Meet Roxy Blazey Summers

We recently connected with Roxy Blazey Summers and have shared our conversation below.

Roxy, so great to have you with us and we want to jump right into a really important question. In recent years, it’s become so clear that we’re living through a time where so many folks are lacking self-confidence and self-esteem. So, we’d love to hear about your journey and how you developed your self-confidence and self-esteem.

I keep getting met with surprise and a bizarrely high amount of denial when I open up about struggling with both elements of confidence and self esteem, especially growing up and not being nurtured in that department. Setting aside the way it can manifest as what we medically define as anxiety- which often needs oversight from professional medical support, I have faced a lot of limiting beliefs due to these issues that have either frozen my ability to progress of to compensate by trying to adhere to other people’s standards. That’s like the number one way to create art that you’re embarrassed by than proud. I think that I understand the mechanics of how these work for us enough so that these days I have a better handle than prior.

Prior to breaking down the issue at hand and dissecting it, I feel compelled to address an often unincluded element in the discourse present which is the bizarre societal pressure that you don’t get to judge whether you should feel good or confident about something, but instead it has to be an external party to pat you on the back and say good job you’re finally a content creator/developer/artist. In media, such an attitude is often presented as overly cocky or something to avoid. A true artist.Tm should never embrace the ego engaging with a confidence within but instead exist with this humility where they flagellate to tell the world that actually they feel like the work is terrible and then the audience comes and rescues by Actually giving their work value.

The most effective shield to that attention fishing I developed was based on the advice that I needed to start calling myself a storyboard artist regardless of studio or production experience, even if that was within the realm of me making unknown esoteric YouTube amvs or fan work, something we generally look down upon. The best undertanding I can tack on is relationship of fan versus creator which we often internalize as entirely mutually exclusive as a label that then entirely defines your presence.

Being a fan feels cringy, I tried to run away from it so much, to be free of being lumped in with that group and instead sit at the cool kids table with the rest of the kids tv show runners in Hollywood. Little did I know I was on a treadmill because to enjoy and be inspired by art, we are and always will in some part be fans. If I looked around the aforementioned fantasy table, I would be met with fans as intense as I. The relevance of this to confidence struck me hard as I was in an industry space, chatting with folks and when I communicated my existence as a story artist with Too Much confidence, I received a scrutiny of whether the label applied to me enough to allow me to do that by my support system that usually cheerleads my progress. I should have communicated it as lesser and appeared like my presence in indie animation is a lesser right to express my craft so that the nice Studio People could validate me instead.

Confidence is skipping that whole process to just saying I’m a story artist with my whole chest. Even if my gig had even less presence or whatever we consider validity. Even if I was terrible! Made no sense! If I do the thing, I am within my right to exist with, at minimum, the quiet confidence of knowing the innate worth and validity of my existence. This is usually paired nicely with a dose of radical self acceptance and unpacking the layers of denial that make you feel you are for some reason inappropriate to exist.

A lot of people like me seem to face it the most in regard to either their role or expectation. Conforming to the norm enables you to escape the status of minority and the vulnerability of being visible or clockable. Being stealthy with your divergence is how you win respect, right? Asking for crumbs so that at most we can be comfortably deviant to those that begrudgingly pretend to accept you when you should let them choke. Developing confidence for me was detachment of what others thought about me being out.

And as for self esteem, That is the ingredient we need to fuel this detachment, Not just values in a vacuum but also the belief that you are worthy of good. Of existing. Of forgiveness if you’re wrong or make a bad decision. And that you don’t need to supply that from anything but your internal ability. Self esteem is often fragile in today’s world, especially when the agenda behind keeping you unconfident and with low self esteem are driven by profit. Not everyone has the privilege or ability to access the support required to pull that off, too. But it begins small, with self talk, with acceptance and with you.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?

My passions lie in all forms of sequential storytelling, from comics to animation and all the cool, weird stuff in between. I have been fortunate enough to have the privilege to pursue these interests and to have consistent forms of related outlets while supporting myself and this lifestyle. I spent the last couple of years in the trenches of academia as a college level TA at LACC for various arts classes (favourite will always be storyboarding <3) while simultaneously volunteering as a story artist for an independent animated pilot over at a small remote studio called Dreamarc and got promoted to being a storyboard lead and to write some scenes- skills I picked up while doing classes in screenwriting for fun prior to TA work. I just finished the first draft of a comic I plan to (probably self) publish that has done really well online (it was a gift to my younger self, a re imagining of a comic book I had been making in my teens) and am working on some various online digital releases of it to drum up publicity as I edit it for print. I am an immigrant from Finland and did my education in the United Kingdom, after half a decade culture shock and the fact I am HERE still gets to me. I feel so lucky to be in Los Angeles and to have access to such amazing resources for being a content creator of any kind. I have been really lucky to still be in education and learning new things every semester. I have really surpassed my limitations in my time- I have really severe anxiety around math and was able to complete a college class with an A grade! Yay! I just picked up acting for the first time as a repressed theater kid who didn't have any opportunity to do so prior, and have a lot of plans to take more classes that will help in building or bringing my original projects to life. Right now, I'm really focusing on proof of concept work in my free time so I can try to convince my friends to hop aboard some scrappy project similar to what I've been volunteering on with all the skills I have developed over the last few years.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

Persistence springs to mind immediately. Common sense dictates that you usually won’t be good at The Thing you want to do to begin with, and persistence is the only way forward to getting from point A to B with improvement, especially if things look dire or like there’s a lack of progress. Persistence also involves not being discouraged by others potentially seeing you suck. It’s okay to be bad at things!

But that being said, the second point of developing an aptitude for picking your battles and being very sure of your intentions and objectives is perhaps even more imperative. I don’t really like stacking these ideas against each other, instead, these skills go together and make something far more than the sum of their parts. Knowing where to direct your focus and persistence is in itself success.

The third is kind of a cheat but as someone diagnosed with combined type ADHD since 2019, the third part is having a healthy relationship with one’s executive function and a good set of coping skills to assist with getting it to align with your goal. There is no use to having limitless energy if you’re focusing it on something you do not consider important! There is no cheat code to curing this, our current lifestyle has us all dealing with a reduced sense and control of our executive function regulation skills regardless of our neurotype. Self care isn’t always pretty- sometimes it’s being frank and honest about why your executive function is in the toilet and treating that appropriately. The key is to not beat yourself up for the failure but focus on the solution and necessary actions.

Okay, so before we go we always love to ask if you are looking for folks to partner or collaborate with?

My dream since I was a small child was to be involved with collaborative productions of all kinds, but mostly within the realm of animation. There’s this one man band enthusiast inside me that feels like an artist’s answer to toxic masculinity, where I feel like I have to do every piece of the work as my own, but years of experience have taught me that reality is the opposite when your crew rocks. I am consistently looking for creative partners and have created some awesome work with people especially of a similar work ethic and drive. Despite my desire to handle everything, collaboration is something I have done since I was a tween for personal art projects and I’m certainly looking for people who are open to something more long term.

Basically: Wanna make something potentially animated or bring your ideas/characters to life? Do projects, vlogs, feel like a part of a creative squad?

My needs are more around reciprocity. I’ll read your original script and go through it with notes if you’ll do the same. I’ll promote you ferociously if you can signal boost when I post. Someone I can catch up with and have the occasional coffee shop creative jam session. You can find ways to get in touch on my website or LinkedIn!

Contact Info:

Image Credits

Skylar Autumn Summers

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