Inji Seo is an illustrator and animator based in Seoul, South Korea. She has been a member on Behance and instagram since 2015. She does not appear to have a website. She showcases her portfolio on her Instagram page @yes_seoinji and uses Vimeo to upload her animations. From what I can gather from her instagram posts and interviews with It’s Nice That, she did an illustration degree and graduated in 2016. Her graduation work has changed quite considerably in the last four years. She went from making simple black and white line drawings and watercolours to fun fantasy worlds with neon and clashing colours. Her work has matured and she is very experimental with her use of colour and compositions. Her round and chubby characters were born from her graduation animation “Melting in You”. She likes to capture special or funny scenes from her daily life. She likes to focus on the small details like the worn nails of a guitarist girl or the ugly ice cream she got at McDonalds. Her work is created mainly via digital painting using Adobe photoshop and tvpaint for animation. Grain brushes and noise alphas add to the characteristic shading in her work. Her bold and brash style is very much her own.

 

Stills from a series of short sequence animations made for the Korean homeware brand Fissler. Used for their instagram summer campaign in 2019. She also made a 3 minute animation to accompany the campaign. I couldn’t find much information as most of her instagram is in Korean. She says she likes to “putting objects from different genres (that usually wouldn’t go together) and arranging them on a single page.” I feel this is showcased nicely in this animation with the little cherubs adorning the homeware and the garlands around the food processor.

  

Stills from animated music video for the K-indie girl band Seoul Moon, to promote their single “Coconut Love” released in summer 2018. The music video was shared on all social platforms. Seo’s popping holiday graphics blend beautifully with the dreamy vocals. A story of three girls going on holiday to the Moonlight Hotel, the name of the hotel referencing the band. She had a lot of freedom with this project as she was allowed to make whatever she liked.

Showcasing her work for a brand of homeware next to her work for a music video shows that her personal fun style shines through even when doing corporate jobs.

 

She showcases her eclectic portfolio on her Instagram page  @yes_seoinji with a link to her Vimeo, where she uploads her full animations. She posts a mixture of personal work, commissions and animations. Her characters are strong women, she seems to have themes she keeps going back to. Such as love, cocktails and dreamy holidays. She juxtaposes objects together to give the images a surreal quality. She presents herself as a unique voice in the world of digital art and animation, who enjoys the challenge of making her personal style shine through, even when working on briefs for corporate jobs.

I can draw similarities between Inji Seo’s work and my own. We both use colour in a bold way and we like to use the female form as our subject. I am very inspired by her use of alpha layers and grain brushes in photoshop. I couldn’t find any information on her working methods so I experimented in photoshop until I found similar brush presets she uses. The best way to learn is to try and emulate an element of an artists work that you like and then make it your own. Her work is a lot more detailed than mine, which she puts down to constantly drawing things around her, funny moments that she remembers. I need to do this more in order to draw on more imaginative material.

 

CANADA STUDIOS

CANADA is a creative production company with studios based in Barcelona and London. Founded by Lope Serrano and Nicolas Mendez. They have an impressive portfolio that they have been building for over 10 years. Working across advertising with clients including Chupa-Chups, Cocacola, H&M, and Miu Miu. And countless music videos for artists such as ROSALIA, The Vaccines and Bad Gyal. Interestingly they both began their careers as illustrators.

In Lope Serrano biography he states: “He directs, writes and draws, and in his best works an echo threading these three skills together can be heard; music videos, commercials or shorts in the reality of which there is a fugue. A sensual, dreamy and plush fugue.” Nicolas Mendez directs and writes with the same intensity a small nocturnal bonfire illuminates a whole forest: his ideas and images shine because they are irreverent, delicate and energetic.

They started to make a name for themselves in 2011 when they directed All in White for the Vaccines and Ice cream by Battles and since then they have carved out a cult following of musicians and artists who want to work with them.

  

Stills from Ice cream, a music video made for the band Battles, for their album Gloss Drop released in 2011. The film begins with a slow motion shot of a girl licking an icecream, it then descends into snappy editing of many different surrealist interpretations of the ecstasy of eating an ice cream. For example, images of hot and cold things are contrasted to symbolise the melting of an ice cream. Shots of women licking inanimate objects add humour and a tongue in cheek eroticism. All the effects were done in camera, such as, the superimposed footage where the abstract shapes become symbols for ice cream cones. They also use double exposures and Key Alphas to add to this collaged effect and look like moving abstract paintings. My favourite is footage of a man jumping off a rock into woman’s underwear, the merged footage looking like an ice-cream cone. You can tell the shots have been planned immaculately. Drawing is central to their practise and both began as illustrators before diving head first into film making. This seems evident in the final outcome as the collaged footage seems born from hours of sketching and colliding different imagery together.

 

 

 

Stills from the music video The Less I know the Better (2015) produced for Tame Impala for the release of their album Currents. You can tell Mendez and Serrano bring the best out of their different skill set. The combination of the footage and the animations are brilliantly put together to tell a story.                                                                                                             I love the references to different classic movies in this video. The boy giving her head – which nods to the scene in Jamon Jamon (1992) directed by Almodovar where Javier Bardem goes down on Penelope Cruz in the Jamoneria (ham factory). The snap shot of the actress holding the basketball between her legs is just brilliant. Then of course the brilliant reference to King Kong scooping the girl up in his hand. It’s a brilliant interpretation of the song which talks about a boy having a crush on a girl who finds out, after their night of passion in the locker rooms, has started to date ‘Trevor’ – the other man – is symbolised as King Kong. They make it clear who Trevor is, with a shot of his basket ball t-shirt with his name printed on the back. The cheerleaders also wear t-shirts with T on the front, symbolising they are on his team. Bananas and oral sex seem to be a theme.  The lead actress dancing around Trevor’s finger whilst surrounded by an animated sequence of bananas – tongue in cheek erotica at its finest. It’s great to see how the same techniques of alpha channels, they developed in their early film work, are still being used for bigger productions. This is reassuring to see, sometimes I feel I reuse the same techniques too often, but if you love it – the aim is to always refine it. They show clearly how you can turn anything into an erotic symbol. They are masters of semiotics.

They present themselves online using different platforms. CANADA studios have their own website where you can find all their commercial adverts, music videos and shorts. This is really useful as you can watch all their work in full and find all the relevant information without having to search them out on YouTube. They present themselves as leaders in their field. As their studio has expanded, they now represent a vast selection of different directors. There is tab with information on different people they work with and a bio for each director. Lope Serrano has his own separate instagram @lopeserranosol where he post personal work and development for their professional work. They have a cult following online and the scope of their work is breathtaking. My dream is to be a able to work with them one day.

I am in awe of their working methods. How they are able to tell a story in an abstract way without loosing the thread of the narrative. They are a perfect example of marrying technical skill with vision. My work has some similarities, I am experimental when it comes to working with footage and use similar techniques like alpha channels and double exposures. When I have directed a shoot I have cast people who are very expressive and that has made it more theatrical.  I still have a lot to learn in terms of editing and narrating but if I keep studying their work and how they develop strong narratives my storytelling will improve.