Today we’d like to introduce you to Kaho Kubo.
Kaho, we’d love to hear your story and how you got to where you are today both personally and as an artist.
I was the first kid in my Japanese family to be born and raised in the US and grew up in a family centered around my younger brother who has severe autism. I grew up in San Jose at the same time tech giants like Google and Facebook were appearing around the city and slowly growing into huge empires of their own.
But even with the huge focus on technology, I wanted to pursue a career of art as a child, especially animation. (I clearly remember telling my mother that I wanted to be “the person who moves Pikachu” when watching “Mewtwo Strikes Back” at the age of six.)
But growing up and caring for my autistic brother and not having the time or personal space to study art, I honestly wasn’t super confident in my artistic skills and wavered a lot as I grew older and had no idea how to get into animation. I went to Pepperdine University for my undergrad and studied set design for theatre to possibly take my first steps into becoming an Imagineer at Disneyland as a compromise. But during the time I was an undergrad, I was lucky enough to meet amazing artists who worked in animation who rekindled my passion for it. Right after I graduated, I quickly switched gears and studied animation and storyboarding at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco and continued on to a story apprenticeship at Sony Pictures Animation. I’m now at Disney TV working as a story revisionist on “Elena of Avalor”.
We’d love to hear more about your art. What do you do and why and what do you hope others will take away from your work?
To simply put it, I make storyboards for film and television, which is part of the first couple of steps to visualizing a show. To explain it a bit more, storyboard artists draw hundreds of drawings to help visualize a film or a TV script to show what a scene will look like or how a shot will move while still telling a good story. I personally enjoy doing this for the fact that I’ve been able to help people start to tell their stories through film. There are stories out there that would change the world if they were told, and being able to help those stories come to life is the fun of what I get to do.
I hope that people take away a tiny bit of the fun I’m having through my art. Be it a personal project or a collaborative one, a tragedy or a comedy, I hope that people take away some of the fun I’m having being able to work on these projects.
How can artists connect with other artists?
This is just my perspective as a person just starting out in the animation industry, but I think that some advice would be to be humble and professional when meeting with other artists. Also, don’t be scared of reaching out to people. As long as you’re respectful of peoples’ time and you’re professional about it, animation people are willing to reach back out.
And this might be advice for this day and age, but be active on social media! There are tons of artists out there that the only reason they can’t meet with you in person is because of distance. And I think social media really helps connects artists no matter what the distance.
Do you have any events or exhibitions coming up? Where would one go to see more of your work? How can people support you and your artwork?
Follow me on Instagram @kahokubo to see more stuff by me. Working in storyboarding is a bit interesting since the actual drawings that are done will sometimes never see the light of day. If you do want to see storyboards I have done, you can also check out my website: kahokubo.wixsite.com/story.
Contact Info:
- Website: kahokubo.wixsite.com/story
- Instagram: @kahokubo
Image Credit:
Kaho Kubo
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