Meet Veronica Kipp: Animator and Costume Fabricator

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

Hi Veronica, can you share the most important lesson you’ve learned over the course of your career?
If anything my career has taught me to listen to myself. As a student I was super eager to take advice and listen to everything my instructors said. While I’m sure they had the best intentions, not all advice is going to work for everyone. Take critique and get your fundamentals down of course, but I feel like we live in a society that reinforces people pleasing, and leads us to create things to satisfy others. If you are truly passionate about something, speak out for it. Otherwise you’ll be creating artwork that someone else came up with and you’ll feel burnt out. I highly recommend at least creating something for yourself once a week, even listening to music and just scribbling 20 minutes can be very relaxing and bring you back into your element. Make manageable goals for your own work, but be kind and flexible with yourself as life can be unpredictable. Set your boundaries, listen to yourself and be the voice that speaks up for you.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
I’ve definitely had my fair share of road blocks, and I know hard work still stands before me but it’s been worth it to get this far. Recently I’ve been focusing on creating art that’s functional outside of a frame. As I’ve been working from home, I’ve been able to really sit down with what I needed to do for my art in ways that I had never previously had the time to due to crazy commute times. You’d be surprised what those hours previously wasted on commuting has provided for my own endeavors. I’m taking it one step at a time as I work on my bigger projects. Getting into illustrative projects, I’ve got a little illustrative series around this little Hedgehog that I’m currently obsessed with that’s been a blast putting together. At the end of the day, I just want to make others smile when they see my art, whether that’s with costumes, illustration or animation I know I’m doing a great job!

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
LA always has great places to go to, but I think people always make the mistake of going downtown and being very confused by it. Anywhere in Little Tokyo is a great place to go if you are in that area but I would definitely venture outside of downtown to other cities in the county. I would take advantage of the museums and Parks on weekdays, we have so many great free places to visit here. Also, if they’ve never been to the beach I know the drive is crazy especially when you’re inland but take your friend to the Santa Monica pier, because when else are you gonna be willing to drive the 2 hours out there? 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?
I feel that I would not be the person I am as an artist without the training, but I feel that the artistic community has allowed me to grow and find myself as a creative. When I find those who really get my sense of direction and my sense of humor, they tend to become some of my closest friends. I’m thankful to Heather Kipp, my life and creative partner to whom I owe so much gratitude, love and happiness, as well as all my friends…I have so many I feel it’s a discredit not to include them all, but to highlight some more recent thoughts of gratitude Sam helped me refuel my focus on what I wanted to do and showing me there were other ways, Q for being a positive voice, Gary for bouncing ideas and talking about inspiration, My Alumni friends for being a constant source of jokes, inspiration and for being harsh when I needed to hear it, C & A for just being supportive all the time, my coworkers for being collaborative instigators.

Website: veveisme.wixsite.com/animation

Instagram: instagram.com/veveisme

Twitter: twitter.com/ChickenTenderz

Image Credits
All art created by Veronica K.