Today we’d like to introduce you to Yuriko Oto
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I’ve always been into animation and art, but it didn’t click in my head that I could make a career out of being an artist in animation until my mom showed me an article about Dice Tsutsumi, a Japanese artist at Pixar at the time, who started a project called Sketchtravel where a single sketchbook was passed around to artists around the world, eventually ending with the legendary Hayao Miyazaki. Being from Japan and growing up on Ghibli films, that piqued my interest, and finding a Japanese person working as a professional artist in the American animation industry really inspired me.
I didn’t have a portfolio ready to apply to private art schools nor could I afford it, but I learned that a couple state schools offer animation programs and landed on San Jose State University. I learned all of my art foundations there and took a variety of classes like 3D modeling and animation, before focusing on visual development/illustration. To this day, I’ve worked with SJSU alumni on every project I’ve worked on in the animation industry.
The summer before my final year I landed an internship at The Monk Studio in Bangkok, Thailand, where I got to help with a color script on a feature film they were developing. It was such a crazy experience since I was the first student from our program to do an internship abroad so there was a lot of unknown logistics to figure out beforehand, and then I was suddenly working and living like a Bangkok local for nearly 3 months. It was one of the greatest opportunities of my life and I feel so lucky to have had that experience!
After graduating in 2017, burnt out from school and not ready to face the real world yet, I moved in with my grandparents in the countryside of Mie, Japan and lived there for 7 months. While I was there I kept working on my portfolio, picked up gouache painting, and started making art for fun again instead of for grades. That really paid off, since a few months after I returned to the US and moved to LA without a job, those gouache paintings I did in Japan caught the eye of my first Art Director who hired me as a Visual Development Artist at Dreamworks TV Animation, starting my career as an artist in animation.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
I still struggle with imposter syndrome, but looking back at the grand scheme of things I would say the beginning of my career was relatively smooth. Of course I worked extremely hard to get here, but I was also really fortunate to graduate during a period of the animation streaming boom- it seemed like there was an abundance of projects with all the studios churning out shows for Netflix. 2 years later I got the opportunity to work on my first feature film, which was my career goal since I decided to study animation in high school and I thought I had “made it”.
However, the industry has really slowed down in the years since Covid and it has been a difficult period for many animation artists, including myself. A project I was really excited for and was given the opportunity to help develop was cancelled, and I’ve been unemployed for 10 months now. It makes me nervous, but I have many peers who are also unemployed so I know I’m not alone in this. The threat of AI to our industry is another big issue, but all I can do for now is keep making art and stay hopeful for more projects in 2025.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I’m still not quite sure what I specialize in, since I feel like my strength is my ability to adapt and be able to do whatever is thrown at me. There are a ton of talented artists out there, so I try to set myself apart by being flexible and as easy to work with as possible. I’ve done pretty much everything an artist can do in the animation pipeline aside from character design; one unexpected assignment was designing the eyeballs of the three Krakens in the film Ruby Gillman Teenage Kraken. It made it onto the first page of the film’s art book, which was so cool to see! I’m really proud of the work I did on Ruby Gillman, not only because it was my first feature film but because of the opportunity to work with Pierre Olivier Vincent (Production Designer on the How To Train Your Dragon films, one of my favorite franchises) who I learned so much from and I just had such a great time on that production.
In my personal work I like to create paintings based on places I’ve been, most recently focusing on creating illustrations inspired by my time spent in the outdoors. Last year I got back into traditional mediums, painting in gouache again and experimenting with watercolor and colored pencils. It’s been a lot of fun and I feel that it’s influencing my personal style as well. I’ve also been interested in children’s book illustration lately and have been consciously trying to shift my personal work in that direction. It would be a dream to illustrate a book inspiring kids to get outdoors someday!
Can you share something surprising about yourself?
People who only know me through my art account probably don’t know how much time I spend pursuing my outdoor hobbies. I grew up whitewater kayaking in the rivers of Nor Cal with my dad and our family would camp, hike, and ski. I stopped doing those activities when I got more into art as a teenager, but after turning my hobby into a job and spending the majority of my week at a desk, I started reminiscing on those childhood days again and yearned to be active outdoors. I got back into those childhood activities and added backpacking, scrambling up Sierra peaks, sport climbing, bouldering, and canyoneering to the mix. It’s my greatest source of inspiration and a good way to give my eyes some rest/stretch my legs after starting at a screen for so long! My recent favorite thing is backcountry skiing, and I’m hoping to make an illustration of it soon.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.yurikooto.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yuri_doodles/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yuriko-oto-83664456/
