Haein Kim

0:00Me it's time now to meet our very first speaker hane kim is a creative who's kept us laughing for a good few years now with her hilarious animated shorts produced in collaboration with paul rhodes as well as her witty illustrations anyone who hasn't seen her short film peeping from a couple of years ago you really should she's joining us tonight to talk through her distinctive character designs which are a fundamental part of every project she takes on.

0:23But it's also worth saying before she said we say hello to her hain is based in sydney and it is currently about 20 past three in the morning so we did say that a talk at 3am was probably a bit too much to ask but hain being the hero that she is she was up for the challenge and we're very very pleased that she was up for that challenge and so hey if you wouldn't mind turning your audio and video on.

0:41So we can say hello that'd be awesome hi how are you doing so it's three in the morning there how many coffees have you had I had four are you feeling okay I feel a bit jittery but I think it's gonna be okay amazing okay well again thank you so much for joining yeah like in the middle of the night for you we really do appreciate it I'm sure our audience does as well I'm gonna leave you now to share your screen and start your presentation.

1:11And then I'll duck away I'll disappear and then I'll come back in in 10 or so minutes once you're done yeah yeah over to you let's do it okay all right guys let me just click share all right. So hello everybody can you guys see it yeah all good yeah all good okay cool so as matt introduced me my name's hayne I am an australian illustrator and animator based in sydney normally I'd be working from my studio space in chippendale next to a banging pub with some other creatives but unfortunately due to the current crisis I am working from my studio space here yeah.

1:53So I guess we'll just get right back into it.

1:56So I'm going to be talking about my character design process and just about characters and stuff in general so I guess I'll give a bit of history about me I come from a background of animation which I studied at the university of technology sydney there I met my current partner paul rhodes who is like a big collaborator with me with my animation projects and as you can see on the screen currently this is a few selection of work that we've made together but first off I'm going to be talking to you guys about a short film I made in 2017 called peepin which I made with paul oops so this is a short that paul and I created it's about three primary school girls that discover something naughty at the back building a little sneak peek or something that they see in the back building yeah.

2:52So I guess with this film we just wanted it to be about we wanted the show we wanted the film to be resin sorry brain 3 a.m we wanted the short film to be resonating with australian asian con the australian asian community and so this is a picture of me on the right with my younger sister basically with the film we wanted it to be kind of about that culture of growing up in suburbia here in australia as an asian so the three main characters are asian australian we wanted it to be about like you know growing up with my mom packing me kimbap for lunch across with getting canteen food that's got like tin can tin foil lasagna and no hat no play and all that kind of goodness so yeah let's just talk about the character designs so these are our three main characters as you can see kimmy k star of the show in the center very very bossy very very confident doesn't even care that her skirt's upside down and she's showing it all off to the world she's off there telling off dorian on the left and then you've got jaylee there on the top of the slide just looking very timid and scared on the top so let's talk about the character designs our main protagonist is dorian here on the right.

4:36So dorian is like a bit of a lonely weirdo who's got a real sweet disposition and she just can't figure out how to make friends so yeah as you can see there's quite a lot of iteration with the characters on the left so there's only two there right now.

4:51But I would like to point out that I did do heaps and heaps of iterations for this character and actually all my characters with all my character work I actually do like pages and pages of just sketches and iterations of drawings and I think that's kind of important in coming up with a good character design I think it's better to do more iterations than trying to perfect that one initial drawing but yeah anyway about dorian she loves kimmy k she hates kimmy k and she hates being called fatty bomba yeah.

5:26So then we've got jaylee over here she's your classic pushover she's she loves social approval she loves god's approval she loves kimmy's approval and she loves lip smackers because let's be real here who doesn't like what smackers when you're in primary school I don't know if that's like an australian thing but liz marcus was huge when I was in primary school yeah she hates smelly things like boys and sinners and as you can see she also went through quite a lot of iterations to get to her final design but yeah let's talk about the star of the show miss kimmy k so kimmy k is larger than life she's the biggest bully in town and she's just kind of this like this magnetic character that everyone wants to either be friends with or just be she loves herself she loves attention and she loves thinking that she's more intelligent than her peers a little bit about kimmy k she actually is very very very much inspired by my older sister jane so jane would probably be super mad at me and yeah she'd be very bad that I have this picture of her up on the internet for you all to see but whatever as you can see she's got very very strong resemblance with the character design with kimmy k but not only was her inspiration the character design inspiration she was also the personality behind kimmy k so growing up jane was that person to me that figure that everybody wanted to be friends with she was like the biggest I guess she was like the biggest bully in my life but she was also incredibly funny so like growing up she would call me stuff like fatty bumba she'd call me like I think she even called me period stain once at like one point which is a weird one but anyway she like in hindsight it's just so so funny so if you watch the film you'll see that kimmy k's speech is like peppered with phrases that jane used to call me yeah. So that film did really really well and that allowed me to work on this really cool short item with uniqlo and you guys that it's nice that so uniqlo wanted me to do like a short item that is about the new fleece collection and they wanted it to encapsulate the feeling of like warmth comfort and security and all that kind of goodness and to me that was something that I associate like those words I associate with my mom so I decided to make a short film. That's about like a mom and daughter duo and their mom is representative of that fleece collection and the daughter is the daughter is representative of the wearer who gets the benefits of the mother figure and that's the picture of me on the left with my mom and that's a character designs that we ended up with on the right.

