that’s pretty much my process right there. Just remembering what you’re trying to tell, what the story you’re trying to tell, and long as you keep that in mind along with the body language and the color and the way that they’re just presenting themselves, the character or the environment, that’s the best way to create that image you’re trying to make.

Maurice Cherry:
Now. You mentioned storytelling. How do you approach storytelling through your art? Is that a separate process?

Isiah Xavier Bradley:
Oh, well, first thing I did was I did some research. I actually had a friend, Tony Atkins. He’s a DC comic artist, and I think he’s the one that recommended me to look at this. I’m not 100% sure, but I have this book here called Framed Ink, and it’s called Drawing and Composition for Visual Storytellers. It’s so such a good book. I recommend this book for any artist who’s trying to do illustration or comic book art. Technically, it’s for comic book artists, but after reading this book, it allowed me to take that method and apply it to illustrations and it talks about everything. It talks about what direction the trees are going in. If the trees are somewhat bending towards the focus point of the piece, it actually creates more of a focus point. If you’re looking downwards or upwards at a person, let’s say upwards, it gives more of a towering kind of vibe where you feel small and they’re big and threatening and whatnot.

Even the dramatic lighting, when I was doing comic books, I was working on some stories where sometimes I wouldn’t even go in full detail. In the area, I would just put a Black background and add dramatic lighting to their face because sometimes the character would be sad or upset and I really wanted to capture that and it gave it a traumatic effect. There are so many little things you can do, and even hands. Hands are a big thing too that give a big personality in storytelling. So, if someone’s more gentle and calm, maybe their fingers look more elegant and soft and not so stiff and someone’s mad or trying to cast an aggressive spell or something like that. Maybe their hands are a bit more provocative or a little bit more like gnarly or something like that. There’s so many aspects to storytelling.

And also another thing I loved to do. I haven’t done it in a hot minute because I’ve just been painting crazy, which is look at movies and notice how they have the camera set, what kind of colors they’re choosing. It’s just like watching movies can teach you a lot about how to do storytelling and I’m trying to think of what was like a good movie I think that was pretty good. I would say I liked Ultraviolet with Milla Jovovich. That was a good one for how the perspectives were. They did the crazy camera angles and the way they showed scenes through someone’s shade. They’re wearing shades and then you could just see a picture within their shades. It’s just so many interesting ways for you to do storytelling. Maybe the person’s drinking a cup of coffee and you see them talking, but you’re not focused on them, the reflections in the cup of coffee. It’s just so many fascinating ways to do storytelling.

So, I would say for sure, just also pay attention to people out in public, just like we’re not having a conversation. They’re not all standstill and stiff like some action figure. No. They’re either hunched over or they’re leaning one way or the other, or it’s all about just pay attention to those small details and if you gather all those, those things to come together. You can come up with some really cool images. So, I would just say people watching, movie watching, sometimes even video games, but it depends on the video game. Like God of War, that’s a good storytelling for sure. If you’ve seen God of War, the video game, you would definitely see what I mean because it’s so well done and put well together, but that’s why I would say that and this book called Framed Ink for sure. It’s so good.

Maurice Cherry:
Speaking of video games, as I’m looking through your portfolio and seeing your work and everything, a lot of it is based on fantasy, science fiction. You’ve mentioned comic books being influenced by that. What really draws you to those as genres? What draws you to all that?

Isiah Xavier Bradley:
Oh, goodness. I fell in love with comics and fantasy, sci-fi stuff when I was a kid. I was so obsessed with it. I wanted to submerge my mind into that world. Something about it just seemed like so much fun and it seemed bright and exciting and just something that just reached out to me. It all started with the ’90s, those beautiful colored costumes and Storm making her speeches and you didn’t see, but my hands just reached out to the sky like her. Just like what else was fantasy like Yu-Gi-Oh!, the monster designs. I was just fascinated by all this. I was watching cartoons absorbing it like a sponge and I was so into it and I had so many action figures. I still do, and honestly, it was like my dad introduced me into fantasy art as well, because he’s an artist and he would do a lot of these paintings at home where they were just fantasy-based, abstract kind of fantasy combination.

I just grew really fascinated with it and to be honest, I was like, when I was a kid, I was bullied and that world of fantasy and superheroes honestly helped me with my day-by-day life. It just brought so much happiness for me and honestly, I think that’s one of the main reasons why I became an artist in the first place. So, anyone else who was different like I was, they could look towards that and maybe get inspired by a character because it was like I was just so inspired by so many other characters too that made me just feel like I was capable. Like being different was great and awesome, and I just think that that’s definitely what drew me in. It’s just that entire world is something that made me happy, really, really happy and it still does.

Maurice Cherry:
Is there a lot of diversity in that space? I mean, of course, there’s the different stories that are being told, but in terms of other artists and things like that, is there a lot of diversity in that fantasy space?

Isiah Xavier Bradley:
In terms of other artists?

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah.

Isiah Xavier Bradley:
I feel like for sure, like back then, when it came to it, like at the time I wasn’t aware, but Larry… I forgot his last name. But Larry is the producer and artist for the ’90s X-Men and it wasn’t until maybe five years ago I found out that it was a Black man and I was just astounded and so inspired. I was already inspired by the X-Men. The fact that it was created by a Black man, I was about to burst in tears happy because it just made me so ecstatic and I was like, “Holy crap. Someone who made something that inspired me and that just touched me in so many ways,” and oh, it was empowering. It was just amazing. I would say for sure that was just an important part of my art journey.

And now, since him, I didn’t notice too many. Even before I met him, I didn’t even notice too many Black artists, or at least they weren’t acknowledged at least because I feel like when it came to especially the comic book industry, that a lot more artists were not being acknowledged for their work. I mean, thankfully now it’s becoming more of a thing, but it should have been a thing already. It should have been like they should have been recognized for their hard work for sure. I didn’t know that many. I know a couple now. I follow a couple now on social media, which is great, but I just feel like we need more because especially for big projects like Dungeons and Dragons and Marvel, like thankfully Marvel’s now definitely for short, like not even artist-wise, but actor/artist-wise, we’re getting more people like Monica, Miss Marvel. It’s just having more people of color. It’s just awesome and I feel like now we’re getting more people of color who are artists arising more, especially during the pandemic because… Well, I think the pandemic’s over now-ish, but I think a lot of people realize that you can make your own business. You can be a freelancer. You can do this.

And them realizing that really did reveal more to social media. Like, “Hey, we’re here. I’m queer and I’m a person of color and I’m here,” and because of that I am happy that that happened, that people were able to put their stuff out there more. So, now I can actually see more and honestly, I’m just really happy about that. I think that would be the only good thing that came out of the pandemic. The only good thing was people realized, hey, I can start my own business. Hey, I can do this. I can make art and people can buy it, and with that, I would just have more rising, more rising and I just want that for everybody. More people to bring their voices forward because I didn’t have enough of that when I was a kid. I didn’t and that’s why I don’t know many people by name, which is unfortunate, but now it’s happening. So, yeah. Now, I can full on support.

Maurice Cherry:
I just looked up who you were talking about. I think it’s Larry Houston.

Isiah Xavier Bradley:
Yeah, I was looking at his last name on the Storm piece he signed for me, but I couldn’t make out… I was like, “Darn it. That’s too many swirls. I can’t read it.”

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, Larry Houston was the producer and director of X-Men, the second season. I’m looking at his Twitter bio, but he’s like Fantastic Four, second season, Captain Planet, Johnny Quest, GI Joe, GI Joe movie, The Karate Kid, Care Bear. I had no idea. I had no idea he had such a impressive resume.

Isiah Xavier Bradley:
I only knew he did the X-Men. I didn’t know the other stuff. My goodness.

Maurice Cherry:
And actually speaking of X-Men, like I know there’s the new… I think it’s like the reboot of the ’90s Cartoon is supposed to be coming out I think this year, maybe next year, but that has a Black director at the helm too, Beau DeMayo.

Isiah Xavier Bradley:
Yeah. Yeah, I’ve been following it too. I was like, “Yes, I need to see this.” It’s like it’s supposed to be a continuation off the ’90s, which I’m very curious about how that’s going to go because first off, that show was just… It was ahead of its time. It tackled racism. It tackled speciesism. I think that’s how you say. You know what I’m talking about? I forget the correct terminology, but anybody who was different, that was not normal. Anybody who was different, they were just looked upon as a freak of nature or something like that and just to have a show that was empowering people who were different, it was a huge gift. I don’t know honestly if I would’ve been an artist if X-Men didn’t exist at that time for me when I was a kid. I don’t know because that was just a huge motivator, huge inspiration for me.

Maurice Cherry:
Let’s switch gears here a little bit. I know we’ve talked a lot about your work and you’ve led us into your process, but you’ve also given us, I think, a bit of a window into where you came from and where this love comes from. So, let’s talk more about you. Let’s talk about you. Are you originally from Seattle?

Isiah Xavier Bradley:
No, I am from Philadelphia.

Maurice Cherry:
Okay.

Isiah Xavier Bradley:
Most of my life, I’ve been an Philadelphian.

Maurice Cherry:
All right. What was it like growing up in Philly?

Isiah Xavier Bradley:
Oh goodness. First off, concrete jungle. No trees around. Some trees around, but not that much. Going from Philly to Seattle was definitely an adjustment. Goodness gracious. In Philly, I’m just remembering, like I was living with my parents. I went to art school. I went to Northeast High and that was in the Northeast Philadelphia and that was definitely a school I enjoyed for sure because I had so many good friends there. I was a part of the choir, so that was another creative thing, another creative outlet for me and I was working on comics and this is before I was overthinking some of this stuff. So, I was able just to draw without overthinking it and actually made a little bit of profit there too.

So, it was super fun just to draw my own comic book, make copies, and my classmates were like, “Ooh, we want to buy one. We want to buy one,” and it was just super, super fun, but the area I was in definitely was more concrete jungle. I don’t think I got inspired by the area I was in, more by the people I was hanging around with and my dad when he was working on this art and my brother too, and it was just like I had a good community over there. I’m very grateful for having so many awesome people there that inspired me to continue making art and going hushing over there in Philadelphia was great. Was there for four years. I met some very good friends of mine and they’re still friends of mine, which is a blessing because it’s hard to find some true friends and it was just a wonderful experience, and honestly, it also helped me find more of myself too, just like people there who knew me through and through.

Before even I knew me, it was weird. It was like, “Where are you, in my head or something?” No, it was just an awesome experience. Plus the food was way cheaper than Seattle. It was also dangerous because I could get me a plain pizza at large for 11 bucks and I would go for it, but over here in Seattle, it’s like a large plain pizza is like 26. So, it’s like, “Okay, maybe that shouldn’t be ordering so much over here. Maybe I should learn how to cook.” So, when I came up here to Seattle, it was definitely more of a, okay, let’s step up this adulthood more. Let’s learn how to cook. So, I did that and goodness gracious, I had to build my entire art studio again because I had no scanner. I had no art desk. So, it was just starting all over and fresh, but being in Seattle, I love the nature. Nature is gorgeous.

If you ever wanted to get away, obviously, you could just take a bus to a park somewhere and just chill there. It’s like nature is right there and it was just so nice to have that accessibility. There is definitely a Seattle freeze for a couple, maybe a handful or two. Over here where it’s like some people are just like they’ll pretend you’re not there or if they need to reach for something, they’ll just reach right in front of you and I’m not used to that. I’m used to Philly kind of interaction which is like, okay, if you need something, I’m going to say excuse me and then get together, but thankfully, a lot of people weren’t born here and moved here and you can always tell because those are the people that are just like, “Oh, hello. How you doing?” They actually will have a conversation with you or have eye contact with you, but thankfully I’ve had the pleasure to make friends with a lot of people who weren’t having the Seattle freeze symptoms.

They wouldn’t have the Seattle freeze symptoms. They would just be completely themselves and open and nice and kind. Yeah. So, be over here in Seattle and Philly, I could tell you that the difference is that for sure is like, “Philly, you just need more green. You need a lot more green,” and then Seattle’s like, “Seattle, you just need to look more fun. You need to have a little bit more fun.” Yeah, it was definitely like a process and adjustment for me to go from East Coast to West Coast. Such a huge adjustment, but I’m still me. I’m still a Philadelphian. I even consider myself to be a little bit of Seattleite, but Philly come first because I was there most of my adult life. So, yeah.

Maurice Cherry:
What made you decide to move to Seattle from Philly?

Isiah Xavier Bradley:
I wanted to be with my ex at the time. So, me and him both moved to Seattle and at that time, I was going through a lot of struggle, a lot of inner struggle, inner demons, what’s that? Imposter syndrome. My friends were trying to help me and my family were trying to help me and they were all so wonderfully attending and want to make sure I was okay, but I was not going to be okay until I was going to want to be okay or figure out some stuff. So, when I moved over to Seattle, it gave me that breathing space for me to figure out what’s going on with me and it took a hot minute too, but thanks to therapy, thanks to journaling, thanks to working out, thanks to being self-aware and giving myself those self-love affirmations, all that helped me become much more of a happier person to get in touch with that inner child that was suffering from all the seriousness of adulthood.

It’s like I know we got responsibilities, but also we are supposed to live our life and have fun. I can’t lose that part of myself because that part of myself is a huge part of why I’m an artist. So, I have to make sure that I’m taking care of myself and giving myself that time and space I need to do what I need to do to make sure I am in a better place, and when I’m like that, I’m actually able to be there for other people more. I’m able to handle more. It’s just something that I think that everyone needs to take into consideration. It’s about like self-care, self-love, self-expression for sure. Self-expression because too many people hold things in and it builds up like a volcano and it explodes and it’s not fun. That was one of the things.

I was just like, “I can’t be living my life like that. I want to be happy. I want to make my work and be proud of the work I make and I want to be there for my friends and not feel exhausted or forced and doing all that work. That self-work allowed me to become much better.” That’s what I would say.

Maurice Cherry:
Have you been able to tap into an artist community or a design community in Seattle?

Isiah Xavier Bradley:
Took me a hot minute, but I find it a little hilarious because I didn’t think it was going to work, but I went to a comic book store, Phoenix Comics & Games, in Capitol Hill, and I went there, and I was looking at the local artists and they had local artists putting their comic books on the rack and I was like, “Oh, let me see if I could find somebody,” and thankfully I found my friend Tim, and his book, I think it’s called Enter the Wolves. He had his phone number and contact information in there, or was it just his email? Either way I contacted him and he responded and we met up. This is before I had any of our friends at all here on the West Coast. So, I went to go meet up with him. We hung out, had a cup of coffee, talked, and it was like later we decided to start making it a thing.

