Transcript - Sonia interview.

[00[00:00:11.04] ok we're gonna start at the end. So I know you like to draw, can you tell me about any projects you're working on or any drawings you're extra excited about these days?

[00:00:22.02]more recently I haven't gotten to draw anything lately um the most frustrating thing about like drawing is that you need, well any kind of art you can't rush art and just when you're a normal person who has to go to work and go to school and have a reasonable social life you don't really get as much time to draw as you would like to.

[00:00:47.29]the last thing I drew was this character I made named Birda and she's kind of like, it looks like she's sitting on the edge of something but her skirt is kind of flowing as if there's nothing underneath her so it really doesn't make any sense but I really liked it and I was able to edit on illustrator and give her more color, more red, more yellow, than I normally would get to.

[00:01:13.13]when you do have time to draw do you usually just like do individual sketches or do you work on story style stuff?

[00:01:22.24]úm the story style stuff usually just stays in my head cause either time or patience is limited on myself, so i end up doing a lot of single sketches but in my head their part of a lot larger of a narrative but it usually just kind of stays in my head.

[00:01:40.20]when did you start drawing?

[00:01:44.21]I started drawing when i was about , it was the summer before 8th grade so I was 12 years old, that' the first time I can remember avidly drawing. I drew almost every day that summer but I have only like a few that I liked which is still the same. I could draw a lot and I'll only like a few.

[00:02:04.15]but my first memory of ever drawing was when i was um when i was like 3. um cause my moms also a good artist and her mothers also a good ariti... it runs in my mothers family just to be an artist. it's interesting how like genes work.

[00:02:20.14]but um I remember she used to babysit and she would have us all draw just like as an activity, something for us to do, and i was really bad at it and I would just draw like circles, like just scribble like little tornados you know. I remember doing that the first time I remember drawing was doing that with a pikachu pen.

[00:02:40.14]so you're mom encouraged you to be artistic?

[00:02:45.00]um yes and no cause I think everyone likes it when they see their kid draw, cause its like aww it's cute, but at the same time when i started getting older and when I wanted to go to college, you know um both my parents were really happy about ya know me going to college. everyone is when their kid goes to college. but I wanted to study art and they were, a little bit I think, frustrated with that because as much as someone likes to see their kid be artistic I don't think they want their kid to go through the struggle of only being artistic. and they said I was um, they pretty much said that I was very smart and they would rather me kind of go more down that path of building my intellect rather than my artist skill.

[00:03:30.28]which was frustrating for me especially cause my father he says when he thinks of me and my brother in the future he thinks of my brother as a musician which is so annoying because, yes he is a very talented musician, I'm very proud of him, but why can't I be an artist and he can be a musician?

[00:03:50.25]I don't like only being seen as smart cause being, art is such an important thing to me I find it more important and I would like if I was seen more in that light.

[00:04:03.09]that sucks, I feel you. does your brother want to be a musician?

[00:04:15.25]he does not want to be a musician, he wants to be um, he likes video editing and graphic arts which is artistic but um you know not, people don't think of it like visual art in a sense, at least some people don't. but no he doesn't want to be a musician he just happens to play guitar, and he doesn't even like to do it in front of people so its like kind of backwards.

[00:04:41.15]thats the most parent thing I've ever heard. will you tell me more about your mom?

[00:04:49.17]she's an interesting character it's kind of hard to describe her, she can be really really, she can be very nice in one moment and very happy and flowery and treat you like her favorite person in the universe but sometimes she can be very distant I guess, well not distant. if you're not a certain way and she doesn't understand it she gets mad or sad and it's kind of hard to fit into someones, it's hard to fit into the idea that someone has of you sometimes. and when you don't represent that idea and they get mad it's kind of, it's either you're gonna gonna act how they want you to act or you're just gonna kind of push away from it and I'm kind of more of a reclusive person naturally so I just kind of push away from it.

[00:05:48.25]ow did you deal with that kind of relationship growing up?

