WHOSE MUSE? CAITLIN CADIEUX, ANIMATOR/ ILLUSTRATOR/ MOTION DESIGNER

Welcome to the first installment of “Whose Muse?”, a series of interviews about creativity with its practitioners. The goal is to learn about strategies and approaches from folks in a variety of disciplines— including those in fields we don’t ordinarily associate with creativity.

Index of all interviews

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Caitlin Cadieux is an animator and illustrator based in Troy, NY. She currently works as a motion designer at Discord, and has a decade of experience as a creative in many spaces, including editorial, television, and advertising. She she has a hard time playing favorites, but probably loves 2D and character animation the best. Cadieux also co-hosts the Cartoon Feelings podcast.

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What’s your origin story as a creative practitioner?

It’s hard for me to imagine a different career path. I was one of those kids who was constantly drawing and getting yelled at by teachers for covering my homework in doodles. I was obsessed with 2D animation as a kid and wanted to be a Disney character animator. When I was in high school, Pixar was king and I wanted to be a 3D character animator, but I couldn’t afford to go to my dream school, SCAD. So I went to state school for graphic design, and I started self-teaching motion design about halfway through that program.

Motion design is great for me because I get to do a little bit of everything, which is nice because I have a very hard time NOT doing that. I’d like to have the opportunity to work more in entertainment someday, but I don’t really regret not pursuing a career in feature animation. I like to keep my options open because as an animator there really are a lot of them!

Who’s been a mentor to you, either as a personal acquaintance or someone whose wisdom you’ve received from afar (or, preferably, both)? How have they inspired or trained you?

This is a tough one. I’ve found mentors extremely difficult to come by, and I think a genuine personal mentorship is rare and something to be appreciated. I’m lucky to have a lot of motion designer and other creative friends, which is almost like having a mentor sprinkled throughout all these different awesome people and the conversations we have. It used to be very important to me to find that one superpowered badass person to take me under their wing, but I’m starting to look more internally for that.

I’ve learned a lot about my own creative processes and inspirations from my friend and Cartoon Feelings podcast co-host Ira Marcks. He’s a comics artist and graphic novelist so we have different industry experiences to talk about, and we spend a ton of time talking about animation, filmmaking, and storytelling. We sometimes have very different perspectives on things, which I think makes for better insights! We have a lot of great creative conversations (both on and off the pod!) and it’s really illuminated my perspective on how I work and what creative goals I set for myself.

What’s some inspirational creative advice you’ve received?

I don’t know if I can call this inspirational per se, but I really like the advice to not get obsessive with and seek to emulate your creative heroes. They’ve already had their whole path laid out, and it can be fun learning about it, but that lightning isn’t going to strike twice and you’ve got your own story ahead of you.

Can you provide some insight into your creative process, and why it’s important to you to proceed thusly?

I’ve found you really need to just do what actually works for you, and not necessarily what are said to be best practices. I really struggle to stick to an exact routine and tend to work in marathon bursts where I hyperfocus, and then I might need to walk away for a little bit. Common advice is to set a routine. Say you’re working on a big personal project; people will tell you to set an hour aside every day to make progress. This is a great idea in theory, and it works for me if all I’m doing is daily drawing practice or something low-pressure, but it just doesn’t work for me on big progress-based projects. 

I need the flexibility to work when the mood strikes. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to force myself-– as people say, just do the work!-– and when I do, the work reflects that. It’s subpar. Instead, I put effort toward maximizing the amount of flexibility I have in my day so that I can do my best work at the best times. I get more sleep, I eat better, I exercise, and I try to keep a good work-life balance. This all works so much better for me in getting creative work done, both personally and professionally. I have to acknowledge that I’m very lucky to be able to focus on these things as much as I am. I have no kids and no greater obligations, which frees up a lot of my time and energy.

The funny thing is routine is still important, just maybe in a different way. The common piece of advice I have found to be true and helpful is to be a lot more protective of my time. I try to spend AT LEAST one full weekend day at home with no plans so I can take care of house stuff (another thing that keeps me energized, because a messy office absolutely kills my creative moods) and genuinely relax. If I can keep evenings free on the weekdays too, so much the better. If I’ve got a socialization thing after work more than twice in a week, I start to feel the pressure.

What are some techniques or mindsets you recommend to facilitate creative practice?