Let’s get together and draw and then we would do that and then we started to bring more people into the forward people. He knew people I would probably meet that were interested in meeting for the art meetup and it’s just now a regular thing and we’ve been doing it for years now, just doing our art meetup and drawing and just having a blast because one of the huge things I missed in Philly was my art community, was hang out with my friend Laurie and Kat and we would just hang out together and I loved that. I didn’t realize how much I would’ve miss that until I moved to Seattle and it was no longer accessible and I needed that back in my life or at least closest to as I could get. So, having that art community is a huge blessing and it’s awesome and it also helps me focus too.

It’s like, “Ooh, if I’m going to be home I’m going to have to adjust myself, but if I go out and meet with my art friends, then I have no excuse. I can just go in there and start drawing because I’ll be fine and chill with my folks.” So, absolutely worth it of trying that, just emailing random artists like, “Hey, you want to meet up and such like that?” I’m just glad that I did that because usually I get social anxiety and I get nervous about talking to people, but it was like, no, I’m not going to let that stop me from making new friends. I’m going to go out there and I’m going to do it. Yeah, I’m just very grateful for that. Absolutely.

Maurice Cherry:
Now you spoke earlier about Larry Houston, but I’m curious, are there other artists or illustrators that have influenced your work the most?

Isiah Xavier Bradley:
Jim Lee.

Maurice Cherry:
Okay.

Isiah Xavier Bradley:
Because he was drawing the X-Men back in, I think, the ’80s, ’90s-ish. Like I said, I’m a huge X-Men fan. You just don’t know. I have so much X-men on my wall about besides that. No, Jim Lee, it was definitely for sure because I loved the intensity he will put into his ink work. It was just so comic bookish style and it really made the X-Men look really cool and I was just like, “Oh my God, I could just read this all day.” Another artist I would say is Ross Straus. Him, I enjoy because of a lot of his potent color. Like my art teacher back in Hussain would talk about how juicy the colors are, you know? When we’re painting, she’s like, “Get the juice in there,” and I’m just like… ever since then when it comes to my art, I just have to put juice into my color.

It’s like I need to make this a little bit more pow in your face. So, yes, that was definitely another one. Alex Ross is another one. He is much more of a traditional. He does works in, like I think traditional acrylics or oils. I’m not exactly sure, but he does work with traditional mediums and his work is taking the comic book world and making it more into a realistic kind of vibe and he does a lot of dramatic lighting too. So, I just loved it. I just love how he was able to take that world that was fiction and bring it so close to reality. So, sometimes I’m doing my work. If I’m working on a cover or something like that, I’ll step on comic book style. I’ll probably go for an illustration style just because it gives it a completely different vibe. It gives the character more of a breath of life kind of scenario.

I mean, I love the graphic feel, but something about just seeing a character that looks almost realistic. You’re like, “Oh crap.” You’re just like, “That looks great,” and one more is Simon Bianchi. I hope I pronounced his last name right, but I believe he is a French artist who works for Marvel and he does a lot of acrylic watercolor kind of techniques where it’s a combination of realistic and comic book style and I just loved how he would illustrate such a dramatic use of colors and his hair detail. He would draw a lot of detail in the hair, but it would just look so beautifully well planned. I can’t even get into full detail about how his stuff works, but Simon Bianchi is definitely an artist I studied especially back in art school. When I was learning watercolor, I would just look at his pictures and I would just paint what I saw.

I would just paint up a panel I saw of his I really enjoyed and because of that, I actually got much better with watercolor the next year because watercolor was literally the first medium I was trying to get really good at and it took a hot minute for me to understand how to manipulate watercolor, but now it’s like after all those years of studying and investing time and studying that medium, watercolor, I just was excited to actually be able to utilize it to make an image the way I wanted to because watercolor is very, very tricky. So, thank you, Simon, for doing that for me because now I know how to paint.

Maurice Cherry:
Now you mentioned that your father was a traditional artist. Was he an illustrator also?

Isiah Xavier Bradley:
He definitely did his own paintings. He didn’t do it professionally, but he wanted to, but unfortunately he didn’t have the support of his family, like not the way that I do and I’m just grateful for him to give me that support because he knows how hard it is out here in the creative field because so many people want to jump in and do it, but my dad still does make art till this day. Like I was talking to him and my mother for Mother’s Day and he showed me these pieces he was working on. It was so beautiful, abstract, gorgeous, surreal kind of fantasy and it just makes me so happy that he’s still making his art because this is a part of who he is. He might not be doing it professionally, but at least he’s still doing it and I’m just happy and proud of him for that.

Maurice Cherry:
Nice. What advice would you give to any aspiring artist? They’re hearing you talk about your work and your process and they want to follow in your footsteps. What advice would you give to them about just starting out in the industry?

Isiah Xavier Bradley:
Number one I think is patience. Patience with yourself, patience with the process of making art and patience with the process of getting work if you want to pursue it professionally. It took me a hot minute before I started to get more commissions coming in manually, and it took a while for me to get to that point where, hey, I don’t have to look for commissions. People just come to me and asked me, “Hey, can you do this for me?” All that took a while and like I said, without that actual chart to show you, hey, you’re on step two now. You’re on step three. Woo. Without that, it’s so easy for you to feel like you’re not moving. You’re standing still, like your career’s not going anywhere, and especially if you are starting off with illustrate, like you’re starting off by making art and you’re not at the level you want to be, it’s so hard to be patient with yourself, especially when you’re comparing yourself to other artists.

I think people need to have much more patience with themselves and understand that what’s going to get you there is consistency, to keep trying, to keep painting, to try new things, to share your work. Don’t be afraid to share your work. That’s something that I still struggle with sometime. I mean, I know I have a lot of content on my social media. Yes, I do, but there are moments where my partner will catch me. He’s like, “Don’t overthink it. Just write out your stuff and post it on there,” and I’m just like, “You’re right. I just wanted to be perfect,” but there’s no such thing as perfect. The best way to be perfect is to be yourself authentically and then there you go. Just be your genuine self. That is perfection.

I would definitely say that that’s something that that’s needed is patience. No one’s going to give you a timeline of when you’re going to get that job either and that’s frustrating. I could totally get that, but you also just got to… Like I said, you got to be patient with that process. You won’t know until it actually happens in that moment. Like this podcast, I didn’t think I was going to get interviewed for a podcast and next thing you know, it just pops out in a moment. I’m like, “Oh, wow. Okay.” I’m like, “Fine.” Even the Western Hotel thing, that was another random thing, and I’m like, “Oh my goodness.”

Another thing I would say for sure is give yourself affirmations for sure. If you had to make yourself that list and cross something off that you got done to get that pat on the back kind of feel, then do it. I would say go for it. That’s absolutely necessary because it’s so easy for you to do things and then forget what you do because this happened to me before and still does sometimes. You forget what you do in the day and then you feel like you’re like, “Oh, I could have done more.” It’s like, “No, no, you’re doing pretty darn good. Look at that list.” I think it’s definitely important to give yourself that affirmation and also to sometimes take a look back at your old art and look at your art the way it is now so that way you can give yourself that affirmation of, oh, I did grow. You know? Because it’s like it’s so… Being an artist is a marathon. It’s not a race. It’s a marathon. That’s what I’m saying to be consistent and with that marathon you’re running, it’s so easy for you to feel like, “Oh, I’m not growing as an artist.” My skill level’s not improving or whatnot and it’s always good to look back at your old art pieces and don’t compare to other artists.

That other artist is on a completely different path than you. Not every artist is going to get a job the exact same way. Not every artist is going to get noticed the exact same way. It’s so different from each other, it’s frustrating because you wish that there was a book to go ahead and tell you like, “This is exactly how you do it.” Oh no, there’s no book. You just got to put your stuff out there and be consistent and don’t be a butt hole. That’s another thing. When you’re talking to people, always want to be a genuine person, but also treat that person with fellow respect. No one likes to work with somebody who’s mean or nasty or comes off as aggressive. No, like this is networking and building a relationship, a friendship. You want to make sure that you are presenting yourself the best way you can be that is genuine and true, and I think that’s just something to absolutely consider as well and another thing I think that’s beneficial is trying out new things.

Like I’ve done watercolor, acrylics, used acrylics as watercolor and on canvas, digital painting. Now, I’m starting to get into story boarding and sculpting. Sculpting too. It’s like you are an artist and yes, you have a preference, but it’s always refreshing just to get into something just a little bit new and it keeps your excitement up. It keeps you like, ooh, I’m so excited just to try that out. You’ll see what comes out and everything. I’m painting on canvas now, and usually I don’t paint on canvas. I usually leave that alone, but with that 10-minute piece painting I was doing at the Western Hotel, that was something that really brought that out on me that I was like, “I want to paint on canvas. I want to try that out.” I feel something that’s pulling me towards that and it was like that kid-like spark that was like, “Ooh, I need that.”

So, now doing that and looking at the canvas, I’m like, “I am happy,” and I think that’s definitely something important to do is don’t be afraid to challenge yourself and don’t be afraid to show your art, self-affirmations and patience with yourself, and one more I think is self-awareness, and self-awareness, I mean by that is just acknowledging if you are upset about something because being an artist isn’t just drawing pictures. It’s you’re putting your energy into that piece. You’re giving parts or you’re putting parts of yourself into that piece, and if you’re upset or going through something, it’s going to show up, or you might not be able to draw as well. You might not be able to think as well. That’s why it’s so important to be self-aware about what state of mind you’re in, and it’s all about just giving yourself that attention, acknowledging that you’re not okay or you’re upset, or maybe you’re just tired and burnt out.

It’s good for you to acknowledge this and to know this so that way you can just take care of yourself, give yourself a hug, or get a hug from a friend or talk to somebody you trust, and this is definitely something that will help you out for sure because being an artist, and especially in a world like this, it’s stressful. It can be very stressful, but it’s also very, very rewarding, especially when you are just giving it your all and you see it pay off. It’s something absolutely worth it, and long as you are just making sure that you’re your own best friend, you’re going to get there just like you got to make sure you give yourself some loving and you got to make sure that you just acknowledge when you need something, and I think that’s important too. That’s my advice.

Maurice Cherry:
Do you have a dream project you’d love to do one day?

Isiah Xavier Bradley:
Oh, okay. It’s on my list. It’s on top of my list. I want to be a cover artist for Marvel, because I just like doing illustrations. I just love doing the storytelling. I want to be a cover artist. I want to do full-on paintings and do stuff for them. I want to do stuff for Wizards of the Coast because I love the overall style of their world. They’re just this beautiful like… It’s like Renaissance paintings. I don’t know if you know what I’m talking about, but it’s like they have that soft glow. It’s like the way they paint them. I was going to the Seattle Art Museum, and I was noticing these pieces that were back in the day Renaissance Times where I have no clue how they did it, but the way they painted, it’s almost looked like they were computers themselves, but you could still tell it was by an artist, of course. The way they just captured a glow or the texture or the way the person was, like the way they were standing. It’s just like their bodies weren’t even stiff. Something like that. It’s just like, “Oh God. Yes. That is exactly what I need.”

Maurice Cherry:
We had someone on the show a couple of months ago, Lauren Brown. I think she’s an art director at Wizards of the Coast. I’m looking now. Yeah, Emmy Award-winning illustrator and art director at Wizards of the Coast. She’s here in Atlanta too. Yeah.

Isiah Xavier Bradley:
Oh, nice. I’m going to look them up.

Maurice Cherry:
Yes. Yeah, so there’s a lot. I mean, there’s certainly, I think as you sort of mentioned that, I think that opportunity is definitely going to be out there for you because as I talked about earlier, it just seems like there’s more and more Black people, really people of color, but I’d say Black people specifically that are really being out there, especially with the major titles. I’m really surprised to see how many are doing things for Marvel. We’ve had a few motion graphics designers that have done work for some of the movies, like Black Panther or into the Spider-Verse. It’s amazing how we are starting to get out there more. I mean, granted, it’s still not super diverse like in the grand scheme of things, but I feel like that’s going to happen for you sooner rather than later. I really think that.

Isiah Xavier Bradley:
Oh, thank you. Yes, please. I want that as like I can feel my spirit trying to grab it with its hands. It’s like I want it. It’s like I need that because in the future, I want to have my own company, like Marvel or Wizards of the Coast where it’s like I’m able to give those same opportunities for other people of color and especially Black people. It’s like there’s so much talent there and it’s like it’s so untapped and now we’re just tapping into it. It’s so much more like Woman King. Oh my God. [The] Woman King, Viola Davis, like oh my God. Thank you for doing that movie because that was amazing. Michelle Yeoh about… What’s it? Everything In Our Place. That’s a long title.

Maurice Cherry:
Everything Everywhere All at Once.

Isiah Xavier Bradley:
Yes, that’s another one. It’s like see what happens when people of color and diversity is represented. You get awesomeness. You get wonderful stories. It’s just something that is needed and in the future, if I can provide that opportunity for more people, I will. If I can reach back and grab my fellow artists and be like, “Hey, I did not forget about you. Come here. I got something for you.” I want to do that and I feel like that’s something that a lot of people of the community should be doing. It’s the only way for us to excel and expose ourselves to more and get our names out there because there’s so much that haven’t been shown yet and we’re just tapping the tip of the iceberg for all this. I just think it’s going to be amazing and I just can’t wait to be a part of it.

I just want to be a part of it, and I just want to be there with my fellow nerds, my fellow awesome nerds and yes, just being in a convention surrounded by people who are raised in the same world that you were raised in. You know, just like anything, like fantasy, sci-fi, comics, movies, games, all that. It’s such a beautiful way to bond with people and to share that. It’s so much fun and I feel like one of the biggest things, adults forget to have fun and to be a kid again, and honestly being an adult, you’re just older and you forget to tend to that inner child and it’s like, no, no, no, no, no. So, it’s when adults go to conventions and it’s like someone who’s like 50 and they’re still buying action figures and whatnot, go for it. Do it.

You work so hard. You get that action figure. You get it and you flaunt it like seriously. It’s just like we need to make sure we’re balancing out that fun and I feel like that’s what my work and the industry of creativity gives to people, gives you that permission. Even though you don’t need permission, you should be having fun. It gives you that childhood like happiness, and I think that that’s why the reasons why it’s so important to be an artist is to bring that out of people so people can still feel that. I think it’s still so important for it. I think it’s very important.