[00:05:50.23]well um I mostly grew up with my dad cause my mom moved out when i was 13 um, it was kind of, it's hard when you're young, I remember when i was very young I was very emotional, as most five year old are, and i didn't always feel... I don't feel now when i look back that i was raised well emotionally. like emotional intelligence is very important I think for people to have, I don't think I'm one of them. not as if I fly off the handle but I don't always know how to handle them so I don't always show them and I think that was especially apparent in terms of my mother in the sense of like shes so very emotional that it kind of puts me off a lo it of the time, we have issues speaking a lot of the time because she's very flippant in her feelings and I can stay in a feeling for days. and I don't often express it rather I just don't share.

[00:06:48.25]and my father is also very difficult with feelings because he doesn't really acknowledge them as much, um like for example my brother has depression also, similar to my mother, and so he thinks it's just physical, he needs to move more, he needs to go outside more, he doesn't understand that it's a clinical thing. so I have one parent who's very strict, well not strict but just he doesn't understand that whole right side of the brain, and then you have one parent who only exists in that side so I don't know how I felt about that growing up, like being around people that are too emotional, I've always been told Im not very emotional, which isn't nice to hear but it's just how i've adapted.

[00:07:36.18]would you say you channel your emotions in just a different sort of energy, a different direction?

[00:07:43.22]when i was younger I think I channeled a lot of emotion through storytelling and art, I think it kind of helped a lot. um, cuse when you can't say "Im feeling like I need help" then you can probably draw a character who is feeling like she needs help or someone who is helping. I think I did that a lot when i was younger. I don't think anyone ever thought of it that way though like "maybe she's trying to tell me something" but I drew a lot of characters that I think represented those different feelings.

[00:08:19.19]there's a lot over the years, now I'm trying to think, there's Ken, ken was the first one I still like Ken. Ken is cool. Um he's really quiet, he's the most like me, he's very quiet and a little bit cynical but he's not a mean person, he's just shy. um there's Hannah, there Evan, there's levi... they're brothers. um amy I think, I think amy and hannah are practically the same, one of them is an adaptation of the other. um and one of them, whoever it is I guess, wait no, amy and hannah are the same, I guess amy turned into hannah. jet is ken's sister, they don't know they're siblings. then there’s Birda, I don't know how she fits into any of this. she's my most recent one and I like her a lot.

[00:09:17.08]you have like a full cast of characters. this is serious business.

[00:09:36.12]well they're all humanistic because I usually that's the thing I can draw the best, is people and faces and hands. I love hands. Ken, what does he look like? Ken is biracial I think. I think he was originally asian but I think now he's biracial um he has light brown eyes, he's maybe like 5'7", 5'8" he’s not tall he's like lanky kind of and he has straight hair and it flops in the front, it's not extremely long, not like emo scene kid but it flops a little bit in the front or to the side and the sides, he's has a taper I guess it's called where the sides and back are short. that's what ken looks like. and he has like a straight nose and thin lips, normal looking ears, no piercings, he's probably usually wearing like, everyone I draw always wear converse. I'm not a converse enthusiast I just happen to like to draw people with converse. yeah. and he' usually wearing like jeans and a sweater and a tshirt underneath.

[00:10:43.15]would you ever collaborate with someone. like with your drawings and someone elses... like comic book style?

[00:10:51.11]I don't know if I could, this is gonna sound like really conceited but the only way i could do it would be like if I was the guy who wrote spirited away and he's like ok this is a general idea of how I want them to move and you're gonna do it in my style. just because that really crazy control freak part of myself where i can't like help but want to do it all myself but realistically I can't do it all myself because I don't have patience and I'm very quick to just throw out things I don't like, that don't look perfect sometimes. the hard part, when you draw a character it's so hard to draw them in different emotions emotions cause one little thing and you ruin their entire face and that's a completely different person so I don't know if I would ever let someone help me with it and i don't know, maybe they're too personal, I don't even like to hare stories I've written. I don't know, hard to say.

[00:11:42.28]I think you're a very emotionally intelligent person. would you say that the way you deal with your feelings and the way that maybe it manifests through your art has evolved as you've gotten older? how have you as a person and your art changed in the past five years?

