We had the good fortune of connecting with Vera Tan and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Vera, why did you pursue a creative career?
I’ve always been very involved with all kinds of arts. I started singing lessons when I was four. I started drawing and painting around 12, then finally acting around 18, and I’ve been focusing on these three things since! It’s mainly what I’ve known and studied my whole life, so it seemed only natural for me to try and live the rest of my life doing these things.

Not to say I haven’t tried anything else. I tried out, for various short periods of time, ballet, acrobatics, Chinese painting specifically, playing the drum kit, playing the violin, and lots of other little things along the way. I have a love for creating for the sake of creating over the final product most of the time,

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
I’m a visual artist, and an actor, and I mostly work on animation and video games, or do private commissions and sell at conventions! Basically, I’m a huge nerd and mostly involved in the nerd space, what a surprise.

I started singing when I was 4, started performing when I was 5, had most of my major performances around 8-10 (including one in Carniegie Hall, NYC!) and officially retired around 14. I do still sing for fun, but this is context for voiceover because it did give me a lot of transferrable skills for that field that allowed me to progress quickly.

As an artist, I started drawing when I was around 12 and decided I wanted to be an artist when I was about 13. When I was 14 I started selling illustrations in my high school, and started making my own stickers and keychains out of cheap sticker paper and sushi containers (as shrink plastic) to sell! From there, I focused on improving and trying out everything I could to get an early start. I probably have around 2-3 online stores that I’ve started and have probably since abandoned, ironically because I was too busy with my degree in Visual Arts and Business Management.

As an actor, I’m pretty new. I started around the first year of university for fun, but soon found out I was gaining momentum with the projects I was working on, meeting LOADS of insanely cool people. After a few months, I thought, hey, why not? It’s something that I’ve been wanting to do for a while, and it’s going well. So since then, I’ve worked on over a hundred projects of all kinds! Animation! Video Games! Commercials! Narration and E-learning! It’s all very fun stuff and I enjoy doing it so much.

In fact, recently I was invited to appear on a panel at PAX Australia called Whose Voice Is It Anyway!, a really fun voice acting game show that introduces the audience to our profession in a fun and engaging way. There should be a few photos from that event in this article. It was a dream come true, and I was incredibly honoured that I could stand alongside such experienced and talented actors. It’s definitely been one of my favourite moments so far.

And just the other day, I was invited along with Sean Chiplock, Amanda Hufford and Wiz to Animaticon in Moscow for a video interview about our roles in The Amazing Digital Circus. It was insane and…. a really weird feeling to see my face on such a huge screen, but everyone seemed really excited to see us, which was also, a very surreal feeling. My friends tell me I should get used to it, but I don’t think I will no matter how many times I come across it.

It wasn’t easy of course, there were many times where I was crunching for a lot of those projects and conventions, I had a 20 hour work day right before a flight once, and I’ve had rush auditions while travelling, an hour before travel, and everything in between!

Most of all, I’ve learnt not to take things too seriously. I think it’s very easy for creatives, especially those like me who have been involved with the industry in some way shape or form their entire life, and can’t really see themselves doing anything else. I’ve gone through quite a few periods of my life where I questioned if anything I ever did had any value, just because in that moment it seemed like I wasn’t doing as well as I had hoped, Sometimes, there’s just a slow period, and that’s okay!

Don’t let the creative stuff you do as work be the only happiness you ever have. I play piano and ukulele for fun, sew clothes for myself, make everything from books, jewellery, and dioramas and paint all for fun without selling or otherwise monetising any of it.

Art, and creativity in general, is a human behaviour. It’s meant to be fun!

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
As someone in Melbourne, Victoria, my best friend lives not even a 30 minute walk away. We’ve known each other for ten years, and he’s a writer for an indie game that we’ve been working on in our spare time.

It’s the place to be; amazing food from every corner of the world, fun activities like Alcotraz, which is a fully immersive experience where they give you orange jumpsuits and have you sneak alcohol into a restaurant setting that looks like a jail.

Or Ice Bar, which is as the name suggests, is a bar made entirely of ice. Even the room, the glasses you drink from, and the counter. They do give you a onesie so it’s not so bad.

There’s also the Summer Night Market at Queen Victoria Market coming up, and I cannot wait to eat all of that tasty street food, definitely dragging him there once it starts.

We could go to karaoke and sing any song that’s on YouTube, even the fitness gram pacer test if we want to!

Honestly, this is the question I’m struggling with the most because there’s just so much!

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
There are so many people in my life who have supported my artistic career choices at every stage, but mainly I want to thank my friends, old and new, and my coaches, mentors and colleagues in my fields of choice, who have been so gracious and kind in helping me navigate such a vast and often intimidating world.

Website: https://veratan.fun/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/veratan.fun/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vera-tan-a46422208/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/veratanva

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCM9H3TFakDDlmEc0C0Xnhng

Image Credits
Vera Tan, Kit Yeo, Fung Wendy Chen

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