Maurice Cherry:
Where do you see yourself in the next five years? I mean, I feel like you’ve already spoken some of that into the universe now, but what do you want the next chapter of your story to look like?

Isiah Xavier Bradley:
Oh, goodness. I have visions of how I want things to look like. As I say this to you, I’m actually looking at my manifestation board. It’s something that I’ve come to really enjoy doing because I’m looking at my manifestation board and some of it’s already come true, which is great, but in the future, I would like to go to more conventions for sure. That’s something I love doing, just to be in that world full of people who enjoy the same things I do and to interact with them and to show them my work. It’s one of the greatest gifts to create art and someone comes along and they’re just entranced by it or they are feeling things because of it, that the art has moved to some kind of way, and I think that is awesome. So, I definitely will want more of that.

I haven’t had my work in galleries before, so I am focusing on getting my work in galleries too, because now painting on Canvas, it’s like I want to develop so much art on canvas, bigger size, small size, all the size. So, I definitely want to have more of my work in the galleries and I want to have my comic book up and have it out there because it’s like my own stories I’ve had on my mind for a while. I started to give it some more work recently, so I was like, “I’m grateful that I’m starting to get back into that,” and in the future, I would definitely love to have a comic book made officially, have a shiny cover, and maybe a 3D model made of a character.

Five years from now, I just want to be making art like crazy and I want to be a part of those teams that make fun projects like people at Marvel, like the people who get to be a part of the whole process of the movie and whatnot. I would love to be a part of that. I would love to be part of a company like Wizards of the Coast where it’s like I can give contributions to like, hey, let’s make this character, whatnot, and just design new stories and characters and whatnot. I would love to do that just to be fully submerged more into my craft, and I think that’s something that I have recently come to full-on terms, which is like acknowledging that this is not only my career, but being an artist is my life and I love being an artist. So, it’s like I just want more of all of that. I am greedy and I want all of that.

Maurice Cherry:
Well, just to wrap things up here, where can our audience find out more information about you, about your work and everything? Where can they find that online?

Isiah Xavier Bradley:
Well, I do have my own personal website. It is my full name, www.isiahxavierbradley.com. You do have to include the Xavier in there because otherwise you’re going to get the Black Captain America, which-

Maurice Cherry:
Oh, yeah, that was his name from… I remember that from the show, from Falcon, Winter Soldier. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Isiah Xavier Bradley:
Yes. Yeah. I’ve always found that hilarious. I was like named Dr. Superheroes, even my middle name. I’m like, “Oh my goodness.” I’m like, “I think I was born to do this.”

Maurice Cherry:
It’s destiny. Yeah, it’s what it sounds like.

Isiah Xavier Bradley:
Yeah, like universe, you have a heck of a personality, don’t you? Also, I do have Instagram and Twitter and TikTok, which all you can find under my handle, Isiah_XB, and then there’s my Facebook as well. You can always go under my full name, Isiah Xavier Bradley and my page would show up. Just include that Xavier part, and we’re all good, and most people get confused with how to spell my name, so I am going to say it’s spelled I-S-I-A-H, and then underscore XB. Most people spell Isiah with two As. For some reason, mine is just with one A. I don’t know why, but okay.

Maurice Cherry:
All right. There you go. Well, Isiah Xavier Bradley, I want to thank you so, so much for coming on this show. I think if there’s anything that people will get from this interview is that you have this joy. It’s not even passion. I mean, I will say passion is probably there too, but you have this joy about just the fact that you’re doing exactly what it is that you want to do that is infectious. You’re excited about the genre. You’re excited about your work. You’re excited about all these things, but you’ve also taken the time to make sure that your own self is prospering and well throughout all of this.

I mean, the world is changing at such a rapid rate. I mean, you talked about self-care and rituals and things of this nature, so I really get a feeling that people will listen to this and they’ll get a really good sense of you as an artist, as a creative, and hopefully we’ll follow your work and we’ll see that Marvel cover one day. I’m putting it out there. We’re going to see you one day, but yeah, thank you again so much for coming on the show, man. I appreciate it.

Isiah Xavier Bradley:
Well, thank you so much for your time, Maurice. I really do appreciate it. This has been awesome. You really made up my day. I can’t stop smiling right now. I’m just excited, just like I’m going to start painting all day today, like I was already drawing and I’m like, “Oh, I’m going to get into it real good.” So, thank you so much for your time and this opportunity. I’m really grateful, Maurice. Thank you so much.

Sponsored by Brevity & Wit

Brevity & Wit

Brevity & Wit is a strategy and design firm committed to designing a more inclusive and equitable world. They are always looking to expand their roster of freelance design consultants in the U.S., particularly brand strategists, copywriters, graphic designers and Web developers.

If you know how to deliver excellent creative work reliably, and enjoy the autonomy of a virtual-based, freelance life (with no non-competes), check them out at brevityandwit.com.

Morgan Bissant

I had to connect with Morgan Bissant after seeing a few of her images of 90s sitcoms make the rounds on Twitter. Her work definitely captures to the richness of the Black experience, and she’s done everything from editorial work for Comcast to children’s illustrations and book covers. But that’s not all!

Morgan and I talked about some of her big freelance projects, and she spoke on how Black pop culture, especially animation, is a big source of inspiration and her creative process. We also discussed how she stays up on trends in the industry, how she handles burnout, and she gave us a look into her current art journey and creative process. Morgan’s experiences and raw talent are a unique combination, and I think we’ll definitely see more of her amazing work in the future!

Interview Transcript

Maurice Cherry:
All right, so tell us who you are and what you do.

Morgan Bissant:
My name is Morgan Bissant. I am a graphic designer and illustrator. I do a lot of branding work. I do a lot of layout design, I do web design, but something that I’ve always been more passionate about is illustration and I’ve been doing illustration work since I was old enough to hold a pencil. Currently, I’ve been doing a lot of illustration work for different companies and publishers. I’ve been working on children’s books, I’ve been doing promotional material. That’s something that I’ve really enjoyed doing. I enjoy being able to actually use my craft, I guess, in bigger spaces.

Maurice Cherry:
Nice. It sounds like it keeps you pretty busy.

Morgan Bissant:
Yes, it’s a lot. It definitely takes up a lot of time.

Maurice Cherry:
How has this year been going so far?

Morgan Bissant:
So far it’s been going pretty good. I’ve actually started a new full-time job probably a couple months back, I want to say. I started a new full-time job doing graphic design work and I work at a marketing agency called OrthoSynetics. It’s been nice being able to do a lot of different things. In my previous job, we designed a lot of baby products, and in this job we do a lot of different marketing products. So, we’ll do flyers, we’ll do social posts, we’ll do websites. I was able to work on a major branding project for a new doctor that we picked up for our agency, and that’s all been pretty exciting. It’s really different from what I’m used to doing. It’s a much faster pace than some of my earlier jobs and projects, but it’s been a lot of fun. I like being able to do a lot of different things.

Maurice Cherry:
Nice.

Morgan Bissant:
Keeps me interested.

Maurice Cherry:
Congratulations on the new job.

Morgan Bissant:
Thank you so much.

Maurice Cherry:
Do you have any plans for the summer? Anything coming up?

Morgan Bissant:
Not necessarily. I’m just seeing what may be over the horizon maybe. So, I’ve currently been working on doing some freelance projects and I’m just always trying to keep myself open to seeing if I could get some other things, follow up with those. I’m always trying to see what other opportunities that I may have and other work that I can take on.

Maurice Cherry:
Now, I saw back in September last year that you had did some work for Comcast for their Black History Month series, which ran this year. Can you tell me a little bit about that?

Morgan Bissant:
Yeah, sure. So, actually it ran last year. I ended up reposting it because I’m pretty proud of it, so I’m going to keep sharing it. So, this was something that we worked on last year. It was a partnership that they reached out to me for. I had initially gotten their attention because I had seen one of their ads on Twitter and it was something for the Olympic Games, and I saw there was this little black girl and she was looking at the screen in awe and seeing the black athletes doing all kind of stuff, and she was just so amazed and everything. And I just thought she was just so cute and I was like, “I just have to draw this little girl because she’s adorable.” And so I went ahead and illustrated how she looked in the ad and I figured out I would just post it and tag them, because why not?

And they ended up seeing it and they really liked what they saw. And so I want to say a couple months down the line, they reached out to me and they said, “Hey, we’re doing this campaign for Black History Month, and we really loved the artwork that you tagged us in on Twitter. So, we wanted you to do something actually in partnership with us this time in celebration of Black History Month.” And that was pretty exciting. So, they asked me to do a couple of different illustrations. The first two that they asked for, they wanted some illustrations of Erin Jackson and Elana Meyers Taylor for the Winter games.

They followed up and they said that they wanted to do something else, something I guess a little bit more Black History Month specific. They wanted to do the McDonogh Three. I know a lot of people aren’t exactly aware of who those are, and that is three little girls that desegregated McDonogh 19 in New Orleans in the 1960s. And that was something I was really excited about doing, because being from New Orleans, that was something a bit more personal for me. Them doing that, desegregating schools is what gave me the opportunities that I had growing up, and that was something that I really was excited to do.

So, I was over the moon about that part of it, and I went through everything to put the illustrations together and they wanted two separate illustrations, so they wanted to show, I guess, a parallel of the past and show them as little girls, and one in the present. So, just showing them how they are now and I guess illustrating how far they’ve come over the years and what their sacrifices meant to people, and also to show that these women are still alive today. And a lot of people always think that, “Well that happened so long ago, and everybody that was involved in that is probably gone and all of that is over,” but they’re still here. They’re still here to tell the stories, and they’re still here to push a lot of the, I guess I want to say, push a lot of what was hidden, a lot of the things that were lost historically because a lot of people know about Ruby Bridges, but a lot of people also don’t know about them.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. I mean there’s a lot of layers to that, that I think is really cool. One that Comcast saw an illustration that you did and they were like, “Oh, this is great. Can you do some work for us?” I feel like you hear those sorts of things sometimes is being discovered out of nowhere things, but I think that’s really cool that they just picked up on some work that you put online and they really wanted to keep working with it. I think that was great, but also the levels of being able to do something that’s tied to history, especially civil rights history in this country as people from this podcast.

Now, I’m from Selma, Alabama, so I grew up in that cradle of the civil rights movement, and there are so many stories about things that have happened that we knew about, the bigger things we knew about the March to Montgomery, as you mentioned, we know about Ruby Bridges, but we don’t know about some of these lesser known stories and struggles and triumphs that have happened.

And so I think it’s great that you were able to create some work that shone a light on that and to let people know that while this is “history,” it’s also the present. Like you said, these women are still alive, so the fact that they are still here and that they fought for these rights is something that we should all be aware of.

Morgan Bissant:
Yes, it’s always good to make sure you’re informed. And it’s always good to be able to put more things out there and shine light on things that we don’t know about, because there’s just so much stuff that we didn’t learn in school and just so many things in general that just get overlooked in favor of just those little three big figures like Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King. I mean nothing’s wrong with learning about them obviously.

Maurice Cherry:
Right.

Morgan Bissant:
But it’s sad that that’s all most people really know about and they barely know about them either.

Maurice Cherry:
Well, I think it’s also telling that, in the past, media was really the thing that brought the whole civil rights movement to the nation. I mean because a lot of these things were happening in small southern towns, et cetera, and it wasn’t, I think until the incidents of, I think it was Bloody Sunday that happened in Selma. It wasn’t until those incidents where there were actually cameras and then that footage got broadcast across the nation that people saw about it. So, in a way, you can see how there’s a lot of stories and things that happen that we just don’t know about. Parts of history that get covered up.

I think people are just starting to really know about, for example, Bayard Rustin or Claudette Colvin, and people have mentioned Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks, but not these other people that were behind the scenes maybe, or that did the work that they did before they did. So, a lot of those stories, it’s interesting, are now also being uncovered through media. I think within the past, I’d say at least in the past 10 years, I’ve seen so many black creators unearth a lot of these stories through animation, through illustration, et cetera. I think it’s really great. It’s really great.

Morgan Bissant:
Yeah, that’s always something exciting to see.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. Let’s talk more about your work as a freelance illustrator. You mentioned that you’re also working full-time at this agency OrthoSynetics. What does a regular day look like for you right now?

Morgan Bissant:
With working full-time, that gets a lot of my time. Basically what we do is we have a certain amount of projects that we have to get done throughout the day, and it’s generally a nine to five situation, and so we’ll have certain things that we’ll work on. We might have banners that we might have to do, we might have billboards, but it basically varies from day-to-day what we might have to work on. The things that we do are mainly for orthodontists and dentist, and that’s just a lot of what we see.

We might have flyers advertising different prices for dental work or different offers or things along those lines. So, that’s basically what we have our eyes on throughout the day. Now, as far as doing any freelance work, I have to put that, I guess, on the tail end of my day or reserve that for the weekends because we’re generally just so busy with doing graphic design work at the agency that sometimes it can be a little tough to juggle. But generally speaking, when I do get freelance projects, I’m given a sufficient amount of time to complete them. So, it’s not like I have to do everything at work and then come rush home and then just rush and get a book cover done in five minutes.

So, I’ll have months and months to work on things and get things done, and I’ll do that in my free time that I have. Sometimes I’ll work on things while I’m listening to music or while I’m watching a TV show that I enjoy to motivate me or I guess help me to get into a groove. It just helps to do it when I have, I guess, some breathing room to do so, which again, with the deadlines, it does help to give me some breathing room to actually get a lot of these projects done, and I try not to take on too much at a time so that I won’t be overbooked.

Maurice Cherry:
I mean that’s a good thing. I know that you’re represented by an agency, which we’ll talk about a little bit later. I imagine your agent knows that too. So, when you’re getting booked for things, you can’t do something last minute, there has to be some buffer time around it for you to be able to get it done.

Morgan Bissant:
Yeah. They have different industry standards on what is appropriate for different projects. Now sometimes people will come and be like, “Hey, we need you to get this done in two days,” which I mean, it’s really ultimately up to you on whether or not you want to take it with not enough time to get it done. But generally speaking, for larger projects especially, you definitely need a sufficient amount of time to finish things. And especially in a creative space, you don’t want to be pushed to the limit and be getting yourself burnt out when you’re trying to come up with ideas that look good and are executed well. I always try to do things that are within my means. Now, if it’s something like maybe smaller and it might be a little bit of rush, I just feel like I have time and I feel like I might be able to do it, I might grab it. But usually if it’s a little too tight, I might ask for more time or I might have just have to pass on that one.

