Today we’d like to introduce you to Joshua Kang.
Hi Joshua, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I’m a 1st generation Korean-American L.A. native that moved into a low-income community in the San Fernando Valley at the age of four. I think you start to walk the path of becoming a strange and potentially interesting person when you’re raised by a single mother & an older sister in a social environment where you’re the only Asian in sight. You grow up around a multitude of people different from you who simultaneously exclude, befriend, and challenge you, and all of these flavors get shaken up into an excellent cultural cocktail that you sip on for the rest of your life.
I’m an artist through and through. I grew up on Garfield comics from the public library, Pokemon on the Gameboy, & you bet your ass I drew them all the time. I kept drawing through my adolescence: I drew comics, designed characters, and made stories. When I was a teenager, I picked up breakin -widely known as breakdancing- which fed my soul and helped me through some of the darkest times of my life; I’ve been practicing it for over a decade now. I loved drawing, dancing and just constantly being creative. But life challenges us and I stopped drawing for a long time. Take my word for it as a professional artist: drawing and learning how to draw well is really f*cking hard. It takes years to get decent and then even longer to master it.
Drawing was a centerpiece of my identity but a lot went down during my adolescence, and it felt like I didn’t have nearly enough mental bandwidth and resources to create and improve past a certain point. At times, it even felt impractical, like a waste of time. I love my family and I’ve always wanted them to be well. We’d lost almost everything when I was just a child, and I’ve always felt an immense pressure and sense of duty to bring lasting positive change to my family that nobody else would or could. I felt that I needed to do something… “purposeful” to support my family. There’s this whole narrative of the “starving artist” and that “working long hours doing things you don’t enjoy is what being an adult is” that’s probably still being told in households around our country. Unfortunately, I bought into this narrative for a while – no, actually, it was all I knew. I didn’t know any better and nobody told me otherwise.
Fortunately, my family & culture have always highly valued education, so I think I was just diligent, lucky, & fortunate enough to attend college on full grants. University was an entire adventure in itself where I was forced to confront and study myself versus my actual areas of study. After I graduated, I wandered quite a bit doing random jobs here and there, but it was always around art – I couldn’t stay away from it, ever. I did handiwork in an art gallery, sales in fine art, cashiering, streetwear design, and practiced graphic design for some years… until I started watching animation again as an adult.
Today, I work in animation at Dreamworks as an entry-level artist that revises storyboards. It’s the 2nd greatest accomplishment in my life. I’m 30 now, and I was 27 when I decided that I would become a professional storyboard artist in animation or die trying. Needless to say, I wasn’t one of those kids who grew up knowing that they wanted to pursue animation as a career. I didn’t even know it was a career available to me. I didn’t go to Disneyland, see a zoetrope, ask my dad, “wow, can I do that, too?!”, and then be told “sure, son! You can do anything! You can be anything!” In fact, growing up, I didn’t even know that these jobs and opportunities even existed – it’s like they were hiding in plain sight.
Aside from the fact that these types of information and resources are available more freely in certain socioeconomic levels, I feel that a large part of it had to do with thinking that someone like me wasn’t even allowed to be in that sphere. Only… “a certain type of people” were. Color, status, y’know where I’m getting at. I started watching animation again in my late 20s and found great joy and comfort in it. Things had become a bit more stable now that I was an adult that could make financial decisions for himself and support those around him. All of the effort and work had gotten me somewhere and allowed my family and I to find some financial footing. I returned to a rhythm of enjoying art and animation on a daily basis. It felt that I’d earned it. That I’d done enough to merit a lifestyle that could allow what I perceived as luxuries. One day, a cartoon that I was watching noticeably shifted in quality on multiple levels and I obsessively needed to know why. From there, I learned about the animation pipeline for the first time and learned what storyboarding was. I was in love. Since that moment, I’ve always wanted to be involved in professional storyboarding and haven’t looked back since. On the eve of 2020, I decided to do the whole “2020 is gonna be my year!” thing and began practicing drawing and storyboarding on the daily. I enrolled for classes and funded myself through them. Then, we all got blindsided by the pandemic only three months into the new year. I think everyone has their own truly unique version of how they pushed through those uncertain years and a valid experience of wading through that darkness. Mine was to chart a plan towards my overarching goal of becoming a professional in Animation, keep my head down, and continue walking towards it (or crawl if I had to – and I did indeed crawl at times). The obstacles were copious, but my persistence was and still is endless.
And my greatest accomplishment? Keeping my family off the streets before, during, and after the pandemic. Yes, this is a flex. It wasn’t easy.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Hell no. I’ve hit so many roadblocks. At times, it’s felt like I’ve driven uphill with four flat tires and a trailer in tow. I grew up struggling with & continue to struggle with a colorful variety of mental health issues. It honestly sucks and can often get to a point of feeling torturous at times, but I’ve learned a great deal and am still learning how to approach myself in a healthy manner. Medication & therapy have both greatly helped with this. These struggles haven’t come without some benefit though. I believe that as one chooses to challenge and overcome each instance of adversity, rewards will present themselves regardless of request. As I’ve overcome and continue to progress, I’ve found in myself a reliable resilience, tenacity, a heightened sensitivity towards the emotions of others, and authentic ways to communicate.
