Not only is she STEAMsational, she's the force behind Sonsational Creations! Explore the intersection of creativity and STEM with Sonja Howard! Learn about the journey of this autistic young artist into a world of crafting fantastical creatures. I first met Sonja in the studios of Wētā Workshop in New Zealand, where she was painstakingly crafting a new hatch of Floofs! I was immediately captivated by her "villain origin story" and knew I had to share her magic with you. Join us on an episode that explores the intersection of STEM and art on a quest for creating impossible things.
Sonja grew up in the Australian rainforest where her imagination was set alight by the weird and wonderful creatures around her. As an autistic child, she was intensely passionate about her interests and relentless in her curiosity. This led to many adventures - and a few misadventures. Thankfully, she was encouraged by local artists and her family to follow this curiosity. Soon enough, she was creating her own weird and wonderful creatures.
Sonja began selling her artwork at age eight at the local markets, and had her work first exhibited in local galleries during high school. Before long, she had opened an online store. Her creatures have landed all over the world, and are featured in places like Wētā Workshop Unleashed.
In 2020, Sonja moved to New Zealand. As well as creating her own artwork, she is an artist in the NZ film industry working on various productions. Her debut solo exhibition, Impossible Things, launched in January 2022. She is currently working as a stage artist at Wētā Workshop.
Sonja is passionate about the environment, and queer and disability advocacy. Through her work, she hopes to promote a more sustainable and equitable society. Her exhibitions prioritise physical and sensory accessibility.
As well as being autistic, Sonja has synesthesia (a condition where her brain interprets sounds, letters, and numbers as colours.) These differences have helped her throughout her life, allowing her to look at the world in different ways, and driving her passion for creativity and equality.
You can learn more about Sonja Howard at Sonsational Creations. And follow her online @SonsationalCreations.
Read the full show notes, visit the website, and check out my on-demand virtual course. Continue the adventure at LinkedIn or Instagram.
*Disclosure: I am a Bookshop.org. affiliate.
Not only is she STEAMsational, she's the force behind Sonsational Creations! Explore the intersection of creativity and STEM with Sonja Howard! Learn about the journey of this autistic young artist into a world of crafting fantastical creatures. I first met Sonja in the studios of Wētā Workshop in New Zealand, where she was painstakingly crafting a new hatch of Floofs! I was immediately captivated by her "villain origin story" and knew I had to share her magic with you. Join us on an episode that explores the intersection of STEM and art on a quest for creating impossible things.
Sonja grew up in the Australian rainforest where her imagination was set alight by the weird and wonderful creatures around her. As an autistic child, she was intensely passionate about her interests and relentless in her curiosity. This led to many adventures - and a few misadventures. Thankfully, she was encouraged by local artists and her family to follow this curiosity. Soon enough, she was creating her own weird and wonderful creatures.
Sonja began selling her artwork at age eight at the local markets, and had her work first exhibited in local galleries during high school. Before long, she had opened an online store. Her creatures have landed all over the world, and are featured in places like Wētā Workshop Unleashed.
In 2020, Sonja moved to New Zealand. As well as creating her own artwork, she is an artist in the NZ film industry working on various productions. Her debut solo exhibition, Impossible Things, launched in January 2022. She is currently working as a stage artist at Wētā Workshop.
Sonja is passionate about the environment, and queer and disability advocacy. Through her work, she hopes to promote a more sustainable and equitable society. Her exhibitions prioritise physical and sensory accessibility.
As well as being autistic, Sonja has synesthesia (a condition where her brain interprets sounds, letters, and numbers as colours.) These differences have helped her throughout her life, allowing her to look at the world in different ways, and driving her passion for creativity and equality.
You can learn more about Sonja Howard at Sonsational Creations. And follow her online @SonsationalCreations.
Read the full show notes, visit the website, and check out my on-demand virtual course. Continue the adventure at LinkedIn or Instagram.
*Disclosure: I am a Bookshop.org. affiliate.
