Cool Kids on the Block — Ebrima Jassey

Welcome to Cool Kids on the Block, Recess Media’s weekly feature project where we showcase different creatives on campus who are passionate and committed to their work. New stories up on Medium every Wednesday.

This week’s Cool Kid is Ebrima Jassey, a talented 3D motion designer and incoming senior. This past year, Ebrima served as the multimedia designer at ASUW A+E [Arts and Entertainment] creating print and promotional material. Besides school affiliated work, Ebrima freelances creating for musicians, artists, and companies. Read on to hear more about his story, freelancing, and his words of advice!

Stay up to date with Ebrima at @ebr.ima on Instagram or at @ebr_ima on Twitter!

Awesome. We’re glad you’re here. As you know, Recess is a platform for creative empowerment and creative expression. For those who are unfamiliar with your work, can you explain what your work is?

Ebrima: To explain a little bit about what I do, I basically build-out scenes to some music that I like and just animate them. That’s something I’ve been doing for a little over two years I think.

The work you do is a very niche type of creative work. Was it always a path you planned to head down?

E: When I was younger, I drew a lot. I read a lot. Did a lot of art and art-adjacent things but as I grew older, I didn’t know whether or not that [art] was for me. I wanted to make a lot of things like comic books, videogames, and all this stuff.

I moved out of the country when I was 11 and went to The Gambia, which is where my parents are from, and upon arriving there. Art meant something very different in that everyone who I knew there who was an “artist” was either a teacher or someone who painted billboards by hand. And I was like, well, if that’s what a designer does… I don’t really want to do it.

I went to middle school and part of high school in The Gambia, moved back to the U.S., and by the time I graduated. I still had no idea what I wanted to do. I entered UW and stumbled around for a bit, tried to do CS, didn’t want to do CS, and then found design.

It wasn’t until a couple of years ago that I started doing this 3D animation thing because I always wanted to be able to animate but I never had the skill of being able to draw well enough to do it by hand so I figured out that motion graphics was a way I can do that. And it went from there to the 3D stuff. And I was like, okay, this is what I actually want to do. And so I’ve been pursuing that for the last two years in the design program at UW.

Jumping from computer science to VCD [Visual Communicative Design] must have been a tough decision, how did that go down?

E: Music was something that I gravitated towards. When I got back into the U.S., I realized how much music there was to catch up on. And so I’d spend a huge amount of time listening to a lot of hip-hop, rap, and other music I felt like I missed. Throughout my first year of UW, I was always engrossing myself in blogs and forums dedicated to music. There was a Kanye West subreddit where people would make super dope shit there, but it was mostly memes for the most part. I downloaded Photoshop to learn how to make memes but at the same time, I encountered super dope artists who put me on to Illustrator and stuff like that.

During this time, I was on track to pursue CS but I despised it. At this point, I didn’t know the design program existed yet. Thankfully, I met someone by mistake who introduced me to the design program in my sophomore year. That very same year, I ended up joining ASUW Arts & Entertainment, which is this entity that puts on programming for a bunch of events, concerts, comedy shows and generally connecting students within creative fields. And this was really instrumental to me because I ended up meeting people who were working in the music industry doing graphic design work.

When I joined A+E, I met Pari Gabriel, someone who’s like a mentor figure to me. He was the director two years ago and he was creating cover art and live graphics for artists that I loved. This opened a new door for me. I didn’t know you could do this but this is definitely what I wanted to do. I took the chance to apply to the design program but I didn’t get the grade I wanted in that class. But I took the design workshop and got accepted from there. That’s kind of how it ended up happening in a nutshell.

I think your connection to music really shows in your work. About last year you released your Flower Boy and boredom composition which made waves on social media. Why do you think this was so special?

E: To this day, I don’t know bro. To be honest, I’ve always wanted to create things I felt like I could see when I listen to music and the Tyler thing was supposed to be one of a bunch of compositions that I was going to make. I was going to make two more for Tyler, one for Childish Gambino, and another one for Kendrick [Lamar]. And so the Flower Boy composition was the very first one.

I would spend a lot of time just thinking about all of the little details and how I would make it. I would wake up in the morning, eat breakfast, walk to campus, sit on a bench, and listen to the album. And I’ll just draw while I’m listening. A couple of weeks go by, I put it out there and the response was okay at first. At the time, I wasn’t expecting much out of it. I was already planning to work on the next one. But next morning, I receive a DM from someone on Twitter who asked me if he could post the Flower Boy piece on his Tyler fan-page, @golftalkukeu.

A lot of people really liked it. I thought that was the end of it but the next day, I get a notification from a @golfwangmedia who reposted my work. I thought it was another small page but it was the biggest Tyler fan-page with 300K followers at that point. Seeing this was crazy. I don’t know why people liked it so much but I think what people appreciated about it was the attention to detail. I am a huge stickler for detail. When I create music compositions, I like to pack in little nuggets related to the artists. With the Flower Boy thing, the idea came from it being a bedroom. Every time I listened to that song myself, I thought about being in a bedroom laying on my bed looking up at the spinning ceiling fan. And so I was like I should make a bedroom and it was fun. Not only playing references from the album but being able to pull references from some of the things Tyler himself has said or done. So I think people enjoyed it because there was so much to unpack every time you looked at it.

