The Pop Quiz, Monday is a fun little exam that we love to give to savvy professionals. The examination is not a surprise after all since the interviewee already knew about the questions in advance. However, we can always pretend and have fun with the scenario of a young professional sitting in class nervously biting on their pencil. They are ready to take a pop quiz on a chapter they were supposed to read the night before. Instead, they played Metroid all night on their SNES (Oops, this was me in high school).

The real purpose of the pop quiz is that this is a fun way to introduce tips from real-world experiences that you can not learn in a classroom. We want to thank our professionals for being a good sport and volunteering their time to answer a few questions to help our community grow from their knowledge.

I want to introduce you to our guest today who will be taking our Pop Quiz Monday.

Would you please tell everyone your name?

Hi! My full name is Darya Kozhemyakina.

What is your job role?

Although I am a housewife, I have a profession - I am a 2D character concept and illustration artist.

What do you love most about your job?

I love that I can create drawings that depict my feelings. And the second most favorite thing is probably the fact that there are people who love my art, maybe even more than I sometimes do, and I think it's beautiful.

Who in the past or present in the industry has inspired you in your career path?

Well, I've always been interested in drawing, and it wasn't someone in particular that inspired me back when I was little. But everything changed when I met the first digital artist in my life.

It is a Russian artist named HELY. It was back in 2011, so it's been a while, and, unfortunately, I am no longer able to find any traces of her art now. At the time, she was drawing all sorts of weird wolf-creatures, and it was then that I've learned about such a thing called a "graphic tablet." And so as I got the tablet of my own, I tried to copy her style and come up with freaky wolf monsters of my own, but only up until I found out about more cool artists and learned about the game industry and all the possibilities that come with it.

What are some of the professional tools you use to perform your work?

At the moment, my graphic tablet is Cintiq 22, and I use the Adobe Photoshop 2021 program to draw in.

What motivates you to get up every day and go to work?

As I've said earlier, I am a housewife, and I don't work to earn money anymore. But as incredible as it may sound, it would be a pretty sad life without a hobby and specific self-improvement goals. So, this is what drawing is for me - my hobby and my way to grow and improve. I don't want to waste my life - and that is the biggest motivator for me.

What are some lessons learned from a past project that you can share with us?

Always take pre-payment, don't work overtime - nobody will appreciate it, and don't work in a toxic environment because you deserve better.

What advice would you give to someone new and starting in your industry?

Game companies don't care about artist's education; they only need skills. So take all the time you need, and spend it improving your art. It is the best way to get a job. To have better chances and advertise yourself, always post your art to social media, grow your Instagram/Twitter whatever, and create art in style you'd want to work in the future. Draw things that you'd like to draw when you got hired. Don't try to learn everything simultaneously. Pick one thing and get the best in doing it.

Good luck and don't be scared. Take care.

Thank you for taking our pop quiz today. You get an A+ for effort. You can learn more about our interviewee and their work by visiting them on the web:

https://www.artstation.com/daryakozh

Artwork by Darya Kozhemyakina

All artwork is owned and copyrighted by the artist, Darya Kozhemyakina.