Ashley Stoddard

My name is Ashley Stoddard, she/her, and I’ve been an artist in the animation & games industries for over 10 years. Most of my work has been in house for studios and I’ve gotten good at building strong teams & work pipelines. Personally, I love working on fantasy IPs and anything that involves dragons. I’ve lived all across the country and love a good waterfall.

In a sentence, how would you describe your work?
I’d describe my work as adaptable - whatever a client needs, I can do!

Do you have any favorite themes you enjoy working with?
When I’m painting plein air, I love some strong sunlight to really dig into cool/warm contrasts.

What mediums do you like to work in?
I’m most comfortable in Photoshop, but I beat my head against gouache when I’m painting outside.

If you were an environmental storytelling skeleton, how do you think you'd be found?
If I were an environmental storytelling skeleton, I’d be buried on a bed of tea leaves, surrounded by my favorite mugs and a really weird collection of small animal skeletons and fancy TTRPG dice.

Do you have a dream project you'd like to work on someday?
I’ve already worked on TWO of my dream projects - The Legend of Vox Machina and The Mighty Nein! But if I could, I’d love to work on an animated adaptation of EXU: Calamity or World Beyond Number’s The Wizard, The Witch, and The Wild One.

What drew you to the imagery of the feathers?
Feathers are something that I doodle a lot and I was looking for something that could create a subtle, asymmetric pattern. It wasn’t a big jump to sketch out some feathers and put some abstract swooshy shapes in there and bam.

Can you talk a little about your design process? Where do you draw your inspiration from, and how do you work shop your design from draft to final?
I submitted a couple designs for consideration, and they were all very different from each other. The other 2 designs were more illustrative, and drew from my love of the mountains and fantasy. Once the final design was picked, it was pretty straightforward to clean up the design in Illustrator for final delivery. The trickiest bit is always translating digital color to physical color, but Zoe & the DFTBA team did an amazing job!

Do you have a favorite feature of the sock design?  
I’m glad our manufacturer nailed the subtle color changes I was looking for! I wanted a design that was unique, but not loud, and I think we achieved that.

Ankle or crew socks for preference? 
Crew! My ankles get cold otherwise.

For more of Ashley's art, visit their portfolio or Instagram!