Meet Pablo Rivera | Visual Development Artist

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

Hi Pablo, how has your work-life balance changed over time?
Over the last few years, the main way my work/life balance has changed is that now I actually strive to have one. I’m a recent graduate (2019) and I have to say that in school, I completely neglected having any sort of structure beyond just grinding on work as much as possible. Unfortunately, this mentality was one that pervasive in my program, and so my peers and I fell into some pretty unhealthy habits. Upon graduating and starting my career, I was fortunate to have more experienced colleagues emphasize that being a professional meant maintaining yourself, and aiming to have a life beyond just working all the time. To that end, now I’m strict about things like making time to go out on weekends, to have evenings where I can relax, and generally I make the effort to exist as a person outside of my main career.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
For my job as a visual development artist in animation, my role primarily consists of helping create designs and paintings to visualize and construct the world in which a given project takes place. This can be anything from an illustrated moment from the film, to a drawing explaining the scale of a prop next to characters from the story.

When it comes to my own work, my aim is to ensure that it’s clearly set it aside from what I do professionally. While this sometimes means creating art for art’s sake (a luxury in a field where everything needs to inform a project one way or another), I’m finding that lately I’m growing more interested in what kind of worlds I want to create, and the narratives I want to tell using those settings.

The notion of creating my own stories seemed like such an impossible task for so many years. Yet I’m proud of the fact that now it’s a goal I make steady progress towards whenever I have time outside of work. The main thing I’ve found that helps is to go back to the ideas and themes that initially excited me outside of art. My partner jokes that all artists got into this passion to make better fan art one way or another. For me, this statement means that I initially was excited to draw because of a love for prehistory, world cultures, and the possibilities of science fiction. Consequently, those are the themes I’m now exploring with my own art.

Getting your foot in the door is an immensely difficult task in any field, and animation is no different. It is a skill-based field, but what also matters is ensuring that people with hiring power know you exist in the first place. That factor was an incredibly difficult one to overcome, and frankly, it was entirely due to pure luck and timing, and not something I feel I could easily replicate. But the advice I would give is to make sure you always present your best work, and that you leave a genuinely kind impression on those you interact with. Your work should reflect your passions since that will help it stand out, and you should be genuinely kind since whoever hires you will likely have to spend close to 40 hours a week with you.

My favorite types of interactions are when someone who is just as passionate as I am about a given subject finds my work. I try to make art that’s specifically about the kind of things that excite me, and knowing that someone else resonates with that is incredibly fulfilling.

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.
Due to COVID restrictions, I’ve gotten to know LA’s outdoor areas and parks very well over the past year. In terms of some of my favorite spots around the city- Ernest E Debs regional park has some great trails and views of DTLA, Millard Canyon in Altadena continually surprises me with new trails and sights, and is a great spot if you’re looking for a forested hike, Rancho Palos Verdes has some amazing tidepools and oceanside walks, and you can even see whales from there occasionally, and the Cave of Munits park has some towering sandstone cliffs with varied caves you can clamber around in. And my main outdoor escape has been to drive up along Highway 2 into the mountains- there are trails running all over and almost anywhere you pull over has stunning views. As far as restaurants, while we haven’t eaten out at too many places over the past year, my partner and I love Cena Vegan’s vegetarian burritos, Veggie House and Thai Rama have some incredible Thai food, and Churros Calientes in Santa Monica is worth the drive for some one of a kind churros and dipping chocolate.

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?
Honestly the main shout-out I want to give is really to all the amazing instructors I’ve had over the years. Learning and internalizing the necessary skills to be an artist is an incredibly difficult process, and its thanks to some very kind and patient teachers that I’m where I am today. Some of those teachers are Elizabeth Jenkins, Ron and Vanessa Lemen, Inga Poslitur, Dave Gustlin, Zac Retz, Khang Le, and Dan and Christina Cooper. A good art teacher is more than just an excellent artist; theyre someone who understands how to communicate some pretty abstract concepts in a tangible way so people entirely fresh to the idea can easily grasp it, and these individuals have all helped me and countless other students to do so.

Website: https://pablonotpicasso.art

Instagram: @pablonotpicasso

Twitter: @pablonopicasso