Maurice Cherry:
Right. Now, I’m looking through your website now. I see of course you’ve done illustration work, but there’s logo design work here. You’ve done book illustrations, character designs, all of it is really great, and I mentioned this to you right before we started recording that I saw your work on Twitter because you had done this character lineup of the main cast from Living Single. And I mean the style of it was so good. I was like, “I have to reach out to her to see if she can come on the podcast.” Are you influenced a lot by TV and pop culture in your work?

Morgan Bissant:
I am. That actually is what pushed me to start drawing, and that’s really what made me want to do it more seriously. Pop culture is a huge part of it, especially things that are immersed in black culture. Obviously me being black, that’s my own culture and it’s something that I can pull inspiration from my personal experiences. Things like anime and cartoons, they’ve always fueled my desire for illustration. I’ve always been influenced by things like Sailor Moon and Dragon Ball Z and things like that. Growing up, I was very small and watching a lot of these programs, and that’s what made me want to draw. I started copying things that I saw while I was watching TV. I would be watching Sailor Moon in the mornings and I’d said, “Well, I want to draw Sailor Moon.” And so I would be working until I got her to what I felt was right and was an accurate depiction of what she looked like on the screen.

And as I got older and I started cultivating my talents and working on my skills, started trying to branch off and do other things. And I’ve always tried to start creating my own concepts and characters, and nowadays I am still heavily influenced by anime and animation in general, but a lot of other things that I was exposed to like different black sitcoms and cartoons, that also had an impact on my overall style. Bruce W. Smith has always been one of my huge inspirations for illustration work. I’ve always liked his style since The Proud Family and Bébé’s Kids, Happily Ever After, Fairy Tales for Every Child.

That always was a draw to me. And I’ve mimicked some of my style and my character designs around some of the things that he’s done, and I mean he isn’t one of the only influences that I have, but that’s always something that I’ve seen growing up, and I’ve always liked his style and I’ve always wanted to, I guess, put a little bit of that into my style. And so nowadays I have this, I guess, combination of all of these different influences that have created what I have today.

Maurice Cherry:
Well, talk to me about how you approach a new project. What does your creative process look like when a new project comes across your table?

Morgan Bissant:
So, for basically any new project that I have, whether it just be freelance or something personal, I always try to brainstorm first. I might write down ideas or just sketch things down, and I just try to just do things and just get my brain going. I don’t always have something in mind before I start sketching, so I have this approach where I’ll just start doing anything. Well, not anything, but I’ll start trying to draw different things and just see where it takes me and then try to give myself a couple of different options and variations in what I might want to do with it, and then just see where it goes from there. This is especially true for larger projects, because I definitely have to see where I’m going before I start tackling something so huge.

So, I always have to sketch things out first. I always have to get ideas down first, and if I have any troubles or bumps in the road, I might go online. I have my Pinterest, I have all these bookmarks and stuff on Instagram. I have all these bookmarks on Twitter of different photographs or screenshots or fashion or just whatever, and I might use that as a way to, I guess, give myself a little bit of inspiration so I can push myself in the right direction. Because sometimes I can’t always come up with things just immediately from the top of my head.

So, it helps for me to look at some things. It helps for me to continuously draw things until I can get some ideas to come out that I like. I always try to keep things in my back pocket that I can always pull up later in terms of references and images that I might have saved that I think that I could probably use going forward for my creative process.

Maurice Cherry:
Was there ever a really particularly hard design or illustration that you had to create for a project?

Morgan Bissant:
I think that probably one of the hardest things that I have worked on in recent years would be probably the illustration that I did for the Crescent City Sneaker Ball. It was both illustration and it was a graphic designed invitation, and I’m really happy with how it came out, but there was a lot of thought that had to go into it, and there was a lot that I had to consider like, “Okay, how is this going to work? How can I fit this in here?” Because it was a little bit different from what I usually do. Everything was a collage and I had to make sure all the pieces fit together and flowed together and had to make sure things didn’t look too cluttered or too structured. So, it took a lot of working around with that one and playing around with it to make it work.

But I think ultimately all things considered, it came out pretty cute. It was a lot to think about. It was a lot to figure out how everything should go and everything should work together. I’m also really not too fantastic with buildings, or at least I personally don’t feel like I’m all that great with them. And that had a lot of structures in it. I like drawing people more. That’s always been my thing. I’ve always liked drawing characters, so structures and boats and street cars and stuff, I’ve never really done a lot of that. And that added to the challenge. So, executing that, it was a lot for me, but ultimately I’m glad I took that on. I thought it came out pretty nice, all things considered.

Maurice Cherry:
Do you have any upcoming projects that you can talk about? Anything you’re excited about?

Morgan Bissant:
I don’t know if this would be considered upcoming, but the book that I have recently illustrated for Lamar Giles that is going to be coming out next month, and I’m actually pretty excited about that one. So, I mean, I don’t know if I would call that an upcoming project because I’ve already finished it, but we haven’t gotten the printed books yet. And so I’m honestly very excited to see how it will come out on paper, because I’ve seen what it looks like on my computer, but I want to see it in book form. It’s just an entirely new feeling you get when you actually see your work just tangible and you can hold it in your hand and on a professional level, because you can print out your own stuff at Office Depot or something, but it’s not the same as this is a book that’s going to be in Barnes & Noble.

It’s almost so weird because I never thought that I would ever get to this point in my life where I would actually be seeing my name on the cover of children’s books or seeing the book actually in store somewhere. So, that’s pretty cool and I’m excited to actually get some copies of it.

Maurice Cherry:
Nice. I mean I think it’s always an accomplishment when something you do makes it on a book or a magazine or something like that, because it’s so finite. Things that are on the web can get redesigned or deleted or moved or stuff like that. But a book or a magazine or something like that, that’s permanent.

Morgan Bissant:
It’s exciting. Like he said, it’s not the same. I mean you can post all your stuff on Instagram and I mean nothing’s wrong with that or anything. It’s great to have your stuff out there, but it’s totally different to go outside and see your work there at the store and other people actually see it. And people that might not even have Instagram or Twitter, they can see your work, and people that are working in these industries, they can actually see your work. And that’s almost like an out of body experience sometimes thinking about it.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. It’s a really big deal. It’s a big deal. I think it’s a big deal. I want to get more into your work and your career, but before that, I want to learn more just about you. As you mentioned earlier, you’re a New Orleans native. Tell me about growing up in New Orleans. Did you do a lot of creative stuff as a kid?

Morgan Bissant:
I did. I don’t know if that necessarily had to do a lot with me living in New Orleans, I did have a lot of opportunities to be creative growing up. We did have a lot of stuff at our schools where we could paint murals and things on the walls. I had this one art teacher in elementary school, Mr. Baldwin, and he had all of the art students paint this, I guess, prehistoric scene of all the dinosaurs on the cafeteria wall, and I thought that was so much fun. I wish I could do more things like that. I just always liked collaborative types of projects and things that were always, I guess, larger than life, at least to me. Because like I was saying before with the book, it’s different when everybody can see it like that. And I think as a child, that really pushed the importance of artwork to me because it didn’t just trivialize it as this little hobby that kindergartners do when they draw with crayon on paper and things like that.

It actually took our craft seriously and it encouraged us to pursue what we were doing. It gave a credence to art, and I think that that’s always important for little kids that enjoy that stuff. I think that it’s always important to encourage what they’re doing because that’s something that needs to be fostered, that’s something that needs to be developed. And if it’s something that they really enjoy and that they want to go forward with it, I don’t see why you shouldn’t encourage it and give them opportunities to push them and put their work out there.

Maurice Cherry:
Was your family really supportive of you going in that route?

Morgan Bissant:
Yeah, they always have been. So, like I was saying before, I’ve been drawing since I was able to pick up a pencil. I don’t remember this, but this is what my mom told me, so this is what I have to go off of. So, I have just always been drawing things and I guess the things that I was drawing were a little bit more developed than what the average toddler would do, and I guess I was showing that I was able to pick up different forms more than somebody that would have that natural inclination. As I got older, my drawings started getting a little bit more developed, and as I was watching cartoons, I was drawing the cartoons that I saw on TV, and they weren’t exactly stick figures. I always tried to get them as close as I possibly can with the skills that I had at three years old.

And as I got older, my parents, they noticed what I had and they put me in different programs. They tried to get me in talented art classes at school, and they always wanted to give me a chance to grow as an artist, and they always encouraged what I did. They always saw what I had, they saw the talent that I had, and they always wanted to encourage me to continue doing it and to pursue it. And eventually I ended up pursuing that as a full-time thing. Now, graphic design is different from a illustration, but it’s still a form of art, and that’s something that they never stopped me from doing it. They were like, “No, don’t do this. Be a lawyer.” They wanted me to do what I enjoyed doing, and I’m really grateful for that, that I always had a supportive family that always pushed me to do what would make me happy.

Maurice Cherry:
And I mean, graphic design is a gateway into I think a lot of different just visual designs. I mean back in the day I think it was all just called communication design, and then it splintered off into advertising. And then I think especially with the advent of the personal computer and Photoshop and stuff like that, it became desktop publishing and then it was graphic design. So, it’s a gateway into a lot of different things. I mean, as you mentioned, you really wanted to do it enough to the point where you ended up studying it. You went to Louisiana State University, majored in graphic design there. How was your time there at the school?

Morgan Bissant:
I really liked the time that I had, because they gave us a lot of time to explore a lot of different things. So, with the curriculum that we had, which it was basically called fine arts, the entire degree itself, they gave us opportunities to do a lot of different mediums of art. Your primary major would be graphic design, and that was what was ultimately the focus. But we had classes where we could illustrate, where we could paint. If we wanted to, we could explore photography, we could explore welding and print making.

So, they gave us a lot of different mediums and avenues that we can dip our feet in and see how we liked it, or we could even use those things to apply them to graphic design in a way. So, myself, I’ve always been interested in illustration. I always wanted to put illustration in my graphic design work, and so when we took a lot of illustration classes there, it also helped me to develop my style and pay attention to a lot of things that maybe I might have been overlooking.

So, it helped me to improve my craft overall when I took illustration classes. And I could always bring that back into graphic design where I could maybe draw characters and now my characters look more refined, or I could draw different symbols, and now everything looks a little better, it looks sharper and it looks more professional. And that’s something that I’ve always liked. So, I don’t know exactly how every other school tackles this degree, but I really did like that about it, because it gave us a lot of different options to go in. You weren’t exactly forced to do all of them. So, I was never really huge on photography. So, I didn’t do photography, but I had another option.

If instead I wanted to do painting, or I wanted to do sculpture making, I could do one of those. And that’s something that I really appreciated. It gave us a lot of different things that we could go into, and I felt like that helped me in the long run because while it gave me a graphic design degree, which helped me getting a full-time job, it also helped me in terms of art in general, because all of those illustration classes, they helped me in terms of anatomy and in terms of composition and things like that, that you can use that in graphic design, but ultimately you could use that in illustration too, because that’s a lot of what I do.

Maurice Cherry:
I mean it sounds like the program was really expansive to allow you to just try out a lot of different things and see what you liked the best.

Morgan Bissant:
Yeah, they gave us a lot to work with, and that was just a lot of, I don’t know if you would call them collectives, but they weren’t exactly our core classes. They were just things that you can pick to add on to what you were doing. And even within graphic design, we still had a lot of things that they gave us that we could explore, like typography and making different graphic symbols and things like that. So, we always had a huge variety, which that was great, honestly, for all of us. Because a lot of people, they branched off and did other things and they found that taking this drawing class, it’s like, “Well, now I want to do books.” Or “I took this photography class and now I want to do photography and I want to do events.” And that was always something that I felt was influenced by the fact that we had all of these options.

And I always thought it was really great, and it made the curriculum a lot more fun. I always liked drawing. I always had fun drawing. So, being able to take all these drawing classes, it was nice. And then it gave me a little bit more of an outlet, because graphic design isn’t always about drawing. Sometimes it’s about laying out things, and sometimes it can get a little bit monotonous, especially if it’s all for school projects and things. But if you have time to go on the side and go draw a polar bear or a bowl of fruit, and that’s something that you enjoy doing, it can make your time in school more enjoyable.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. So, when you graduated, did you have an idea lined up about what you wanted to do next?

Morgan Bissant:
I honestly was not exactly sure, but at the same time, I actually already had an opportunity lined up for me before I even graduated.

Maurice Cherry:
Oh, okay.

Morgan Bissant:
So, a couple of months before I graduated, me and a few other students had gotten recruited by a local business called Impression Works, where we did photo books and greeting cards and things like that, and we could basically do whatever we felt like worked. So, it didn’t always have to be layout stuff. If we wanted to put illustrations in them, we could, and it gave us a little bit of creative freedom. And that was nice to be able to have during school, because it was a bit of a safety net in terms of having a job when I graduated. But then on top of that, I had a little bit of income coming in while I was in school, and it was flexible because we could do most of our work from home.

So, I was able to just work on projects for work in my free time, and we were still interns/part-time, so we weren’t totally overloaded with things where we couldn’t balance homework and senior projects and work work. And that ended up working out for a little while. And then it was a contract job, so once the contract was up after that, I had to try to turn around and try to find something else as soon as I could. And I wasn’t exactly sure how that was going to work out, because with me being pretty illustration oriented, I wasn’t sure how I would’ve liked something that didn’t really allow me to do that. And I know that a lot of graphic design jobs don’t really have a heavy focus on that. And so I was always wondering, “Well, will I be able to fit into another job somewhere or at a real firm?”

Because I really didn’t do a whole lot of layout at the time, and I didn’t have a whole lot of that in my portfolio outside of a couple of school projects. So, I was wondering how that was going to work out. And I ended up landing another full-time job at a company called Sassy Baby. That was a place where we got to design a lot of baby products. So, we would draw the little characters that were on bibs and bath products, and there were a couple little toys and stuff, we designed teethers and things like that. And that actually worked out in terms of capturing the, I guess, the niche that I am in, because being a graphic designer and an illustrator isn’t always… it is I guess. A lot of people who are graphic designers, they’re not illustrators, and a lot of illustrators are not graphic designers.

So, I guess I felt like I was different in that sense. But that job that I found, it ended up working out pretty well because I got to draw cute little characters. And we also had to do a lot of graphic design, we had to do a lot of layout things, we had to do a lot of presentation materials. So, graphic design of course helped me in those aspects. But being an illustrator helped me in terms of being able to capture different likenesses of little bears and bunnies and things like that. That was a pretty nice job, because we got a lot of tangible products out of it. You’d go in Walmart and you’d see the bibs that you designed. You’d see the little patterns of characters and things that you did, and you could go to Target or Meijer or wherever, and you could see the work that you’ve done, and you’d see it on full display for people to buy. And that was always cool. And it was always rewarding in a sense, to see your work.

