Vivienne Medrano

Vivienne Medrano, known online as Vivziepop, is a Salvadoran-American animator, illustrator, comic creator, and voice actress best known for creating the series, Hazbin Hotel, and its spin-off series, Helluva Boss.

She voices the characters Keenie and Deerie, as well as several background characters in Helluva Boss.

Personal Life
Vivienne was born and raised in Maryland. She studied at the School of Visual Arts in New York City starting in 2010, graduating in 2014. In 2016, she attended a two week summer course at Gobelins, L'École de L'Image, school of visual communication and arts in Paris.

In 2012, Vivienne started a webcomic series called Zoophobia. The comic series gained a dedicated fan-following, but went on an indefinite hiatus since November 2016. During her education at SVA, she uploaded her third-year thesis film The Son of 666 (2013) to YouTube, along with her senior thesis film Timber (2014), which won the 2014 Dusty Award.

In October 2014, after graduating from SVA, she uploaded a fan-animated music video to YouTube, featuring Zoophobia character JayJay singing Die Young by Ke$ha. The video currently has over 70 million views. Vivienne talked about it "boosting her channel up" and helping her gain an audience early in her career. That video has now been unlisted, presumably due to copyright reasons.

Career
In 2015, Vivienne had been commissioned to animate for two music videos, Sing Along by and a Five Nights at Freddy's Song by Good Mythical Morning featuring Markiplier, as well as the art for Gooseworx's orchestral cover of Sirius.

In July 2016, she moved to California. Before beginning her development on Hazbin Hotel as a planned tv show, she worked as an animator in the internet series Too Loud! created by Nico Colaleo on DreamworksTV, alongside Ashley Nichols.

