Creative Pep Talk Presents: Adobe Express’ “In The Making” Making Magic Happen with Vanessa Rivera

0:00Hey y 'all, this is an episode from the podcast in the making from Adobe Express. At Creative Pep Talk, we love connecting you with other high-quality creative podcasts, especially if they can offer a different perspective or cover ground that we don't usually tackle directly on this show. This episode is episode one of their second season, an interview with Vanessa Rivera. Her art is a mix of digital painting and photography. They talk about AI in ways that we haven't on Creative Pep Talk. and they also dive deep into what it's like juggling a big family while maintaining an art practice. I know that lots of our listeners will highly relate to these topics that we don't always touch on and also hope that these different perspectives are refreshing to you.

0:53Hope you love this bonus episode in our feed this week. We will be back with a regular episode of Creative Pep Talk on Wednesday per usual, but for now, enjoy.

1:07Welcome to In The Making. I'm Teresa Au. Join me for conversations with creatives, solopreneurs, and experts as we explore the unique challenges and surprising rewards of the creator economy. Over 1 million fans follow Vanessa Rivera and her family of six on their YouTube and Instagram accounts, The Life of Avax, where she shares whimsical and childhood imagination inspired artwork, as well as lessons in Photoshop. Thank you so much for being our guest today, Vanessa. Thank you so much for having me. So first tell my audience about how you got started. Sure. I am known as The Life of Avax, which is the first letter of all of our names.

1:55Just wanted to learn how to take pictures myself of my kids because I had zero experience in photography. I was introduced to Photoshop by my husband. I fell in love immediately and dove in. And over the next couple of years, developed this style, very heavily inspired by my children. And just the idea of children's imagination. we do a lot of images that are just inspired by our day-to-day life, silly things they do, and we incorporate all kinds of mediums from photography to photo compositing, digital art, and even craft making. Yeah, it's such a fun household, I'm sure. Looking at your posts and stories online, it seems like it's just so wonderful to be part of that imagination and childhood fun yes yeah so we talk a lot about taking the leap especially in creative careers and I see your story as a series of small leaps towards that big goal to start following your creative dreams and vision and then when your husband quit his job to join in the family business to work with you and then of course the biggest leap of all which was when you both sold your house and all of your belongings and moved your family to Europe and started creating content full time while you were traveling abroad.

3:27How do you know in your bones, right, when it's time to take that leap? I don't think there's ever going to be a time when you say, this is the perfect time. I think it's just more about just taking a risk and kind of just rolling with the challenges that are going to come out because you could wait for what you might think is the perfect time. And there's still going to be things that happen. There's still going to be challenges that you did not anticipate. I know every day is going to just keep going by. And I don't want to wake up one day and have this regret that I didn't try to do something.

4:09And I saw a little window of opportunity and I said, we're just going to take it. And whatever happens, happens. We'll figure it out. and we kind of did and so much went wrong. So, so many things that we can now laugh about. But at the time we were like, what are we doing? This is not at all like what we thought it was going to be. But when I look back at it and we reflect, we're just like, wow, that was an adventure. And if we could go back and do it again, we would do it. How do you overcome that little voice in the back of your head that says, Man, this is so scary. This is the unknown. How do you propel yourself into that leap of faith?

4:49I think it's just a matter of tuning it out. It's for me, my husband is that little voice. And he's the one that is like, okay, let's really think about this. I don't know if this is a good idea. And for me, I'm more of the type of person who I kind of just shut it down. And I just say, if I do kind of give this voice a little bit too much thought, then I'm never going to do it. I'm always going to be afraid and just know that whenever there's like a little window of opportunity, just just take it because you don't know when the next one's going to come around. I guess it's focusing on the more positive voices in your head and being a little more of a risk taker.

5:31How do you reset when you can't turn your life upside down and move to Europe? What what does hitting the reset button mean to you? Oh, gosh, I hit that a lot, especially when I hit burnout, which is obviously something that's common with creatives, especially because I'm a mom and it could get a little bit overwhelming at times. So for me, hitting the reset button means disconnecting. Although I love creating and I could create all day, every day, if I was given the opportunity to. I think it's something that I'm learning recently is it's okay and it's healthy to have other things that you enjoy that kind of help re-energize you and pull you away from just focusing on creating.

