Alumni Profile: The Parkin Way

Santa Monica College (SMC) alum Miranda Parkin is an award-winning voiceover artist and professional animator, but life hasn’t always been smooth sailing in finding their place in the world.

“I’ve been drawing for as long as I could hold a pen,” said Santa Monica College (SMC) alum Miranda Parkin who uses she/they pronouns. They are an award-winning voiceover artist and the newest member of the animation studio Surfer Jack.

Parkin, 21, perched atop a cushion on the floor as they smiled warmly, fringed by their curly pageboy haircut and bold thick, black-rimmed glasses on the tip of their nose. A string guitar rested against the walls of Parkin’s studio, which are lined with a dozen vintage postcards and Guillermo del Toro's Shape of Water movie poster. "I don't really have my own art up, but I will actually be changing that," said Parkin.

Shuttled between two artist parents from the age of three, Parkin lived in a world filled with laughter, inventiveness, and uncertainty. “My dad would take me to museums and camping up and down the coast, and I would draw everything I saw around me,” they said.

Parkin grew up in the Mar Vista neighborhood in Los Angeles. Their father, Scott Parkin, a voiceover artist and teacher, strived to cultivate his daughter’s ebullient imagination. “I’m just always trying to set the table for her as best as I can because I constantly feel a tremendous responsibility to her,” he said. “She has such an amazing brain. I have to feed it.”

Throughout their childhood and early adulthood, Parkin struggled to find stable ground, internalizing the turbulent relationship of her divorced parents. Fluctuating between depression and tremendous anxiety, Parkin suffered from chronic panic attacks which often spiraled into despair.

In their freshman year at Santa Monica High School, Parkin’s depression became completely debilitating. “I was often outwardly happy, as depressed people often are, but I was just at a horrible place because I didn’t feel like I had anything to contribute,” they said.“I was just really lost.”

Parkin missed over 162 days of school that year – though they still managed to graduate with honors.

Denise, Parkin’s mother, is a singer/songwriter with two master's degrees, one in psychology and another in music theory. Parkin inherited their mother’s musical genes as they have perfect pitch. They can hear a piece of music, or a vocal sound, and mimic it perfectly. Parkin’s father put that into context. “I can teach her an accent and she’ll be better than me at that accent very quickly,” he said.

Parkin has been working as a voiceover actor since the age of five. “My dad is my best friend. He’s incredibly supportive. I’m lucky,” they said.

But what Parkin loved more than anything else was drawing. As the art kid, they would often draw their classmates’ projects. “It was a way for me to relate to people because everyone likes art,” they said. “Everyone likes a pretty picture.”

In junior and senior year of high school, Parkin started taking concurrent art courses at SMC. They recalled how they were a 16-year-old in a class of “all grownups” taking animation and character design courses.

Parkin explained the reasons they chose to take courses at SMC. “Not only was it inexpensive, but also my professors were incredible. They were all still working in the industry,” they said. ”These guys have worked on shows and movies that I know and like."

“Miranda was one of those students I didn't have to worry about, because I knew she could do the assignments and tackle whatever challenges that came her way,” said SMC animation and storyboard professor Ewald Klautky.

“She blew me away with the last assignment in my storyboarding class," Klautky said. The assignment was to make an animatic set to music. Most students chose a movie score or a song they liked, but Miranda composed and then sang her own music for the project. “This is on top of her exceptional drawing,” he said.

Professor Klautky still uses Parkin's animatics in his classes, and so Parkin's art “lives on to inspire the next wave of students," he said.

Parkin and their dad have an animated pilot that they created called "Comet Casino." It features Maurice LaMarche and Tara Strong.

“There is just such a non-linear connection in the way her brain works,” Parkin’s father said. “The comedian Pat McCormick once said that ‘Beethoven was so deaf he thought he was a painter’, well Miranda has that kind of brain.” In 2021, the Society of Voice Arts and Sciences awarded Parkin with the Best Voiceover Award for Outstanding Commercial in TV or Web.

Sitting in their studio, Parkin was thoughtful. “This is the thing that I do the most, and I love the most, and I want to keep doing [it] for as long as I possibly can,” they added. Navigating life hasn’t become entirely easy for Parkin, but art remains a refuge as they continue to wrestle with mental health and finding their place in the world.

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