Larissa Brown

Illustrator, cartoonist, and educator Larissa Brown strives to create joyous and playful imagery while teaching students young and old how to do the same. After earning a BFA in Fine Arts at California State University, Fullerton, Larissa continued her education at the Animation Guild and The Animation Academy. She later returned to CSUF and the Animation Academy to begin her career as an educator.

Since then, she’s taught at companies such as New Masters Academy, Cartoon Network, LinkedIn and Google. She also taught as an adjunct faculty for over a decade in the Animation and Illustration departments at Laguna College of Art + Design. She is now an adjunct instructor at Saddleback College and Orange Coast College.

Larissa is the founder of OC Art Studios, an art enrichment company that she began from her garage teaching a handful of students which grew to include a dozen instructors teaching at elementary schools all across Orange County. Over the course of the pandemic, she shifted from teaching young students in the classroom to developing portfolio preparatory courses online for high school and college aged students. She’s offered over 500 full scholarships to Black art students all over the world and has partnered with Twitter to offer another 100 mentorships to Black artists.

Larissa worked as a Character Designer for Nickelodeon’s Rocket Power and Rugrats TV shows and has illustrated almost a dozen books for Nickelodeon’s licensed properties, including Rugrats All Grown Up, The Wild Thornberrys, and Avatar: The Last Airbender.

Her debut graphic novel, Blake Laser, is an epic 24th century science fantasy graphic novel about a biracial girl who is unaware of her genius and has to save the planet from aliens.

Larissa’s favorite color is yellow because it’s the color of joy and she loves to share that joy of connection with warm hugs.  She also loves to dance but no one should ever hear her sing.