Today we’d like to introduce you to Anda Deng.
Hi Anda, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Growing up in China, as far as I could remember, I have always been interested in drawing and painting random things on textbooks, walls, school table, tissue paper. Besides, what I enjoyed the most was “drawing” by laying out toothpicks (the only thing that’s free at restaurants in China) and signing my name on the table with soy sauce (it’s not easy). My parents saw a great potential in me to becoming an artist so then my art journey began by going to all types of art classes after school and weekends. You probably won’t even believe that I had already won 20 Chinese national/international youth awards by the time I became a junior high schooler. They called me future star or something (it really tricked me that I thought I would become second Da Vinci until I realized everyone else was one of the stars, haha).
As I grew older, my love for art only intensified. I actually studied architecture for roughly a year in China before deciding to move to the U.S. to study entertainment arts at the University of Utah (Yo! Utah is a very beautiful place!). I’m now working as a character artist in the gaming industry. The things I do are very fun and you can think of character artist as a digital sculptor but you get to play games at work.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
Being a professional artist in any field in general is not and never going to be a smooth road. As for character artists, according to a popular industry media “flipped normals”, there are very few positions available for character artists (only a few thousand positions worldwide and the competition is very high). The people who get these jobs are usually already highly skilled artists who have been doing character work for years. Characters in a movie or game are often the most important asset and require a lot of time and effort to create. To be trusted to work on such important assets, you’ll need to be technically and artistically strong.
But hey! all of those facts are just to scare you away! I knew that! I have heard many recruiters (at least 5) telling me not to pick character art as a career because it’s going to be a marathon not a sprint. Especially as a foreigner, the biggest obstacle is to find work that sponsors (most don’t sponsor) so that I could maintain my status in the U.S. to continue my American dream. It was a lot of hardworking and praying! I’m very appreciative of all the support from people that helped to me become who I am today. Here’s an inspiration quote that some of the people might already know, but I still want to repeat it again. “If it scares you, it might be a good thing to try.”— Seth Godin
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I specialize in making digital character arts for entertainment industry. I’m also very into making character collectibles that could be 3D printed in general. To be honest, I’m just like all other artists out there that have been trained by the some great mentors, so I wouldn’t say I’m a very special one. But I guess what sets me apart from most of the others is my hard-working willpower. There’s really no shortcut to get to the level of becoming a master besides working hard. I believe that art is more a skill than talent. It takes time for skills to be mastered but no masters would say they were born with the talent already.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.andadeng.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andalistic
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andadeng
- Other: https://www.artstation.com/andadeng
