Alumni Profile: Ang Vondra
Huge thanks to Ang for the wonderful interview! Ang is a YACalum who now works at Cartoon Network! Check out more of her fabulous work on her blog here!
Year/years at yac
My memory is hazy, but I’m going to guess around 2009-2012 through high school until I went off to college, and then for a bit in 2014-15 when I was a 19 year old college drop out hanging out in my hometown planning out the next step to reach my goals as an artist.
Did you go to college and if so where?
I did, but I did not graduate and do not have an arts degree (or any college degree actually) despite working professionally as an artist! I attended Laguna College of Art and Design for a year and a half before dropping out due to a variety of reasons. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it and I have very mixed feelings about college in general when it comes to pursuing work in the art field.
Did you learn elsewhere? Where and How?
After college, I never went anywhere else for an education. I just learned everything about art online through having so much access to tutorials, resources, and others’ work at my fingertips. I would pay attention to what artists who inspired me did with their work, shared knowledge with friends, read books, would learn from observing fellow YACsters and how they approached aspects of their work I admired. On top of that, I would look for opportunities to do figure drawing when I could, and drew from life and used reference whenever I wanted to better understand something.Otherwise, I was fortunate to get to take some fine art drawing/painting classes from a private instructor when I was young, which even though I ended up pursuing cartooning instead of fine art, learning the basics gave me a solid foundation to work from when I started experimenting with finding shorthands in drawing that led to me developing my cartoon-y drawing style I have today.
Tell us about what you’re doing now.
As of currently, I’m working full-time in-house at Cartoon Network as a Storyboard Revisionist on Mighty Magiswords! After the storyboard artists finish boarding out an episode (which are basically the episode blueprints), my job is to address notes the boards receive before they are sent off for the next stages in the animation pipeline such as voice recording, design, etc. It is my first animation industry gig, and it is pretty awesome. Before I was hired full-time as a revisionist, I got to freelance as a Storyboard Artist on half of a ten minute episode for the show. The episode is called Squideo Games if anyone is interested in finding it.
What has inspired you along the way?
For my art specifically, I was inspired by a lot of modern cartoon art and artists in the animation industry. It’s hard to give specific examples because none immediately come to mind. However, when it comes to storytelling, which is an important part of why I create art, I’m inspired by own life, experiences, and the people around me, My inspiration for getting to where I am now is thanks to all the people and friends who offered me help, support and kindness along the way (such as the YAC co-founders!) and I wouldn't have made it without that.
Favorite YAC memories?
I think one of my more fond YAC memories would be the 24 hours Art-a-thon. It was like one giant sleepover with all your friends but instead of sleeping you stay up all night drawing and eating snacks. I finished around 3-4 larger pieces during that which I was really proud of myself for, and got to spend a lot of time with my best friend I met at YAC who I didn’t really get to see much beyond that because we lived a bit far from each other. A lot of my fond YAC memories aren't specific events I can easily reference to, but just more of the positive feelings I get remembering the routine of coming in and always feeling welcome and excited to sit with people I knew and work on art and have that creative outlet.
A mention about the value of YAC?
YAC was very valuable to me because being able to have a way to escape my hectic home life and have an environment specifically for me to focus on art meant so much to me at the time. It helped me develop and hone my artistic abilities in a way that would have been much more difficult without YAC there. While I am not in contact with any of the friends I made there anymore (it’s ok, life happens), I did make one of my closest and most important friends at the time at YAC who impacted my life, art style, and storytelling skills very heavily. Being able to be around so many different kinds of artists with their own goals and styles is so inspirational and I feel like I wouldn’t have grown or improved in the way I did without that exposure.
On top of that, the founders, Marcia and Meg, as well as everyone else there who helped keep YAC going, were incredibly kind, understanding, and supportive people who made me feel like I could achieve my dreams when I struggled to get support in other places. I don't really think I would have made it to where I am in my life anywhere near as soon as I did without YAC being a catalyst for setting up a sequence of events that pushed me in that direction.