6:19And so that when you come back, you come back with a fresher mind, you're more excited to create, and you just have a little bit of that space, you know, from your screen. That's what I do. I kind of just disconnect and I go do something else that I like, whether it's like reading a book or taking like a trip to like the sand dunes or something like that, watching a movie with my kids. It's so important to take care of yourself first in order to help others around you and for your projects to thrive. And like you said, yeah, come back better. If I don't feel taken care of, I don't really put the effort and the love that I want to into my artwork.

7:01And it really does show my creativity kind of dulls a little bit. I don't think of things that I normally would. And it just doesn't become fun. And once you start going that route, that's when your creativity can really take a plummet and burnout happens. A lot of creators and solopreneurs are working from their kitchen tables or somewhere in their home or in a co-working space, but it's still very isolating. I loved when you said in one of your videos that I saw, I had 200 ,000 followers and not a single real friend. These days, how do you feel? How do you keep from feeling isolated? That's something that I have personally struggled with.

7:51And I think I still do quite a bit. I think it's safe to say that a lot of creatives are introverts. And that's why we feel comfortable staying at home where we could just focus and we don't really work with other people. Although that's great, because we can create these awesome things to share with the world. It also does something to us where we start to kind of forget how to interact with other people. Honestly, I think what kind of has saved me personally is really just hanging on to the community of the creatives that are here. And honestly, like I look forward to things like Adobe Max. I really just re-energize when I am around that community.

8:38I almost, it's like a switch that you turn on. And you're just like, I know I'm not going to get this interaction every single day. And that's okay. But right now that I have the opportunity to interact with other people and to socialize, I'm going to just push myself, even if it's uncomfortable, even if it's out of the box for me. Nowadays, everything is online. But I think just even just talking and DMing and And taking, like I said, advantage of creative communities like Adobe has set up for us is a game changer. Even now, I wish I could interview you in person. But yes, every little ounce of added connections, whether it's virtual or in person, helps with the isolation.

9:27Yeah, for sure. I'm sure that anyone who has seen your tremendous success, all the videos, your huge following, not to mention having your four energetic, bumptious kids, wonders if you have any tips on having a work-life balance. You certainly are balancing a lot. How do you do it? I think that's another one of those where you're never going to find that perfect recipe. I have tried everything in the book from schedules to, you know, one day I work, one day I don't. I've tried it all. And for me, I kind of just focus on the moments that I am given. So for example, I take advantage of the moments where my kids are at school, my daughter's napping, my toddler, and the house is quiet and I could just hyper focus on creating or just answering emails, whatever I have to do that's more on the business side.

10:32And then when they come home from school, I'm able to just say, let me turn everything off. And even if it's like 10, 15 minutes, those are the 10, 15 minutes that I am just going of hyper-focus on asking them about their day and just spending that time. And I think at the end of the day, sure, it's not anything grand, but it's still something that I can appreciate. And it kind of makes me feel like at least I'm tackling all those little boxes, even if it's not in big chunks. How do you manage working with the young kids at home? So you mentioned you take advantage of the quiet times when they're in school or taking a nap.

11:14Do you work at night when they're sleeping? How long do you work in a day? Because I do know you mentioned a few times that you spend 20 to 30 hours on each art composite that you do. So I'm just curious how you manage the hours in your day. So I will admit it's probably not the healthiest. I do work late. Definitely a night owl, as I know a lot of creatives are. So the minute everyone goes to bed, I do turn on my computer and I do work as long as I possibly can. Although I wouldn't recommend going to bed at 2am. Sometimes it happens if the creative juices are just flowing and you're in the zone and you don't want to really turn that off.