Do what you like!! It is so easy to get caught up in an obsessive cycle of keeping up with technological advances. Starvation mindset makes me feel like I HAVE to know how to do every little thing all the time. You’ll enjoy your work more and do more of it when you’re actually working on stuff that makes you excited.

The physical technique I recommend is to get enough sleep. Everyone says that but it’s seriously true. Even when I was in my 20s I was a total wreck when I was sleep-deprived. Grinding all night does NOT work for me, but waking up rested before my alarm goes off? That is the good stuff. All the energy I gain from that trickles down into being able to exercise and eat right and do better work. Good sleep benefits literally everything else. Bad sleep detracts from everything.

What holds you back, and how do you defeat these challenges?

Anxiety has held me back in a lot of ways. I am afraid of not knowing enough and being able to do enough, afraid of not standing out. A big fear I’ve had even since I was a kid is that I’d only be able to mimic and replicate other people’s work and that I don’t have anything original to share.

A lot of these issues have been significantly alleviated by getting on antidepressants, something that’s completely changed my life and that I wish I’d done years ago. I don’t think I can even articulate all the ways this has changed things for me. I obviously can’t recommend this to just anyone, but I mention it because for me it was something that really needed to be concretely addressed, not just ignored or “worked through”.

So that fear of lacking originality or mediocrity I think is like a maximization of the “blank page” fear where you never draw in a new sketchbook because you’re afraid of making a bad drawing on this pristine new page. You feel like you need to literally manifest something amazing out of nothing and it ends up with you most likely doing nothing at all. You gotta get comfortable knowing nothing is really original. Taking care of my stress and anxiety allowed me to spend more time drawing and animating stuff that I just genuinely enjoy, and that’s where all the good “original” stuff is going to come from. It’s that same answer to that question young illustrators sometimes have, about how to develop their own unique style. The answer is usually “just do your thing, and it’s going to come naturally.”

The other thing I’ve found really challenging is my desire to just do everything and be everything and excel at everything. It puts so much pressure on you and it’s totally unrealistic. I think finding great collaborators and working on projects as a team really helps you see how much collaboration boosts a project. I have ambitions and I’d like to lead more teams and have a directorial role in creative work, and I think my generalist experience and knowledge is great for that, but I don’t have to be a literal savante at every creative pursuit to succeed.

What are some habits you can share that help you cultivate creativity?

Do fun stuff! Do the stuff you like!

The grind sucks. I have this natural tendency to make everything I do, read, and watch also somehow serve the double purpose of being educational or inspiring or whatever. This is the highway to burnout! It sucks! I spend as much time as I possibly can doing things that I just enjoy. Playing Teamfight Tactics on my phone is not beneficial to me as a creative person, but I like it and feeling good and relaxing your brain is good for you. Work is work, and personal time is SUPER important. Like I mentioned above about working on what you like serving you better creatively in the long run, the more time you make for fun downtime, the more it will actually benefit you in other areas of your life. If you’re a filmmaker and you like watching movies, you don’t actually have to have an encyclopedic knowledge of the oeuvre of every well-known 21st century director or whatever it is. You can if you want to! Watch the stuff you feel like watching and don’t pressure yourself to fill up your free time with more work.

What’s been inspiring to you lately as a creative person, and why? (Could be a film, book, or show you’re enjoying, a place you like to go, an activity that gives you life, a person out there in the world whose actions you admire, a pet, a friend, someone in your family, etc) 

My husband and I got a puppy in January and she has been awesome in so many ways. She is the cutest and the best dog, yes she is, and she also has us way more active. We’re getting out of the house more and meeting new people and it’s just funny how much good it’s added to our lives.

We bought a house last fall (we are so lucky and grateful to have been able to do this) and taking care of house stuff and decor has been energizing. Our apartment prior was kind of depressing after the pandemic and years of living there, and we didn’t really value our space so it was haphazard and poorly decorated and full of clutter. My environment has a huge effect on me and cultivating nice spaces at home (and an office, since I’m full-time remote) has been really fun and helpful. I feel like I’ve mastered my office layout and have a space I’m comfortable in for both working and making personal art. Harkening back to the creative process question, the more I focus on removing barriers, the more and better I work, and keeping my workspace pleasant and functional has been a really fun way to do that.

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