Trivia

 * Vivienne stated in a tweet that herself being a proud fiery Latina, Vaggie is the character she related to most in Hazbin Hotel. In the same tweet saying that Vaggie and Charlie are like sides of herself, having an ambitious side and the temperamental wanting to defend herself and others side.
 * Vivienne stated in a tweet that she is the daughter of a Salvadoran immigrant father who worked hard to come to America and make a good living for her and her family, and a mother who has worked three different jobs.
 * She also said in the same tweet that her parents are the ones who inspired her to work hard.
 * Vivienne loves musicals and horror movies/horror aesthetics.
 * Some of her favorite musicals include Annie, which is a musical she fondly recalls getting the lead role in as a child, Little Shop of Horrors, and Hello Dolly.
 * Her media influences include , ', ', ', ', Alan Menken and Howard Ashman era Disney musicals, and ''.
 * She cites darker media and stories containing strong villain characters as something she gravitates towards. The Joker from the 90s' animated Batman series is one of her all-time favorite fictional characters.
 * Another influence she always had is Futurama, saying that she loves how memorable each of its one-off characters are.
 * In an interview on October 17, 2023, Vivziepop stated that her biggest influences are with music, and that with the musical side of things in her series she likes to turn to music for inspiration. She also adds that she adores adaptations of any kind, especially of a pre-existing mythos, or lore, or folklore, and that Hazbin Hotel comes from biblical sources and demonology, with the series being her take on those pre-established things.
 * Vivziepop explained that Broadway is what inspires so much about what she does and is a big influence on her, and that she is a big theater fan.
 * Vivziepop feels that despite animation being where her characters get to be the most expressive, the most of themselves, and where she has the most freedom of casting, she would love someday for there to be a Hazbin Hotel or a Hazbin-related Broadway musical, and that it would be unreal to have characters she made on stage in any way.
 * On January 7, 2015, Vivziepop said  is one of her top favorite shows, and that the show became a huge source of inspiration. Additionally, she said Senketsu is hands down her favorite but she loves Ryuko too.
 * In a tweet Vivienne made with art of herself she listed several things she likes and some things she dislikes, including liking to sing, dance and bury herself in work.
 * In the art of herself she lists liking musicals, dinosaurs, villains, bones, cartoons, hot chocolate, true crime docs, avocado, snakes, whales , cats , owls , eels , and animals, and lists disliking chimpanzees, bacon, moving, cockroaches, creeps, "Juno", and driving in LA.
 * In a reply to that tweet she included a "more accurate" doodle of herself with her likes being bowties and her dislikes being planes.
 * She loves animals.
 * She is a cat person and has three of her own; Pixel, Honey, and Nugget.
 * Vivienne picked up Pixel on October 18th, 2014.
 * As of July 11th, 2020, Vivienne had adopted Nugget.
 * Her favorite color is yellow.
 * Vivienne uses Discord light mode because it is a pretty shade of yellow.
 * Sir Pentious is one of Vivienne's favorite designs of any of her characters partly because of his yellow colors.
 * She is bisexual.
 * She was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). She discusses issues managing such a heavy workload with the disorder, mentioning how it allows her to hyper-focus and get a lot done over short periods of time, before burning out very quickly.
 * Her favorite holiday is Christmas.
 * Her nickname "Big Viv" is in reference to her larger-than-life attitude.
 * She previously worked on Too Loud with cleanup artist Ashley Nichols.
 * She draws on a Wacom Cintiq 22 HD, and she primarily sketches and makes corrections for the shows she works on in Paint Tool Sai.
 * She was featured in 2010, 2011, and 2014 on Drawing Tutorials.com, a YouTube channel started by SVA professor Matthew Archambault, and gave sketchbook tours.
 * Vivienne met several of the voice actors and creative crew, who would eventually be cast in the Hazbin Hotel pilot, several years prior to casting.
 * After Vivienne's Die Young video became successful on YouTube, she was contacted by Mick Lauer, who brought her into his fold of Newgrounds artist friends, inviting her to feature on the MAGFest 2016: Animation Panel with him.
 * She also first met Dave Capdevielle at MAGFest 2016. They became friends, after which Vivienne messaged Dave to ask if he would help out writing on her "hell show". Dave brought his friend, Raymond Hernandez, on board and they wrote the Hazbin Hotel pilot together.
 * Christopher Niosi, who met Vivienne in the School of Visual Arts (and was given special thanks in her thesis film, Son of 666), was the one who suggested Monica Franco for the role of Vaggie, before the pilot had started production, and before casting had even begun.
 * She created the character of Alastor in high school around 2008, making him the earliest known character to be created who later features in Hazbin Hotel.
 * Additionally the characters Arackniss, Husk, Mimzy, and Crymini were created before the end of 2012, with Arackniss first seen in an artwork from 2011.
 * The character of Angel Dust was created at the School of Visual Arts college on February 9, 2013.
 * The character of Charlie was created during her time at the School of Visual Arts.
 * The pilot episode for Hazbin Hotel was set to air on October 28th because it was her birthday.
 * Additionally, the Helluva Boss episode, "MAMMON'S MAGNIFICENT MUSICAL MID-SEASON SPECIAL (ft Fizzarolli)", aired a day after her thirty first birthday.
