Heather Dixon is a writer, illustrator, animator, and storyboard artist. She is currently a storyboard artist for Disney Interactive. She graduated from the BYU Animation program and is a story person for several studios—including directing some Mormon Messages on YouTube. She lives in Utah. Dixon maintains a very funny blog at story-monster.com.
Describe yourself as an artist. I’m primarily a story artist and writer, though I do illustration work as well. Usually my stuff is quick and sketchy. I also love it when I have time to flesh out a piece, though, and I love to try different styles. Girls in big poofy dresses are my muse. And of course Mary Poppins! She’s my favorite thing to draw. She’s so glam.
Talk about your work at Disney. What are the pros and cons of working for a huge company? I help make the Infinity video games, which are a kick! I do a lot of boarding of the cinematics in between the gameplay, and writing for the stories and characters. There are a lot of great perks to working for Disney–not the least of which is free entrance to Disneyland and Disneyworld! I like that part 🙂 The downer of working at such a large company is the approvals process–the story snags on a lot of things before it sees the light of day.
What do you think about art and the Church these days? I’m not well versed on the art scene, but since I’ve worked as a board artist for the Church, I can relate my experience from the inside. I’m really impressed with what the Church has been doing lately–they’re pushing the envelope with animation, going for more artsy and conceptual, so the projects have been quite a lot of abstract fun to work on. There are so many talented LDS artists who contribute, and I only see that growing as the Work moves forward.
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