Michael Ajayi
Storyboard Artist
Growing up, art wasn't all that important to Michael Ajayi, who now works as a freelance Storyboard Artist and Visual Development Artist in the Los Angeles animation industry. As a kid, art was just a fun hobby—something for him to do. "When you're that young, not everyone is supposed to know what you're going to be doing for the rest of your life," he says. Little did young Ajayi know, he was a diamond in the rough with a rare artistic talent that would soon be pressurized into a fierce passion for drawing and animation.
Ajayi grew up in Maryland, in a region the locals jokingly call the "DMV" for its proximity to D.C. The first challenge that would serendipitously lead him towards his future artistic career came at the start of high school when all of his friends got zoned for a different district than he was in, which, for teenagers, is basically like moving to a different continent. After a short time in a particularly tough high school, Ajayi, a natural go-getter, used his artistic talents to audition for the visual arts magnet program at his friends’ school. Naturally, he was accepted, but at the time, he only saw the art program as his way to cleverly trick the system into letting him be with his friends. It wasn't until two months before senior graduation, when a representative from the School of Visual Arts in New York came to speak at the school, that Ajayi started to seriously think about art as a career. The SVA rep enlightened him to the idea that you don't have to be a fine artist to work in an artistic space, and that a career as a professional cartoonist was even an option.
Inspired, Ajayi took his raw talents to the local art college in Baltimore, Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). The sheer cost of college was the catalyst which would wake him up to realize this couldn’t just be a pipe dream, he was in it to win it. "I know a lot of people regret paying that much for college, but I see the benefits," he says in rebuke to the common narrative of art school's oft-debated value, "I don't think we look at ourselves as 18 as kids, because at that moment you feel how you feel now [like an adult]. I look at college like planting seeds. We went to college thinking we were going to become trees immediately. But no, we're just there to water the seed, and eventually you’ll grow into your full potential. And then you'll flourish."
Ajayi was lucky to find lifelong friends at MICA, many of whom joined him after college to make the cross-country leap over to Hollywood. Now, he's currently freelancing and looking for more permanent work as a storyboard artist or visual development artist, with the objective to become a character designer or a director later on in his career. Ajayi is also currently working on what he calls his "lifetime job," which is an undisclosed project he currently has in development and creative partnership with his mentor. But Ajayi’s main goal right now is to get his foot further in the door by getting his first title with a major animation company, for all the experience and the weight of professionalism that comes with it. "When you don't have that title yet, like for example Storyboard Artist at Nickelodeon, it weighs you down," he says. "It's really everyone's goal. To feel the freedom to be accepted and to be looked at. When you don't have that title, people ignore you, even if you're good."
When asked about what he watched recently that struck a creative nerve, he responded, "Primal (2019), and it's one of the greatest things I've ever watched. Artwise, it's beautiful. The way they played with aspect ratio size, focus, everything is telling you one at a time 'this is happening, then this is happening.' It's like an animated storyboard book. And there's no dialogue, you don't know what's going to happen. You're forced to watch the storytelling." The show brought him back to memories of art school, where Ajayi made an animation concept with no dialogue for his thesis project. Ajayi, then just a seed, had no idea why he was doing this, other than playing around on instinct with the incisive idea that animation doesn't need to have dialogue to tell a good story. Now, with seeing this concept in "Primal" so intentionally manipulated, and finally understanding the "why" behind these kinds of creative choices, he reveals, "to get on that level of [creating] something that's readable without hearing anything is one of my goals in animation."
A degree in one hand and a dream in the other, Ajayi moved to Los Angeles in 2018 to break into the animation industry. Since then, he's continued improving his craft by studying Mike Mattesi's FORCE Drawing Method. Having already mastered the first two courses on FORCE form and perspective, he is currently learning how to master rendering shape, and will then be moving on to human anatomy comprehension. Ajayi was directed to Mettesi's online courses after bravely messaging an artist whose style he liked on Instagram, "what can I do to get [my art] that way?" An admirer of Disney’s Tarzan and Glen Keane's uniquely lifelike drawing style, Ajayi continues practicing the FORCE method of drawing to better emulate Keane’s, aiming to make his art feel simple yet alive, and, most importantly, always ready to move.
A lifelong learner, Ajayi calls out the importance of continuing to educate yourself after art school. "When you graduate, you don't think you need to do self-teaching because you just went to college. But you have to! It goes back to planting seeds. They [professors] just put the thoughts in there, now you have to explore the options," he explains. Besides Drawing FORCE, Ajayi has recently taken The Copeland Brother's Storyboard for Animation class, David Chlystek's Art of Storyboarding class through the Animation Guild, and Alex Woo's Gesture Drawing class on Schoolism. Pre-pandemic, Ajayi also frequently attended live life-drawing classes, but the most important thing to do, he says, is "to keep drawing every day and posting your work online everywhere you can for feedback."
Outside of drawing, Ajayi often reads books on animation and teaches himself about filmmaking techniques by watching Youtube videos on directing and cinematography. He also tries to suck in as much entertainment as is humanly possible. Whether it be animated or an Oscar-bait type, movies or TV shows, Ajayi critically consumes as much content as he can to help build context onto his pre-existing skills, and lead him to a better understanding of why we watch these things and what makes them so good. To relax, Ajayi loves to work out, hike the various L.A. trails, and one day a month, he treats himself to a trip to the beach to clear his head. The rest of his time is spent working on the long-term project he has in development with his mentor. Ajayi hopes to build from the experience so that he can start making projects of his own, and then subsequently pass the baton over to newcomers who need help getting their start in animation just like he did.
The advice Ajayi has for someone who may want to get to the place he's at in the industry is simple: "Network, draw, rest, repeat." He stresses the importance of networking, sharing that right after he moved to California in 2018, a college friend told him to look out on Instagram for an animation industry mixer called The Creators Society. For Ajayi, attending his first L.A. mixer was a tremendous illustration of the powerful camaraderie that makes up the animation community. The Creators Society opened up the seemingly locked door of the industry to anyone who asked, and neighborly welcomed him in to share his story with other like-minded individuals all striving for the same dream. "I knew Maryland had some kind of an art community," he says, "but The Creators Society made me feel like this is the one you want to be at." He also notes how much he admires The Creators Society's resilience in keeping up with monthly networking events despite the challenges of the pandemic, and is grateful that because of this, people who want to strengthen their network don't have to skip a beat.
Networking and conversation comes easily to the ever-cheerful and optimistic Michael Ajayi. But, just like every other weapon in his arsenal, he's worked hard to get to the point where he can call it easy. "MICA was a predominantly white school, you just had to dive in being a black artist." His secret tactic remains unchanged, "just being open. Seeing other people and going up to them and saying a simple 'hey how's it going?'" Ajayi also got a lot of practice interacting with different types of people by working in sales at Target, where he had to get used to people he didn't know coming up to him all the time. He closes out with an important reminder that, even with the pandemic, people still need to learn how to interact with other people, and Zoom meetings are actually really helpful for that. He encourages, "what you have to do is talk to everyone,” referencing back to his experience at MICA, “you never know who you will connect with, or who you might want to work with. Just go for it."
"Don't give up. Just keep going."
