I'm speaking with Laura Yee, who is a senior 2D animation major at Pratt Institute. We talk about cultural identity, how her thesis has evolved, and representation in animation.
This interview was conducted in WPIR's studio on April 5, 2020.
I: Laura! Where are you located currently? Connecticut, right?
L: No longer, so I've actually moved to North Carolina, where I know you are from!
I: Oh my gosh. Wait, where are you?
L: I’m in Charlotte with my girlfriend.
I: Blake’s from Charlotte, that's right. Do you know which part of Charlotte you're in?
L: Mecklenburg County.
I: That's where my grandparents are from! Tell her I’m from Waxhaw.
L: She said ok.
I: I’m glad we had this discussion.
L: We’re actually in an Airbnb right now, because we are self quarantining.
I: Okay. Yeah that's smart, how many days ago did you get there?
L: It’s been three days. We’re here until the 12th.
I: Right. Okay, that's not bad. Oh God, it’s already the 5th of April.
L: We actually get out of here on Easter Sunday.
I: This goes to show how far removed I am from anything Christian. I thought today was Easter for a half second, because I was like, “oh it's Sunday and it's, April now, right?”
L: Every Sunday in April is Easter.
I: Yes, every Sunday in April is Easter. Well, I'm glad you have company while self quarantining. That's really nice. Wait, so you're in an Airbnb… I didn’t think that Airbnb’s are still operating. But I guess there's a demand for them, now, maybe.
L: Yeah, we haven't run into too much trouble finding Airbnb’s. In fact, we’ve never interacted with the host. I think they're like, as cautious about us as we are being around them. But, yeah, no trouble, I mean like Airbnb is kind of suffering now, so whoever can take people are still doing that.
I: What are you doing for food, have you been grocery shopping independently, do they have enough space for everyone?
L: No, so Blake's family has been very nicely dropping us groceries on our stoop, and then they like, wave from the car.
I: I’m so glad you have a support system down there. How are you doing with schoolwork right now? How are you feeling about all that?
L: Well, it feels so weird now, because I felt so motivated right before school ended, and then all this stuff happened, and I think my whole mindset about my thesis…. everything's changed. My priorities have changed. So it is really difficult to get back into the groove of things, and find motivation to do things. But I am still working.
I: You're still able to work on your thesis, right? Like you have enough power with your machinery to get it done and rendered and everything? Well, you're not rendering because you're 2D.
L: It's rough. I am one of the luckier people that can still work, because I have a tablet, I have the program, and I have a laptop that can do most stuff, but I haven't opened a giant After Effects file yet. It's working for the most part, but there are definitely a lot of 2D animation people who can’t work. People who are doing stop motion don’t have their stuff anymore, so they can’t work, some people don't have the laptop power or they don't have the program.
I: Are you doing it entirely in After Effects?
L: No, I'm doing it in Toon Boom Harmony, which is an animation program. But I then put everything together in After Effects.
I: I'm considering myself pretty lucky because I can also kind of continue everything. It’s going to be a different output than I was hoping for, but it's not like I'm stuck. Do you have a bunch of other work besides thesis? Or is that all you have to do?
L: I also take a Chinese class, and I have my Professional Practice class, so I do the work for that, but it's workbook stuff. I mean my Professional Practice class is like, “make a resume” “write a cover letter.” Which is strange, at this time.
I: Very uncertain… everything feels unreal. Like sending cover letters, and just like browsing for work. What's surprising is companies are still kind of putting out calls for emerging graduates, entry-level job stuff. But I'm just wondering… if I was to be hired by something like that, what would the work even look like? I'm surprised they're even able to hire full time people right now.
L: I guess they have no choice, but it feels weird to never go into an office, I guess if you needed to be interviewed it’s over video….
I: It feels like nothing's real. Yeah, I don't know. It's really weird. If anyone’s tuning in now, my friend Laura and I are talking about 2D animation today. So, one of the first things I want to ask you is:
What exactly led you to 2D animation, or what appealed to you about the field and the medium, specifically?
L: So I've always been interested in cartoons, I mean you watch cartoons when you're a kid…. But I think I always had more of an interest about the behind-the-scenes stuff. I used to get all those Disney movies, and then search the special features for all the little shorts of the animators drawing and whatnot. And that just slowly built my interest. I can't pinpoint a specific time when I was like, “oh animation is it,” but I think I always knew that the entertainment field is what I wanted to go in, some kind of animation, illustration… something to do with cartoons.