Wonder Curiosity Connection. Where will your adventures take you? I'm Dr Diane, and thank you for joining me on today's episode of Adventures in Learning. So welcome to the Adventures in Learning podcast. When we were in New Zealand, I got to go to the Weta Workshop and while I was there I fell in love with our next guest. Sonja Howard is a very cool artist. The stuff that she makes is just mind-boggling in its detail and it really got me thinking about the idea of STEM and STEAM from a whole new light, realizing that those of us who are artists can also contribute to making things and creating things and being part of something really magical. So, sonja, welcome from New Zealand. Thank you for getting up this morning to be on the podcast. I appreciate having you here.
Speaker 2:Oh, thank you so much for the invitation. It's a pleasure to be here.
Speaker 1:So I'm wondering when you first were on our tour, you introduced yourself by sharing your villain origin story. Can you share your origin story in terms of how you got to where you are today?
Speaker 2:Absolutely so. Yeah, I'm originally from Australia. I grew up in the wild rainforest, full of all sorts of real monsters, and my dad was a crocodile tour guide. So it's kind of no wonder that I wanted to start making creatures of my own. And because I'm autistic, when I get passionate about something, I get really passionate about it. So I decided from a pretty young age that I want to make monsters for a living, and the best place in the world to do that is Squatter Workshop right. So years I heamed and I saved up and I finally moved over. I was so excited it was going to be great and COVID hit Great timing right.
Speaker 2:But I was lucky enough to run into Richard Taylor one day when I was walking my dogs and I decided you know what stuff it this is my chance Walked up to him, introduced myself, introduced my dog and after I could maybe drop off a portfolio, and he said, yes, I also included a block of bribery chocolate when I dropped off the portfolio, just to you know, meet in the deal. And I guess it worked, Because a few weeks later he called me up and asked if I wanted to make a bunch of creatures for unleashed. He actually only gave me eight minutes notice to get down to the workshop. I was sitting in my fluff pit working on a little rat dragon and suddenly it was like oh hi, it's Richard, when can you come down? I got something that might be of interest. Can you be here in eight minutes? So I frantically got changed, sprinted down the road, made it just in time to hear about all of the cool stuff that he wanted me to make.
Speaker 2:So my work on that project led to work in the head apartment on Rings of Power at the workshop, where I was basically spending about 50 hours a week in a room lined with orchids. We're all just sort of daring at me all day as I tied individual strands of hair on the near invisible way to give them all the most glorious headings in all of middleer, Only for them all to wear a helmet. So you can't see any of it, but you know we had a good time. So I've worked on a few bits and pieces since then, but most of them are still very top secret. Yes, that is my super villain origin story.
Speaker 1:I love your origin story and I'd like to circle back to growing up in Australia and sort of the inspiration for your creatures, as well as being a child with autism, and how that impacted your decision to go into making monsters, because I think that's really interesting. Can you go a little deeper on that?
Speaker 2:Absolutely Certainly. See, I was a really weird kid. I always thought that I was going to be a zoologist, so going into like studying animals and stuff and the place I grew up, mission Beach, is full of both artists and scientists. So I had this really amazing community around me that were like encouraging my interest and supporting me when I wanted to pick up a lot of roadkill and sort of you know, pull it apart and have a look at how different creatures worked and stuff, and would often like give me random skulls and things to study. So, yeah, I was just really really supported by the community and thought, you know, I'll go into sciences and then got right to the point of like graduating, getting into the universities that I wanted to, and then decided, actually now I want to make creatures instead of studying them and so I sort of pivoted all of a sudden. But, yeah, I was really really fortunate to have that incredible supportive community around me.
Speaker 2:In terms of sort of autism and stuff, I thought I was diagnosed when I was I was well and I was basically having really really bad anxiety after a massive cyclone hit the region and basically destroyed the high school like two weeks into my first year of high school and so I ended up getting diagnosed and it was amazing. It was just like oh, oh, there's actually. I'm not just like oh, we don't miss it, there's a reason. I mean, I'm also a weirdo miss it, but like there are others, and so, yeah, that was really amazing and really really helps sort of unlock a lot of who I am.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was very cool.
Speaker 1:And tell us a little bit about the kinds of creatures you love to make today. What are, what are, some of the things that you're interested in making?