Maurice Cherry:
I’m so glad that you said that about a graphic designer’s not an illustrator. Illustrator’s not a graphic designer, because I feel like sometimes, and this is really from the company standpoint, they just think it’s all the same. They think as long as you can do something in design, that you can do everything in design. So, I’m glad you qualified that by saying that.

Morgan Bissant:
Yeah, I’ve seen a lot of mix ups with that. I will see a lot of illustrators that I follow get all of these requests for, “Hey, can you do logos?” And I’m just like that’s not the same thing. Just because they can draw Goku does not mean they can give you a professional looking logo for your law firm. This is two totally different forms of art. It’s an important distinction.

Maurice Cherry:
No, it’s an important distinction. And I think it’s good to stick by that, because I think early in your career you want to be able to do any work that comes your way because you want to be able to prove yourself as a creative. So, even if you are, say for example, really good at illustration and someone says, “Well, can you do a logo?” You’re thinking, “Well, I mean it’s a drawing. I can do that.” But I think it’s good that you’re sticking by saying, “No, I only do illustration. This is what I do. I can’t do this other thing that you’re asking for.”

I mean you probably could technically do it because the skills are transferrable, but I think it’s good to stick by that because what it does is it strengthens your particular craft in that area. So, people eventually don’t get it confused. But I feel like that’s pretty common early on though. You try to do a little bit of everything, one, to see what you can do, and two, because the work just comes your way.

Morgan Bissant:
Yeah. And I get that, especially if you’re just starting out and you’re like, “I don’t have any projects and this guy is asking me for a logo, so I’m just going to take it because I need the money.” But if that’s not what you do, you don’t want to end up getting saddled with that your whole life, trying to struggle to do something that you know you don’t enjoy doing and you don’t exactly, I guess, have the equipment for. Because you can definitely do a logo that’s a drawing. But I mean if this super corporate firm is asking you for a super corporate logo and you draw just characters or buildings and things like that, it’s not always going to transfer well.

You don’t exactly have, I guess, that same know-how or that same eye to capture what they might want. So, I like to make sure people know that there’s a difference, because every illustrator that you try to ask for a work from is not going to be equipped to give you what you need, because illustration and graphic design aren’t the same thing. And I feel like a lot of people just think, “Oh, art is art,” but that’s just not how it is.

Maurice Cherry:
Right. Now you’re represented by Inkyverse, which is a agency. They rep a lot of animators, artists, authors. How did you go about getting representation? Did they come to you? Did you seek them out? How did that work?

Morgan Bissant:
They actually came to me. I believe they found me on Instagram, I want to say. So, it was, I think not too long after I had posted this graphic that I did. It was the Salt Girl, the Salt of the Earth thing that I did. And that went viral, and I think that’s what got me noticed by the agency. They reached out to me, they actually sent me a text because I had my number on my resume and they were like, “Hey, this is Inkyverse and we are looking to see if you would be interested in commercial art representation.” And then I followed up with, “This is not a scam, this is real?” Like okay.

I was like, “Well, thank God for clarifying.” I sure was about to just block the number. They said that they would keep in touch with me, and we ended up having a conversation over the phone. The agent that I was speaking to, Katrina, she was going over everything that having an agent entailed and how having an agent can help you find high profile clients and they can help you to establish rates for yourself and they can basically just manage you. And I was like, “That sounds pretty good to me. So, I mean I don’t see why I would say no personally.” I mean I never was really good with managing everything that I had. I was always really bad with trying to figure out rates that I wanted to charge for myself. So, I mean I was like, “Well, I’ll go for it.”

I mean the worst that could happen is that I might not like it and I can just say I don’t want to do it anymore. So far it’s really been a blessing to have an agent and work with Inkyverse, because having a lot of these major companies reach out to me, not having an agent would have been terrifying because I would not know what to say. I would not know what money to ask for. I wouldn’t know how to fight back against that, because especially if you’re pretty green, it’s like you don’t want to say the wrong thing and be like, “Oh my gosh, I just ruined this entire opportunity because I have asked them for the wrong amount or I said the wrong thing, or whatever.”

So, it really helped to have somebody, I guess, go back and forth on my behalf that actually knows the industry and actually knows the standards and actually knows what to ask for, what is fair. That’s been a huge help in getting me fair rates for projects, for getting the amount of time that I would get for things. I mean it’s been good to have somebody to look over contracts and things and make sure nothing weird is in them before I sign them. And that’s something that I really like having and I would definitely recommend other artists do so if it is at all possible to have somebody to, I guess, be your help where you need it.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, I mean I’ve had other illustrators on the show before that are also represented by agents and they’ve talked about how it just helps them to focus on the work. They don’t have to handle all the administrative emails and contracts and all this stuff. They can just focus on doing the work when it comes in, and it’s just such a big benefit for them. And it’s really cool that they reached out to you, they saw your work and wanted you to be a part of what they’re building.

Morgan Bissant:
Yeah, and I was honestly really blown away by that. I was, “Really? Me? How did you even get here?” It was really exciting. I was like, “I can’t believe you would want me to do this.” And then even more so with the random text, I was like, “Are we sure this isn’t a scam and you’re not going to ask me for my credit card number next? I feel like this is too good to be true.” But it was really nice to be able to have somebody who works in that industry say, “Hey, we think your work is so good and that it can make a whole bunch of money, so we want you here.” Not to say that my representative is just like, “Hey, we just want you for the money,” because I didn’t want it to sound like that, but it’s nice to know that your artwork is appreciated in a professional sense.

Maurice Cherry:
Right. How do you stay up to date with the latest design and illustration trends? Like you mentioned pop culture being a big part of your work, pop culture and television. How do you stay up to date with trends in the industry?

Morgan Bissant:
I personally would say that I try to do somewhat of a research. I don’t know if I could 100% call it research. Well, I guess I could, yeah. I try to research some things when I have time to do so. At my previous job for graphic design, we always used different magazines and publications and even Pinterest to stay up to date with what was trending and what was up-to-date and designs that we can pull from that won’t look dated. And I do use that to a certain degree when it comes to illustration work, but I also do like to look into a lot of fashion.

I follow a lot of fashion bloggers and I’m always looking at things on TikTok and stuff like that, because that’s always been an influence on my style as well. I like drawing illustrations that incorporate a lot of fashion. I like looking at different, I guess, design when it comes to fashion on TV or in movies or things like that. I try to pay attention to those things and pay attention to, I guess, what is out now and what I could probably see in the future.

Maurice Cherry:
What would you say is one of the newer trends right now?

Morgan Bissant:
You mean in terms of fashion?

Maurice Cherry:
Well, I mean like, yeah, I guess in general, as you look at it as to how you might apply it to your work, do you see any trends that you’re like, “Oh, I might want to try that out?”

Morgan Bissant:
Honestly, I’ve been looking at a whole lot of fashion.

Maurice Cherry:
Well, I mean fashion could be that inspiration, it sounds like.

Morgan Bissant:
Sometimes I look at a lot of just things that I see just online, and it doesn’t have to be anything in particular, but if I feel like something is particularly striking, I might pull some inspiration from it, from what I see on there. I guess as of right now, I’ve been liking a lot of, I want to say suits and things in that general area. That’s always been something that’s been drawing my attention. I don’t know if that is exactly the trendiest thing overall now in terms of I guess business and things like that. I’ve seen a lot of people doing those kinds of things on TikTok and whatever. That’s always something that I wanted to incorporate in some of my illustrations as well. Now, in terms of now, I wouldn’t say a pulling a whole lot of things from now in particular, or some things that are trendy now.

Maurice Cherry:
How would you say that your style as an illustrator and a designer has evolved over the years?

Morgan Bissant:
I have definitely gained a better understanding of composition, and I want to say anatomy and layout. Basically everything that I worked on, I feel like it has elevated. I feel like I’ve really grown to have a better understanding of what works and how things should look, how I can utilize the different spaces of things and create, I guess, a better and more fluent composition. I also feel that I’ve grown in the sense where I’ve been able to refine how my characters look. I went really back and forth with a lot of different styles and trying to figure out what worked and trying to figure out how I should paint things and should I do things that are really stylistic? Should I do things that are realistic? It’s always been experimental and trying to figure out how I want things to look overall and what I felt worked for me.

And I think I’ve found, I guess, a good middle ground of how I want my illustrations and how I want my designs to look. But I think just having more of a knowledge of shapes and color and growing in those areas has really helped my design and illustration work to flourish. And I have also accepted the fact that everything is not always going to look the same. So, I know a lot of artists have a particular style. I know a lot of people, including myself, have always felt like you should just have one style and that should be it, and you shouldn’t really do anything else. As I’ve grown, I’ve learned that you could just do whatever you want. I mean if I want to do something realistic one day, I can do that. If I want to do something stylized another day, I can do that.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that I don’t have a style, and it doesn’t mean that I don’t know what I’m doing. It just happens. You might want to experiment, you might just want to do something different. I mean I think that that really just shows that you just have a lot to offer as an artist. I mean it just shows that you have the skill to be able to go back and forth and do a variety of things. And I don’t think anything’s wrong with that, which unfortunately a lot of people still feel that way. But I think that I would always encourage artists to just do what you enjoy doing. If you want to do a lot of different things, I say go for it, as long as you’re not burning yourself out.

Maurice Cherry:
Well, I guess speaking of that, how do you handle those periods when you might be burnt out or you might just have low motivation? How do you handle that?

Morgan Bissant:
So, overall I try to just take breaks in between my work. I try not to rush things, and I always am pretty careful about not overbooking myself, especially keeping in mind that I do have a full-time job and I’m trying to juggle freelance and whatever else I have. I always want to make sure I’m trying to gauge my time properly and see what I actually have room to do, because I don’t want to get to that point where I’m just like I’m completely just worn out and I just can’t do anything. I think that it’s very important to take breaks when you can. I always try to set aside some time or a day or whatever to just do nothing or just have fun or maybe watch a movie or play a game or just something, something not work related. But there have been times where I just didn’t have a choice.

I just had to power through something. And I felt like what just motivated me to get it done is just to try to have as much fun with it as possible. There’s been projects that I’ve worked on and I just try to, I guess, put a little bit of myself into it and just use that as a way to express myself, which wasn’t exactly discouraged in the project. And that helped me to, I guess, think of the project that I had to work on or something that was just more fun, something that I could enjoy. Not thinking about it as, “I have to get this done right now because the deadline is tomorrow, and if I don’t, then the whole project is ruined.”

I thought about it as this is something that I’m enjoying doing and I just want to do it. And in times where I am just getting a bit pushed, that’s what I try to think about. I try to think about it as something enjoyable. I try to just take my time with it as much as I can and have fun with it.

Maurice Cherry:
What do you hope people take away from your work when they look at it?

Morgan Bissant:
I would hope that they could see the beauty in a lot of these different characters. I like to do a lot of black girls and black women, and I’m sure you’ve seen, because you have seen my portfolio, but little black kids. I like to draw a lot of that stuff. And growing up, I had issues where I want to say I had lower self-esteem than I should have had. I never really felt like I was cute. I didn’t think that I was pretty, because I would see a lot of the cartoons, like the heroes and the love interests on a lot of cartoons, and they wouldn’t look like me. And that is what made me want to put a lot of black features and characters into my artwork, because while we did see a lot of that growing up, I felt like we didn’t exactly see as much as we probably should have gotten.

Black characters were always like the sidekicks sometimes, and they didn’t always get time to shine. And that’s something that always impacted me growing up. And so I like to put that into my work. I like to show people, like anyone that we are beautiful and nothing is wrong with our features. Our features are beautiful. They make us unique, they make us who we are. And I think that that’s something that I wanted to put in my work, because I want everybody to be able to embrace that. So, I always hope that little kids and adults alike can take that away from what I do.

Maurice Cherry:
What advice would you give to someone, they’re out here listening to your story, they’re hearing about your work and everything. What advice would you give them if they want to follow in your footsteps?

Morgan Bissant:
The advice that I would give to anybody that might want to pursue a career in art or graphic design, I would say that don’t be afraid to do what you know you want to do. Have fun doing it. I would say that if this is something that you really enjoy and you really see yourself doing this in the future, and you know you really want to go into these different arenas where you can use your art for animation or books. So, I mean I would encourage anybody that wants to pursue art to just go for it. I don’t think that you should let anything scare you from doing it. If it’s something that you enjoy doing I say, why not do it?

I mean it’s something that it’s always been fun to me. I could never really see myself doing anything else. And so I felt like this is what I had to pursue, this is what I was going to do. And I know that there’s other people that feel that way and I feel that they should go forward with it, because I mean why keep yourself from doing something that you enjoy doing and that you can make a living off of it. And I know a lot of people feel that it’s harder to actually make a living off your work than doing other things, but I believe that we have so many examples out that shows that that’s actually a possibility. You can work in animation, you can do books, you can even do things like ads and partnerships with brands.

You can do flyers, you can design things for brands, branding or whatever. There’s so many options that you can explore, things that you can put your talents toward. There’s so many options that you can look into that you can use your skills to make it tangible and make it real. So, I would say that you shouldn’t limit yourself and you shouldn’t hold yourself back if you’re afraid that you might not be able to get different opportunities, or you are afraid that you might not be able to get into this certain arena so there’s nothing you can do, because there’s a lot of things that we, as artists, we don’t really think about how many opportunities that they really have out there.

But there’s a lot. It’s just the possibilities are endless. And on top of that, I would encourage people to always have fun with what they’re doing. Never be afraid to experiment and do different things. Just have fun. Just enjoy it. Take time to perfect your craft. Take time to practice. You always want to take time to pour into it, because if this is something that you’ll enjoy doing and you want to put yourself out there and you want to continue to grow, I mean you always want to keep doing it. You always want to keep those, I guess, creative gears turning.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. Where do you see yourself in the next five years? What work do you want to be doing?

Morgan Bissant:
I’m honestly not 100% sure. I honestly never thought I would even see myself where I’m at now five years ago. It’s different for me. If there is something in particular that I could be doing down the line, I’ve always been interested in animation of course, because it’s always been a huge inspiration for me. And I’ve always wanted to work maybe in an animated series, maybe like creating some characters or concept work or visual development or something along those lines. So, here’s hoping that maybe at some point in my career the door may open for that. I’m just here to see where life takes me as of right now.