11:58I do find myself there a lot, but I kind of thrive like that. So I've kind of learned to be okay with that. Although my images do take like these massive amount of hours, I do break it up into days. And I think that's why I'm not able to create at such a fast pace as other creators, because I'm only able to work a couple of hours every day. And so at the end of the week, I've maybe clocked in for like, I don't know, 25 hours for a photo or something like that. But then you still have the video that you have to make and all that stuff. So when you were on the road, did you try to keep a routine and a regular work schedule?

12:37How did that work? What did that look like? Oh no, it was, it was pure chaos. It really was. And that's why I say it was an adventure because we did not plan it down to the T. There was times where we were booking our Airbnb on our way, like on a train or even before boarding a flight. And we had no idea where we were going to stay that night. I think the only thing that we did kind of maintain was more of like, we want to try to create a new piece of artwork at least once every 10 days. And so that kind of just forced us to dedicate certain amount of hours, even if that meant staying in sometimes and not really going out for a couple of days or whatnot.

13:20But that was kind of like the only thing that was a little bit structured. And even that wasn't perfect. So it was all chaos. Yeah, well, it was an adventure. Were you homeschooling them? I was. Wow. So on top of the travel and the creating, you were also homeschooling. I tend to layer on a lot of things that maybe I shouldn't, but it's a learning experience. You don't know if something's going to work out if you don't try it. Tell me about your business and how it works now. I know you do a lot of different things. what are your main sources of income? So right now, I'm a content creator first, kind of what they refer to as an influencer.

14:04Brands reach out to me, we create content revolving around that product, and we promote that on our channel. So that is the main source of our income. However, we are kind of moving more towards focusing on other things like our Crate. That is like a subscription program that we've started. I release a new tutorial once a month. And I also have like a private Facebook page where the community and everyone who's a member comes in, they share the artwork that they create, and they all kind of give each other feedback on improving. I pop in every now and then we do challenges and stuff like that.

14:45So we have that, which is becoming a pretty close second to our income. And then my husband does real estate on the side as well. My ultimate goal, though, is to become a children's book writer. And I'm hoping that that kind of takes priority over the years. So have you started working on that dream? I did. I illustrated my first children's book last year. So I'm hoping that comes out. It was for another author, but I did illustrate the entire book. So that was really fun. We are going to go the self-publishing route. So there's just been a lot of a learning curve with that. I have started just kind of slow, but I'm getting there.

15:26You have to have those big dreams. I know you can achieve it. Have you thought about what you'll do if your kids get older and they don't want to be featured in your artwork anymore? Yeah. Gosh, you're going to make me cry. Absolutely. We're actually kind of starting to experience that if I'm being completely honest with my oldest, the 12 year old. If she's like, I don't want to do this, obviously I'm not going to force her to. But I do try to give her roles that she is comfortable with. She's trying to grow up. Yeah, like I, you can't force her to want to play the role of a six year old anymore.

16:06She's not going to want to do like a quirky facial expression, a silly pose, things like that. And so I've kind of adapted lately and I've given her the role of actually just being herself. So for example, I did an image where the kids were on a radio flyer and they're kind of like crashing through the wall. And the expression that I had her do was very much natural to her. She is always annoyed of her siblings. And so she kind of just nailed it. Like she didn't even have to try. I know that eventually the day is going to come when they're just like, no, we don't want to do this anymore. Like our friends at school are seeing it or something like that.

16:49And they don't want to. And I've come to terms with that. What do you think you'll do? For me, it's been more of, I think that's why I heavily edit my kids. And I think a lot of people wonder why, because they, a lot of the times people question, why do I even bother photographing them if they're so edited they look almost like cartoon characters and I guess I'm starting to do that more intentionally now because I'm hoping that one day when I get to that point where they don't want to be a part of these images anymore I can maybe just paint them and these could be characters that are inspired by my kids although I think even if I weren't able to do that I don't want to stop.

17:34Like I want to continue to be able to like make these whimsical images. And even if I can't do it on my kids, I know that there's tons of families who would love to have an image like this of their kids. I would love to commission like my kid and I, I would love one of your fun, whimsical photos of me and him both, you know, we'll talk offline there. So focusing on the work part of work-life balance, Are there any tools or processes that help you work better or faster? Yeah. Well, I mean, obviously, AI has been a huge game changer for me. Doing things like Firefly, Genitifil, those have been tools that completely have changed my workflow and have taken away all those tedious things that save me hours of times.

