My Life as a Dreamworks TV Artist
My first full-time job in animation on Kipo & the Age of Wonderbeasts (2018-2019)
It’s hard to believe that at the time of writing this, 7 years have passed since I started working full-time in animation. I had interned the previous year at Cartoon Network, but only for a couple of days a week, mainly doing transcription tasks. You can imagine how excited I was when I was hired for my first big boy job as a Color Designer on Kipo & the Age of Wonderbeasts, a quirky and upbeat YA sci-fi/fantasy show slated to be released on Netflix. The year and a half I spent working on this show at Dreamworks TV is still to this day one of the warmest crew environments I’ve ever had the pleasure of being a part of. Come along on the journey as I look back on my first full-time job as an artist!
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Getting The Job
This job fell into my lap thanks to a hearty helping of pure chance - I never applied for the position, nor did I know anyone who worked at the studio. Rather, after my internship at Cartoon Network ended, I posted a series of character designs I had made for my intern pitch on social media. I passed out, and woke up the next day to a surprise Twitter DM - a showrunner at Dreamworks TV had liked the art I had shared and was curious to know if I’d be available to help on his brand-new Netflix series. (The DM was so chill that I definitely thought it was a joke or a mistake at first - it took some frantic Googling before the reality of it really sank in.)
The show, Kipo & the Age of Wonderbeasts, was still in early stages of production, and offered me some color design freelance, which involved taking existing line-art for characters and props and designing color palettes for them. The art style had yet to be fully established at this point in time, and the character designs still had a long way to go before arriving at the official look they have in the show.
I was definitely a bit nervous at first - I’d had my first little taste of freelancing earlier this year, but those projects had felt lower-stakes and were intended for a much smaller audience. Luckily, my efforts paid off because after freelancing for about a month, the show decided they wanted to bring me on as a full-time Color Designer, with a start date in late January 2018! From there, I was set to start officially in-house in Los Angeles, giving me some time to finish up the semester and make the cross-country move.
The Studio
Glendale, CA
Dreamworks had two offices in Glendale - one was the “main” campus designated for feature film employees, and the second was a high-rise from which Dreamworks leased a few floors for TV production. In 2013, Dreamworks entered a multi-year content deal with Netflix to start pumping out exclusive original projects, and many of the TV shows being produced there at the time were part of this deal. As one of these Netflix shows, Kipo was produced in the high-rise TV building, and so that’s where I reported to work every day.
The interior of the building felt like a typical corporate office, and there were sets of elevators that would take you up the various floors. I’m not sure what other companies leased the building at the time, but I recall Dreamworks TV only took up a few of the floors. Some other shows being produced on-site at the time included Voltron: Legendary Defender, She-Ra, Cleopatra In Space, and Captain Underpants.
A nice DW perk was that lunch was catered every single day, at both the main lot and the TV building. The quality and variety of the options was definitely better at the main lot, but most studios don’t provide any meals whatsoever so at least it was better than nothing. Each day would have a different culinary theme, with some recurring meals being “vaguely Mexican”, “vaguely Asian” and “kind of a hamburger??” During the year and a half I worked there my diet mostly consisted of steamed, unseasoned broccoli, as that was the only dish served every week without fail (lol).
The Crew
The crew consisted of our two showrunners Bill Wolkoff and Rad Sechrist, a writing team, production team, story team, and art team. The art team included character designers, background designers, background painters, a sole prop designer and a sole color designer (me!) Under the guidance of our art director Angela Sung, we each worked on our own small pieces of the larger whole, which would all come together after our work was packaged up and sent off to our collaborators at Studio Mir in Korea.
Artists are already quirky by nature, but even by that metric this show had some of the funniest and most unique personalities I’ve gotten to work with. Every single day in the office was always a weird surprise in one way or another. I’m introverted by nature so it can be hard for me sometimes to fully open up around new people, but by the end of my time on Kipo my crew friends and I were hanging out outside of work almost every week, and to this day the friendships I’ve made are still some of the best ones in my life since moving to LA.
As a fun Easter egg, there’s a moment in the very first episode where Kipo stumbles across an old photo frame in a long-abandoned high school. Upon wiping off a layer of dust, a class photo drawn by James Lien is revealed, depicting various crew members as the high school students in the picture. A cute detail!
The Workspace
I shared an office with our prop designer Chibu, and the two of us got our own room with a window and a big blackboard. Just outside of our office was a larger main room full of cubicles, where the production staff and story revisionists worked.
Over the years I would put up prints, little crew drawings, personal sticky notes and other mementos up on the blackboard we had in our shared office.