Maurice Cherry:
Well, just to wrap things up here, where can our audience find out more information about you, about your work and everything? Where can they find that online?

Morgan Bissant:
So, I am on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok at morg_city. Also on Facebook at Morgan Bissant, all one word. I have a website, morganbissant.com, and you can basically see most of my portfolio on there, and you can find links to my social pages at the bottom.

Maurice Cherry:
All right, sounds good. Well, Morgan Bissant, I want to thank you so much for coming on the show. Thank you really for talking about I mean, one, your journey as an artist, as an illustrator, as a designer, and how it’s brought you to where you are now. But I really think it’s good that you talked about your process, you shared your inspirations, you shared your experiences. My hope is that when people listen back through this interview, and especially once they get a chance to really look at your work, they’ll be able to get a good overall view of who you are as an artist and the work that you’re bringing into the world. So, thank you so much for coming on the show. I appreciate it.

Morgan Bissant:
Well, thank you so much for having me. This is definitely a pleasure speaking with you.

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Akeem Roberts

It takes a lot of hard work, dedication, and sacrifice to make it on your own as an artist, and Akeem Roberts knows this well. This illustrator and animator juggles being an associate director at Holler Studios with freelancing for The New Yorker. Even though Akeem’s been in the game for nearly a decade, I have a feeling that we’ll be seeing his work for many years to come.

We talked about Akeem’s new gig at Holler, and from there he went into sharing his unique approach to storytelling. Akeem also spoke about attending the University of South Carolina, went into some of his influences for his artistic style, and gave some great advice for handling operational tasks as a freelancer. Akeem knows that success doesn’t happen overnight, and he’s put in the time and effort to come out on top!

Interview Transcript

Maurice Cherry:
All right, so tell us who you are and what you do.

Akeem Roberts:
My name is Akeem S. Roberts. I’m a cartoonist for The New Yorker. illustrator for J.D. the Kid Barber series, and a book designer by day.

Maurice Cherry:
How has 2023 been going so far?

Akeem Roberts:
2023 has been pretty crazy so far. I started off the year unemployed, just doing freelance stuff, and as of like three weeks ago, I just got a brand new job and sort of getting the reins on that and everything’s been going pretty good.

Maurice Cherry:
Oh, nice. Congratulations on the new job.

Akeem Roberts:
Thank you.

Maurice Cherry:
Do you have any plans for the summer? Anything you want to do?

Akeem Roberts:
For the summer, right now I don’t have anything planned. I’m sure I’ll just try to go to a beach or a lake or something and just relax for a little bit.

Maurice Cherry:
I’m curious, from last year to this year, aside from the employment change that you mentioned about, have there been any other kind of changes for you? Anything else going on?

Akeem Roberts:
I’d say from last year to this year, I’ve more committed to being in publishing versus animation, which was kind of the main thing that I did at the start of my career was mostly animation. After I started doing stuff at The New Yorker and stuff with Kokila, I slowly started making the transition into publishing.

Maurice Cherry:
What brought that transition on aside from just more work? Was it a feeling or anything?

Akeem Roberts:
I felt like for animation mostly it was things move a little bit slower and it feels like the artists… I guess I was a cog in the machine animation-wise, while publishing, even though I am still just in the machine, I have a little more of a voice and a little more of a say, and I guess it just feels more freeing.

Maurice Cherry:
Sounds like there’s just more, I guess, agency, I guess, in publishing.

Akeem Roberts:
Yes, exactly.

Maurice Cherry:
Okay. Let’s talk about some of your work that you’re doing as a freelance illustrator. I’m curious, what does a regular day look like for you these days?

Akeem Roberts:
If I’m doing dailies for The New Yorker, I’ll try to get up around like 7:00 and then hit Twitter or some kind of news source and just go through trending and try to see what’s going on, what happened in the past 24 hours. Then, I’m seeing if I can find a joke and connect that into a bit for The New Yorker for their daily cartoons.

Maurice Cherry:
You’re creating new pieces every day, so you have to check the news, be like, “Oh, this is funny,” draw something, and-

Akeem Roberts:
Yeah, yeah.

Maurice Cherry:
… then it’s just done? That’s it?

Akeem Roberts:
It depends on the process. Sometimes, for instance, I got one in for a daily after the trailer of the Barbie movie dropped. For that, I had an idea of doing something of scientists trying to get to the Barbie because there was all of those memes about people saying three, how many or whatever for Barbie movie tickets. I wanted to like have that idea of getting to the Barbie movie first and having it happen immediately, so I was first thinking like scientists creating a time machine to get there on the day that it’s released. Then, for The New Yorker, I thought of that idea, but I put a little bit of ’80s nostalgia in it, so then I changed it to kind of like Back to the Future where they’re trying to go to the future to see the Barbie movie.

Maurice Cherry:
Like Marty and Doc Brown and the DeLorean?

Akeem Roberts:
Yeah, yeah, so they’re all sitting in the JCPenney parking lot trying to get to the Barbie movie.

Maurice Cherry:
That’s funny. It’s interesting, though, that you have to, I guess, get them in by a certain time, but it’s every day, so that makes sense, I guess.

Akeem Roberts:
Yeah, yeah. For the dailies, it’s you have to get the sketches to them before 9:00, and then they’ll let you know if they like it or not by 10:00, and then you have that done by noon. The one that I did for the Barbie was like a bonus for the daily, so I didn’t have to get that done till 2:00.

Maurice Cherry:
Okay. No, that’s just interesting that it’s so fast. I don’t know why I thought maybe you would have done it the day before or something like that.

Akeem Roberts:
I think some people do. I’m reckless.

Maurice Cherry:
I see you do a little bit of everything, book illustrations, you do comics, you do animation, you do editorial work. Is there a particular one of these that you prefer to do?

Akeem Roberts:
I think I prefer to do comics and publishing chapter book stuff. I feel like that gives me the most control, but also the most freedom. I feel like when you’re usually doing a comic book, you got to do like 30-something pages and the deadline’s pretty tight, but when it comes to chapter books or whatever, it’s a little bit… It’s still tight, but it’s not as, I don’t know, it’s not as hard just because you’re just doing one panel kind of basically, versus doing nine panels, trying to semi-tell a story, designing multiple backgrounds. It’s a lot.

Maurice Cherry:
Hmm. I can see how doing it in that sort of controlled format also, it’s just easier on you probably just on your workload, you know?

Akeem Roberts:
Yeah, yeah.

Maurice Cherry:
Talk to me about how you approach a new project. What does your process look like?? Does it vary per type?

Akeem Roberts:
Yeah, it definitely varies per type, per project. For anything that’s like New Yorker, that’s just I’m just on the subway jotting down ideas. I send my notes app and I’ll just like think of jokes, try to connect them, and then from there I’ll draw a little small thumbnail and then sketch a bigger illustration for that and then send that to the New Yorker. Then, my process for when I’m doing my web comics also starts on my phone. I just write a joke, describe what’s happening in the panels. Then, from there I do a thumbnail and then I finalize it and then add all the texts and stuff.

Then, for animation, usually with this, there’s only a couple of those that I started from scratch where I had a original character and original plot. Those started off more… I was in Word and Google Docs instead because it was longer format and I had to share it with other people to read, look over, see if they had any notes on the script. For those, it’s like script first, and then you start the thumbnails and animating each thing.

Maurice Cherry:
What if you’re doing, say, editorial work or something for the book? Is that process kind of the same?

Akeem Roberts:
Yeah, editorial is like you’ll… Most of the stuff that I did editorial for was like for Men’s Health. They have this section called Cool Dads-

Maurice Cherry:
Mm-hmm.

Akeem Roberts:
… so for that, I would like… They would give me the article that a celeb wrote, and then I would read it. Then, from there, I would like think about an illustration that kind of hit the vibe of what the celeb wrote. The latest one I did was for like LeVar Burton. His whole thing was talking about reading books to his daughter and giving her the freedom to read and how he wants to be there for her. Then, he also makes a reference basically to Harry Potter.

For that, I just drew him in like the garbs with a wand fighting off the Dementors because in the article he talks about how his daughter stopped reading because she didn’t like the Dementors. He was like, “Maybe I should have not introduced her to Harry Potter.” I just took that vibe and added it to the illustration. I would send like three sketches and then the art director over there would pick which one they think is the best. Then, from there I would finish and color it and everything.

Maurice Cherry:
You kin of have to read a little bit of what it is that you’re going, then, to make sure that the illustration kind of matches that in some way.

Akeem Roberts:
Yeah, yeah. With every editorial or even like the children’s book, you have to read the manuscript and everything first before you can fully get the gist of it to kind of sum it up in whatever illustration, whether it’s for a chapter or for an article.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. Last year, I was Editor-in-Chief of a print magazine. This was part of the job that I was doing at the time, and our in-house creative director had decided for our first issue that he wanted to also do all the editorial illustrations. I was like, “Okay, that’s-

Akeem Roberts:
Uh-huh.

Maurice Cherry:
… “a lot, but if you want to do it.” He also did the cover and everything. I was like, “Look, more power to you.” It was so funny because the way he approached it was like, “Well, I have an idea of a theme for the whole magazine,” and so he just did illustrations based on whatever, and none of them matched the article in any sort of real way. I’m telling him like, “You should probably try to make sure that the images match what the article is about. You drew a polar bear. This article has nothing to do with polar bears. What’s the connection for the reader to look at this?” He’s like, “Oh, well, the connection is winter because we’re publishing the magazine in the winter.” I’m like, “Huh. No, no.” That doesn’t make any-

Akeem Roberts:
Yeah, that’s sounds like a little bit of a stretch, but you know, I feel it, I feel it, I feel it.

Maurice Cherry:
Well, that’s one of us that feels it. I mean, eventually we ended up sort of just going with the concept because we didn’t have enough time, but for the second issue, the pieces fit the article more and I told him like, “Look, read the article and then get started with designing.” He would just start designing and be like, “Oh, I have to read the article?” I’m like, “Yes, it would help. It would be helpful so at least what you’re designing matches that in some capacity.” So…

Akeem Roberts:
Yeah yeah. You got to read the article.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah.

Akeem Roberts:
You got to.

Maurice Cherry:
I mean, how do you approach storytelling through your art? I’m pretty sure it’s more than just like in, say, the book illustration example, it’s more than just reading. How do you really approach telling a story through your art?

Akeem Roberts:
I would read it and then I would like try to imagine it in my head and say, for instance, for the J.D.the Kid Barber series that I did, for that it was reading it, and then the art director would kind of tell me what they imagined in it. They were like, “Oh, this character is in their room,” but it’s up to me to add anything else that I wanted to add into it, so I would just try and look up Google images basically to find what I imagined this school look like because references, it’s always great to have. I know sometimes it’s like, especially when you’re starting out, you want to not use any references. You’re like, “I can do this from my head.” You can’t. I mean, you can, but you’ll miss the small details that you want to have caught if you weren’t looking at a reference. I would look at reference, kind of imagine the area, and then just try to imagine the characters just living and breathing.

For some of them I would add even like small jokes. One of the illustrations, the art director was, “Oh, he’s losing this battle, but everyone has numbers up saying 10 for this guy who’s winning.” Then, for one of those, I drew his friend in there giving him a thumbs up with like a two, so everyone has a good rating except he has a bad rating for the guy, and he’s got a thumbs up giving it to the guy being like, “Don’t worry, I got your back.” I try to put in little jokes like that inside the book so kids will see it and notice it. I’m trying to always make an illustration for, I guess, like the younger me if I was reading it as a kid.

Maurice Cherry:
Hmm. Do you try to add a little something that’s just unique to you in each image that you do?

Akeem Roberts:
If I do try to add anything, I try to add humor. I feel like that’s my go-to form of communicating is trying to add a joke if I can.

Maurice Cherry:
Now, we’ve had a few New Yorker illustrators on the show before, most recently, Liz Montague. I’m curious, how did you get started with doing illustrations for The New Yorker?

Akeem Roberts:
I feel like my story is very unique. I have yet to hear anyone else who’s had this experience.

Maurice Cherry:
Okay.

Akeem Roberts:
Basically I was like tabling at this convention in New York called Mocha Fest, which is like an art festival, and I had a bunch of comics that I had done online and this little short story that I did that was in black and white. After that weekend, I got a message from Emma who’s like the Editor at New Yorker. She was, “Oh, do you want to do a daily shouts?” Basically like, “I like your work, and I was wondering if you want to try to submit some jokes or a daily shout or anything like that.”

I was like, “All right,” and then I sent my first batch, and then after that Friday after I sent it they were like, “Oh yeah, this one is in.” I sold one the very first time I tried, which was crazy good. I don’t know anyone else who’s done that. Maybe other people have, but I had sold it first immediately. Then, the next week, I also submitted some batches and I also sold another one, so I was feeling really good. I was like, “All right, I can do this,” and then after that, it was 40 weeks of like not selling anything.

Maurice Cherry:
Is that usually like the… You said that was sort of unique to you. I’m just curious, what would a cartoonist normally do if they’re trying to get into like The New Yorker? Is there a more-

Akeem Roberts:
Right.

Maurice Cherry:
… typical process?

Akeem Roberts:
Yeah, there’s like submissions that you can do on the website, and you can send them batches that way. Then, they’ll say, “You’ve made it,” and then you’ll get Emma’s email, so you can start sending batches to her directly. Sort of like a filtering process before you get her email, but I just got it immediately and then got one in immediately, which felt good. Then after that, it slowed down a bit, obviously.

Maurice Cherry:
I mean, you’re still doing it now, so, I mean, it obviously worked out in your favor.

Akeem Roberts:
Yeah, yeah.

Maurice Cherry:
Is there a particular style that you think, I guess… I guess it probably varies per publication, but for The New Yorker, and not to harp on them specifically, but is there a particular style that you think they’re looking for?

Akeem Roberts:
For The New Yorker, I think they’re looking kind of for something that is sketchy and has detail, but not too much. Nothing that will distract from the joke.

Maurice Cherry:
Mm-hmm.

Akeem Roberts:
Basically just like if you had to jot down a joke with stick figures in five minutes, that’s kind of the ideal I think like they want in terms of detail is just not enough stuff that will distract from it. Then, they definitely don’t want it too cartoony, which is like I always put my stuff, and maybe sometimes it’s too cartoony, but there’s a line where you’re trying to hit where it’s not cartoony in the sense that it feels like on a Saturday morning cartoon, but also not cartoony in the way that it feels like it’s Family Guy. You got to hit a perfect, unique just like sketch style that takes a lot of work, but looks simple.

