Korean animator Seong Yoon Jo takes a whimsical look at plant life with a pretty animation that screams flower power. Laura Swinton caught up with the filmmaker who blends inspiration from East and West to find out about a blossoming new talent.

What attracted you to animation?
When I was studying in BA, I enjoyed watching international animated films because of various artistic styles. Among them, Yuri Norshtein’s works took my eyes. His poetic narrative, style, sound and edit were special and deeply impressive. I felt that the combination of motions and sounds communicates with people more strongly than picture does. So I can say that giving vitality to pictures and controlling them with sound let me get into animation.

Can you tell me a little about where you’re from and if/how that has influenced the style of your work?
I’m from Seoul, Korea. The style of my work has developed from studying visual communication design at university. My course gave me experience in various different fields, graphic design, illustration, photography, animation and motion graphic design. These subjects helped me to look for new technical ways to make animation. Especially I like to combine many objects. For example, collage style mixed with photography and drawing.

In terms of the colour of the work, Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door, it can be said that it had been influenced by Korean traditional colour. When I was making a short animation, ‘Cat and bear’ (2007), which is based on Korean traditional folk tale. I wanted to find out and introduce the beauty of Korea through my works. It became a good chance to look back my country and culture. it made me get a different view about the Korean tradition through the research. The process also helped me to develop my artwork style and has influenced on the later works so far. But the most important thing is to find out the proper style whenever new projects start.

Why did you decide to move to England to study animation? What was that experience like?
I had the chance to participate in the international animated film festivals, and I found that many British animated adverts include music videos showed. Soon I enthused about that. Not only they had various ideas and artistic styles but also they were well connected to commercial industry. So I hoped to get into Britain’s animation education system and industry. I really love British films, music, design, especially garden culture as well.

Before studying in the UK, I had worked so hard in the field of motion graphic design. It made me feel like a frog in a well, so I really needed to get fresh air. First time I had got trouble with the language, different culture and food in the UK. Fortunately, the UK’s terms has a tight system, so it made me not to think any other things except projects. Most of all, what I loved to do in the period was to meet with other animators and illustrators who were from different countries and had different ideas. The experience let me get a wide view about animation’s social, cultural worth. It was just 1 year, but valuable time in my life.

How would you describe your animation film?

My animated film is sort of languages to communicate what I think. I try to find out the idea from unfamiliar thing, but I want to show it familiarly to people using my own visual. When I were dealing with noises and photos from a street in order to make a short film, ‘Ststst-noisic’, it was difficult to explain what I want- Controlling the noises and objects like DJing. But after showing it, everybody enjoyed it.

Tell me about Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door… why did you decide to make a film about plant heaven? What were the ideas behind it?
Well, as you know this film is about the spirit of plants. Few years ago, I read an interesting article about plants. It said that plants read people’s mind and grow well when they listen to classical music. The article became a great inspiration to me. I thought maybe human would not know anything about plants even though we have been researching about them so far, maybe there would be their own world which people don’t know. This question led to make ‘Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door’. I wanted people to think more about plants’ vitality, so that I decided to make a story about sprits of plants which are waiting for judgement to go Heaven or Hell, but not in heavy mood. So the spirits’ dance performance with music were planned. I hoped this would represent the characteristics of plants such as growing, blooming and vitality as well.

I’ve been living with two cats. Sometimes I feel that they have other senses which people don’t have. Animals and plants communicate each other with sending their own signals, and maybe they would send that to human strongly, but only human would not realize that.

Where do you see yourself in 10 years time?
Of course I will work in animation field, and also I will be in the various fields such as film, picture book and sound design, and I strongly hope to be in a studio surrounded by a beautiful garden and forest in countryside.(-:

To find out more about Seong Yoon Jo, check out www.withalice.com