 * Vivziepop has an official Hazbin Hotel playlist, which contains songs that remind her of characters, scenes, and the show as a whole.
 * Vivziepop has previously cited her dream creative hires for the show as, , Kesha, , , and.
 * She is very particular about how her characters look and sound.
 * She is a big fan of Weird Al Yankovic, as she revealed in Ask Angel Q&A #1.
 * She expressed a wish to have Weird Al voice a character on Hazbin Hotel, although she did not reveal who.
 * When asked if she could hang with any of the characters of Hazbin Hotel, she said she would hang with Charlie and Alastor, as Angel and Husk would be likely to make fun of her.
 * She has unfinished and shelved projects such as the JayJay Returns Fan Animated Music Video, the pilot for her project, and SVA Thesis Film Timber, a musical short film entitled Allison, and a short film with the working title Classic.
 * She used to like Five Nights at Freddy's and even made a drawing video of the animatronics and a Five Nights at Freddy's animation, but she stopped liking it and its creator Scott Cawthon after some discussions on Twitter and getting doxed by a Five Nights at Freddy's fan.
 * Vivienne prefers her characters (excluding the background characters) to have their own unique voice actor. This was one of the reasons given for her recasting the character of Millie from pilot to series in Helluva Boss. She was originally voiced by Erica Lindbeck, who also voiced Loona.
 * As well as animation, Vivienne provided the voice of "Sara with an H" on "Too Loud" among other additional voices, replacing cartoonist Julie Vickerman when the production of Twelve Forever made recording for a show a scheduling conflict.
 * Subsequently, Vivienne later voiced the cat Poopsie St. Poodles in Too Loud creator Nico Colaleo's online series, Ollie and Scoops.
 * Her Impsona has made a cameo in two episodes of Helluva Boss so far. First in "Loo Loo Land", during the scene wherein Loo Loo welcomes Moxxie and Millie to Loo Loo Land, and again in "Spring Broken" as part of the clients falling in line to hire I.M.P for their services.
 * Her Impsona also made a cameo in the ADDICT music video.
 * One of Vivienne's nicknames (and a long-running inside-joke among the Helluva Boss crew), is "the Cashier", originated from her providing a bit-part voice for a nameless cashier in the episode "Murder Family" in Helluva Boss.
 * Vivienne describes Zoophobia as a "mess" because she believed at the time that it would be her "big thing" and so she added "everything" to it, having folklore, urban legends, Hell, aliens, and was set in it's own fictional world, because it was everything she was interested in put into one story.
 * Vivienne revealed that she started creating the main characters of Zoophobia in elementary school, making Zoophobia a part of her childhood.
 * In 2021 Vivienne expressed her desire to return to the Zoophobia comic but in a physical form. In 2023 Vivienne said on stream that she has wanted to explore it's characters again in animation and she wants it to be a comic one day, but unlike the original webcomic, it would be a young adult series that's like an adventure with a much smaller cast.
 * In 2023 Vivienne stated that "aliens" along with Hell and folklore were a part of the added elements for the Zoophobia webcomic. However, in the original webcomic it is said that despite the presence of animals, demons and folk creatures in the World, aliens do not actually exist.
 * On stream Vivienne said that she adores crossovers and would love to have Hazbin Hotel and Helluva Boss crossovers one day, but doesn't know if it will ever be possible.
 * Vivienne tweeted that she has had the "Viv can't take criticism" reputation since she was 17 after she said she wasn't going to take feedback from the badwebcomicswiki for its page about her original Zoophobia webcomic.
 * Vivienne's first ever hangover happened after the Hazbin Hotel pilot screening party, which in "Queen Bee" there is a scene based on after Vivienne and Sam Miller left a bar from that time.
 * Vivienne really likes Country music.
 * She loves Rascal Flatts, but her favorite artist is Kacey Musgraves, adoring her vintage jaunty country sound she captures.
 * In 2023, Vivienne Medrano received a Streamy Creator Honor from Brandon Rogers for being an inspiration to him.
 * When asked if she were a character in the hotel in season one who would she be and why, Medrano answered that she couldn't be any of the characters because they are all cooler than herself.
 * She also explains that she would always joke that she wouldn't fare very well in Hell, but would fare very well with Charlie. Additionally saying that if she was a sinner in this world, Medrano would want to go to the hotel because Charlie would actually be nice to her.
 * Vivziepop explained that she jokingly says that Hazbin Hotel is a "comic book show", which for herself has become an adopted catchphrase for the show, but the comic doesn't physically exist, and instead it exists in her head and has a very intense lore with mysteries, and twists and turns, and arcs for the characters, and big reveals and secret characters to come, and all these things that a traditional comic book would have. She continued by saying that when the writing team get into the writer's room and create the map for the season it's kind of her just info-dumping.
 * According to Sam Haft, Vivienne Medrano talks about Bojack all the time in interviews and in real life.
 * According to Medrano in a tweet, as of December 20, 2023 her proudest personally written episodes are still "Ozzie's", "Oops", and others later in Helluva Boss season two and three.
 * In the same tweet Medrano explains that she feels "Truth Seekers" is one of the most balanced episodes and where she took the most risk, and that it was the episode Brandon let her take the reigns and she felt really confident in it.