— PROJECT NAME
Kay Sekimachi
— ROLE
Director,
Animation
— DATE
Jan 2024
I had the joy of bringing Kay Sekimachi's story to life, as part of a Youtube series by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
The goal of this series is to make accessible stories of traditionally under-represented voices in American Art. To work on this together with a seasoned female Asian American Producer was especially meaningful.
This was my first time assembling and directing a team of animators. Puzzle-solving a way to showcase each person's diverse strengths was a creative problem as interesting as designing the animation itself.
Visual Language
Simple, flat shading
Early on, we decided on a water-color texture with simple visual language.
This was to highlight the minimalist nature of her work as well as give a nod to Chiura Obata, who taught Sekimachi briefly at a WWII internment camp.
It was a new challenge for me to explore flat-shaders. While they limited the use of lighting, the lighting-fast render speeds were essential to iterate quickly on an animation of this scale.
Symbols and Motifs
I was greatly inspired by the stores of Sekimachi, her contemporaries, and their common inspiration from nature.
Obata, known for his landscape paintings, was a strong believer that art could provide the common ground necessary to transcend the barriers of nationalism and racism.
The use of birds as a theme was inspired by Tyrus Wong and the retrospective on his work "Water to Paper, Paint to Sky".
Full Credits
Director: Rae Xiang
Program Manager: Sabine Birk Larsen
3D Animators: Sabine Birk Larsen, Olivia Petersson, Rae Xiang
Cel Animators: Malin Eriksson, Than Loedsatien, Olivia Petersson
Compositor: Than Loedsatien
Original Music: Bryan Stage
Produced by Morzov Productions
Interview audio courtesy of Japanese American National Museum and Archives of American Art.