Introducing ROUGHCUT
Behind-the-Scenes of an Artist Trying to Find Her Footing
Hello!! My name is Hyungjin Lee (이형진) and I am a multidisciplinary artist and storyteller based in NYC and Seoul. I am an animator, filmmaker, and a playwright. I love moving between and exploring new mediums to tell stories! I was born in Korea, but moved around quite a bit, spending most of my childhood in Indonesia and coming to the U.S. for high school and college. I recently graduated from Brown University in the obscure major of “Modern Culture and Media” to my family’s great relief.
If you’re seeing this in your mailbox you may already be signed up, or maybe you are just looking around! In whichever case, welcome! <3
What will ROUGHCUT be about?
ROUGHCUT is a monthly newsletter. Every month, I will share a behind-the-scenes of what I am working on. It might be a rough draft of an animation, a dialogue from a play, the first sketches of a raccoon riding a motorbike… For every issue, I will have a loose theme that encapsulates what has been running through my mind in my artistic process. If there are any exercises, questions, or inspirations that have been helpful, I will share them as well!
I have just been ripped out of the unsettling placenta of a college education, so I will be sharing a lot of my first baby steps trying to figure out how to keep my head above the water and retain joy in my creative process as a young artist trying to freelance in NYC.
My hopes for this newsletter!
I have always loved sharing how the oddly shaped bones, joints, and skin of a story come together in the most unsightly, beautiful, and frustrating ways. I find a lot of courage and assurance in seeing the behind-the-scenes of other artists, seeing that others also often have the fears and frustrations that I do. I garner inspiration from how they are navigating the sharp turns and cliffs (?) that come with creating. I hope sharing my process can do the same for you.
I want this newsletter to be an honest, unpolished conversation. It will be messy and anxious and take weird turns, so if you’re down to go down that journey with me stay on the mailing list! The weird turns may surprise you and me with moments of clarity.
Above everything, I want this to be a community gathering place. I am hoping my newsletter can be a conversation starter. I absolutely do not want this newsletter to be a one-sided monologue into the dark, dark void of the internet. So please, help me and tell me about your thoughts! Your experiences! Your anxieties! Your inspirations!
What have I been up to in July….?
I have been trying to rest. Successfully? I’m not sure. My mental health was the worst it has ever been last fall, and ever since I felt like I was dragging myself through life with an open wound. When I graduated, I was determined to take the two months before I return to the U.S. to fully rest. I now have around two weeks until I return, and I feel much better than before, although my ‘resting’ didn’t take the shape I was expecting it to.
I have a hard time taking long periods of time off my work. Anything more than a day and I start getting anxious. Ironically, I beat myself up a lot for not being able to relax. I know. I get stressed about not resting well enough. I realized after a month that my ‘resting’ might not look exactly like completely isolating myself from art. I love creating. I find so much joy in my art. Instead of not working completely, I’ve been trying to find space and time to create without pressure, without deadlines, without perfectionism.
My animation professor (I love you Amy) used to always say that you should not animate for longer than four hours a day. She used to always suggest working every day in shorter spurts over pulling all-nighters for a couple of days. I didn’t really get it at first, but now that I am no longer in the structure of school, her advice is making so much sense. It is not about how much work I can get done, but how I can sustain my creative joy and energy for the rest of my life. Animating twelve hours a day for three days worked when I was in school because there was structure built into my life, but now that this is my job, I feel the need to create a more sustainable rhythm where I can continue working without draining myself to the ground.
I’ve been animating for around two hours on most days, reworking ‘여기 있으면 (Stay With Me)’. I’ve been working on the third cut - you can see the difference below between my first cut and my second. I’m excited to share my progress with you over the next few months.
Before we say goodbye, here’s a tentative title of my first issue to drop in August….
“Burnout and Cute Things”
I hope you have a beautiful month and that it is not monsoon season wherever you are like it is here! If you are in Korea…I wish you dehumidification and a sturdy umbrella <3
Love,
Hyungjin
Unpolished is the word