Baby's First Newsletter

Happy Birthday to this Newsletter and this Newsletter Only

Hey hey! Welcome to baby’s first newsletter. It’s me, I’m baby.

I hope you’ve had an awesome start to your new year, if not there’s another one coming up (Lunar New Year)! A big goal of mine this year is to be more active in talking about stuff that I’m doing because algorithms suck and I just want to share my work with my community without having to be my own social media team! So, here we are - this month has been packed full with hanging out with cool people and doing some cool projects.

Powerpoint Parties

I went to a shocking amount of powerpoint parties this month. I don’t think my middle school self was prepared for the amount of powerpoints that I would be presenting in adulthood. I went to two goal setting parties, which were very sweet and wholesome. There was even an actual baby that had a vision board, corporate America am-i-right? Then a very fun birthday party where I had to improv my way through a powerpoint that I had never seen before - it ended up just being full of snake pictures!

Career Day

A fun presentation I got to do was at Career Day for Pris’ (my wife) niece’s sixth grade class. I was around their age when I decided that I wanted to be an artist in animation. It was rad to show them that being creative is a real career path, because I only discovered it from obsessively watching all the behind the scene clips of my favorite DVDs. We explained to the kids all the different parts of having a career in animation - I talked about the artist side and Pris talked about the production side!

Shout out to all the production workers out there because they are so freaking important! Please thank your production team when you have the chance! They are truly the backbone to a show running smoothly, we would all be lost if it weren’t for them. If you work in animation or film production, and also if you’re specifically my wife, thank you I love you very much (and you should be paid more!!!)

Also, side note - middle school kids are wild, they’re all taller than me but have baby faces. They’re just an insane mashup of an adult and a child. Like two kids in a trench coat, but when you open up the coat and it’s just one awkwardly tall pre-teen.

Riso Comic Workshop

This month I also ran my first Riso Comic Workshop at Nova Community Arts! Another baby’s first! The class sold out super fast so I’m hopefully going to do more in the future! I’m totally doing more, keep an eye out for the April schedule!

Teaching the class was so much freaking fun. I loved giving feedback and notes to really highlight everyone’s voices and stories. I was so proud of everyone’s comic at the end! From someone’s post, “@christinelesantos is an amazing instructor and hoping for a full course with them. THANK YOU, Christine!” Hang on, just gonna run to the club real quick so I can cry in it.

A lil sneak peek of the comic I made, I’ll share the full comic in an upcoming post!

This month was full of teaching moments and it was awesome! I love sharing knowledge, I think that’s why I love film and television. Media has so much power to educate and influence - my parents were so out of the sphere of American culture, television and movies were where I learned how to fit in.

Lunar New Year is fast approaching and I have some really cool projects going on! Here are some sneak peeks of what I’ll be talking about next time!

A dim sum washi tape “You Win Some, You Dim Sum” and red envelope, “Orange You Lucky” that are (now!) available to purchase with Washi Station! I named them! And they were both requested to be stocked at Gallery Nucleus and North Figueroa Bookshop!!! (holy crap!) So, keep an eye out if you’re there!

I’m also a part of the Chunky Things Gallery Show “I’m Home!” in Chinatown, Los Angeles! The art gallery will run from January 27th - February 25th!

On a more serious note, I have added a charity postcard for $5 on my site to raise funds in support of Palestine. All proceeds from the purchase of this print will be donated to provide aide to Palestinians affected by the genocide in Gaza.

Thanks so much for taking the time to read my first newsletter!!! I hope you liked it. If you have any questions or if you would like to leave a comment you can reply to this email or visit the Substack website or app!

Thanks for being here!

-Christine
www.christinelesantos.com