We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Anna Riva. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Anna below.
Anna, so excited to have you with us today. So much we can chat about, but one of the questions we are most interested in is how you have managed to keep your creativity alive.
For a long period of my life, I thought I wasn’t a creative person. I think it is easy for people to have the misconception that artists are born with a gift, that they were made for art. I started drawing abstract art at first because I believed I wasn’t able to draw a still life or a human. Funny enough, it is contradictory since abstract art is based solely on your creativity and how you express yourself without concrete elements. I slowly realized I was also able to be a creative person. I was too afraid of trying and failing by not being “creative enough” or being unable to develop a personal style. Art is also a process. You learn to be creative and exercise that even when you’re not feeling great about what you are creating. The best way for me to keep creativity alive is simply to try. Especially following this as a career path, I know I will have to make art when I’m not feeling inspired, but sometimes, during the process, you work your way to that and achieve what you want even if you didn’t expect to. I also think constantly consuming art helps me keep my mind open to explore new things in my style, which is also a key element to creativity.
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
I’m a CG Artist specializing in Lighting, Look Development, and Environments. Currently, I’m a Senior in 3D Animation and VFX at the School of Visual Arts in NYC, but I was born and raised in São Paulo, Brazil. Right now, I’m in the process of directing and producing my thesis film, titled “Chiquito”, with my teammate Lesley Marroquin. It’s been a fun journey, and I’m excited to share my growth as an artist through this short film!
Animation has always been part of my life, but I never expected to pursue a career in this field. I never thought I would be able to be on the other side of something that I always loved as an audience member. In Brazil, the animation industry is not as big as it is here. I didn’t know there were schools that taught CG until my senior year of high school. My goal before was to pursue film and become a cinematographer. I always had a passion for color and composition to create pleasing visuals, so when I started learning CG, I naturally leaned towards these aspects and found myself in look development and lighting.
I enjoy being part of an animated production where I get to be part of the process of bringing worlds to life. I love developing visuals and being able to translate artistic and creative views to CG. Especially now that I have to do that for my thesis. In my illustrations, I like experimenting with a lot of bold and colorful palettes, so figuring out how to best implement that style in a more realistic world, in CG, required a lot of experimentation. I like how CG has a good balance between artistic and technical skills. I enjoy the challenge of figuring out how to push creative boundaries in all the different software we have available to explore. It’s been an exciting project directing an animated short film and extending the limits of all the skills I’ve learned since I started doing art in CG.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
Ambition. Passion. Cooperation.
I’m constantly trying to challenge myself in my technical and creative skills. I always try to go beyond what I am already comfortable with, and most importantly, I love exploring new things. I think we should never limit ourselves. It is easy to overshadow the path people follow to get where they are at. Every skill can develop with practice. If you keep challenging yourself and keep a clear goal in mind, there’s only room for improvement.
I think being very passionate about CG also helps me to be grounded and determined to always push my limits and aim for a better result in each project. I feel like, especially now, with all the different styles we see emerging in the industry, every time I see a new stylized look on a film it makes me excited to also produce art like that. I want to be able to invoke the same emotions in other people with my art.
I learned so much in school by just talking to people. Teachers, of course, but also my peers and upperclassmen. I used to be very reserved in my freshman year, but once I felt comfortable and integrated into the community of my department, I was able to connect and talk to amazing people. I learned a lot from seeing their creative process and taking their advice. Personally, I also enjoy sharing what I know and helping people around me who might be struggling with something that I am more experienced with. Talking to all these people who were so willing to help was important for me to get where I am. All these artists around me inspire me to be better, and I think it is essential to have a supportive and cooperative environment to grow as an artist.
How would you spend the next decade if you somehow knew that it was your last?
Co-directing and producing a short film is the biggest challenge I have faced so far. It is an exhilarating experience to spend two years in a production, crafting a story and slowly seeing it come to life. When my thesis partner, Lesley Marroquin, and I started discussing story ideas, we both wanted to represent our cultures through this project. I’m Brazilian, and her family is from El Salvador, so from the beginning, we knew we wanted this short film to take place in Latin America.
The story is about an ambitious Salvadorian inventor who’s too focused on making her teleportation device work and neglects her pet armadillo, Chiquito. He takes matters into his own paws, stealing the device when it starts working and teleporting both of them to Brazil. We wanted to tell a lighthearted and fun story through a unique lens by representing our personal stories through the environments.
One of my main goals is to represent Brazil through my personal experience. I want to use the visuals to translate to the audience how I feel in my home country. More importantly, I want to highlight the city I grew up in, São Paulo, depicting this place through an energetic and exciting lens expressing all the good memories I built there. The color palette in that part of the film will be very vibrant pushing a more stylized look and playing with saturated and bright colors.
In an animation pipeline, it is almost impossible to do everything alone, so we have been reaching out to underclassmen and some recent graduates in our school to ask for additional help. It is gratifying to see how supportive and excited they are to be part of this project. It showed me the actual reason why people make art and how amazing it is to collaborate on this craft with other artists who are also passionate.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://ariva51.wixsite.com/annariva
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/annarivart/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/annariva-/
Image Credits
Portrait taken by Tatiana Kireicheva
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