🌿Hi! I'm Ivy 🌿
Before coming to live in Morelia, I was in another beautiful city, Xalapa.
There my parents owned an internet café named Divertinet, where sometimes me and my sisters could play computer games, or browse the early internet.
I've always had this feeling of needing to know how things work, so when my parents gave me my first broken computer I could crack open, a whole world opened up to me. Being still just a kid, knowing I could open, tweak and play with computers was huge.
When I was 12 years old, my parents got a copy of Macromedia Flash on one of the computers and I couldn't help but try it out.
At the same time, I was suffering from intense social anxiety in school, so I saw an opportunity. I realized I didn't have to perform, I could create something, press Play and let the work speak for itself.
So I made this:
It's very silly but I think this shows very well how my work is very tightly intertwined with my motivations: I used animation to get through the hardships of being a neurodivergent kid.
I'm obviously way more skilled now than when I was a kid, but sometimes I can't help but feel like I'm doing the same thing I did back then. All projects I work on are projects that, in a way, I care about and I want to talk about.
Later in life, I was diagnosed with ADHD. It totally makes sense and I think that has to do with my problems at school. I have found it way easier to learn by myself, by reading, researching and reasoning.
For example, I always found math fascinating so I was good at it, but I don't think I ever paid much attention to math class and my grades were pretty bad.
Likewise, when I moved to Morelia to study Arts and Design at UNAM, I didn't go because I wanted a degree, but because I wanted to meet other artists, learn some drawing, painting and sculpture.
I did get to do all of that during the first year, which was incredible. I met so many talented people, many of whom are still my friends to this day.
Sadly, from the second year on, the subjects changed to almost exclusively digital arts. It was all stuff I already knew, as before going to university I already had about 4 years of animation experience.
So I feel like I stopped learning, and I was still burning out pulling all-nighters just to turn in a bunch of assignments. The excitement died down and after much deliberation I decided to drop out.
My main decisive point was that at that point in my career, a job might teach me much more. Plus I had already found what I was looking for: a community of friends.
So I started updating my portfolio and looking for work.
I ended up working with Veritasium a few months later and I got to learn so much more working there, while also making some money for equipment and software licenses.
I met Alondra at university, and we quickly became great friends. We also found that we worked incredibly well on projects together, so later on we also joined forces for some animations for Veritasium.
This got us to a place where we had established a workflow and a very good synergy, so we decided to start Mosscrystal Studio.
Nature has always been a major inspiration, and I love textured visuals and traditional techniques. In Mosscrystal I get to explore all those things and more.
I love science communication and I still want to work on it for sure! But now my means are expanding further to cover even more of my interests.
Thanks for reading. If you want to chat about any of this, or collaborate with me, please write me at either of these: