Intervenants du colloque

Peter Kunshik Chung Curiculum vitae
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Education

Awards
Gold Cindy “G-Police” 1998
ASIFA-Hollywood “G-Police” 1998
SICAF “Mangchi Pilot” 1998
Annecy “Fuel Gauge” 2000
Annecy “Coupe Mission” 2000
Ottawa “G-Force” 2000
SICAF “Chicken Sandwich” 2001
Cinanima “G-Force” 2001
Hiroshima “Be On Alert” 2002

Biography
I was born on April 19, 196l in Seoul, the third son of Kyu Sup Chung and In Sook Choi. My father served as consul general and later as ambassador in the Korean diplomatic service until 1974. Through my early years, I was raised along with my two elder brothers, John and David, and my younger sister, Margaret, in England, Kenya, the United States, Korea and Tunisia.
I attended twelve different schools from first grade through twelfth. My early education up to the fourth grade was received in English. In the years 1968 and 1969, I lived in New York City, and it was at this time that I developed an interest in drawing. While in Seoul from 1970 to 1972, I attended Korean elementary school, where I learned the Korean language. From 1972 to 1974, I attended French schools during my father’s ambassadorship in Tunis. Perhaps due to the lack of lasting friendships while moving from one city to another, I spent much of my free time alone reading books, writing stories, and drawing.
In 1974, my family returned to the U.S. and decided to settle down in Virginia, in the area surrounding Washington D.C.. During my last two years of high school, I collaborated with a friend on making an independent animated film. Though it was never completed, the process proved very fulfilling and I decided I would pursue an art education, and eventually, a career in animation.
I attended the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) starting from the fall of 1979. I was enrolled in the Character Animation program, which at the time was taught by veteran artists from Walt Disney Studios. CalArts was originally a school founded by Walt Disney, although by the 1970’s, the range of instruction available included Art, Music, Dance, Theater, Film and Video (live action and animation). The enrollment for the entire school, counting every department was approximately 800 students. I spent two years at CalArts: the first in Character Animation, the second as a student of Film Graphics (Experimental Animation).
At age twenty, I went to work for Walt Disney Productions in Burbank, California. In 1981, the state of the animation industry was decidedly weak. Disney Studios were barely releasing a new feature every three years; the only other feature studio was Bakshi’s, which made only rotoscoped films; television animation was restricted to children’s Saturday morning programs, produced by a handful of studios who were already starting to contract overseas studios to handle the animation. Very few jobs existed for U.S. animators.
During my two years at Disney, I worked in feature development. I did research, design, and story work for several projects which were planned as feature films combining live-action and computer animation. Unfortunately, due partly to the financial disappointment of their first such feature, Tron, none of these planned projects were produced. Demoralized by the lack of progress on my projects, I left the studio.
In 1983, I became a naturalized citizen of the United States.
I freelanced briefly doing animation for small studios, then went to work for Marvel Productions, where I drew storyboards for TV series which were being animated in Japan and Korea. I was sent to Seoul to work with Korean artists for the first time in the summer of 1984, then again in 1985. That experience was deeply influential as I was impressed by the efficiency and skill of Korean animators. It seemed that there was a great potential for doing high-quality work if only the scripts and designs could be improved.
I next went to work doing character design and art direction for various L.A. studios. At that point, I began to refine my own individual style.
In 1989, Colossal Pictures in San Francisco invited me to develop an animated feature based on Secret Agent X-9, a classic comic strip character. I did research into the plotting of detective fiction and became fascinated by the moral ambiguity of complex characters. I wrote a scenario and designed characters, but the project was cancelled as the subject seemed more suited for live-action than animation.
At the L.A. studio Klasky-Csupo, I directed a six-minute pilot film for their proposed TV series, Rugrats, my first directing assignment. The short film was received well and the cable network Nickelodeon ordered the production of a regular series. For many years, Rugrats was their top-rated show, winning multiple awards and spawning three feature films to date. For the weekly series, I designed a few of the main characters, and directed the opening title sequence, but chose not to remain on as an episode director.
At this time, the animation industry was experiencing a great revival. The new generation at Disney was making animated features at a faster pace and with greater commercial success than ever before. Adult-oriented animation was airing on primetime T.V.. Cable television and home video were expanding new venues for animated programming for targeted audiences.
In 1990, Colossal developed Liquid Television - a half-hour compilation program made up of animated shorts intended for adults. So I created a 12-minute film starring a sexy female spy dressed in black leather called Aeon Flux.
To produce the film on its tight budget, I went to Korea to assemble a team of animators whom I’d met on previous projects.
With Aeon Flux, I hoped to achieve a distinctive style of visual storytelling, without words, and to create a memorable adult character reflecting intelligence, physical grace, humor and irony. Although the technical quality of the finished film was a bit rough, I was happy with the result, and felt that I had finally, after ten years in the animation industry, made my mark. I noticed the fact that Aeon Flux elicited good responses mainly from non-animators. This pleased me, as I wished to reach an audience that didn’t have an intrinsic interest in animation.
The following year. I wrote, produced, and directed five more Aeon Flux short films which were broadcast on the second season of Liquid TV.
Due to favorable response from viewers of the second season shorts, MTV decided to expand Aeon Flux into a weekly half-hour program. I wrote plotlines for eight of the ten episodes. The script writing was a slow, collaborative process with sometimes as many as four writers (including myself) involved on a single script. While I was ready to compromise my standards on the animation for the series, I was determined that if nothing else, the episodes would be well-written.
Broadcast at ten P.M. on MTV, Aeon Flux garnered a loyal following and a fair amount of good press. Even though my work on commercials is of higher technical quality, Aeon Flux displays best the full expression of my artistic interests. In the U.S. and Europe, supporters of the show have written magazine articles, reviews, web pages, and even university term papers analyzing its meaning.
In 1996, I made commercials for Pepsi and MTV, then worked briefly in Paris at Cryo Interactive on the CD-ROM of Aeon Flux. That summer, I was invited to do design work for an animated series based on the life of Alexander the Great, a Japanese-Korean coproduction. I spent several months in Japan working at Madhouse studio, an experience that taught me much about the Japanese production system.
Over the next several years, I worked as a freelance designer and director, dividing my time between Los Angeles and Seoul as the jobs demanded. When directing T.V. commercials for U.S. clients, I preferred to employ animation studios in Korea. There, I found very talented individuals who appreciated the chance to do unusual and challenging work.
During that time, I worked frequently with the digital animation studio DNA in Seoul. In 2002, we completed a sixteen-minute film as part of Animatrix, a project consisting of animated episodes related to the popular Matrix movies. On this project, I used computer-generated 3D models extensively for the first time. I am currently involved in developing an independent feature film with DNA, which I will write, design and direct. We plan on using a combination of traditional and digital techniques to present an innovative and distinctive new style of animation.
The course of my career has been far-ranging and has coincided with great changes in the animation industry. I have become well versed in the methods of both classical animation as produced by the Hollywood industry and the currently popular Japanese productions. Through my recent projects, I have become acquainted with the newest computer animation tools in use.
However, the primary guiding principle in my work has always been to emphasize content over technique. Animation, is by its nature, a complicated technical process. The most important and challenging task is, throughout that process, never to lose sight of the ideas one intends to convey. In both educational and professional work, sophisticated technique is unfortunatedly often made to serve simplistic and formulaic content. I believe that the discussion and study of good storytelling is important to those who would enter the field of film and visual communication.
The medium of animation is more widely accepted, more varied and more accessible than ever. No doubt, the art of animation will continue to flourish and mature, and that in the near future we will see achievements to equal the best works of painting, music, theater and live-action film. My hope is to contribute in some way to that development.