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… read more
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
