Growing up in a half-Japanese, half-American household, Lisa’s sense of storytelling was shaped by watching Western and Japanese cartoons and video games from an early age. It didn’t matter what languages the shows or games were in; she would find a story through ✧˖°vibes ⋆˙⟡.  

As a small child, she watched Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron on repeat. And on one fateful day, she saw the “Learn to Draw Spirit with James Baxter” bonus feature on the DVD and was hit with an insatiable desire to own a drawing of Spirit. She knew exactly what she needed to do: ask her mom to draw along with the video and then take her mom’s drawing.  Lisa’s genius plan fell apart when her mom said, “No, go do it yourself.” Lisa tried to follow along but only ended up with a circle-y, lumpy Spirit. Although she was dissatisfied with how her drawing fell short of her vision, she felt invigorated to keep practicing. Thus began her artistic journey. 

Her pursuits in art led her to eventually study Animation at Brigham Young University, where she was introduced to the 3D animation pipeline. She thought it was magical to see points in space transform into something tactile and something that has a life of its own. With each step, another layer of detail is added to support and strengthen the story. And with each iteration, improvements could be added. Even though things inevitably break, Lisa learned that broken things can also be fixed or worked around (yay life lessons). 

She developed a love for lighting while exploring the artistic and technological possibilities of animation: finding balance among what looks good, what is physically correct, and what serves the story when making decisions. Lighting and color can trigger emotion and be a powerful tool for storytelling, so it was nice that she could finally find a use for her lifelong skill of observing ✧˖°vibes ⋆˙⟡.  

After graduating college, she applied to the Nick Artist Program along with 100 other job/intern applications and was ready to keep collecting no’s. As she continued to record her rejections in her job-search spreadsheet, she found work as a teaching artist where she traveled to different schools and shared her love of animation with kids. She had a blast teaching kids and loved their creativity and fun energies. Then, she worked hard as a lighting artist for Frame Machine, working on Fortnite. In November, she was very, very surprised to hear that she was selected for the Nick Artist Program, and with shaky, thunderstruck hands, she updated her spreadsheet with the good news.  

Lisa is humbled and excited to join the Nick Artist Program and continue the artist journey tiny Lisa set off on.  She can’t wait to work with talented artists, learn new things, make new friends, and put her heart into making cool art that inspires kids.