8:25So a little bit about the film it starts off with the two characters doing japanese radio calisthenics at a park and then they just chill out and stuff and then they come across this really mean angry cat that scares the daughter and then the mom being the hero that she is comes and saves the day and scares away the cat by literally becoming like a big angry dog so I guess the inspiration for this was like growing up my mom was that like like growing up me and my sisters would cower and fear from like cockroaches and all these creepy bugs and stuff and my mom would come and save the day and just kill the offending bug and to this day I still don't have that courage in me if I see anything that calls I will probably cry and so I asked my mom like where did you get that courage to like be able to kill these bugs and stuff and to my astonishment she said that she's never. Actually like gotten over here for her fear but it's the fact that her kids are in need and she just becomes the person she needs to become in order to defend her children and yeah hopefully you can see that across in the film. Anyways this is this is some character designs from a short film that I'm working currently on with paul it's about a jaded couple that's just trying to make it in life and just try to be somebody but yeah I can't really talk too much about it because we're still workshopping it.

10:02But I just mentioned it because they're actually based on these characters that you can see on the right but along with those characters came along this really really great character the green character here so let's talk about this character his name's kevin aka shrek at the time paul and I like were really weirdly obsessed with like really shrek merch and I think I found like a shrek number two hat on ebay and I just thought it was hilarious. And we wanted to make a character out of this.

10:35So we got that.

10:37And then we got a friend that we knew at the time.

10:39And then merged them together to come up with kevin aka shrek so kevin is your classic third wheeler he's extremely loyal and he's just like incredibly funny but just constantly overstepping boundaries because he just doesn't realize that he is and yeah he's just constantly getting mistaken for being shrek which he finds incredibly annoying but it comes in useful when he's at parties and stuff because everyone treats him like a c grade celebrity yeah.

11:12I just wanted to mention it because I think he's really funny but I'm not sure if we're gonna make anything with him currently but he'll be in the vault yeah.

11:23So I'll just talk a little bit about this comic that I worked on during this whole covered period jumbo press is like a really cool rizzo studio based in barcelona in spain and they approached me to make a short comic about cuteness and evilness and I already had this idea in my head of like a lonely manic spider woman who like kidnaps women off the street to enlist as a new bff and it never works out because that's not how you make friends but anyways I just couldn't really figure out how the look and style of this comic would be until a few weeks before the covert lockdowns I was at a local gig and I saw this really cool band called void and they're like a really cool all girl band australian band punk rock I just really really love their look with like the bleach fringe and like the black latex and the patterns and all that stuff so that was quite important to me and hopefully you can see that through come through through the the comic and the look of the comic yes I guess what I'm trying to get at is that inspiration for my designs can come from anywhere whether it be a band that I saw a few weeks back or whether it's like merch that you find in the local chinatown or yeah even just like people that you know it doesn't have to be through research that you find online I think it's kind of interesting to draw influences from like people that you know or like like from just around for example I was watching this really cool film with paul like a few weeks back it's called from dusk till dawn and I just really liked it because it's about like demons and vampires and like it's just the craziest film like quentin tarantine is in it and he gets like a whole shot through his like his hand and stuff and yeah.

13:26I just really wanted to do an illustration on that.

13:32So yeah I did came up with this one on the right I guess that's all I have for today guys thanks for listening to me thanks very much sorry if I jumbled it all up because it's so late no honestly don't worry I think everyone is like amazed that you managed to stay awake this long so amazing work yeah thank you so much you can stop sharing your screen now I've just got a couple of questions that have come through from from the audience but yeah it's interesting someone someone just put in the chat I don't know if you saw it but please make something with kevin was one of the requests so I think you have to do that next and before I let you leave and grab some much earned sleep just a couple of questions from our audience really.

14:15And this one came in from harley what kinds of personal work have you found yourself creating within lockdown I guess you showed us a couple of projects there but are there any things that have changed about your kind of process while you've been in lockdown not really I've been like just listening to like fan read harry potter books online and just like just doodling I'm like really obsessed with harry potter at the moment so I might do like harry potter fan art I mean that sounds like a fantastic use of time yeah fair enough and another a slightly more serious question I guess someone asked have you got any advice on combating self-doubt as a freelance creative I guess it's something that lots of people suffer from as a freelance creative you know you're doing a lot of work on your own and putting it out there. And I guess it can make you quite vulnerable yeah is there any any tips on kind of combating self-doubt I think you just gotta do it right like I suffer with the same thing and like I think you just need to keep putting work out there and eventually you'll just get closer to what you want to be like putting out do you know what I mean so like even if it's not to your standard right.

15:21Now I think if you keep working at it you're just gonna eventually get there but you just need to put the work in cool that sounds great well listen thank you again so much for joining in the middle of the night I'm gonna ask you now to turn your audio and video off and you can please get some sleep