Daily Inspiration: Meet Daun Han

Today we’d like to introduce you to Daun Han.

Hi Daun, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
This is very much a stream-of-consciousness kind of story, so hopefully it feels a little more organized once it’s written out here! (lol)

I’m currently working as a character designer at Glitch Productions on a show called Knights of Guinevere.

My journey into the animation industry started, perhaps unsurprisingly, with how much I loved animation as a child. I grew up watching drawings move on a screen instead of real people, and I was fascinated by how animation could bring movement and life to all kinds of worlds that could only exist through this medium. As I became more interested in creating those kinds of worlds myself, I naturally started wanting to work in the animation industry.

Originally, I was planning to attend an art school in Korea, but when I was in middle school, my father’s work took our family overseas. That led to a pretty sudden change in plans: I ended up preparing to attend the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in New York and eventually enrolled there. It was quite a drastic change!

Before moving abroad, I had mostly been exposed to Japanese TV animation and theatrical animation, but studying in the US introduced me to the charm of Western TV animation and commercial animation as well. I became a huge fan of shows like Steven Universe and Midnight Gospel (haha), and eventually developed a dream of creating animation that could combine some of the strengths of both styles.

At first, I was more interested in storytelling, staging, and creating the mood of a scene, so I primarily studied storyboarding. After graduating, I was incredibly fortunate to pass the storyboard revisionist test for The Owl House and join DTVA(Disney TV Animation). Not long after I moved to California, the pandemic hit and everything went into quarantine. Since I had only recently moved there, I found myself wanting to return to Korea and spend some time with my family.

I ended up going back to Korea and continued working remotely as a storyboard artist. After that project wrapped, I worked as a directing supervisor on a project adapting a Korean game into an animated series. Then Dana, the creator of The Owl House and Knights of Guinevere (and, honestly, my life savior), suggested that I work as a character designer on KOG.

I had only ever experimented with character design for fun, so the idea of doing it professionally was definitely intimidating. But, as always, I found the world of KOG incredibly compelling, and I thought it would be amazing to somehow become part of the project. I also wanted to challenge myself and try something new, so I said yes.

And surprisingly, I found that being a character designer suited me much more than I expected!

Of course, designing the main characters is incredibly fun, but I also really enjoy thinking about and designing the supporting characters who inhabit their world. I love figuring out how those characters can naturally expand the world around the protagonists and help the audience feel more immersed in it.

I barely had a character design portfolio at the time, so I still think it’s amazing that Dana saw something in me that I hadn’t even recognized in myself yet.

I’m now approaching my second year as a character designer, and I hope I can continue to challenge myself, have fun with the process, and share more and more of the work I create with everyone!

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’d say my biggest obstacles were language and cultural differences. Working in a new environment, I sometimes struggled not only with communication, but also with differences in work styles and the kinds of content and references we were familiar with. Things that felt natural or familiar to me because of my cultural background weren’t always familiar to people from a different culture, and it took some time to learn how to navigate those differences.

But through those experiences, I eventually realized that what I saw as a challenge could also be a strength. My own culture, memories, and experiences could offer a fresh perspective in a different cultural environment. Things that felt ordinary or familiar to me could actually feel new and interesting to someone else. That made me start seeing those cultural differences not as something I needed to overcome, but as something that could make my work more unique.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I’m an animation storyboard artist and character designer. Most of my career has been in storyboarding, and this year I’m especially excited to see a spin-off graphic novel based on one of the animated projects I worked on being published.

What I love most about both storyboarding and comics is portraying characters’ emotions as strongly as possible through expressions, acting, and visual storytelling. I’m always thinking about how to make the audience feel what the character is feeling in that moment. Whether it’s joy, frustration, fear, or excitement, I want readers and viewers to connect with those emotions and experience the story alongside the character.

I’ve recently started working as a character designer as well. While I’m still early in that journey, I’m interested in creating designs that not only support the world of a project but also reflect my own artistic voice. I want my characters to feel expressive, memorable, and full of personality.

I think my background in storyboarding influences everything I create. Even when I’m designing a character, I’m thinking about how they move, how they act, and what emotions they communicate. At the end of the day, my goal is always the same: to create characters that people can emotionally connect with and remember long after they’ve finished the story.

We love surprises, fun facts and unexpected stories. Is there something you can share that might surprise us?
Honestly, I don’t know how surprising this is, especially since I haven’t been very active online lately, but I always wish I could share more personal artwork and interact more with people on social media. The problem is that by the time I finish work, I’ve usually used up all of my energy for the day, so that plan tends to fail pretty quickly!

Lately I’ve realized that spending so much time working has taken a bit of a toll on my stamina, so I’ve been trying to exercise more and build up my energy again. My goal is to have enough fuel left at the end of the day to create more personal work and share it with people.

So if anyone notices me trying to be more active online in the future, please know that there’s a lot of effort happening behind the scenes. I’d love for my hard work to pay off someday. (LOL)

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.daunhan.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/din_du_99/
• Twitter: https://x.com/din_du_99