I: Do you remember where you saw some of the behind-the-scenes-type stuff when you were younger?
L: The first thing that comes to mind is the Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron movie.
I: What year did that come out, do you remember?
L: I don’t know, like 2000?
I: I’m trying to remember how old we were. So you had the DVD and it had the behind-the-scenes special feature stuff?
L: Yeah, I just remember they would draw Spirit, and they were like, “Well, horses don't have eyebrows, but we're gonna give him like that, he can relate to people,” and he was voiced by Matt Damon.
I: Humble beginnings. Not at all his beginning, of course. I guess, maybe in high school, since that's often everyone's second phase of figuring out what they want to do, because they're applying for colleges and stuff…. by high school were you still taking art classes, what were you making, what were you doing?
L: I took a little break from art from middle school to the beginning of high school. I was like, “art is just a hobby, blah blah.” But I hadn't taken an art class in a while, and I was like, “remember all that art stuff I used to do? That was fun.” I would, like, draw cartoons and whatnot, so I got back into it and started taking an art class. And I went from an intro art class right to AP studio art the next year. I talked to my teacher and said, “I want to go to art school, let's do it” and he was like, “okay! Let’s get you in AP”
I: Was that freshman to sophomore year?
L: No, that was junior to senior year. I started late. But I picked it back up and still retained the skills that I had before. So I did AP Art and made a portfolio to apply to art school. But then my parents weren't very privy to the idea of me going to art school. So I didn't end up going, I went to Boston University, no major, for a year and a half. And then I applied to Pratt.
I: So you didn't apply to art schools out of high school?
L: No. I was a film and television major for a semester. Before that I was undecided. And I was just kind of bumbling around and figuring out what I wanted. And then at the end, I was like, “Well, why don't I just apply to the art school here?” And so I talked to the department and they're like, “Oh, we have a lot of fine art, so it'll give you a good foundation of art, but we don't have animation or anything digital art based.” Yeah, that's when I decided that I wanted to apply to a proper art school.
I: Had you been drawing leading up to middle school and high school? Or did you literally just jump into art junior year?
L: No, I was always drawing, it was just a hobby. I would always doodle. I used to make comics when I was little. It was just always something to pass the time. Like, cartoon characters and video game characters. I kind of put it aside for a while, but I still did it in the background. When I was at BU I remember I drew so much because I wasn't in an artistic environment. I always had little post it notes, and I was always doodling on those, and they were just covering my desk.
I: I remember that becoming a project of yours later! So, I interviewed Austin a couple weeks ago who's a 3D major, and I asked him a little bit about the curriculum.
Could you walk me through Pratt’s idea of what 2D animation is, and what it looks like year to year, what skills are taught, in what order, that type of thing?
L: Of course you have foundation year, but then sophomore year is when you really get into things, they introduce you to the department and whatnot. It kind of gives you another foundation year in animation. First you do paper animation, and you pretty much make a flipbook. I think all my projects that first semester were traditional pencil/paper animations. You have your board, and then you just draw. But towards the end of that, they start introducing you to the digital stuff, so you open up Adobe Animate, and Toon Boom Harmony, which is the primary 2D animation program people use. But after that it's your decision to continue with the traditional pencil and paper or go digital. Most people go digital, but some prefer pencil and paper. People also do stop motion. But after that foundation here, you get more into projects, and you have the freedom to do whatever method you want. So, you make a short every year, but they're pretty tiny. The first one is 30 seconds. Junior year you make an animated documentary. So you can take an interview or report on a subject, and then you animate it. If you know what StoryCorps is, it’s kind of like that. It’s an animation studio that makes specifically documentary animations.
I: I think I saw the video you did junior year. What was the guy’s name?
L: Jeremy Bentham. He's a philosopher from the 18/19th century, and he had his body operated on and then embalmed and formed, and it’s a crazy story where his friend was not good at embalming his head. It was really freaky. And so they replaced it with a wax head, but they still displayed the head around a college for a while, but it's like touring the world.