When you got your whole when you got noticed by these big pages, did that have any impact on your career?

E: I would say it definitely did. It’s funny because this experience kickstarted me to do freelancing. When I created the Tyler the Creator composition, I didn’t expect anything out of it. My plan that summer was to get a normal job actually. I was working at the HUB designing graphics there and it wasn’t the right fit for me. It was very cut-and-dry and strict on following the brand guidelines. When the Tyler thing happened, I had a bunch of people hitting me up asking me to do commissions. I was torn because I wanted to do this but also, I had rent to pay for at the end of the day. A couple of days before, I had already accepted a job at FedEx before this happened so everything was happening at once. I called a friend who encouraged me to do commissions and I ended up calling FedEx and said: Yo, I’m so sorry but something’s come up and I can’t do this anymore.

After that, I ended up spending the summer doing a bunch of freelance work creating loops and designs for rappers and their songs. I didn’t think I’d be ever able to get paid making stuff for people. I learned a lot and my skills grew a lot as I gained more experience. It definitely impacted my career and it opened my eyes helping me realize that this could be my entry point into working in the music industry directly.

How does one get into freelance? For Recess, we have a lot of budding creators who are hoping to get their foot in the door into roles like A+E and freelance. What was your journey like?

E: The first thing that always helps is having somebody to help you get your foot in the door. By the time I was doing the Tyler freelance, I had this homie, Pari Gabriel, who always looked out for me. Early on when I was exploring design, he connected me with a friend of his who wanted a logo and the rest is history.

There’s a lot to consider when you’re freelancing. How much should I charge? How do I communicate? What are my rates? Do I charge by the hour or by the project? It’s scary to be asked those questions when you don’t even know the answer yourself. That’s why I think it’s good to have someone who’s already gone through the process to guide you.

You mentioned Pari Gabriel quite a bit. How important is it to have a mentor as a creative? What kind of impact did Pari have on you?

E: It’s extremely important. I’ve had lots of mentors but Pari was one of the very first people to show me that I could work in music. By the time I met him, he made posters for A+E, he was the visual designer at the Office of Communications at the time, and he had done these live visuals for GoldLink and Masego and I was like… yo, this is the guy! I did not know you could do this and seeing that this was possible was the most important thing to me. There was comfort in knowing that I can reach out to him if I had any questions or anxieties whether. It’s so helpful to know that you’re not kind of by yourself because it’s scary to get into something new. It’s great to have your friends who will support you all the time, but there are certain things where your close friends might not have all the answers and it’s good to know that there are people who do. Even if they don’t, they can direct you to those answers. I don’t take any of my mentors for granted. Regardless of how far off you are or whatever you do, there’s always someone who knows more than you do or knows things that you don’t.

Have you gotten the chance to mentor anyone?

E: Yes and no. I have a couple of friends who were in the design program who will ask me for advice and stuff like that. I would say maybe half a dozen people have asked me questions like how did you get into this? What software did you use? How do I get started and it’s always humbling because I’ve benefited my entire life from people who have been able to guide me.

Okay, I’ll tell you a short story because it illustrates my point. At the end of my freshman year, I was still new to this design thing. I remember doing vector art which is like flat vector art. It’s the main thing people use Illustrator for. I was looking at all these tutorials and everyone recommended getting a Wacom tablet to draw with because of how easy it was to do pen work on Illustrator.

So I was like, I should probably get one but I don’t have a lot of money so I should look for a used one. I hop on Offer Up and I see one for only twenty bucks. I could afford twenty bucks so I hit the guy up and I said “Hey are you still selling your Wacom tablets?” and he asked me why. I was like why are you asking me why, but anyway, I ended up explaining to him that I was a student at UW who was pursuing HCDE, CS, whatever but was interested in design and so I wanted to use it to do vector art.

He was like, oh really? I told him I was and he said “I’m actually a designer as my job so if you want, I’ll just give it to you. Just pull up to my house and I’ll give it to you.” I pull up to his house and we’re talking. I told him about how I was interning at the Office of Communications and I found out he worked at Groupon and Amazon before. Before I left, he told me “Yeah bro, if you need anything, let me know. I’d be more than happy to help you out. You seem like a good kid.” I go home and I’m super excited because I have this free Wacom tablet and a cool mentor figure now.

