Illustrator Megan Roy on Following Your Gut to Carve Your Career Path
One glance at Megan Roy’s Instagram feed (@roymeister), and you’ll immediately understand her illustration style: colorful, whimsical, and playful. She has an impressive 25.5K followers on Instagram and is the textbook example of a creative who has carved a career path that works for her, on her terms. The biggest lesson I learned from Megan’s story is that your gut feeling should serve as your internal compass. When a career move doesn’t feel right, it probably isn’t, and even if the next best thing isn’t clear to you, taking baby steps can help you move closer to the right fit. Read on to learn more about how Megan became a full-fledged “illustrator” and how the most monotonous 9 to 5 job really did help catalyze her career. Since going freelance as an illustrator, Megan's designs have been carried at Nordstrom, and she recently partnered up with luxe candy brand Sugarfina for a commission project.
What were you like as a kid? Did you know you wanted to be an artist from a young age?
I always liked drawing and art was my favorite subject in school. I wanted to be an artist when I was really little but I moved away from that for a while. I didn’t know anybody who was doing that professionally so I didn’t see it as a viable path in life...The only example of that I had was my art teacher. When I started to age out of that I didn’t know what to do with it so I started looking for other things to do that were creative. By the time that I had applied to college I had landed on film school so I decided I wanted to work on sets, basically. I didn’t have a specific job in mind but I went to school for film and tv production.
Once you graduated from college, what did you start out doing?
At first I was doing production assistant work…I had it in my mind that I wanted to be an Assistant Director. It was interesting to me but I didn’t feel passionate about it. I got a job at a post production house and worked there for a few years and really did not like the culture. That was a real turning point for me because I was miserable. The place I was working at did movie trailers. It was 100% contained to the office and you were never anywhere else. There were a lot of people there that were really difficult to work with, and I decided I wasn’t enjoying it and I needed to find something else to do.
I actually got a job at a middle school as a receptionist and I enrolled in CSUN’s teaching credential program. I did that for a semester, but had that same sort feeling I had at the post production house. I was surrounded by people who were really passionate about education and I was sitting there thinking “I’m not one of you”.
How did illustrating and drawing work its way back into your life?
While I had that job I ended up with a lot of downtime where I was stuck at my desk. I started bringing in sketchbooks and was drawing more to pass the time. I started to make things for myself, and friends started asking if I could do stuff for them. It started expanding from there slowly. I did cards and some commissioned drawings. I think I was at that job for 3 years. In my head I wanted to stay there as long as I could to have that paycheck. Eventually I was like, “I can’t do this anymore” and I decided to go freelance full-time.
I had a little bit of money saved because I knew I had wanted to go full time freelance eventually. The motivation to keep pursuing this, to push really hard, to market myself, to work harder to get more jobs, came from knowing that those resources that I had saved up were almost depleted. It’s so strange, you get that extra push, knowing that you’re on the brink of having nothing.
"The motivation to keep pursuing this, to push really hard, to market myself, to work harder to get more jobs, came from knowing that those resources that I had saved up were almost depleted. It’s so strange, you get that extra push, knowing that you’re on the brink of having nothing."
So once you knew you wanted to pursue becoming an illustrator, what types of actions did you take to get jobs?
I had my brother (a web designer) build me a website. I started reaching out to people blindly- anyone I thought I’d want to work with, I sent them an email. I switched my personal Instagram account over to more of a business account so I started to post stuff that I was working on. I spent a lot of time in the app trying to interact with people and trying to spread my reach organically. I did eventually start to get a lot of business through Instagram. I still have a part time job for a graphic design firm, and then I also work one day a week for a calligrapher and then my third job is my own stuff.
Did momentum come in gradually, or all at once?
Honestly, the second I decided to go freelance full-time my friends and community were so great because they would send me jobs and things that they thought I’d be good for. I applied to literally everything, but it was mostly commissioned projects I started to get. I used to work for Hello Giggles, and the way I got that job is that somebody forwarded me a post looking for freelance illustrators. It just worked out somehow that almost everything I was applying to, I was getting. It was validation for me that I was doing the right thing. It felt like it was meant to be. Stuff just kept happening, bigger and bigger things kept coming to me…It did feel like the pieces fell into place.
"It felt like it was meant to be. Stuff just kept happening, bigger and bigger things kept coming to me. It did feel like the pieces fell into place."
What are some of your big goals for the upcoming year?
One of my big goals is to start selling things wholesale. I’ve been toying with the idea of finding an illustration agent so I don’t have to hustle quite so hard. I find that my creative energy is really drained at the end of the day. I spend most of my day working for someone else and by the time 5:00 rolls around there’s nothing left for me to put into my own business. I would love to reach a point where my own business is 80-90% of what I’m doing instead of 40-50% of what I’m doing.
To see more of Megan's work, check out her site here and her cell phone cases which are sold here.