I: Oh my God, that's such a good subject matter. So you do one short a year, not a semester. Is first semester more research based, you’re figuring out the pacing and style of what you're doing?
L: Yeah, first semester, you do certain projects and learn new techniques. Second semester is using those techniques to execute whatever.
I: And your thesis started at the end of junior year, is that right.?
L: Yeah, second semester junior year, you start developing. Yeah, so it's the longest conceptualizing of a project I’ve ever done.
I: Could you tell me a little bit about your thesis? Tell me where it started and what it's become.
L: I had always been coming up with a few ideas, and one always stuck in the back of my mind. I had gone to Hong Kong the winter before second semester of junior year, and it was my first time going to China. I've always been very conscious of my cultural identity, being Asian American. But that experience of going to China and really feeling what it is to be Asian Americans in China… I knew I wanted to do something about that. Originally my idea was very different. It was just going to be about the idea of someone going to a place that is foreign, yet familiar. And I tried to develop it for half the semester and just wasn't working,
I: Were you taking a literal approach?
L: It was told in a fantasy fish world. It was going to be an astronaut going to this alien world that's just populated by fish. I really wanted to draw fish people. But I talked to one of my professors about the narrative and I was like, “it's not working. I really want to get this down” and whatnot. And he sat me down and he said, “This doesn't make sense, what are you trying to say?” He actually got to the core of what I was trying to say and he was like, “it looks like you're trying to talk about your cultural identity. You're telling this very surface level, travel journal story. I think you're trying to make so much more with it. You just need to roll with it.” And it was the first time that I had heard someone say that back to me. I had a big epiphany slash breakdown, and I re-evaluated things.
I: Was this the first semester of this year?
L: No, it was second semester, junior year. I think that day, I just sat in solitude, and thought about what I wanted to do. I wanted to roll with the whole fish idea, but I really had to think about how I thought of myself. My cultural identity and whatnot. I just remember being thinking that it’s something I'm always grasping at, and something I can't fully appreciate because of all these misconceptions I have about myself, that were just developed through the years. I grew up in a really Caucasian neighborhood in Connecticut. I didn't realize that I was bullied or that I had a negative self image of myself until I got to college. So looking that in the face, while I was trying to make this thesis, I was like, “I need to stop skirting the subject and just talk about this.” That night I came up with this whole idea about a fish boy who lives in the human world. He’s anthropomorphic, so he has the head of a fish and the body of human, and he's trying to navigate this world of humans. Sometimes he gets made fun of, sometimes he sees negative images of himself. I have this sequence of television shows where he sees a mermaid, representing fetishization of fish people.
I: We got some love for the fish boy in the comments.
L: Thank you! After I changed the whole idea, everything just fell into place, really well. I still struggled with the narrative, but now that I have a clearer idea of what I want to do, everything just feels like it flows.
I: How long is this thesis?
L: Four minutes.
I: That's insane. Especially, cuz you had to like backtrack, and you lost a little bit of time that way. Are you gonna publish this to Vimeo when you're done?
L: Yeah, I want to publish it to Vimeo, I'm not exactly sure when that will be. My original intention was to finish the film and then perfect it so I can submit it to film festivals. Who knows when those are going to happen anymore. Most festivals like to premiere the short. So if a festival wanted to premiere it I would have to do that. But at this point I’ll just post it somewhere.
I: Yeah, it might be a while before any big festival happens. Do you think you're on track to finish it by the end of the semester or will take a couple months after to tweak it?
L: I think it might take a bit of time to tweak it afterwards.We lose a bit of time when we do critiques, and then we additionally lost time because of the pandemic. We were already on a pretty intense schedule and were supposed to finish by April 27, and now our due date is May 4, so we only gained a week. And with the changing working conditions, it makes things even worse.
I: Especially people doing stop motion, like you said. I don't know what they're going to do.
L: It’s rough.
I: What percentage of people would you say do stop motion in the Pratt 2D animation senior class?
L: It’s a smaller amount, I know four, maybe five people doing it. But it's not like they’re doing full stop motion animation. It's a mix of 2D animation and stop motion.
I: That's pretty cool.
L: It is really cool, I think it's really important that they integrate those different mediums together, and it would be really sad if they couldn't finish the stop motion part of it.
I: Does animation do a screening of the senior films at the end of the year? And are they still doing it?