I stay up late drawing this Kanye vector portrait before he went off the rails. It was that iconic Pablo picture where his hands are up like that. I’m hyped about it so the next day, I went to Suzzalo’s Media Arcade to finish it. As I’m working on it, there’s this woman sitting two chairs away from me just watching me. I thought it was kind of weird but I continued doing what I was doing. Eventually, she comes over and asked if I was in the design major. I didn’t know what it was so we spent the next hour talking about what the design major, how she got into it, and why I should get into it. I had no idea anything at all existed at UW and that’s when I knew what I want to do. Her name is Joylyn Yang. She’s still one of my mentor figures to this day and if it wasn’t for her, I wouldn’t have known that design was an option at all. Alvin Benavides, who is at Billboard now but used to be a former officer of A+E. It was through him that I learned about A+E. It was through him that I met Pari. And then I ended up getting to meet Raphael, another mentor of mine, who’s now at Human Condition Magazine. If I hadn’t met these people, I would be nowhere near the person I am today nor gone on to become an officer for A+E had it not been for them. So to answer your question, it’s always a blessing anytime I get to the same for someone else whether what scale it’s on.

Seems like you’ve gone very far in your design journey? Would you consider it skill or luck?

E: I think it was definitely a bit of both. I got lucky because I was introduced to a lot of these opportunities through other people. But I think it was definitely assisted by having the drive to follow through with these things and even being interested in these things to begin with. So I would say it’s a good amount of both, but I’m an extremely lucky person. I’ve always had people around me who pushed me up and supported me.

Although sometimes, it gets really easy to say that I don’t think I deserve to be where I am and I think imposter syndrome is a very real thing especially being a black student in a lot of these spaces. For example, I’m currently the only black student in my grade level in the design program and I’m one of three in the design program in total. It’s not only spaces like that but in a lot of different spaces, it’s easy to feel like I don’t deserve to be where I am. If people are complimenting your work, it’s easy to brush it off as just them being nice.

I have to remember that at the end of the day, there’s no reason that all of these people would be lying to me. I have a tendency to be very hard myself and I’m a perfectionist to a bit of a fault. Whenever I got good feedback, I somehow forgot that I did all the hard work to get there in the first place. I do have to give myself credit from time to time for persevering through it and just doing shit. It’s not easy. So I definitely think it’s a bit of both.

And for those who struggle with imposter syndrome, more than others. Do you have any advice for them?

E: It’s hard, man. I don’t think it ever really goes away. I should have mentioned this earlier but my ADHD which I found out about two years ago impacts my life in a lot of ways whether it’s life or art. Living with ADHD is like setting a goal to buy a red plate by Friday. It’s Monday right now. I actually bought a red plate on Wednesday, two days early. Now that I have a plate earlier than expected, I realized I don’t have a utensil to match it so I start searching for a matching red fork and I can’t find the fork when Friday comes around. I’m stressed about this fork and I’m like “damn it, I need the fork.” Because I don’t have the fork, I feel like I’m a failure and I forget that my original goal was to get the plate. This is something that quite happens a lot where I set goals, reach the goals, then the goalpost extends to something else.

When it comes to just like imposter syndrome, I feel like it’s very important to try and stop yourself and remember where you are and remember what you’ve been able to accomplish. I think as people we’re so used to just being like, go, go, go, and never really stopping to realize how far we come. It’s very important to realize that you grow every single day. Regardless of where you are. You deserve to be there because nobody is going to open doors for you and allow you to walk in. I think it’s easy to be in these spaces with all these people that you admire and think of how you’re so lucky to be here. If you weren’t supposed to be there, you would not be there, same as the other people who are in those places with you. It’s also easy to think that people are letting you in out of pity or obligation, but at the end of the day, your work got you there. Your work ethic and passion got you there. Everything happens for a reason.

I don’t know if I answered your question at all, but it’s something that I definitely relate to a lot especially being someone who has ADHD, I fall on my face a lot. But it’s about getting up and keeping on going no matter what because it’s kind of all you can do. It’s either you keep going or you just stop and if you stop, that’s the end. Why wouldn’t you keep going? Even if it’s baby steps every single day.

What advice would you give to people who are starting a hobby, similar to yours?

E: I’m still figuring it out man so much. Like it’s crazy for me to think back on the last couple of years about where I started off and where I am now. To be honest, all it really was, was sticking with it. Even when you’re trash, I think that’s fine. I think the hardest part is always sticking with it in the very beginning.

Something that’s important to remember is to just start creating whenever you feel inspired. Once you let an idea marinate for too long or tack on all this unnecessary stuff to it, you can lose that spark that inspired it in the first place. You lose the essence of what it was supposed to be.

I would say: just go for it! But don’t do it too much because something important to note is that you need to find the right balance between your hobby and other parts of your life. For me, I had a very tough time balancing art with other things like eating, school, family, and friends — and these are just as important. Make sure to take off-days and remembering to enjoy it because, at the end of the day, it’s supposed to be fun. If it stops being fun for you, then you got to re-evaluate it and figure out what’s going on.

If somebody in our audience wanted to keep up with you. Where can they find you?

E: Okay, it’s the time for socials. I’m @ebr.ima on Instagram. I’m @ebr_ima Twitter.

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