Today we’d like to introduce you to Kangmin Lim.
Hi Kangmin, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I was born and raised in Busan, South Korea. As a kid, I always doodled and found art fascinating, and I grew up as an artsy kid. I came to The States to study Fine Arts at Columbus College of Art & Design (CCAD) in Ohio and fell in love with experimental animation and wanted to study animation deeply. I had a privilege of getting my master at School of Visual Arts in New York and made my short film Under the Dark Clouds in 2020, which won some awards and has been selected to over 30 film festivals all around the world. After graduation, I worked as a freelance 2D animator and made some music videos for clients based in LA and Korea. I got my first full-time job as a background designer at Bento Box Entertainment in Atlanta, GA, and worked on 3 shows for HBO MAX and Netflix. Currently, I’m an assistant professor at CCAD and working on my next film.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not, what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
I’m aware that I’m very lucky in terms of having a clear vision of what I’ve wanted to do since I was young, which was visual art. But since I was interested in so many things, including visual development, animating, storyboarding, installation-based fine art, interactive programming, printmaking, illustration, comics… It was indeed hard for me to choose specific path and fully focus on them to get a job. During school, I just worked hard in general and learned as much as possible, but I actually developed the majority of my portfolio after graduation, which was May 2020, the peak of covid time. The world was tumbling, the creative job market was pretty rough, my mental health was not good, and I also had to deal with visa issues as an international student, and everything felt very challenging. However, things got better over time, and I’m very grateful for every opportunity that I had so far.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
My body of works often uses dreaming as a storytelling tool. I’ve been fascinated by how our dreams show abnormal mixture of memories but also something deep in your mind that you may not want to face. I started my dream journal drawing series called ZZZ in undergrad, which ended up being a big pen and watercolor drawing that’s insisted of my daily dreams and also some evidence of social and personal issues I had to face growing up in conservative culture. For my graduate thesis film, I wanted to create more personal piece that is character-based and linear narrative so that people can easily understand and connect to the story. Under the Dark Clouds was a film about a girl accepting her depression through dreaming and visiting her unconscious world, which is based on my own mental health journey. Dream often helped me understand what I’m actually going through and having a communication with myself in a creative way. I’m glad I’m keep focusing on self-reflection, and I’m eager to learn more about how dreams are working since it’s still very mysterious in the modern medical field.
Alright, so to wrap up, is there anything else you’d like to share with us?
I’m working on my next film, which will be a lot more experimental in both technical and conceptual ways. It is again about self-reflection, but I’m focusing on the concept of ‘psychological home.’ As I moved pretty often from the young age, the concept of home became a bit vague, and it’s been interesting to reflect on my memory and how the environment influenced me throughout the time. I’m also going back to where I started as an animator, experimental stop motion.
Contact Info:
- Website: kangminlim.com
