My name in Kim Leow.
I'm an animator for 15 years. Currently I m working at Pixar Animation Studios. My latest work will be
Disney - Pixar's Elemental . I love observing life, and animation
gave me that room to explore characters and their thinking, their internal thoughts.
It s a kind of feeling like I m that person, and I wanted to be visualised into my work.
You know, animation is also a craft where you can really do good storytelling.
If I want five characters in a show, in my short film,
I can give them personalities.
I feel like a god, you know, like creating something from scratch.
Growing up in my childhood, I remember that I was just a very active kid.
Well, I don t have a great memory on that, like I couldn t really remember,
I do know that I was drawn to it (arts), when I was in primary school or high school.
I was always volunteering designing or decorating the school's classroom board.
I also remember drawing my dad a portrait of him, and it made my parents really happy
.
They were like, Where did you find this talent? Animation wasn t in my mind. I came to The One Academy and I saw
a lot of artists, and it was really inspiring and I just wanted to try it out,
and I think the foundation, you really gave me that platform to explore what I wanted to do.
I remember that I got good grades on the arts side but, there was my classmate who was kind of saying, Animation is the hardest! I just wanted to try to
bring something to the table. Maybe I m much more of a
person who s like, if you say I can t do it, I'll show you what I can do. I actually really liked the 2D Animation class. I learned so much about animation through the 2D classes. The One Academy brings in and
attracts a lot of creative minds, and I made a lot of friends in my batch.
I feel like everyone is learning together, making mistakes together, on a
different pace but at the same time, we are just exploring art and having fun.
I would say Elemental is my favourite, because it s the late
st work that I ve
worked on and it s been seen globally. Even my nephews would like tell me
about it, and I was like really happy that they have watched it.
The second one would probably be Over the Moon . Because I admire Glen Keane and John Kahrs, and they are such
compatible director and co-director. The third one would be, actually an
indie short film that my husband directed. It s called Fox & the Whale .
What I like about this short film is that we didn t wait for other people to ask u
s to do a
short film, we just took the initiative to just do it for the craft, for the love and the passion.
Inspiration comes from everywhere.For me, if I m working on a shot and I needed to find something specific, then I would just gear towards looking for that kind of performance.
I watch a lot of movies. I also love watching anime. Anime gave me, just the way how the format is different, the storytelling format is different, the animation style has a very different kind of energy.
Even tho
ugh I don t understand Japanese, but I still feel it, I still cry.
When I first moved, I just thought that I could go into the studio no problem.
I'll get hired, I'll do a good job on my short film and I will get the job.
I'm a hard worker, I don't see why not.
But what I didn't realise was the real life kind of obstacles. I needed to find the correct work permit, need to find the right visa.
And that s a whole different thing that I wasn t prepared for.
That was a big slap to the face. I was li
ke, Oh now I m learning about the real life.
My English wasn t good when I first started out.
So I couldn t really communicate my thoughts well.
- So I'm always a bit shy, trying to avoid communicating with people who knows what they re talking
But I figured out that I just have to make the mistakes.
Everyone has different ways of getting into Pixar.
For me it's a little bit of a zig-zag journey. I asked her to work hard whatever small job or big job, just go ahead and gain experience. And she
started from a small company to all range of companies until Sony which I'm very happy when I heard that she's doing job for Sony. And then now that's her dream Pixar.
She said, Oh, I ve achieved it! I said, Good, that's what you wanted.
I forgotten for a long time about applying to big studios.
I'm just content with where I'm at, at that point,
but when the pandemic hit, I think a lot of studios were
switching to the work from home model. And after a couple of months, my husband's
friend
who worked in the story side at Pixar, he was asking my husband if I'm
interested in applying for the position, and I couldn't pass on this opportunity.
It's something that I was thinking about, and this comes in, and I was like I'm taking it.
It's a lot of timing and luck to get me into Pixar. The personal sacrifice would be being away from my family and every year I come home, I'm just missing out.
Sometimes I feel like if I think I'm successful, it's like putting a limit to myself.
You nev
er know what is success, if there's no failure then there's no success.
So to me, it's just I don't think I'm there yet. I think the two that stuck around in my head is you need to be reliable and you need to be castable.
Reliable will be having other people have confidence in your work and you
deliver with a hundred percent of what you can give or more if you can give more.
Having to be castable would be people having the confidence in you and putting you in different types of shows because
animation is wide spread. There s realistic and there's cartoony, so if you can bounce around in terms of that, I think it's a very highly desirable quality.
If you would do anything, do it with heart and give it your one hundred and ten percent. Just don't give up. Just keep trying. You d never know where it would lead you. Well to The One Academy, I wish The One Academy will have many exciting years ahead.
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