Today we’d like to introduce you to Rebecca Payne.
Rebecca, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I grew up in a very suburban part of Orange County, California (for context, about 30 minutes south of Disneyland, and about 15 minutes south of where Arrested Development took place). It’s the kind of place movies like to use as an uncanny, everything-is-too-perfect setting in horrors and thrillers. There wasn’t an extreme amount of art culture going on near me. On top of that, I come from a family that has had pretty much every single occupation except for an animator or artist. There was just something I loved about drawing. I also grew up on a lot of animated films and TV shows. Watching animation was my favorite pastime, with the behind the scenes of how animation was made coming in at a close second. In the end, I think it didn’t surprise anyone when I told them I wanted to work in animation.
In middle school, I started to work on how I was going to reach my goals. I filled tons and tons of sketchbooks and school-mandated planners with drawings, which is something I never got sick of (although I think a lot of my middle school teachers did). I was very fortunate to attend the Orange County School of the Arts, where I was a Visual Arts student for all four years before graduating in 2019. From there, I was accepted into CalArts, my dream school, in the Character Animation program. I just finished my first year, and in that space of time, I’ve already learned so much from my peers and my teachers, and have also found a love for writing that I didn’t know I had. The future looks a little weird right now, but I’m still very excited to see what happens next.
Has it been a smooth road?
The biggest challenge I faced leading up to this point would be my mental health. In middle school, I was diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder, and while I’ve been very fortunate to have access to many resources that help me keep it under control, I’d be lying if I said I still don’t grapple with it. The way that my anxiety manifests itself in terms of my art is that it makes me second guess everything, and overall look at myself with an overly hyper-critical eye which can be helpful, but it often gets to the point where it’s hard for me to see anything good about the things I create. This can prevent me from making things and often causes me to cast negativity on myself rather than ask myself how I can take what I’ve learned and do better the next time. It’s something I learn to deal with everyday, and something that I expect will still cause problems in the future.
I do want to recognize though that overall, I have been very fortunate. I’m really lucky I had the mental health resources I did, and the friends and family that I have. Many are not in the same place and need to fight a lot harder for a lot less.
How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
Over the next few years, I think (I hope) that animation will become more diverse. There is still a LOT of work to do, but compared to even ten years ago, animation is more diverse than ever. Hopefully, more people will be made aware of the many socio-economic roadblocks that prevent many people from pursuing a career or education in animation, and we will fight to find ways to make education and job opportunities more accessible. Again, there is still a lot of work to be done on this, but right now it’s really inspiring to see artists in animation fight for higher accessibility in the industry, and for calling out injustices that have plagued the industry for far too long. Hopefully, this will lead to substantial change and more diverse voices.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rib.art/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/Rib_art
Image Credit:
My mother and myself
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