L: Usually, they have a big showcase show at Alamo Drafthouse. They screen everything and then they do “the best of.” But we're not gonna have that anymore. They are thinking about a virtual show, but I don’t know how that’s gonna work.
I: If it is open to the public, let me know, I'd love to see everyone's stuff. That’s one big thing we’re losing here, being able to see each other's work all in one place. So, I guess it sounds like your thesis, because it's about your identity, is it something you've known you wanted to do for a couple years now?
L: It was always in the back of my mind that I could do something about what it's like for me to be Chinese and whatnot. But I was really nervous to do it because it's so personal. I tend to make more comical stuff. Obviously this thesis is kind of serious. So, just changing tone itself was daunting, and putting myself out there was scary. Having something that's so personal critiqued. It’s scary.
I: Do you have any dream projects that you could see yourself doing in the future, or anything on your mind that you want to do once this is all over?
L: Maybe not something specific, and maybe not even specifically animation…. I've always wanted to make comics. Something that's narrative based. Even if I don't have the resources to make a full animation, a comic is something I can do on my own time. I guess that is my dream project but I don't have any specific ideas.
I: Because we're in this strange limbo between school and the professional world right now, especially because we’ll be isolating for an unforeseen amount of time, the idea of making a comic book actually makes a ton of sense.
Before all this started happening, did you have anything specific in mind for a place you wanted to work, or someone you want to work for? A dream job specifically?
L: I always said that I wanted to be a character designer for some kind of animation studio. I know that's not animation per se, but I love making characters. I love thinking about their personalities, what they look like, what their life is like. I’ve always been drawn to that. I draw more characters rather than backgrounds, I've always wanted to do that. In terms of specific studios, I really love the work Cartoon Network is putting out. It’s so different from normal kid’s cartoons, and they’re very progressive with the content they’re putting out, regarding gender, race, sexuality, mental health.
I: Do you have a couple shows specifically that are talking about that sort of thing?
L: Yeah, I’m sure you know Steven Universe. They say so much about like gender identity, mental health, they have canonically queer characters. And it's really refreshing to see that kind of content in a kid show. I like that a lot of their shows might be fun, silly, and colorful, but they tackle really serious topics, not in a “light” way, but in an artistic way. Steven Universe has a canonically non-binary character. They use “they/them” pronouns. They’re a combination of a male and female character. When they come together, they make this non-binary character. Everyone respects them and says things like, “oh, they're so cool, they dance so well!” and you fall in love with this character… And the idea of referring to them as “they,” and thinking about them as a non-binary person, just becomes natural. That is so important to show kids these days. Yeah.
I: I think I've watched a couple episodes of it, but I really have been wanting to go back and revisit it. I really hope kids of all backgrounds are able to have access to that show, and be able to watch it, and be allowed to watch it.
I: I'm not super familiar with Cartoon Network, but would you say that's the first show on a network like that, that's been so progressive?
L: I think to this degree, Steven Universe is doing the most. I haven't seen every single cartoon out there, but it's on such a large platform that’s so well known. And Cartoon Network has a long history of classic cartoons, to see something like that is so important. It puts gender identity and all those subjects at such a forefront of media. There have also been other shows that talk about those subjects, but it did kind of push in the background. Nickelodeon had the Avatar: The Last Airbender series, and they followed with The Legend of Korra. There's a couple between two female characters. Of course the show got into a bunch of trouble for trying to say this so blatantly, that Nickelodeon pushed it to a later time so children really couldn't see it, and then they pushed it to just online for a while. They put it back on television and took it off again. The Season Finale shows these two characters together romantically, and it was just not on television. They can't show them kissing or anything, there's just a glance.
I: The gay-ze. Is that significantly older than Steven Universe? I don't know how explicit Steven Universe is with showing affection, but … I wonder when that change occurred and why.
L: I know in the beginning of Steven Universe, the creators had a lot of trouble putting out the content they wanted to. A bunch of the characters go by she/her pronouns and are referred to as female gendered, but they're technically, like, aliens. So when they show affection to each other, Rebecca Sugar the creator would be like, “well, they're not gendered. They're just alien space rocks, so, what are you going to say?” I think slowly Cartoon Network warmed up to the idea of putting out a more progressive show and slowly Rebecca Sugar has gotten more freedom with what she wants to do with the show. So like… now they can kiss.
