“I am a radical escapist. I’ve always been ever since I was a kid. I see the world as it is and I’m like, oh, this sucks,” said Jules Rivera, who teaches storyboarding at California Lutheran University.

The adjunct communication professor and self-taught artist channels her passion for art into her graphic novels, comic strips and art videos.

“Eventually I would just start telling my own stories and start drawing my own comics, and I found that creating new worlds and creating characters, reading situations…that’s really where I wanted to be and what I wanted to do with my life,” Rivera said.

Rivera attended the University of Central Florida where she earned her bachelors degree in electrical engineering.

Even after college, she knew that drawing was her passion and so she has pursued art for the past 17 years. She said that her art is driven by something “screaming” inside of her.

“That’s what caused me to be self-taught. That’s what caused me to draw my own stories…I’ve just had this screaming need to do it. If I have like a week or so where I don’t draw, I just get itchy,” Rivera said.

Dru Pagliassotti, communication department chair described Rivera’s class as a learning experience.

“Ideally, students would be coming into the storyboarding class with artistic skills, but because we’re not an art major, I can’t assume that,” Pagliassotti said. “So the fact that she goes in there and she actually teaches the students how to do it and that she’s taught herself how to do it, I think really brings it home to students.”

Stefani Gallico, a good friend of Rivera and fellow storyboarding artist, also knows the feeling of having a burning passion for art.

“As a fellow artist and storyborder, I think it’s important that we support one another and keep inspiring each other to tell stories because this is our passion, and we have to push one another to be the best artist we can be,” Gallico said.

Rivera said she will continue drawing for as long as she can through connecting with her inner thoughts, her screaming passion.

She attended the New York Comic Convention in early October to showcase her art.

“I have a lot of stories to tell, I have a lot of things I want to say and when you say it with artwork, you can say it in a way that’s just so much more powerful and so much more higher-reaching than just writing it out with words,” Rivera said.

For more information about Rivera’s art, visit her website.

Bryan Duda

Reporter