Today we’d like to introduce you to Angie Lee.
Angie, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I always liked drawing and cartoons, but I don’t think I consciously decided to get serious about it. It kind of happened gradually. My sister got me a drawing tablet for my birthday. In high school, I found out about CalArts, which was somehow like five min away from my home the whole time. I job shadowed one of the animation professors for a random assignment, and she was really nice about the whole thing, taking me to see the students’ film screening, answering all my questions, even taking a picture in front of the school with me as proof haha.
Next year I did CSSSA at the same campus, and a year after that I transferred from UCSD to the experimental animation program at CalArts. Until then I felt like I was totally flying by the seat of my pants, but when I got accepted, that was pretty much it, I knew what I wanted to do.
Great, 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?
Nope! Getting into school, I thought the hard part was over (lol) but I was immediately blindsided by four extremely challenging years. I guess for the first time, drawing had stakes and the self-doubt came rushing in. Now I actually had to show my work to people — really talented amazing artists, which was terrifying.
I constantly wished that I was cooler, artsier, more daring. But, I also found it hard to make anything that I wasn’t personally interested in. So I developed this habit of running towards and away from the things I wanted to make, with the result that whatever I did manage to get done felt inauthentic to me. If you don’t start somewhere, you can’t start improving, so I always felt stuck in limbo. I worried that I was wasting my valuable school time and the time and energy of anyone who’d helped me on that path.
It wasn’t until after graduation that I started to try and find a way out of my self-sabotage-y hole. This sounds bad but it was actually by kind of laughing at myself about the whole thing. I was getting stressed about drawing cartoons, which is ridiculous. Maybe this helped me unclench a little, and I’m slowly learning to cut myself some slack, and be okay with where I’m at now. It’s very tempting to fall back on trolling myself like I usually do, but it’s a work in progress.
Tell us about your work – what should we know?
I do a lot of character designing, and sometimes storyboarding and comics. Usually digital or markers on paper, really basic tools so I can hash out quick drawings and ideas, and to get this kind of rawness that I personally find appealing. I like to find a balance between boundaries like cute or ugly, weird or grounded. Paradoxes are fun. I like funny truthful moments. And mostly I just like making images that I think are fun to look at, and hope that other people get a kick out of them too.
The cool thing about experimental animation is that I got to try out things I would have never thought of doing, like stop-motion, sculpture, 3D modeling, that were all very fun. But even though it was my major, I never got into animating. It was like doing a dunk in the ocean without learning how to swim first. I’d like to come back around to it, though.
Is there a characteristic or quality that you feel is essential to success?
I think, getting to a place where you can feel pretty good about working on your stuff, even if you don’t stick the landing all the time. That’s when the best stuff happens. Most of the time though it’s not gonna be like that, it’s gonna be very hard and sucky, and that’s okay too. Have faith that it will all come together in the end.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.kyungminangie.com/
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kyungminangie/
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