Her Story
About Ligia
I've always wanted to do cartoons and animations since I was little. I used to drive by the Superdome when I was young and wonder what it would be like to work there, and now that's exactly what I do. I started at a university here in New Orleans trying to pursue animation, but they didn't have the program I needed, so I actually dropped out and waited tables for a year to save up money. Then I moved out to California where I attended the Art Institute in Los Angeles. Out there, I learned computer animation, 3D modeling, and post-production visual effects, which really caught my attention. My teachers were amazing - some were working in the video game industry, others on movies. I had one professor working on Transformers and another at Nickelodeon, and they would bring in their actual projects to show us what could be possibly reached. When I moved back home to New Orleans, the city was just starting to get tax breaks for film production, and I figured I'd have a better chance of breaking into the industry here. I was able to work on some feature films, including Fast Five from the Fast and the Furious series as my first movie, and 12 Years a Slave, which won lots of awards. Since 2014, I've been working at the Superdome, and every year it's developing into more and more things that I get to do or try. I love being able to continually grow and try new creative things. I've worked with the Bayou Classic for multiple years, and they've pretty much put me in charge of building their graphics with creative freedom. I also create the look for all the boards for Endymion, one of our big Mardi Gras extravaganzas where the parade ends at the dome and there's a massive party. Being able to be creative is my main thing - I've always loved art and movies and special effects, and I like being able to know that I impact somebody's experience and lift it up to another level.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Ligia
01What do you attribute your success to?
I attribute my success to my parents showing me hard work and dedication. We are from Nicaragua, and my parents were doctors there. They moved here in the 80s when I was one and a half, due to the war and civil unrest that was going on. When they came over here, their titles weren't accepted - they weren't seen as real doctors or anything. So my mom had to clean houses, and my dad had to work the graveyard shift parking cars in the French Quarter in a parking lot. My mom went to night school to learn English, and she learned all the medical terms in English, which I think is crazy. She went back to work in the hospital doing what she was doing before. My dad was older, so he didn't really go back into his doctor field, but he never complained about his job or anything. I think just seeing them work hard to be able to provide for me and my siblings set a hard work ethic in myself.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
The best career advice I've ever received is to love what you do, because then it's not really a job. I know it seems like something that everybody says, but it's true. I get stuck working sometimes, and I have to remind myself to pull away from the computer, because I'm so into what I'm doing that I forget all about time.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
Don't be scared if it's a predominantly male industry, as most graphic things are, like graphic design or animation. When I was little, I always wanted to do cartoons or go work for Pixar. Once I got to college, I went from wanting to do 3D animation to wanting to do post-production visual effects because that just caught my attention more. I went to school out in California, and that would be a very hard thing to break into, but then I wanted to move back home to New Orleans because that's when we were just starting to get the tax breaks here in the city. I figured I'd have a better chance of breaking into the industry here, and I was actually able to work on some feature films while here in New Orleans, so I have my name in some credits.
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
The thing now that I'm facing is the whole AI evolution. I'm not still embracing it all, because I feel like it's taking away from the hard work or years that you've put in to learn stuff, you know, with an easy click of a button. I think that kind of just takes away from the whole art aspect of it.
05What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
Hard work is most important to me. If you really want something, you work for it. For my actual work, I like to do the best that I can. Some people give me a hard time because I put little details in there that only I would know are there, but I think that's what kind of separates regular work from something else - if you add the little extra something to it. In my personal life, I spend a lot of time with my three kids. My little one's about to start into baseball and he's into wrestling, so we play around with his wrestling toys all the time. My daughter's into dance, so I'm her rehearsal buddy for whenever she needs to practice. For myself, I still love to paint, I still love to color and draw, and to clear my mind in the morning, I still go out for runs to get my day started and give me a fresh slate.
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