I: This is a really good example of something that’s progressive and awesome… Is there anyone or any other show you've discovered lately, maybe an artist or animator you’re getting into right now?
L: Right now I'm not getting into too much content. There are creators that I’ve admired for a while, but one of the artists that I really love is Dana Terrace. She worked on Gravity Falls in the past, [she's from] SVA and whatnot. I've been watching her for a while. She was just an animator on these shows, but then recently she just got a show called The Owl House she’s the producer, she made the show. It's really cool to see a female director making something new. Her characters and the style is kind of witchy and occult. There are strange character designs, there’s like, a giant baby head… I met her at Comic Con this past year, she had a panel about The Owl House. They were talking about emerging female content creators. I didn't get to go to the panel, but I was walking around my friend, and she happened to be walking around with the creator of Gravity Falls. We went to talk to her, and just, like, blubbered, saying ,”you are doing such inspiring work! Thank you so much!”
I: That's awesome. My next question is:
In a broader sense, looking back, what was a piece of art or design that really impacted you when you were younger?
It doesn't necessarily have to be something that's 2D animated.
L: I really loved Avatar: The Last Airbender. It was a really beautiful show. Very different, at the time, it was pretty dramatic and serious. It had a lot of darker themes. And it was also based in Asian culture, which I didn't think about at the time, but now I'm like, “damn.” Yeah, I think a lot of people who want to go into 2D animation and art in general were inspired by that show because it was new, it was different. A lot of people just grew up with it. And because it was so beautiful, it won awards and whatnot. I think it definitely made people go into the 2D animation world. It definitely did for me. It was mesmerizing. It wasn’t like watching a little bouncy character run around… these were humanistic characters, and they're like shooting fire off in the air, it was crazy. Everyone's dream.
I: Everyone I know who watched that as a kid holds such a special place for it in their heart. I personally didn't grow up with Cartoon Network or Nickelodeon. But it's nice hearing why it appealed to you so much, I'm always fascinated by the concept of that show. I guess we can get into the last question: How do you feel you have changed, from coming to Pratt and leaving now. As an artist, but also as a person?
L: Coming to Pratt, right out of BU, I felt desperate and scared. I thought, “I better like Prattt, I better succeed at this place, otherwise transferring would all be for naught.” In the beginning I think I was a little crazy. I did my homework assignments, I got good grades but it was more out of fear.
I: The stakes were high.
L: Right. But as I relaxed, I thought, “I should still try hard, but I don’t have to do it out of fear any more. I feel like I fit into this place, and this is where I'm supposed to be, and this is the major I’m supposed to be in. So once I got over that, I grew as an artist, in that I was learning more techniques and skills but I also felt a lot of motivation to keep going. To keep exploring the craft. Now I know that I have the tools to make the kind of art that I want, and to get the end result as close to the vision that I want. I feel more equipped and self assured. I know now what kind of art I want to put out. And even though it's scary. I like delving into the more personal stuff. I like content that talks about serious subjects. Even though I like to make comedic work, I want to make work that’s still meaningful.
I: Especially in our senior year, I think most people I'm talking to are realizing the more that their work becomes about themselves the happier they are with it. It's awesome that you're putting out stuff that's all about who you are. It's really impressive.
L: Pratt gives us a lot of freedom, and, sometimes it's to our disadvantage because we don't feel like we have as much structure. But the upside of all that freedom is that we get to explore topics that are so personal. And we're not necessarily just using our skills to make a product for someone else. Some of the other industry’s schools do mostly group work, where everyone is assigned a job but you make, like the end animation you make is something that the whole group came up with. Or something that is assigned to you. With Pratt, it might be a really rigorous and tedious process to do it all yourself, but you get total freedom. That’s nice to explore.
I: Yeah, I think that's a huge benefit of going to the school. Going from BU to this must have been a breath of fresh air. After the initial panic.
L: Yeah!
I: Laura, thank you so much for doing this with me today. That’s such a lovely note, I want to end on it. I can't wait to see your thesis. It's gonna be awesome, based on what I've seen already. I hope you and Blake stay healthy and safe in your Airbnb quarantine.
L: I hope you stay safe in New York.