Maurice Cherry:
Mm-hmm. I get what you’re saying. I get what you’re saying. Certainly, nothing that’s like, I don’t know, Marvel style, like not a comic kind of thing, but you also-

Akeem Roberts:
Yeah, yeah.

Maurice Cherry:
… want it to have some level of expression and polish, as you would say, that doesn’t detract from the joke.

Akeem Roberts:
Yeah.

Maurice Cherry:
Now, you’ve worked with some other big clients as well, Boom! Studios. You mentioned Men’s Health earlier, Conde Nast, which is over a bunch of different magazines and such. Is it easier working with bigger clients like those than, say, smaller clients?

Akeem Roberts:
For sure. I feel like bigger clients, they kind of have an idea and they kind of let you be free, especially if they know your work. They’ll be like, “All right, I saw your work. I kind of imagine what you can do. If you’ll do that, we’ll be great.” I feel like when it comes to mom and pop type of clients, it’s a little less freeing for the artists in a sense because I guess the dollar value that they’re spending is… it’s precious, their $500 or whatever.

This thing that you’re doing for them, especially if it’s like a logo or anything that they’re going to use over again for t-shirts, it’s very important. Because of that and because of how important it is to them, they’re sometimes a little overbearing. They’ll overwork in illustration because of having multiple revisions that kind of the artist loses… The more revisions that’s happening, the artist kind of loses the spirit sometimes. If it’s 20 revisions to get this logo done, the artist each time is less and less into it-

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah.

Akeem Roberts:
… and that doesn’t mean that there will be a point where they don’t care. The artist is always going to care because it’s for their portfolio and their job. They want it to be good. It’s kind of like a way of the artist helping… not helping themselves, but guarding themselves from being like… If you’re too personally attached, you’ll get upset about the notes-

Maurice Cherry:
Right.

Akeem Roberts:
… so you have to be removed. The more and more you get notes, the more and more you’re like, “All right, this is getting away from my vision and I’m trying to see if I can get exactly what they’re seeing in their head,” which is not normally something an artist can reproduce is what another person is envisioning.

Maurice Cherry:
I feel like if I had to do 20 revisions on a design, I would want to fire the client. To me, that feels like the client really doesn’t know what they want, and they feel like you’re just going to keep iterating on it until it magically appears to them. I mean, I know that’s how we’re sort of just pulling that number out of anywhere, but I get what you’re saying about the dollar value, which I think is something that’s really important. A lot of these bigger companies just have the budget to be able to do bigger type projects, more audacious ideas, et cetera, but then smaller clients, that money has to really go far. That’s not to say that larger clients aren’t as invested in the end project, but it just takes on… There’s an added gravity to it when it’s from a smaller client or for a smaller client, I should say.

Akeem Roberts:
Yeah, yeah.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. Can you discuss any upcoming projects or collabs that you’re excited about?

Akeem Roberts:
Right now, I don’t really have anything coming up. I guess the only thing I have is I’m working on a graphic novel and I’m trying to pitch to HarperCollins or Kokila to just get the story that I have in my head off the ground.

Maurice Cherry:
Okay. I’ve always wanted to do a graphic novel. I cannot draw, but I have had ideas for characters in my head since I was a teenager to put into a graphic novel. I’ve talked about it here on the show before. People probably already know this, but one day I’m going to have the time and the funds to make it happen, so I hope it works out for you.

Akeem Roberts:
Yeah, yeah. I’m hoping it works out, too.

Maurice Cherry:
Now, I want to get more into your work and your career, but let’s learn more about Akeem. Let’s learn more about you. Are you originally from New York?

Akeem Roberts:
No, I am kind of like from everywhere is what I tell everyone. I was born in North Dakota and my Mom was in the military, so I moved around a lot from North Dakota to Alabama, to Germany, to South Carolina, to Texas, to Maryland, to New York. A lot of places, but most of my time was in the South, so I guess I could just say I’m from the South.

Maurice Cherry:
Wow. Did you do a lot of drawing growing up?

Akeem Roberts:
Yes. I would just say that I started drawing… There’s two big reasons I started drawing, so first I was just doodling, and then in third grade, I won an award for the state in South Carolina, third place for this painting I did-

Maurice Cherry:
Hmm.

Akeem Roberts:
… and that was a good boost. I was like, “Oh, wow, this is cool. I can draw.” I didn’t really think of anything of it. I was just like, “All right, I can doodle.” Then, in fifth grade, there was this girl that could draw way better than me. I was crushing, so then I would try to get better to impress her, and I think that’s kind of my origin story is trying to get better to impress a girl. Then, I just kept drawing on my own.

Maurice Cherry:
Did it work?

Akeem Roberts:
It did not work, you know? So-

Maurice Cherry:
Oh.

Akeem Roberts:
… ultimately it was for me, you know?

Maurice Cherry:
I had someone on the show a couple episodes ago, Kendell Burton, and he was telling me how he first… He’s an art director now, but he was like, “Oh yeah, I first got into design in the web because I was making a blog on Zynga to try to meet girls.” I’m like, “Does that work?”

Akeem Roberts:
Never does.

Maurice Cherry:
You were doing a lot of drawing and stuff growing up, and I see you went to the University of South Carolina and majored in Media Arts. Tell me about that time. What was that like?

Akeem Roberts:
Media Arts, basically, I ended up there because I was very late at applying for colleges, and my family had just moved back to South Carolina, so then I just applied there. This guy that I met with was like, “Oh, tell me what you want to do.: I was telling him that I probably would want to do some animation, like comics and stuff, and so he was… The Media Arts Program, which is basically teaching you how to use the Adobe Suite while learning about film, photography, script writing, and so it was like mostly on the film and photography side. Then, I minored in Illustration, so I did like one figure drawing class on my senior year and one illustration class on my senior year.

Maurice Cherry:
Do you feel like they really kind of prepared you as an artist?

Akeem Roberts:
I feel like not in a sense of what I ideally wanted to do, which was basically do animation and stuff like that. I didn’t have a student film. I didn’t even take the animation course because I never signed up in time, but I guess overall, it kind of helped me be a jack-of-all-trade because certain things with film and photography and script writing can transfer into illustration. Having that does help me visualize ideas, but not necessarily in the sense of, “Okay, you do this something. You’ll have a job immediately after.” You know?

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, I think school is interesting in that way. I mean, I majored in Math, so I didn’t think-

Akeem Roberts:
Oh no.

Maurice Cherry:
… when I was graduating I was going to have… Actually, no. I mean, I did major in Math, that’s true, but I had like a scholarship thing lined up with the program that I was in that I was going to work for the government after I graduated. Then, that fell through like junior year because of 9/11. It fell through. I was like, “Oh, I have no plans for what I’m going to do when I graduate.” I was working part time at the Symphony here in Atlanta selling tickets, and I did that, I think… I did that up till I graduated, and I remember when I graduated they took the calculator away from my kiosk because they were like, “Well, you have a math degree now. You don’t need this.” I’m like, “Is that supposed to be funny?”

I mean, I didn’t need it, but I didn’t have any sort of career plans lined up after graduation because I thought I was set. I really didn’t even pursue other companies. I snuck my resume into other departments’ resume books so I could get interviews at places. I was wholly unprepared going into senior year for any kind of actual career goals. I was in college just because I was a nerd that liked math.

Akeem Roberts:
Yeah. That actually sounds very familiar to my story. That’s basically kind of like how I ended up in New York was my friend got me an internship in New York, and then I did that internship for the summer, but it kind of fell through near the end. Then, I was working at Starbucks in South Carolina. I was making $9 an hour, but the rent was just so much. Most of my money was going towards the rent-

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah.

Akeem Roberts:
… and then it was like… I think the rent was… I want to say almost like 600, almost 800, which is a lot. Then, they were like, “Oh, you could transfer to the Starbucks in New York,” which I transferred and I was making like 13. Then, the apartment I had up here was 584 with everything included, so I was way better off staying in New York, and that’s just like how I got here was not planning on staying. I came up for an internship and I was like, “All right, I’m just going to go back,” but then it just seemed to work out better for me to just live here than be in South Carolina barely making it-

Maurice Cherry:
I mean-

Akeem Roberts:
… you know?

Maurice Cherry:
… that makes sense, and I would say also probably as an artist, I mean, you kind of want to be in the cultural capital of the country when it comes to experiences and stuff. I would imagine you probably wouldn’t have access to the same level of experiences in South Carolina that you would in New York City, you know?

Akeem Roberts:
I mean, I feel like… Okay, so when I was going to college, there was this rumor that actually a bunch of comic artists actually lives in South Carolina, which might be true, but I just never met anyone.

Maurice Cherry:
If I recall, and this was years ago when I interviewed him, Sanford Greene, who’s like, I know he’s done stuff for Marvel, for DC, pretty prolific visual artist, lives in South Carolina. He lives in South Carolina.

Akeem Roberts:
Oh really?

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, he went to Benedict’s.

Akeem Roberts:
Yeah.

Maurice Cherry:
Yep.

Akeem Roberts:
Yeah, so like yeah, I guess… Look, I guess South Carolina is the home for the comic artist, but I just could not find that community at all, but comic artists tend to be homebodies, so you would never really see them.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. I mean, I’d imagine, yeah, it’s probably not… There’s no collective or something like that. I would say it’s probably just easier in New York because of availability and just the cultural atmosphere of the city. I came from a small town in Alabama, and if I would’ve stayed there after I graduated high school, I’d know I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing now because there was no kind of technology or design or anything. You either got married, got into the church, or maybe worked a factory job. Not a lot of options.

Akeem Roberts:
Yeah, yeah.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. I mean, that’s not endemic of the South, but just in particular, like-

Akeem Roberts:
Yeah [inaudible 00:30:14].

Maurice Cherry:
… your environment can help out, you know?

Akeem Roberts:
No, no, I hear you. I have a bunch of family from Alabama.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. One of your early career gigs, you were at this place called ideaMACHINE Studio where you worked as an animator. Talk to me about that.

Akeem Roberts:
All right, so crazy with that was one of my friends came up and he was doing photography. I was still working at Starbucks at this time, and he was like, “Oh, there’s an animation studio just like here. Do you want to apply?” I was like, “All right, cool.” We possibly could work in the same building, whatever, so I applied. Then, I got the job, and then that same day my friend got fired from whatever company he was working at in the building, so it’s like we didn’t get to work together, but he did help me get this job by seeing it. Then, at that same time, I was still working at Starbucks, which I worked that job while also doing Starbucks for like a year and a half just doing both of them.

Maurice Cherry:
Wow.

Akeem Roberts:
Yeah, and at Starbucks, I had just became a shift manager. I would only work two or three days a week, but it was weird because I’d be in charge then, so it’s like…

Maurice Cherry:
You were able to kind of juggle it sounds like.

Akeem Roberts:
Yeah, yeah. I was able to juggle it, but it was surreal once I think about it, just like how many hours I was working. It was a lot.

Maurice Cherry:
How was ideaMACHINE Studio? Was that kind of your first studio experience?

Akeem Roberts:
Yeah, that was my first studio experience. That one, it was a little more… I guess in a sense it kind of trained me, kind of gave me the animation class kind of a sense because I went in there knowing some stuff, but not really knowing the 12 principles of animation or anything like that, just what I saw online. Most of the stuff that I did for them was kind of like whiteboard explainer videos.

Maurice Cherry:
Okay.

Akeem Roberts:
It was like for pharmaceutical companies that had this idea, but wanted it to be explained in a simply way. That’s what we did for them. There was tiny stuff that you can animate, and then I would push it every once in a while to try and get better at my animation chops and my graphic design skills. I guess in a sense that job kind of trained me, but it was very reluctantly because the guy who runs the company was… I was trying to get better at art, and he was like, “You don’t need to get better at drawing.” I was like, “Yes, I do.” Then, I just kept pushing and doing my web comic on the side was also something I did. Just work on my skills and progress my abilities to draw and stuff like that. Was just doing that weekly in order to force myself to put something out consistently and have a foundation.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, so you were doing this kind of freelance work or doing your own work at least as well as doing this nine-to-five. How did you balance that?

Akeem Roberts:
I did not sleep a lot is how I balanced that. Basically, I would work during the day. If I had a Starbucks shift, maybe it was two or three hours, so I’d work nine to five, and then I would walk over to the Starbucks. I just happened to be super close to this company and then work four hours there and then come back home, which the commute was good. It was like 30 minutes, not that bad, especially for New York, and then work on my freelance stuff. Then that started again in the morning. It was a lot.

Maurice Cherry:
It’s amazing the stuff that we pull off when we’re younger just to try to get that… I don’t know, I guess you just have all that youthful energy. You can get it done. Nowadays, absolutely not. I’m in bed-

Akeem Roberts:
I-

Maurice Cherry:
… at a certain hour. I not staying up pulling all-nighters anymore. No, I get what you’re saying. It takes a lot to try to make sure you’re doing all of these things because, of course, you’re doing what you have to do to pay your bills and whatever, but you’re also establishing yourself during this time doing your own thing, which I think is super important. It’s something I tell a lot of designers that come on the show, especially ones that just start off, like have something on the side that’s just your own thing, you know?

Akeem Roberts:
Yeah.

Maurice Cherry:
You can still do what you have to do to get involved with your career at your workplace, but have something that’s just yours.

Akeem Roberts:
Yeah.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. Now, after you worked at ideaMACHINE, you ended up at another studio called Holler where you were their Associate Animation Director. Was that a big shift from your work at ideaMACHINE?

Akeem Roberts:
Yeah, that was a big shift. One of the main things that like… The reason I left ideaMACHINE was first I wanted to grow as an artist, and then the second thing was that they were in Brooklyn, and then they were moving the company to New Jersey. I was… I don’t want to step foot in New Jersey, no offense to New Jersey, but I was just like, “I live in Brooklyn. The commute is crazy. Getting on the path just to get there, I absolutely can’t do it.” This is around the same time that The New Yorker reached out to me, and then this company reached out to me and they were like, “Hey, do you want to do a test for us?” I did a test for them. I had my Cintiq and everything all set up, and then my Cintiq broke that weekend-

Maurice Cherry:
Oh.

Akeem Roberts:
… and I had to use the Bamboo, which is kind of like is still a drawing tablet, but just doesn’t have a screen. I had to use my Bamboo tablet and finish that animation for them, which is a quick reaction GIF that was like three seconds long. I did that over the weekend and they liked it.

