The Animatrix

Peter Kunshik Chung (born April 19, 1961 in Seoul, South Korea, as 정근식 (Chung Geun-sik, or alternative spelling Jeong Geun-Sik is a Korean American animator. He is best known for his unique style of animation, as the creator and director of Æon Flux, which ran as shorts on MTV’s Liquid Television before launching as its own half-hour television series.

Early life and career

Peter Chung was born on April 19, 1961. He lived in Glen Rock, New Jersey. Chung studied animation at CalArts from 1979–81, one year at the Character Animation program, and another year in the program in Experimental Animation.

Chung started his animation career at a small animation studio in Maryland at age 18 working for Animator and Illustrator Dominic LoPiccolo. Later, James Gallagher from CalArts would be a significant mentor. From there at age 15 he was doing character design for Hanna-Barbera. It was around this time he also started working on the layout and animation on Ralph Bakshi’s Fire and Ice before being hired by Disney for feature development.

Directing credits

In addition to Æon Flux (3 seasons: 1991, 1992, 1995), Chung’s directing credits include the Matriculated segment from The Animatrix, and, most recently, The Chronicles of Riddick: Dark Fury. Chung served as lead character designer for two animated series, Phantom 2040 (1994–96) and Reign: The Conqueror (1999). All three series feature lean angular characters inspired by the art of Egon Schiele, a look which has become Chung’s trademark character design. He also, along with Arlene Klasky and Gabor Csupo, co-designed the characters in the Nickelodeon series Rugrats, as well as directed the pilot for this series, “Tommy Pickles And The Great White Thing” and the opening sequence. In addition, in 2007 he directed the opening three-part episode for GameTaps’ Re\Visioned: Tomb Raider, entitled “Keys to the Kingdom”.

He has also directed some television advertisements – available at Peter Chung at Acme Filmworks – including a Diet Pepsi advertisement in the Æon Flux universe, featuring Cindy Crawford as Æon and Malcolm McDowell as Trevor.

Currently, among other unannounced projects, he is working on new direct-to-video episodes of Æon Flux and a full-length animated feature entitled Luvula. He is also director of the television adaption of Firebreather for Cartoon Network.

Animation style and influences

Chung’s animation, particularly Æon Flux and Matriculated, tends toward the artistically and thematically experimental and is an example of progressive animation.

Being a native New Jerseyan, strongly influenced Chung’s work. This is also shown by related works, “The_Toxic_Avenger” and “Clerks”. However this “synchronicity”, was common during this period in time.

Chung’s stylistic influences uniquely include European expressionism such as Moebius combined with Japanese animation.

In the animation field, he admires Yoshinori Kanada, Koji Morimoto, and Igor Kovalyov.

Ralph Bakshi, one of the first to hire Chung, has stated that one of Chung’s favorite artists is Toulouse-Lautrec.

Personal life

Chung has also been a participant in online forums, where users have asked him about his work and creative process. Two of the more prominent forums are ILX and Monican Spies. —Wikipedia

Yoshiaki Kawajiri (川尻 善昭 Kawajiri Yoshiaki?, born November 18, 1950) is a critically acclaimed writer and director of Japanese animation. He is the creator of titles such as Wicked City, Ninja Scroll, and Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust.

Kawajiri was born on November 18, 1950 and grew up in Yokohama, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan. After he graduated from Yokohama High School in 1968 he began working for a few years as an animator at Mushi Production Animation until it closed in 1972. He then joined Madhouse Studio and in the 1970s was promoted to animation director and finally debuted as a film director with 1984’s Lensman, directing jointly with the more experienced Kazuyuki Hirokawa (Kawajiri also did the character design along with Kazuo Tomizawa). Gaining an interest in darker animation, he next directed The Running Man. Afterwards, he was instructed to make a 35 minute short based on Hideyuki Kikuchi’s novels, which was released as Wicked City. After completing it, however, his producers were so impressed, he was asked to make it feature length. Kawajiri enjoyed the dark tone so much he agreed and managed to complete the entire film in under a year.

After Wicked City received such critical and commercial success when released in 1987, Kawajiri gained a lot more freedom and began scripting and designing his own film set in feudal Japan, which was released as Ninja Scroll, about the Japanese folk hero Jubei Yagyu. After the western release in 1996, Kawajiri’s status as a director received international recognition and was asked in 2002 to direct a segment of The Animatrix, titled Program, considered as a showcase of the best directors Japanese animation has to offer. Before The Animatrix, he also directed Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust which was based on a novel by Hideyuki Kikuchi.

Kawajiri directed Highlander: The Search for Vengeance. It was released on DVD on 5 June 2007. In an interview with Ain’t It Cool News with producer Galen Walker, about 7–8 minutes of added scenes with no opening exposition text sequence were removed when the film was released and Kawajiri did not like it. But the director’s cut will include the footage.

He has script approval for Ninja Scroll’s sequel, which is listed as being in pre-production with no specific release date as of 2010. —Wikipedia

Koji Morimoto (森本晃司 Morimoto Kōji?), born December 26, 1959) is an animator and one of Japan’s premier anime directors.

Born in Wakayama, Japan, he graduated from the Osaka School of Design in 1979 and a couple years later joined the studio Annapuru as an animator for the TV series “Tomorrow’s Joe”. While working there, he saw some animation by Takashi Nakamura in ‘Gold Lightan’, an otherwise standard mecha TV series by a rival studio. He was impressed, and it inspired him to quit his job and become a freelance animator.

Morimoto often collaborated with Nakamura, most notably in Katsuhiro Otomo’s ’The Order to Stop Construction’ segment of the anthology film ‘Neo-Tokyo’. This opened many doors for him, from working as animation director on Otomo’s landmark feature ‘Akira’ and a chance to direct a short for the ‘Robot Carnival’ anthology. Around this time he founded Studio 4°C with producer Eiko Tanaka and fellow animator Yoshiharu Sato.

Since then, Morimoto has focused almost exclusively on his directing work. His work became increasingly unusual with time. This is best represented by the concert scenes in ‘Macross Plus’ (his only animation work in the past 15 years) and his short film ‘Noiseman Sound Insect’.

Aside from a small cult following, his films have been ignored outside of Japan. This has begun to change in recent years, with his artwork being featured in Takashi Murakami’s Superflat exhibitions worldwide, and being invited by the Wachowski Brothers to direct “Beyond”, a segment of The Animatrix. He is currently working on ‘Sachiko’, his second feature-length film. —Wikipedia