Today we’d like to introduce you to Yaxaira McNear-Echeverria.
Hi Yaxaira, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
Life has a funny way of meandering, taking us places we otherwise would never have expected. Opportunities arise and are taken away, we succeed and fail, fall in and out of love. We remember life as a story we tell ourselves, a narrative of one thing leading to another, bringing us where we are today. I never would have imagined being where I am now, working in animation, yet it also seemed inevitable, like a story that was writing itself without me realizing.
In my early teens, I decided that I was going to be a theatrical costume designer. I had fallen in love with the craft, spending my teenage years sewing, working backstage at my local community college, immersed in the sweat and adrenaline, and I loved it. The opportunity later came to study theater in the United Kingdom, so I left my home of sunny California and moved to Cardiff, Wales.
I met wonderful people along the way, but I sensed that my time in the UK had changed me. I don’t know exactly when or how, but this intense passion was replaced with apathy. What I thought was an ever-growing crescendo of possibility had fizzled, and when I moved back to California I didn’t know what I was going to do.
I had flirted with the idea of going into animation while I was still living in the UK, but remained unsure. The next few years I spent wandering from one thing to another, working as a waitress, running a small business selling vintage clothing, and taking classes at the junior college.
During the early days of the pandemic, I finally made the decision to pursue a career in animation. In making this career commitment, I thought back to an art class I had taken at Fullerton College, taught by instructor Marshall Vandruff.
He explained that: “When you are drawing someone who is scared, you can make the lines feel scared. When you are drawing someone happy, you can make the lines feel happy. This taps into our impulses and moves us toward style from feeling.”
Hearing that made the proverbial light bulb in my head explode, it was the most “a-ha!” of “a-ha” moments that I ever had. It made me realize the sheer freedom of expression, using the simple beauty of a line to convey any emotion. Drawing, and by extension animation, became the ultimate form of art for me. The only limitations were one’s drawing ability and their imagination.
The problem was that my drawing skills were not up to par to work in the animation industry. Left with no other choice, I set out to properly learn how to draw, practicing every day for hours and hours over the course of two years. This rekindled my childhood love of drawing into a genuine admiration and respect for the craft, rooted in something more than just passion.
Now I freelance as a background designer in the animation and games industry, working for independent studios. Reminiscing, there were many things subconsciously pointing towards animation without me realizing. It just took a few years to see it, but I eventually got there.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
There are inevitable twists and turns in life, it’s definitely a curvy road. But sometimes, it’s nice to take the scenic path because you never know what you might discover. Life is about the experience.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
If I have to think of a defining characteristic of my personal work, it would be Los Angeles. It is both my home and my muse. It’s a city that I love, not because it’s perfect, it certainly has many flaws. But it’s an enduring place full of beauty and contradictions. There’s something about the dust in the air, the way the smog hazes the horizon, making the mountains in the distance look like a watercolor painting against the blue sky. I love strip malls and I don’t know why. I just do. I love the freeways at night, the wide expanse of the road and the ambient sound of cars. I love motels and dive bars, neon signs, the dry desert air. I love the heat and the feeling of the ocean breeze. It’s a city you can spend a lifetime in and still get lost in its endless sprawl.
One just has to keep their eyes open and be willing for experience. Los Angeles a place of caricature and diversity simultaneously. It can keep you forever learning, which is one of the greatest gifts a place can give you. Because life would be fundamentally boring if one knew everything.
Can you share something surprising about yourself?
I make a mean piña colada.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.yaxairamcnear.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vivalacougar/
Image Credits
Olivia Racionzer
