Meet Brooke Huggins | Background Artist & 2D Animator

We had the good fortune of connecting with Brooke Huggins and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Brooke, how has your perspective on work-life balance evolved over time?
For the majority of my life, it was basically nonexistent. Being put in advanced classes since middle school meant I was constantly given homework and it wouldn’t be finished until 12 a.m. that same day. That meant less sleep going into the next school day. Sometimes I’d only get 4 hours of rest in. I finally got the chance to slow down once I got into college. More time to myself with less strenuous assignments meant that I could have time to relax. It felt so good to have free time and not spend countless hours working on useless assignments. That feeling only improved once I got out of college. I was able to hang out with my friends more often. We’d get food or watch movies after work and it’d be fun even if the movie was terrible. I’d say that the work life balance is way more important than one may think. I once thought it was unnecessary or that people overhyped its importance. Now that I have some semblance of balance I never want to go back. This is the reason why whenever someone asks “Do you ever wish you were back in high school?” I always say no. High school was awful and didn’t allow me to do anything outside of work. Touching grass is fun. Very, very fun.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
I draw animalistic characters in fantasy settings! I don’t have the same amount of fun drawing people though so you won’t find any humans in my art. Some places may look familiar while others are more dreamlike. These drawings are connected to a story I’m working on so they’re also concept art to an extent. I genuinely can’t wait until I can put all the pieces of my passion project together. Little me would be excited to see it come to life.

Right now, I’m working as a full-time freelancer animating on an upcoming indie video game. How I got there was definitely lucky. At first, I wasn’t having the best of luck getting any work in the animation field. I spent my first few months out of college upgrading my portfolio, trying to get feedback from others, and reviewing my older work to see what I could’ve done better. I came across the game’s application for animators on Twitter around that time. Funnily enough, I was passively keeping up with the game’s development on another site before that point. The application was eventually sent in and I’ve been working with them ever since. It wasn’t easy. Even now as I’m expanding my skillset to include background art, it’s a completely new area of expertise that I’m working on understanding. It’s one of those things you just have to figure out. That goes for both of these professions actually. A lot of “Figure it out”. There’s a decent amount of wiggle room for some things in the artistic field even after the broad strokes of what is considered good or bad have been defined over the years.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
There actually isn’t much to do in my area. But one place that never ceases to fail in the entertainment department is The Historic Towne of Smithville in New Jersey. It’s a very cozy spot. A cute little town with cute little shops and cute little specialty items. It even has a soap shop where the soap looks like food! Very nostalgic for me since I used to visit that place a lot when I was a kid. Other than that, time to take a trip up to New York. Or Pennsylvania. Either one works!

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
My parents definitely deserve credit for helping me get this far. Their support allowed me the time to find my footing both during and after college. I wouldn’t have gotten the chance to meet a decent chunk of my friends if they didn’t help pay for tuition. That time away from home allowed me to meet people that were trying to get into the same industry as me. Coming from a small town, finding people that wanted to work in animation was very rare. My friends deserve some recognition too. There’s no one else out there like them and we all push each other to be the best that we can possibly be. They’re the coolest people out there.

Website: https://fezacreations.wixsite.com/portfolio

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fezacreations/?hl=en

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brooke-huggins-9b8813172/