Climbing out of a bucket of crabs can be a slow and challenging process. I believe many of the more difficult challenges that I’ve endured stem from socioeconomic differences that I’ve lived through. Because you can’t easily reach your full potential starting at a young age when money is scarce and food is hard to find on the table. Simultaneously, your parents or guardians probably wouldn’t be having a great time either or even have enough time to help you grow if they wanted it. These things contribute to a maddening level of instability. Now imagine a bunch of people & stunted families going through this all at once and put them all in one city. And then living in it? Yeah. Well, I’m still living in the same place that I mentioned earlier, by the way. I love it in a special way, but I wouldn’t mind some new scenery, y’know? But change takes time and the aftermath of poverty sticks around for a long time and demands to be experienced.
“You ever notice how people who have money think that money isn’t important?” – Ali Wong in Netflix’s Beef
Yes, I’m working in one of the world’s top animation studios now, but unfortunately, it doesn’t instantly evaporate the effects of everything that I’ve mentioned above. As I continue my journey in the animation industry, there are many instances in which I’ve felt large gaps in privilege and socioeconomic chasms that serve as reminders of the detours that I perceive I was funneled into to get to where I am now. Frankly, stepping into the animation industry for the first time, which I do consider to be a privileged sphere, felt a bit alienating as the contrast between the cultures that I was used to and the ones that others have lived in since their youth was incredibly stark. I’ve put in a lot of effort to and probably even overcompensated at times to make it feel less so. I’ve always disliked feeling alienated as it’s felt like an inescapable shadow looming over me. It’s important to note that everyone takes a different path to get to where they are, and I acknowledge and have made peace with that fact; I can only work harder to overcome the years that I feel that I missed out on to get here, but the most crucial reality is that I’m here now. Nobody is responsible for my present and future except for me. Let me be clear: I am NOT sharing these things to discount the hard work that my fellow creatives have put in to be at this grand destination; they’re brilliant & deserve all of the success they’ve earned. It’s a monumental task to develop the skills to become a professional artist in animation, and I applaud, celebrate, & admire every hard-working artist that’s stepped foot into this world. This isn’t a sob story to garner sympathy – this is what’s real to me, and I want to share it with you, reader, as closely to how I’ve experienced it as possible. Because it’s my interview, and I’ll say what I want to, haha. I don’t resent those who come from more privileged backgrounds than me (unless they act and speak in tone-deaf mannerisms that invalidate the lives of the less fortunate). If they come from a more comfortable background? Good for them, truly. Because I am privileged, too. Privilege is a wide spectrum, and we’re all living on it.
I’m truly grateful for my life. There’s a lot to appreciate, and I’ll always be putting in the effort to keep a positive trend going. I’m so happy to be working where I am now as it’s literally a dream come true, and this career is one of the grandest things that I’ve played a large part in forging with my own two hands. Drawing professionally in Animation is one of my greatest joys in life, and being able to share that joy with my passionate peers and loved ones just makes the experience all the sweeter. I’m also very glad that my mom has obtained supreme bragging rights about me.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
If you’re still here after reading through all of that: props & thank you for sticking around. I think one of my favorite things about working in animation is the community. The story team that I work with is incredible and the passion that circulates throughout our squad is endless. Those surrounding me have a bottomless hunger to learn and are simultaneously generous with their knowledge and supportive of the craft; I truly admire them. Despite my feelings of alienation that I described earlier, the people that I work with have never added onto it. Although I may come from a slightly different background – even though we ALL come from different backgrounds – our passion for art and story serves as a powerful common denominator. We are all birds of a feather.
Is there anyone you’d like to thank or give credit to?
My mentor, Leah Artwick! She’s an outstanding human being and an incredible storyteller who has immensely supported my growth as a storyboard artist. I met her through the amazing non-profit organization Rise Up Animation – a group dedicated to supporting people of color in their endeavors towards working in Animation. She’s currently a Supervising Director at Disney TV Animation and goated at Dreamworks. I’m proud to call her my mentor and friend.
My current teammates, whom I learn so much from every week and accept me for who I am. Who are so open-handed with their knowledge and expertise. They’re a grand group to spend my first experiences in animation with.
Most importantly, my mom who – through all of her sacrifice- has always supported my future. My decision to stray away from art and drawing years ago was my own ignorant, innocent effort to commit myself to giving back to her a fraction of what she’s offered me. But now, I can give back in addition to living my dream. Check us out, 엄마, we did it!
Pricing:
- $1,000,000 Doodle Commission
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joshzots/
Image Credits
All me, baby