18:27My images do tend to take 25 plus hours. And I would say that before they probably took even longer just because I would do a lot of work like clone stamping, trying to extend an image for a background, like a line of trees, a water line, things like that. And I would sit there and I would kind of clone stamp it and it would just take forever. Also, because we do work with our kids, we hold them up for poses. like if one of my kids is writing a broomstick, we would hold them. And so the way the photo is taken, our hand comes out. And so I used to have to sit there and try to fix that. Now I could just, you know, use dinner to fill and it removes our hand.

19:10And then obviously Firefly too, I use that all the time now to create stock images because that is very time consuming for me. Although I try to take pictures of props and whatnot every now and then, sometimes it's not possible. So I do use stock photography a lot. And it would take a lot of time to kind of just go page for page, finding the perfect one. And then maybe it's in the wrong angle, maybe the lighting is completely off. And now I can kind of just create it the way I want. And it kind of saves me time. And then I could just focus on things that I want to that I have more have fun with like drawing hair, painting, lighting, things like that.

19:50Yeah, I've seen your process online. And it's amazing to watch you just extend the curls of your son's hair and change the lighting. It's magnificent. Thank you. I always ask this of my guests. What is one word that is going to guide you in this year? Well, it's more like two words. For me, it would be manifesting positivity. I am a pessimist by nature. And this year I decided I don't want to be that anymore. So for me, it's more of manifesting positive outcomes and thinking about like the positive aspect of things, even if they don't turn out the way I want them to. Yeah. Amazing. That is such an oxymoron for me to hear that because to hear that you are often a pessimist, but you are not afraid to take big risks, even if you're nervous about the outcome or think it might not work out, you still take that leap.

20:53So that's, that's incredible to me. Obviously, a lot of us experience this, you know, just doubting ourselves and kind of thinking we're not good enough, or maybe our artwork isn't great enough. And so I think a lot of my pessimism comes from that. And that is something that I promised myself I would work on this year. Well, I hope you listen to your followers, your subscribers, the people that love you, because I think you're amazing and your artwork is incredible. It's so inspiring and uplifting and fun and it brings me joy to see them. Thank you. I really enjoyed our conversation as always.

21:33And I wish you all the best. Thank you so much for having me. I always have fun chatting with you. And thank you so much for just, you know, highlighting our family and our artworks. I really appreciate that. Thanks again to Vanessa for joining me today. I was so inspired by hearing how she makes it all work for her family and for herself and getting her creative work done. You can find her at the Life of AVAX on social and check out our show notes for all the links. Here are just some of my key takeaways from our chat today. One, sometimes life isn't about just one big leap. When the dream is so big, you may have to take a series of smaller steps in the right direction to achieve that dream.

22:21Two, working at home can be isolating. So if you can't connect with other creatives where you live, finding that support online can really help. Three, Vanessa sets limits on her workday so that work doesn't creep into her family time. But she also takes time away from work to do the things that nurture her spirit. It turns out that you can be better rested when doing more things if they are the right things. Four, AI isn't just a time-saving tool. It can free you from the tedious tasks in your projects so that you can have more energy for creativity and inspiration. Thanks so much for listening to In the Making, brought to you by Adobe Express and Adobe Creative Cloud.

23:07We'll be back in two weeks with a brand new episode. In the meantime, we'd love to hear from you. So email us at inthemakingatadobe.com with any guest ideas, questions you want answered, or topics that you want us to cover this season. And if you liked this episode, please leave us a review and rating and be sure to subscribe in your favorite podcast app. See you all in a fortnight. All right, y 'all. It's Andy again. I'm back to just quickly say, if you enjoyed this episode, go check out Adobe Express's podcast, In the Making, wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also find a link to follow the In the Making podcast in the show notes of this episode.

23:51And also, don't forget to stay pepped up. See you soon, y 'all.