My first meeting with my mentor, Lera Nyukalova, took place in a casual setting of a cafe in Gastown. We began our discussion with a Q&A and she was very open about telling me all the details of her career path. Lera Nyukalova works as a lead designer in Atomic Cartoons. She created stunning environment designs for an upcoming Netflix show “Last Kids on Earth”. Talking to her was incredibly insightful since her journey towards her dream job began in a very similar setting to mine. Both of us come from the same city, Almaty, and both attended the IDEA program. Lera also showed me her portfolio of stunning digital paintings which got me even more inspired to learn from her.
Throughout our talk, I found out a lot of useful information about networking in the animation industry, self – discipline and the work ethic needed for reaching success. I was pleasantly surprised to find out there are quite a few industry professionals in Vancouver who came from Kazakhstan, just as I did. One of the most important tips that I noted down was that attending art and design events is one of the best ways of discovering new connections. I was also shown a few tips & tricks for improving the quality of my drawings.
When we moved onto deciding what type of project to work on, Lera gave me a suggestion to take an existing fairytale as a base, adding a certain twist to it. This is needed for a base narrative that we would later use as guidance for the characters and environment designs. Later on, we have settled on the idea of readapting the classic “Snow Queen” set in the vibrant era of the 80s. This is very exciting as the 80s inspirations, such as aliens, cold war, video arcades and pop culture can lead your imagination to incredible results. I am now all set with a written brief a tone of inspiration to begin ideating on the character design, our 1st stage of the project.
