Shiyoon Kim

Shiyoon Kim began to draw from the early age of three. Growing up, he consistently practiced drawing, bringing more and more life to each successive doodle that he created. As time progressed onwards, he his artwork improved and he showed a lot of innate talent for it. After seeing his natural proclivity towards drawing, his parents encouraged him to keep on going and even went so far as to move from Massachusetts to California to enroll him in a high school animation program shortly after tenth grade.[1]

The program which Kim entered, was the Rowland R.O.P. Animation Program. The high school's animation program is known for its rigorous creative process, which is similar to the experience of an actual professional animation studio.[2]

Kim credits one of his professors Larry Kurnarsky, with teaching him the importance of a story driven piece. One of the main lessons which Kurnarsky taught Kim, was that everything within a piece of art, or even a collection of art- relates back to the story in one way, shape, or form. Kim even stated that, "Everything he looked at (storyboards, character design, layouts, animation, etc) was in terms of how it is either pushing the story or hindering it." It was the advice of Kurnarsky that prompted Shiyoon Kim to take his first life drawing classes at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena California. After graduating from his high school, Kim decided he wanted to continue his education at CalArts. It was here that he studied the different components of filmmaking and animation. Kim credits the school with teaching him how to create a film, compelled by an intriguing story narrative. [1]

At CalArts, Kim made Leash Boy, and The Fox and the Boy, as his third and fourth year films, respectively. After graduation, Kim worked for Rough Draft Studios on the Futurama DVD box sets. During this time, he also interned at Pixar for Animation, and worked on doing some animation tests with the Ratatouille models, (none of which appeared within the movie). After these jobs he moved on to Disney's Apprentice Program for visual development.[1]

At Disney, Shiyoon Kim has designed characters for films such as: Tangled, Wreck It Ralph, Frozen, and most recently he was the lead character designer on Big Hero 6.

Kim started off his career at Disney working on the Prep & Landing (2009) films where he is credited as working within the art department. After this he moved on to work on Tangled (2010), as an accredited character designer. He also worked on the animated end credits of the film. Following Tangled, he worked on the 2011 version of Winnie-the-Pooh, in the visual development department. Once Winnie-the-Pooh was taken care of he worked on Minkyu Lee's Academy Award-nominated short film Adam and Dog (2011) as an animator and digital colorist. The success only continued as Tangled grew to be so popular, that following the movie the demand for a wedding scene was so large that the creative teams once again had to come together to create a short film, Tangled Ever After. Kim was once again in charge of doing the end credits for the short film. Paperman (2012) was the next short film which he worked on once again as a character designer. Following this, in 2013 he worked on Frozen as the designer of the Duke of Weseltown, and on the short film Feast as a character designer.

In 2014, his magnum opus would be the smash-hit film Big Hero 6, where he was enlisted to be the lead character designer on the film. He worked on all of the characters but he had fun with the two main characters, Hiro Hamada and Baymax, especially.

Most recently he has worked as a character designer for the academy award winning film Zootopia (2016), and the short film Inner Workings (2016). He is credited with designing Zootopia characters such as Mayor Lionheart, Assistant Mayor Bellwether, Flash, Gazelle, and Bonnie and Stu Hopps. Kim would later serve as lead character designer on Sony Pictures Animation's Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse in 2018.[3]

While working as the lead character designer on the film Big Hero 6, Shiyoon Kim worked hard to incorporate Korean characters into the Disney film for the first time in the studio's history. According to Jin Kim, another animator at Disney Animation Studios, Shiyoon Kim had designed the lead characters of Hiro Hamada and Tadashi Hamada as Korean characters in the original drafts. GoGo Tomago was also originally designed to be Korean as well.

Although Shiyoon Kim originally wanted the three main characters to be Korean, the film called for at least one Japanese character to better conform with the comics. Due to this necessity, Kim had no choice but to drop Hiro and Tadashi Hamada's proposed Korean ethnicities, and give them Japanese names instead. Although the film called for making Hiro and Tadashi Japanese, he was able to succeed in making GoGo Tomago Disney's first Korean character.

Even though Hiro and Tadashi Hamada are portrayed as Japanese characters in the film, his original Korean-based character designs are still prominent within the film. In fact, Tadashi Hamada's character design was influenced by Daniel Henney, his Korean-Irish-American voice actor. GoGo Tomago's design was also influenced by her Korean-American voice actress, Jamie Chung.

Nominated for the 42nd Annual Annie Awards for Character Design in an Animated Production for Big Hero Six (2014).[4]

When I'm designing my characters for my short films I try to have a solid understanding of my whole story and the relationship my characters have to it. I will ask myself who are these characters and what role do they play in my story? What is their personality? I'm constantly drawing sketches to explore the character while also thinking about who they are and how they will move and act. It also helps to go and do a lot of research on whatever character or thing you are designing. Through this process I'm trying to stay rough and loose because I know towards the end it will get tighter and tighter. Most of the time I'm just trying to find that drawing with the most appeal and character. A lot of times the difference between an appealing drawing and one that's not as appealing is simply the subtle spacing between proportions.[1]

Towards the end, I start tying down my character. I start asking myself what style of animation I am going for in my film? Since I'm probably going to do most of the animation of the characters myself, I will try and find the most economical way of drawing my characters without losing the "character" or appeal? At this point, the perfect situation would be to do experimental animation with my designs.[1]

I think the fun part comes with coming up with ideas and characters. The hardest part for me is still learning how to draw well. I don't think there have been any easy parts of designing for me.[1]

Growing up I think I always wanted to become an artist just because of the fact I had fun drawing. I wanted to do something that I enjoyed, so I realized being an artist was someone that drew so I decided to want to become that.[1]

• Official website
• Shiyoon Kim at IMDb