[00:12:06.25]well when i was younger they were, ken was originally from a superhero story, he was like a sidekick, he was like a bad guy turned good, his character grew up with me, when I first started drawing him he was my age and he's still my age, he always stays my age. I don't know if I would say, I guess I would say it changed because I used to draw heroes and now I just draw real people. Birda, she's just an actual, I just want her to be a real person.   she has a family, she doesn't, she loved her family, everybody loves their family, but she doesn’t like her family. and for her she just wants to be an individual and i think that's a little bit of me, i just want to be an individual. so I guess like they grew up with me and I guess they changed with me, but I don't know, I always feel like I stay the same.

[00:13:03.14]like if you look at a picture of me now and you look at a  picture of me when i was like 14 I look almost the same, my hair is shorter that's about it, and I don't, I’ve lost some baby fat and that's like the main differences so I don't know if I'd say... I feel like I'm forgetting the question.

[00:13:21.27]do you share your art with your family at all?

[00:13:26.26]um I like to share my art, the most family, I just live with my dad so , I show my art to my dad but he doesn't really like he looks at it he's like "thats nice" and that's about it. um my grandma likes it cause my grandma is old and she liked to draw and she likes to see that it stays in the family but I don't really show a lot of my family my art because a lot of my family they're just kind of like "oh you have to go school, get a good job, have a family, blah blah blah" so it doesn't allow a lot of room for like expression. which is, I guess weird cause a lot of my family is very verbally expressive but um like, I'm more written expressive, I need a piece of paper to be expressive.

[00:14:16.02]

like I was younger my aunts used to say about me and my brother, which is kind of really mean, cause my brothers is really similar in this sense, they used to say that we were the children of the corn cause we were always very quiet and we kind of just talked to eachother, and we didn't really say or do much and we were very synchronized in that sense. so I think they kind of considered me the weird one out in my family, especially visually, cause I'm of mixed race so my dad is black and my mom is white so I also don't really look like any of them either. like, it's not a thing, no one treats it like a thing but the older you get the more you are aware of it and it's a little bit of a thing.

[00:15:04.13]where do you see yourself five years from no and how is your art a part of that?

[00:15:09.05]um five years from now I don't know really, I want to, right now I'm into journalism, I like it cause it helps me share peoples stories that aren't mine and I hopefully it'll help me share one day, a story that’s mine. five years from now I'd like to be working on journalism, I'd like ot be part of a paper or a news organization or something. personally, Id like, I'd like to one day finish a story and have it be published, I think animated, I don't think actors would work, Id want it to be animated. um I have  story I wrote one day, I wrote like for a while about Ken but I never finished it. I know how I want to end it, well actually I don't, I have two different endings. I have one where like it's really neat and finished and resolved and I have another one where it's totally like, you have no, like it's kind of finished but not really and I don't want to ever, I want to lave people on the cliff of that like "oh no, is it really, is it really done?" and then just never give them an answer cause only I get to know. which is kind of really mean i guess and kind of a dickish thing to do but it's a nice way of saying like"im sharing it but it's still mine I guess"

[00:16:29.24]what kind of art did you like growing up?

[00:16:36.13]um when i was a kid I watched like a ridiculous amount of cartoons and i as an adult I still watch a ridiculous amount of cartoons. I guess the cartoon i watched the most when i was a kid was avatar the last airbender. that was like a really imaginative show and i really think that helped me like develop like, I already had a large imagination and it helped me realize that you can take it and make it into its own little world cause there are things that you can say that can and cannot happen in that show because they have laws practically that governed the rules of the show. like an air bender couldn't just randomly birth a water bender unless that was in their genes and I can say that definitely because that was the law f that universe and I think that influenced a lot of how I think and I draw and I write.

[00:17:22.23]um and I guess when I first started drawing I was really into anime. I don't like it when people say I draw anime because I do not draw anime. that's a very specific kind of art style adn i don't think I abide to it. but I guess that was the first time I really got into any kind of art. the first drawings I did were like visual trace drawings, like dragon ball z, now I hate doing that.

[00:17:48.01]it's funny cause I hate half of my drawings, a lot of people will be like "oh my god your drawing is so cool" and I'm like "no it's not it's disgusting" I'll rip it in fonr tof them and their like "aaawwww I love it" it's mean but I love it. but that's the nice thing about drawing, I can always draw more.