The acclaimed animator, whose original songs often featured in her work, talks about their recent album and latest professional evolution.
Acclaimed animator, storyteller, and filmmaker Rebecca Sugar (BFA 2009 Animation) made a huge cultural mark with their critically acclaimed Cartoon Network show, Steven Universe.
Heralded for its pioneering, positive LGBTQIA+ representation on television, Universe ended its six-year run in 2019, not long before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which left Sugar feeling reflective and questioning their artistic identity and path forward. A subsequent three-year break from social media and the Internet turned into a fertile period of artistic reconnection.
Sugar wrote and sang many of the songs featured on Steven Universe show, but it took time to overcome the self-doubt they felt about exposing a more personal, vulnerable side. As the animator-turned-musician sings on “Sweet Time,” the lead-off song on their dreamy, folky album, Spiral Bound, “Everybody’s headed somewhere, and they want to get there faster, but . . . I’m taking my sweet time.”
Alumnus Rebecca Sugar.
Alumnus Rebecca Sugar.
“After all these years of writing songs for characters, it was really challenging to write a song as myself,” Sugar says in a new video feature for SVA. “Honestly, I didn’t know how to start, and I thought, ‘Well, maybe I’ll just create a cartoon character and write new original songs for that character, and that’ll be how I do music.’ And slowly, I felt, ‘Well, maybe I could be the voice.’”
Inspired by three years of daily journaling and sketching in spiral-bound notebooks, Spiral Bound chronicles the gentle, arduous process of healing from extreme burnout and unresolved trauma.
“I’ve made a lot of art that’s a quest for perfection,” Sugar says. “In my quest for perfection, twisting myself into knots trying to meet this impossible bar that I was setting for myself, I made a lot of art that was made out of self-destruction.”
The cover of Rebecca Sugar's 2023 album, Spiral Bound.
The cover of Rebecca Sugar's 2023 album, Spiral Bound.
Sugar said the quieter, more introspective pandemic era led them back to their artistic roots, reminding them of their formative years at the School of Visual Arts.
“So much of what I do now does go back to my time at SVA. I think all the time how much that set me up to do what I’m doing now.”.
“To me, art is communication,” she says. “To be able to communicate is to be able to connect, and so art is an incredibly powerful medium with which to find each other and connect with each other and find yourself.”
Watch the SVA feature below to learn more about Sugar’s journey of artistic self-discovery and evolution.
Known for creating the Cartoon Network series Steven Universe, Rebecca Sugar (BFA 2009 Animation) has tapped into their musical side for a new career evolution.