Speaker 2:Okay, so I have sort of two mainstream the fluffy, cute, ridiculous little creatures that you saw at the Wettum Cave they've all become known as flutes because they're fluffy and then there's the skeletal creation where I basically get ethically sourced to remain usually rat, my brode, kill bird, that sort of thing and I feed them to my colony of flesh eating beetle. I clean the bones and reassemble them into little fantasy creatures, which is a very good fun.
Speaker 1:Okay, wait. First of all, let's back up for a minute. You have plenty of flesh eating beetles.
Speaker 2:Do tell, yeah yeah, they're actually surprisingly easy to get. My first colony I got over in Australia when I did this amazing little two day mouse articulation workshop with a guy who goes by articulated imagination and there was a take home kit involved and I was like, oh sweet, that'll be, you know some chemical from tools. Oh, I'll get the take home kit. Turned out it was a colony of flesh eating beetles that I then had to get on a plane, which was concerningly easy, like custom, or it wasn't custom, it was domestic.
Speaker 1:They didn't care, they were like all right, I was going to say domestic doesn't care. Had you been international, they would have given you more grief. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you can't bring anything international into New Zealand. So when I moved over here I had to get a new colony and I ended up trading a little skeletal creature with the Dunedin Museum of Natural Mystery and he sent me a bunch of flesh eating beetles in the mail, as you do.
Speaker 1:So, and those creatures are amazing. I mean, they're so, they're lifelike, but they've got that fantasy spin to them and I could see sort of that fascination with creatures and science coming through in that work. Am I right?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Yeah, I love thinking of sort of ways that they could be sort of evolutionarily possible, if not likely. So trying to sort of think about how things would actually move and stuff within those sort of constraints of our world doesn't always work, but that's the aim. Do you have a favorite? That's like picking a favorite child. I really enjoy doing little fantasy griffins where I basically get like a bird and give it depending on its size. Oh gosh, sorry, my dog's just appeared, so should I just start that again?
Speaker 1:You're fine, the dog is welcome to join us.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, yeah, little fantasy griffins where I take a bird skeleton and, depending on its size, either add sort of mouse or rat front limbs or, if I don't have those available because you know skeletons, I'll use a smaller bird's legs as sort of the front limb paternum into little griffins and stuff, and ideally with like a little mouse or rat tail to give it a long tail. And it's sort of my twist on like a little common griffin.
Speaker 1:That is so cool and in terms of inspiration for your work, do you draw on the environment? You draw on nature, like what are the inspirations you bring into it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely so. I love thinking about fantasy twists on real animals and how fantasy adaptations and stuff could be scientifically explained. I actually did an assignment in high school where it was like a myth busters unit and I was looking at the evolutionary possibilities of the existence of dragons, which I sadly concluded was not really possible, but like looked at like how could they breathe fire? And like how could we explain a creature that's got six limbs, because they've got the wings as well as the four legs and stuff, and going into ludicrous amount of detail around that, which was very good fun.
Speaker 1:I love it. I was going to ask you, as I'm sort of thinking about you're now at Weta Workshop and you got there because of your body of work and your portfolio, as well as your guts, in approaching Richard Das for a job what did you have to do sort of leading up to that moment? What kind of training or what kind of experiences went into that?
Speaker 2:So I moved down to Brisbane where there was going to be sort of more opportunities and I met some guys from the workshop at a convention and they sort of gave me the advice that if you want to get into the film industry you have to have a really amazing portfolio and get like professional quality images of your work.
Speaker 2:So I sort of took that the heart and I went off and I studied, I did a diploma in screen and media specialist makeup services at the Australian Institute of Creative Design, so it was a full six month diploma.
Speaker 2:That sort of taught you the basics of like prosthetic makeup and stuff and through that they let me use their professional photographers to put up, put together a portfolio to enter some international makeup competitions. So there was one in Sydney and one over in London and so that helps really build up that sort of like portfolio level images of the stuff that I'd made. And then I like sort of spent the next couple of years working on a bunch of short film projects as well as continuing to make and sell my creatures like the little fluffy ones and, yeah, just sort of cobbling together a bunch of different things and working on upskilling. I spent some time with a manual art teacher to learn how to make knives, which was very fun and yeah. So just sort of cobbling together a bunch of different fields and skill to give myself the best chance before I took the lead and moved over.
