Today we’d like to introduce you to Kevin Leal.
Hi Kevin, 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?
Before I even thought of going into animation as a career, I wanted to be in a metal band for a living. I was in a tiny local band in high school and the drummer and I wanted to make it big so we decided to skip going to college. My parents weren’t too thrilled to hear about that idea and urged me to at least try community college. Very begrudgingly, I agreed. I decided to major in fine art seeing that I had been drawing since I was little and on the night of my first class I was instantly hooked. Leaving a career in music behind, I made my way to an art school called SCAD where I majored in animation knowing absolutely nothing about the medium except for the fact that it involved drawing.
Once I became acquainted with the world of animation I decided to pursue a career as a Storyboard Artist. I relentlessly put together a portfolio of personal work outside of my other classes and showed them to all of the animation studios that visited the school. I was determined to have a job lined up before I graduated and even put an event in my calendar on the final day of school saying “Be a Professional Storyboard Revisionist” (The entry role for a storyboard artist.) I applied for jobs, internships, and everything in between but unfortunately, I graduated having zero leads for a job. Until one day out of the blue, a couple of months after I graduated, I received an email from one of the studios I had met with, Disney Television Animation. They had taken a look at my work and wanted to interview me for a Storyboard Artist position on the show Monsters at Work. After the interview, I feverishly refreshed my email for two weeks, until finally, I got an email saying I got the job.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
All things considered, I think it has been a relatively smooth road. My biggest struggles have easily been my mental health. During my final year at SCAD, I burned out hard and wanted to give up directing my thesis film (The film the senior students make in their final year of school.) I didn’t want to get out of bed, I didn’t want to draw, I honestly just didn’t care about anything. All I could hear was the voice in my head saying I was lazy, unmotivated and clearly didn’t want ‘it’ enough. I had a hard time admitting to my family that I needed help, but I did and started therapy which has been a life changer.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I am a Storyboard Artist in the animation industry. For those who don’t know, a Storyboard Artist is an artist that creates hundreds of black-and-white sketches that are cut together to create a rough cut of a show. It is a great way to see if an episode or movie is working before it is fully animated. It’s an enormously creative job where we get to draw the silliest things, act out our drawings with funny voices and try to make our bosses cry with emotional character moments.
I would say I’m most proud of the effort I put into growing my storyboarding skills while at SCAD. I went from not even knowing what storyboarding was, to three years later landing a job at one of the biggest studios in TV animation. I’m really bad at letting myself have wins, but that one was big for me. It’s tough too though, my work habits and mentality in school were what led me to burn out so hard, but at the same time, I don’t think I would be where I am today if I didn’t push myself hard in school. It’s a very, very thin line.
I guess I would say what sets me apart is I love to pitch my storyboards. It is like being able to perform your art. Being able to make sound effects and crazy voices for my drawings brings me a lot of joy. I actually have videos of myself pitching my work on my website and I was told that that was something that really helped land me the job at Disney.
How do you define success?
This is a tough one! For me, success is being able to express myself with my art. I’m obsessed with the creative process and just creating things in general because I have an overwhelming need to express who I am and what I’m feeling. For me, that is what art is all about.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.kevinlealart.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kevinlealart/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinvleal/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/kevinlealart
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEpvqlpbYT4