Then, I started working there and the culture was very different. ideaMACHINE’s culture was kind of like you were doing like a student project. You would have art director… They would like help you, but not with any direction. The art direction was purely up to the animator. The way that it looked was purely up to the animator. The client would give notes, but it wasn’t like I had to follow a guide. I was the guide. It was like everything I did at ideaMACHINE from like the music to audio, sound effects and all of that compositing, there we did… It was a one-shop stop for one artist on each video. It wasn’t like working as a team really. It was kind of one guy is doing this, and if they need help with the animation, they’ll ask you, but it wasn’t anything that was ever felt like a cohesive team effort where everyone is trying to draw in the same style or anything like that.

Maurice Cherry:
Hmm, so it seems like it was definitely just a ramp-up in terms of responsibility, though, right?

Akeem Roberts:
Yeah, yeah, so for Holler, when I first started, I was just doing little three-second GIFs and there’ll be client stuff, and then we’ll work on those. Then, later on, I started directing some shorts that they did right before I left. There was one called Akemi-chan: Is It Magical?, which is an idea that I had which was like a play on Magical School Girls trying to do a bunch of anime inside jokes kind of stuff like that. I was writing the script for that and then guiding the people that was working with me of how I wanted it to look and fleshing out storyboards and having more of a commanding role, which felt good, which kind of led to my newest role is sort of still doing that. It was kind of a stepping stone of becoming in charge, taking a step back and letting people do their things, but also helping them grow.

Maurice Cherry:
Hmm. I would imagine even with that, it’s sort of helping you out in your freelance because you were still freelancing also during this time with Holler?

Akeem Roberts:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. With Holler, I was still freelancing. Like the beginning of 2020, like in January 2020, I got a call from Kokila being like, “Hey, do you want to work on this book?” I was like, “This name looks familiar.” I was looking at the art director’s name, and then I looked it up and it was the same art director for Hair Love, which I loved Hair Love. It was great. They’d just had that short come out. It was beautiful with Matthew A. Cherry. I was, “Wow, I would love to work with them.” I reached out to them and I was getting started. I was like, “Man, I don’t know how I’m going to do this with the commute, but I’m going to try and make it happen.” Then, of course, the pandemic happened, so it made it a little easier for me to finish my day job and then jump straight to my freelance. From there, every day I was doing illustrations from like 9:30 at night to like 2:00 in the morning-

Maurice Cherry:
Wow.

Akeem Roberts:
… just to get those things done, and it was a lot.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, but I mean, I would imagine it changed the way you work freelance, right?

Akeem Roberts:
Yeah, yeah, definitely. Freelance before I felt was more if I felt like I had the energy to do it, I’d do it-

Maurice Cherry:
Mm-hmm.

Akeem Roberts:
… but with the book, it was like, “All right, you got to get these pages done. You got to get these multiple books done. You kind of have to treat this now like a full-time job where you clock in.” I was like, “All right, my clock-in time is 9:30 at night to 2:00 in the morning.”

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, yeah, that’s good. You get into doing it, you kind of time box your schedule, it sort of helps out, especially if you’re doing it on a regular basis.

Akeem Roberts:
Yeah.

Maurice Cherry:
Now, something that I’ve seen at least over the past decade that I’ve done this show, but I’d say probably prior to that as well, you started to see a really big increase of Black artistic talent, visual artistic talent specifically. Cartoons, animations, fine art, like you mentioned Hair Love from Matthew A. Cherry. No relation, I think, I think. Any genealogists out there want to dive into that, I’m more than welcome.

When I see all of this, I also end up seeing this question about representation, like that always seems to come up, which I think is kind unfair that if you are a Black artist that you have to represent your community through your work. I think it’s up to the individual artist what they choose to do. Is that something that you feel like you have to do through your work? Have you gotten that kind of, I don’t know, sense of… I don’t even want to say responsibility, but have you gotten that, say, from other people, from clients, et cetera?

Akeem Roberts:
Yeah, I would say there’s a little bit of that, and there’s like, for instance, when I first started at Holler, I was one of the only two black people there that was the artist and black people in general. One of the things I did when I started there was like I didn’t want to get pigeonholed as the guy who you only come to for Black stuff, right?

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah.

Akeem Roberts:
That I immediately just did not draw. I drew like animal characters that I knew were Black or like Mother Earth was a character that had an Afro, but I knew she was Black, but it was like I didn’t do anything that was explicitly Black because I didn’t want to get pigeonholed. With my comic stuff, it’s slice of life, but there are times that I do stuff that is political, but those are very few and far between. Then, my main stance on that is just I want my web comic to… There’s a bunch of web comics out there where it’s just nothing really happens. It’s just like couples chilling and that’s it.

I was like, “This web comic, I’m doing it to show that Black people are normal. This is my every day. This is slice of life. There’s like nothing big going on. No overarching villain. This is just a Black guy chilling. Here’s a look into this. It’s not what you normally expect.” I feel like there’s that, and then sometimes if there’s bigger issues, I’ll just bleed over. Then, I’m just like, “I have to address this.” I will-

Maurice Cherry:
Mm-hmm.

Akeem Roberts:
… but most of it I’m just the way that I’m thinking of representation is just like, “Hey, I’m just a normal guy on the internet. This is what a normal Black dude is doing-

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah.

Akeem Roberts:
… you know? Chilling.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. I like that, and I’m glad you sort of framed it in that way. You know, it’s interesting, even after doing this show for as long as I’ve done it, people will only think Black designers come in one specific type. I mean, that can be whatever that type is what that type is, but I say that to say that there’s a lot of variety in what people might think might just be a monolithic set. One thing I’ve tried to do with the show is like, yeah, I have designers, but I’ve got cartoons and illustrators. I’ve had footwear designers on the show. I’ve had software developers on the show. I try to make it pretty diverse in general just to give a sense of what we’re doing out here in terms of creativity in this kind of digital age. I’m glad that you framed it in that way. I think that’s a really good way to look at it.

Akeem Roberts:
Yeah, that was also one of the things when I did the J.D. the Kid Barber books was the reason I worked so many hours on it was because I really wanted the illustrations to have like an angelic feel or like magical feeling, and to have there be depth in the Black character’s skin, so it wasn’t just a gray tone because it was on black and white, but it wasn’t just a gray tone for the skin and no light. I made sure that there was an airbrush. I showed the details of Black skin so when a Black kid opens it up, they’re like, “Oh, my skin is beautiful.” I made sure the skin popped, and that’s what I was like… That was another way of what I was thinking of representation, but not in the sense of, “Oh, this stands for something,” but just in a subtle way of like a kid opening a book and seeing that Black is beautiful.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. Who are some artists or illustrators that have influenced your work?

Akeem Roberts:
I got the classic Calvin and Hobbes. Loved the Garfield. Loved Boondocks. Maybe it wasn’t age-appropriate for me to be watching it when I was, but I did love The Boondocks. Strong anime influence. Just a bunch of stuff. Even speaking of The Boondocks, when I was in college, I think this guy is named Carl Jones. He worked on The Boondocks.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, yeah.

Akeem Roberts:
Yeah. He was in Columbia, South Carolina, for something. I don’t know what he was there for, and he saw my sketchbook. He was like, “Oh, let me look at this.” Then, he looked at it and he was like, “You got some good ideas here, but you really need to work on your fundamentals.” From there, I just started working on my fundamentals like crazy, which I reached out to him and I told him that and he was like, “Wow.” Then, that was it, That was the last we talked, but he was like, “Wow, thanks.” Then, he started following me on Instagram and I as like, “All right, cool.”

Maurice Cherry:
No, that’s so interesting. Early… I wouldn’t even say… This wasn’t even in my career, and I keep sort of making these parallels because you’re saying some things that line up directly with some experiences that I’ve had. This was the year, God, I sound so old. This was like 2000 I want to say, ’99, 2000 maybe, but I was palling around on the internet. This was back when Yahoo used to be a big destination on the web for a lot of people.

Akeem Roberts:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Maurice Cherry:
It had chat, it had games. I mean, ask any elder Millennial about Yahoo Spades, and they will spin you a tale, okay. Yahoo had a lot of these user groups that you could just join or whatever. Very similar to like, I guess, a forum or something like that. They had one around Black comic books that was just called like Black Comics. When I tell you the crème de la crème of Black artists at the time were in there, I’m talking Denys Cowan, I’m talking Dwayne McDuffie. Dwayne McDuffie-

Akeem Roberts:
Oh wow.

Maurice Cherry:
… actually gave me a critique on a comic book idea that I had. I was like, “Yeah, I want to make this comic book about these like… They’re ninjas, but they’re Black, and I’m going to call it Black Ninjas.” I mean, I can laugh about it now. This is terrible. He’s like, “This is just-

Akeem Roberts:
Oh no.

Maurice Cherry:
… “you’ve just taken Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,” which I love, “you’ve just taken Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and mapped their direct characteristics onto Black people.” He’s like, “If you want to make something that’s your own, you really have to make it your own. You can’t just copy from what someone else has done.”

That has stuck with me. I mean, I’ve certainly taken that advice with other projects and things that I’ve done, but this was way back in the day. It’s amazing how even just like those kind of little comments that you get from someone that has been where you’re trying to go can help just set you in the right direction, that kind of indirect mentorship in a way.

Akeem Roberts:
Yeah.

Maurice Cherry:
What advice would you give to any aspiring artists out there that are just starting out in the industry? What would you tell them?

Akeem Roberts:
Work on your fundamentals, but also when you’re doing contracts, there’s a couple of things you need to make sure you have, which is a kill fee. If you finish an illustration, no matter how much percentage of it, they’ll still pay you what they said they’ll pay you. That way, even if they’re like, “Oh, you finished this illustration,” and then they’re like, “Actually, we don’t want to do the project anymore,” if you have a kill fee, that would be like, “Hey, I finished a hundred percent of this project. Pay me a hundred percent of the project.” No matter what, they still have to pay, which is important.

Then, make sure you have a limited number of revisions. I like to do three revisions, and then if a client goes over that, they pay for that, so like you get these three revisions, then anything else they pay for it. That allows the client to think about it because I feel like if it’s unlimited revisions, the client is just going to keep being like, “Oh, what if this was pink? What if this was blue? What is this was orange?” If you’re just like, “Hey, you have three revisions,” that kind of nit-picky stuff with the client they’re not going to do because they’re like, “Okay, these are important. Let me actually think about it.” Like, “Oh, can I just imagine that color in blue or whatever versus asking the illustrator or artist to do it for them.”

Maurice Cherry:
Mm-hmm.

Akeem Roberts:
Then, after that, I would say also save 30% of whatever you get for freelance for taxes because you do not want to get caught with your pants down.

Maurice Cherry:
Are you speaking from personal experience there?

Akeem Roberts:
No, I was able to catch it. I didn’t let that happen to me, but I’m always worried. I’m always trying to save just in case. I don’t want to end up having to pay too much in taxes and don’t have any money in my account.

Maurice Cherry:
That’s a good idea. That’s a good idea. How do you stay inspired and motivated in what you do? I’m curious. How do you handle burnout or any sort of periods of low motivation? How do you get through that?

Akeem Roberts:
That, I feel like whenever I’m in a funk, especially when I’m drawing stuff, I kind of just doodle a comfort character, which for me is like I love Sonic the Hedgehog. Sonic 1 was like one of the first games I ever played. I always draw Sonic, and it helps me get out of the funk because I feel like the funk you’re usually in is just because you’re progressing in your mind, but you haven’t kind of caught up to your hand yet. You’re like, “Oh, this is looking bad,” because I know my taste is a lot better in my head and I can visualize it, but I’m like my mind, my body hasn’t quite gotten there yet. I feel like if you have a comfort character that kind of helps you put things in perspective, I guess.

For me, it’s Sonic, which whenever I’m feeling out of it, I’ll just doodle a little Sonic and I’ll be like, “Hey, this was better than what I did before. That keeps me motivated, and I always try to measure myself only to myself. Yeah, there’s going to be artists and stuff that you look up to, but make sure you just look at how you are progressing so that way you don’t lose motivation and drawing. If you’re drawing and then you see another person who just draws something straight out of the air and it’s perfect and beautiful and you’re like, “Man, I can’t do that,” you just got to like slowly keep working. Just look at yourself and be like, “Hey, I’m slightly better than what I was the other day,” and just keep going.

Maurice Cherry:
Where do you see yourself in the next five years? What kind of work do you want to be doing?

Akeem Roberts:
I’d love to have this graphic novel come out and then continue doing stuff in publishing, because right now my job is designing book covers-

Maurice Cherry:
Mm-hmm.

Akeem Roberts:
… so I don’t do the illustration or anything in that. I just do the layout, the fonts and everything-

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah.

Akeem Roberts:
… and I feel like that has been a little freeing in order to look at the process, but also pick other artists that will be good for a work or a job or something like that. I guess I give them the opportunity to show themselves.

Maurice Cherry:
I mean, I think designing book cover certainly is a…that seems pretty cool. I’ve seen awards go to just book covers in terms of design and everything, so that’s a pretty cool gig to have.

Akeem Roberts:
Yeah, yeah. I’m liking it so far. Only three weeks in, though, but it’s good right now.

Maurice Cherry:
Nice. Well, just to kind of wrap things up here, where can our audience find out more information about you, about your work and everything? Where can they find that online?

Akeem Roberts:
You can find out more about at akeemteam.com and everything pretty much at Akeem Team, which ironically, that is just like an AIM username I made back up in middle school and I just kept it,

Maurice Cherry:
Now, it’s yours. It’s yours forever.

Akeem Roberts:
Yeah.

Maurice Cherry:
All right, sounds good, man. Akeem Roberts, I want to thank you so, so much for coming on the show. Thank you for, I think, demystifying a little bit about what it’s like to be a working freelance artist. I think what’s probably the most important thing that I gathered just from this conversation and from your story is that this wasn’t an overnight success. You always sort of had this gift for drawing, and then you cultivated that through college and then through your additional work experiences. Then, you were also freelancing and now you’re doing cartoons in The New Yorker and you’re designing book covers and stuff like that.

It’s all a process, like you’ve managed to continue to build your skills up at every step of the way, and I think that’s something that for most people, particularly for most people I think that are listening, it’s just an important thing to know that success doesn’t come overnight. You’ve really kind of worked hard to make a name for yourself. I’m excited to see what else comes out from you in the future, so thank you so much for coming on the show. I appreciate it.

Akeem Roberts:
Hey, thank you so much for having me, man.

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If you know how to deliver excellent creative work reliably, and enjoy the autonomy of a virtual-based, freelance life (with no non-competes), check them out at brevityandwit.com.