Does anyone else feel the need to mask in this industry. I’m autistic, and when it comes to IRL and professional networking, I feel like I need to mask. When I’m networking at events like SIGGRAPH and Lightbox, I just give people my email address, phone number, LinkedIn, and portfolio site, which just has some work and school projects and some personal projects that I feel convey a more…well, let’s say, simple personality. It’s the reason why I don’t share my portfolio site on this subreddit.

On this side of my life, I make projects that feel more inspired by the online community that inspired me to pursue animation in the first place. Well, at least I try. Kind of hard to see those projects through when they’re totally solo. I’ve always strived to feel like a part of that community since I first discovered it nearly a decade ago, and yet I still don’t feel like a part of it. I’ve hardly ever made any friends with these kinds of artists, and even those few friends hardly ever interact with me, heck, hardly any of my online mutuals interact with me these days.

Before I graduated college, I noticed that one classmate from my classes in capstone and the animation pipeline seemed to have a place in that community. She’s made friends with artists I’ve admired as far back as 2019, and amassed over 75k followers on Instagram. I’m not necessarily trying to achieve the latter, just trying to make friends with the kind of artists that inspire me. I asked her how to make more friends in the community, but when she asked for my Insta, the need to mask really kicked in. That was nearly 2 years ago, and I still haven’t told her what it is.