Jumping Into Multiple Story Worlds With Author And Illustrator Pablo Leon

How do you jump between very different story worlds?

Pablo Leon is an author and artist from Guatemala. Leon currently lives in Los Angeles, California and jumps between the TV animation industry and comics world. His original comic, The Journey, an account of an unaccompanied child coming from Central America to the U.S., was a 2019 Eisner Award nominee, and was the illustrator for the exciting middle-grade graphic novel Miles Morales: Shock Waves and its follow-up, Stranger Tides from Marvel & Scholastic. He currently works at Disney TVA as an Assistant Art Director on an animated production. Pablo Leon chatted with Forbes about his career path and how his personal history and background has inspired his creative work.

Goldie Chan: Hello Pablo, thank you for joining us. What has your career path been?

Pablo Leon: I started doing then-popular explainer videos for a start-up tech company in DC. It was a fun job, but when the chance to work on TV animation came up, I packed up and went to work for an animation studio down in Atlanta, at a time when streaming was still new. It was a lot of work, very long hours, and then months of hiatus times between projects. During that downtime, I started working on stories that were centered on the unaccompanied children crisis, kids that were coming from Central America to the U.S. border alone. This was pre-2016 era, a few years before it became a hot-topic issue, but things were still horrible then. I posted these online, and maybe two or three people read them. But one of them was an editor for a news website, and he asked me to pitch him a story.

One of those stories is where The Journey was born, which ended up being Eisner-nominated. I had made my way to LA to work in the animation industry there, but I feel the validation that this comic received set me on a path to find my voice, which ultimately, to me, it’s one of the most important things to have as a creative.

Chan: With your career path in mind, what has been your favorite project that you’ve worked on?

Leon: In 2020, I worked on a middle-grade graphic novel called Miles Morales: Shock Waves, for Marvel and Scholastic, written by Justin A Reynolds. They gave me a lot of freedom and encouragement to just go all out, and so I did. It was important to me to portray Miles’ Afro-Latino side because it’s one that’s often sidelined and not nearly explored as much, and I think it’s just as important to his character development. And when the book came out, reading about kids devouring the book and feeling seen, feeling that they could relate to Miles’ struggles, it made me feel good, knowing we did a good job.

Chan: How has your personal background shaped your current creative projects?

Leon: In my art journey, my culture and roots are deeply connected to my art and all my personal work, and they are something that I carry and bring to everything I work on as much as I am allowed to. I’ve made it my mission to bring a spotlight on Latinos, our culture, our indigenous representation, our roots, and our very real problems.

Much of my work has been mostly about generational memory and coping with it, ordinary people living through drastic situations, to me their stories are important, and I do my best to tell them and keep them alive. I think especially when it comes to Central America, a mostly ignored region full of conflict and repression, I’ve tried my best to always put the utmost importance on putting a spotlight on our issues, but also balancing it out with the amazing things our culture and our people bring. In general, yes, some of the things I chose for my work, they may be painful topics, but I feel like it’s important to revisit the past to heal and move forward, so we don’t keep making the same mistakes over and over.

Chan: What are you currently working on?

Leon: Currently, I’m working on two very special projects: The first is my first writer/artist graphic novel, Silenced Voices, about two sisters who must find their way back to each other while reliving old scars surrounding the Guatemalan civil war, published by HarperAlley, coming out in 2024. The second one is a short animated film called Remember Us, which tells the individual experiences of three people who lived through the often overlooked and tragic story of the 12-year-long Salvadorian civil war in the 1980s.

Chan: What is your favorite part of working on comics or animation?

Leon: The sweet spot for me is always the early stages of crafting the story, putting it all together in front of me, and trying to piece together this massive puzzle to make it make sense. The early design stage is also great, it’s a flow of ideas where there’s no such thing as a “wrong design”, just a matter of “those this work for our story now?”

I think with animation it’s even better, because there’s a team effort to bounce several ideas and make them better. It’s a collective. Comics is a bit more of a lonely effort to a degree, especially on an indie level. I would describe it as you falling down the highest building, no safety net below, while putting on several hats all at once. But! You have the freedom to chose when and how you fall. I believe comics are the ultimate form of pain and passion blended into one. The reward is actually finishing the project, looking back, and going, “wow, you almost single-handedly made a 100-200+ page book, uh?”

Chan: What is the most important key to telling a great story?

Leon: To me it's all about finding your voice and being very specific, whether it’s culturally or with intent, having a strong point of view, and going further ahead than that of your personal references that you're pulling from is what makes a good story sharper. Trust the audience, they will follow you.

Chan: Who has been your favorite character to write about?

Leon: In my upcoming graphic novel, Silenced Voices, I write about two sisters that struggle to bond after a raid on their village. I drew inspiration from several interviews and reports. Still, the biggest inspiration came from a bit of history from my grandmother and her sister. Diving into their family history, and finding out more about where our family came from in the process was a very rewarding experience, and I think having that knowledge helps the relationship come across more natural.

Chan: What changes would you like to see in your industry?

Leon: I wish there were more transparency about what's happening in animation, outside of the circle of insiders, so we can start talking about progressive changes more openly, starting with the fact that streaming platforms have consistently resisted allowing residuals to apply to their content.

We've also normalized going through constant abrupt production cancellations and unexpected layoffs, whereas in other industries, this would probably not be accepted. Many artists are rightfully concerned with feelings of being easily disposable and are looped in a cycle of dread, waiting for the other shoe to drop constantly. We shouldn’t be saying “well this happened before–”, because that’s not sustainable for anyone in the production level. The animation industry deserves so much more than this.

Chan: Any last branding or career advice?

Leon: There are no rules, only consequences. Whoever wants to start comics or illustration can just do it, the tools are more accessible than ever too!. As with anything, the rules of design, writing, etc, are all bendable. As long as you make it work for your vision and package it well enough for your audience, go ham. When it comes to comics, there is no right or wrong way of doing them, it’s helpful to know the process of what came before, of course! So you can tear them down and use them as you see fit.