Far away from the Los Angeles landscape, in a small South Jersey town resided an offbeat child named Dominique, plagued with an overactive imagination and gifted with little adult supervision. Rather than obsessing over paints, pencils, and paper, she obsessed over two bright, electric boxes: the computer and the television.

From playing as superpowered heroes in video games to watching cartoons about the lives of non-human protagonists, the more speculative the fiction, the more she was enraptured. As she grew older, Dominique subliminally absorbed not only a taste for science fiction and fantasy, but an understanding of the status quo present in even the most innocuous content. After investing so many years on the internet, she found a platform that bolstered her creative writing hobby further: fanfiction. Writing for pre-existing worlds progressed into writing and drawing her own characters and by high school years, she had a realization. This burgeoning urge to draft her own works merging with a dissatisfaction with the limited scope of stories reflecting people like her encouraged Dominique to diversify media through her own writing and illustrations.

By the conclusion of high school, her commitment to a career in visual storytelling earned her acceptance into a handful of art schools and she set off to Moore College of Art & Design as an illustration major. Majoring in illustration introduced Dominique to the field of visual development, yet she could feel the distance from her goals in both her physical location and the non-specific curriculum structure. In hopes she would narrow the focus of her college experience, she added a concept art class to her schedule, invested a merit-based grant into an internship at Moondog Animation Studios, and tailored her senior thesis around development art. Despite all these efforts, upon graduation, she still found herself a bit, well, career-challenged, and for the next several months Dominique chased after sporadic illustration opportunities with the anxiety of impending loan payments looming over her.

With financial hardships exacerbating an already stressful living situation, Dominique applied to the Americorps program City Year at the recommendation of a friend, and her service year in Philadelphia was the first of many turning points. After a year of balancing high school classroom support during the day and freelance comic artist at night, she still found herself without an entry-way into animation. She made a decision to return to City Year, with one major change – she would transfer to the Los Angeles site. Living within the backyard of premiere animation studios had never been so within reach, so she took all those saved City Year stipends and migrated to the opposite side of the country.

As she transitioned from New Jersey to Los Angeles, Dominique conceptualized a plan: she would submit an application to the Nick Artist Program as a trial run, receive a rejection, and in the aftermath build a solid portfolio that would guarantee acceptance in the following year. In hindsight, this plan makes her laugh, incredulously at that. During the process of her application, that initial plan would constantly be tested and challenged, and ultimately it failed. One application submitted while sitting on a barely furnished apartment room floor lead to several phone and virtual calls, various bouts of crying, an existential crisis, and lastly a triumphant acceptance to join the upcoming the Nick Artist Program Design track. As far away from the Los Angeles landscape as she was, Dominique persisted with this ambition to break into animation, to illustrate for a living, and to simply, wholeheartedly create – not just for herself, but for the many kids escaping into the stories broadcasted on their computers and televisions, just as she did.