Life & Work with Naomi Castro

Today, we’d like to introduce you to Naomi Castro.

Hi Naomi, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
Ever since I was little, I have wanted to do what my older brothers were doing. That included watching lots of anime, playing video games, and drawing characters from these things, usually copying all the various art styles. I continued to surround myself with art, learning from these examples until I started developing an art style of my own.

I decided to continue to pursue this passion in my adult life, earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts with a concentration in Illustration from Northern Michigan University. During college, I began freelancing, taking commissions from people from all corners of the internet. I found myself working with all sorts of clients, from people just wanting to commission art for a friend as a gift to Twitch Streamers looking for art for their profiles and branding to self-published authors, all the way to some of my favorite TTRPG companies.

I love getting to have such a variety of opportunities, and I’ve really come to rely on freelancing to help me float financially and keep my artistic skills sharp.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Pivoting off my original dreams of becoming a concept artist for a major video game or animation company. Ever since I was little, that was all I wanted to do one day.

But as I got older and closer to entering the job market as an adult, more and more info came out about artists being overworked and underpaid. Not being fairly compensated for bringing such amazing and well-received projects to life didn’t bode well for what I imagined my future career and happiness to be.

After many failed job applications or having to deny offers, I realized that the freelance work I had already been doing could be viable, even if it wasn’t always the most steady flow of income.

Thanks – so, what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I always say I’m primarily a concept artist. Really, I just love bringing stories to life visually.

I love character design, prop, and environment design, as well as storyboarding and comics. I’m most proud to be a published illustrator with one of my favorite TTRPG companies, Evil Hat Productions, across multiple publications at this point.

I think what sets me apart from others is the care I put into each and every element of design when it comes to portraying an idea. I am always looking for new and clever ways to represent an abstract idea in a visual format.

Risk-taking is a topic that people have widely differing views on – we’d love to hear your thoughts.
For most of my time after graduating college, I flip-flop between freelance art being my primary source of income or my “side hustle.” The starving artist trope is always something I’ve tried hard to avoid, accepting the times when I need to work a part-time or full-time “day job” in order to make ends meet while still finding the time to pursue my artistic passions.

During 2020, I found myself absolutely miserable, trapped in IT, which was a field I was good at but brought me no joy. I decided to quit my job and work full-time as a freelancer. Putting my nose to the grindstone, I put all my effort into online content creation to draw clients, working on my original webcomic, Icarus, and marketing myself as a viable artist for bigger contract work.

I don’t always consider myself a big risk-taker, as even when I make these big jumps as far as career changes go, I am very conscious of my financial situation, asking myself, “Will I be able to live comfortably off art alone?”

Contact Info:

• Website: https://naydcas.art/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/naydcasart
• Twitter: https://x.com/naydcasart
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@naydcasart

Image Credits
Naomi Castro @naydcasart