vfx is healing me

fun fact: i grew up singing.

not just casually singing in my bedroom, either. i took voice and piano lessons every week. i sang in multiple choirs, performed in musicals and concerts every year, and spent years training seriously.

my parents would drive me an hour into the city for lessons at the New England Conservatory and Boston Conservatory. i was even accepted into a vocal intensive one summer in high school.

and then, somewhere in college, i just… stopped.

i don’t really know why.

i think i slowly lost the idea that i was actually that good at it.

growing up, i feel like being artsy or musical can somehow get labeled as weird before you even realize you care about it. so you learn to shove that part of yourself down. you try to be normal. you try to be good at a sport. you try to do things that feel easier to explain to other people.

luckily, my sport was figure skating.

which, looking back, is probably the funniest possible loophole.

because figure skating is equal parts sport, performance, music, costume, storytelling, and art. it gave me an outlet for all the things i was supposedly trying to make myself less of.

so i kept skating.

i was on my college figure skating team while juggling my majors and minors, graduating a year early, and then going straight into grad school. i was busy. i was accomplishing things. i was making films and animations.

but i wasn't really pushing myself creatively.

not enough.

i was making what i thought people wanted me to make.

pretty VFX.

dramatic films.

things that looked impressive but weren't necessarily me.

and somewhere along the way, i started believing that if i wanted to actually make a career out of design and video, i needed to flatten myself into someone who could work almost entirely in the commercial and marketing world.

be strategic.

be polished.

be professional.

make things that sell.

and obviously, i do love that side of the work. i love solving creative problems for the companied i've worked with. i love making something strategic look beautiful, or cool, or trendy. i love figuring out how a visual can actually communicate something.

but i think i confused being commercially minded with needing to completely stifle everything else about myself.

i thought the weird, experimental, musical, overly-specific side of me was something i needed to keep separate from my “professional” creative identity.

it turns out i didn't need to choose.

i could learn how to make things commercially and make things that are completely ridiculous.

i could be strategic and strange.

i could make work for a brand during the day and spend six hours at night figuring out how to turn myself into a VFX cloud fairy.

i didn't have to flatten myself to fit into the industry.

i just had to figure out how to bring the rest of me with me.

because weird is probably the most consistent thing about me.

i sing.

i make layers out of harmonies AND layers of adjustments in AE. ;)

i make things move.

i make feelings into visuals.

even when i was singing constantly growing up, i didn't necessarily love every song i had to sing. i didn't love singing something just because it was technically impressive. i wanted to feel something.

i loved making people laugh.

i loved comedy and absurdity. i loved art that had something deeper hiding underneath it. i loved things that made you look twice.

which probably explains my obsession with video games, too.

give me a weird little easter egg hidden somewhere in a world that i have to work to find and i am immediately obsessed.

i think i've been slowly finding that part of myself again.

and honestly, making VFX lately has been a huge part of that.

i've spent years thinking i needed to make myself more commercial. more polished. more marketable. more normal.

but i don't actually want to make things that just make sense.

i want to make things that make me feel something.

so, naturally, i decided to sing Ariana Grande into a live looper, record approximately one million takes until i was happy with it, and then put myself on a magical little VFX cloud island.

because apparently that's where we're at now.

and honestly?

i really impressed myself!!!

not because the VFX is perfect. not because the vocal performance is perfect. but because i actually let myself do it.

i let myself sing again.

i let myself make something strange again.

i let myself be excited about an idea without immediately asking whether it was practical, commercial, or normal.

and maybe that's what i've been needing as a recently fully developed adult (25 yo).

not becoming someone new.

just becoming comfortable being the person i was before i learned i was supposed to tone it down.

i'm weird.

i'm artsy.

i like making absurd little worlds.

i like hiding things for people to find.

i like singing harmonies.

i like making VFX that probably takes me ten times longer than it needs to.

and i like it.

so i think i'll keep doing it.

i'm also incredibly grateful that i now have a full-time job as a video and motion designer where i can spend my days making things for an actual company and then come home and unleash all of the eccentric little ideas i've apparently been storing up for the past decade.

a healthy balance, really.

commercially employable during the day. VFX fairy at night.

and maybe that's the thing i needed to learn:

i don't have to choose between being a professional creative and being a weird artist.

i can be both.

and i think i'm finally okay with being as weird and loud as i want.

maybe VFX isn't literally healing me.

but it is definitely helping me find myself again.

vfx breakdown on my insta!

https://youtu.be/5PbygPCArmA?si=frQvAajmxGiz2i-D