Speaker 1:That makes sense. And so if a child wanted to sort of follow in your footsteps, had a passion for monsters or a passion for creatures, what would you recommend that they do to get to that, that level eventually?
Speaker 2:Just try as many things as you can and figure out what your passion is and work to create high quality things that spark your imagination. Not just doing just the boring everyday things that people tell you to do in art classes, but going out and experimenting and playing around and figuring out what really makes you go. Wow, Okay.
Speaker 1:And I understand you're also a novelist, is that correct?
Speaker 2:Yes, so I recently got a literary agent and we're working on edits to the manuscript at the moment and hoping to send out to publishers within sort of the next couple of months.
Speaker 1:So I think it's crossed, so what is the?
Speaker 2:book about. So the book it's working title is A Melody of Souls and it's about a young soul grafters fight against poachers that attacks sort of the mythical creatures in her area and how a dead human makes for an unlikely ally. So it's basically Interesting. Yeah, it's such an interesting world full of fantasy creatures that I'm hoping to illustrate. It's super queer and the main character is autistic, like me, so I'm hoping that people who don't often get to see themselves in novels will get something out of that as well.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's wonderful. Yeah, we talk a lot here about windows and mirrors and books that allow you to see yourself represented but also provide a window into other cultures, and it sounds like that's a lot of what you're doing in terms of your novel and your advocacy work.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:That's the aim. Yeah, that sounds wonderful. So let's talk a little bit about your favorite fantasy creatures. You're at Weta Workshop and I'm wondering do you have a favorite genre of fantasy that you are drawn to or that informs your work?
Speaker 2:Oh, good question. I mean, I love dragons, all dragons. I'm also like a massive fan of practical effects and really like immersive environments where the creatures have their own ecosystems and stuff and it's not just like a monster sleigh, but it's like a full, living, breathing world. But things like the dark crystal, where you get to see all these little creatures scurrying around in the bushes, and stuff that basically add nothing to the plot but make the world feel so rich and vibrant.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, I love that You're just thinking again about STEM and STEAM. Often we ask kids to think about animal adaptations, we ask them to think about habitats, and why not go from a fantasy point of view, apply as you were saying about the dragons, apply what you know and create a whole world where it needs to make sense in terms of the creatures that are living there. I think that could be a really fun thing for the creatures to try. I love it.
Speaker 2:Oh my goodness, If I had been given that opportunity and stuff in either science class or art class, I would have just lost my mind. That would have been so cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah, here's a question for you. Where are you hoping to go career-wise from here? You're so young and you've got your entire career in front of you. What are your big hopes and dreams from here?
Speaker 2:My biggest one is I really want to work on Doctor who. You have a favorite Doctor. I mean, I have many. I really really love things like I've watched all the classics. So like the second doctor is amazing and the sixth doctor, fourth doctor, is sort of a bilgitry. And then also I really enjoyed, like Max Smith, the 11th doctor and the current doctor, shudy Gatwa, is oh, my goodness, I loved the recent ones.
Speaker 1:David Tennant was one of my favorite doctors, but I love this, yeah, his excellence so much. All right, so I'm sorry I interrupted you. Back to Dr who. You want to work on Dr who?
Speaker 2:Yes, I would love to work on Dr who Also. I want to do all the things. I want to be able to make sort of cool fantasy creatures go like bigger scale, smaller scale, doing more skeletal stuff, more exhibitions, write a whole bunch of books. Yeah, I'm sort of at the stage where it's like there's all of these really, really cool things that I could do and I just want to do all of them.
Speaker 1:Based on your portfolio and everything I've seen, I think anything is possible. Cool, well, thank you so much for joining us on the Adventures in Learning podcast. It has been such a treat and I'm going to drop your website in the show notes so that people will be able to follow you and hopefully we'll be able to eventually see your stuff on the big screen as well. I think it's crossed, thank you very much. Thank you for joining us today and have a wonderful day over in New Zealand. You too, thank you. You've been listening to the Adventures in Learning podcast with your host, dr Diane. If you like what you're hearing, please subscribe, download and let us know what you think, and please tell a friend. If you want the full show notes and the pictures, please go to drdianadventurescom. We look forward to you joining us on our next adventure.