My journey with design started much before I even knew what a png was. Growing up in a house with two musical artists as parents, with friends who were dedicated to drawing, it was no surprise that I ended up taking a huge liking to drawing as a kid by the time I hit the end of elementary school. After some time, I convinced my parents to buy me a wacom tablet for my birthday, which is when I started creating digital art. Throughout this time though, joining different online gaming communities inspired me to create art, and designs, for said games. I ended up self-teaching all of the software to the best of my ability, spending hours and hours creating art and designs for my friends. And while I showed off my work online, I was always self-conscious. This heightened continuously as I went through middle school, and eventually I dropped digital art almost completely in favor of design.
While part of me wishes I were not so insecure in middle school, imagining what my current art ability would have been, I am also glad. This full-focus shift to design allowed me to discover my artform. I continued making gaming-related designs, taking inspiration from the designers I interacted with online. This nontraditional approach has heavily shaped my current artstyle and knowledge of design, as my inspiration was layered, colorful, and complicated – sometimes to a fault, looking back.
On top of this, I had a heavy interest in anime and Japanese music culture. Often paired with a lot of the music I would listen to were powerful, creative, flashy, and detailed music videos comprised of 2D motion design, 3D work, and digital art – all things I loved. This has inspired me to push myself to learn motion design, something I came to absolutely fall in love with.
Combined, these experiences have turned me into a designer that dreams of creating work that will move people emotionally through my use of detail, motion, layering, etc. And all things considered, I am pretty happy with where I am at now. That being said, I am even more excited to keep improving.
-Avila Armstrong