My computer was in the best spot, tucked away in the corner of the room facing away from the door. I’ve worked in other places since where your screen is clearly visible to anyone who enters the room, and those other offices always stressed me out because of the nerve-wracking feeling that anyone could be peeking over your shoulder at any moment. I loved the privacy, the ability to shut our door if things were busy outside, and the full desk space for my tablet and monitor.
Later on in the production we were joined in our office by BG/prop designer Linda Chung, and the three of us worked in the space together!
The Work
My official title was “Visual Development Artist,” but this was a hiring technique that the studio used to authorize us to do different kinds of work while technically complying with union guidelines. My actual job was really that of a “Color Stylist,” (nowadays it’s called “Color Designer”) and my main responsibility was to design color palettes for all of the characters, props and FX that would appear throughout the show.
I made $31.50/hour which was a huge step up from making minimum wage as an intern, but I learned months later that I was the lowest paid artist on the staff due to my own newness and ignorance about the animation industry (oof.) (That’s the importance of knowing your worth and how to negotiate your wages- learn from my mistakes and make sure to do your research if you’re ever put in that position!)
Here are the finished sheets for two of the main characters, Kipo and Wolf, showing their turns as well as detail call-outs.
The show had a distinctive color palette with lots of pastels, neon colors, and vivid shadows, and that was something I would keep in mind when picking out palettes for the various characters. A purple Multiply shadow was used on characters’ base colors in the daytime to create the show’s signature look.
Aside from doing base colors, I would also design special color palettes that were informed by the lighting of the various scenes of the episode. With finished background paintings as a guide, I would place the characters within the scene and find a way to make the characters’ colors feel incorporated into the overall lighting.
Sometimes a scene might have an FX that would call for a special lighting condition, and I designed colors for these as well.
Although I mainly worked with coloring files and designing palettes, one of my favorite early assignments was getting to do costume design for a scene where Kipo rapidly tries on a bunch of different outfits. These drawings were definitely on the looser side but helped to get the ideas across, and were a lot of fun to conceptualize!
I remember feeling quite lost when I first started the job - I had done a little freelance for the show already, but it had felt like I was just figuring things out as I went with no real understanding of the “right” way to do things. I quickly realized, this is just what everyone’s first job feels like and it’s perfectly normal!
Over the course of the first few months, I finally started to understand how to achieve the standard I was trying to hit, and eventually settled into a routine. This just kind of happened intuitively over time, until I had developed my own methods for all of the tasks I needed to do.
My job involved a lot of files - I would finish and turn in between 60 - 70 individual PSDs per week - and as a result, staying organized was critical. Layers had to be kept clean and sharp, so that the animators working in Korea would be able to easily eyedrop the colors in the file and get what they needed. Color design required a good eye for color (of course!), but I never found it too demanding since much of the job involved filling in flats and then finessing hues with adjustment layers. I was able to listen to music or watch TV shows on my second monitor while working, making it an incredibly chill work experience.
The work would be reviewed once or twice a week, and we’d drop all of our files into a designated location on the server. The showrunners and art director would review the files together and discuss revisions, and then Angela would send us any notes we had in written form, and we’d work on those for the next round of submissions. I definitely liked this remote style of note-giving versus having the artists sit in on live reviews - it saved us all time and helped a lot with having a good mental separation from work so critiques never felt too personal.
Work Activities
There was never any shortage of things to do, as Dreamworks had a lot of internal employee events and little activities every week. Here are some examples of various perks they offered:
Weekly after-work figure drawing sessions with a model
Workshops and painting demos with various artists, including Robh Ruppel and Bill Perkins
Free employee screenings of new Dreamworks movies at the main campus
Big holiday event parties for Halloween and Christmas
Aside from these activities, here are some more fun memories I have from my time at DWTV:
DreamCon | October 4, 2018
Lemon Eating Contest (???) | October 15, 2018
Halloween Party | October 31, 2018
Lunch Drawings | 2018 - 2019
Last Day of Work
June 7, 2019
Near the end of production, I decided to end my time early when I got the opportunity of a lifetime to work on one of my favorite shows. A recruiter at Cartoon Network asked if I’d be interested in testing for a background paint position on Steven Universe and obviously I said, “AAAA!!!” and then “YES, OF COURSE!” I eventually ended up getting chosen, and as much as I’d loved my time working on Kipo, I knew I’d never forgive myself if I didn’t take this new job.
With Kipo halfway done with its final season, it felt like a good place to end this chapter, although it was definitely tough to make the conscious decision to say goodbye and venture out into the unknown. In the end it felt like the timing was right, and I’m glad that I got the chance to say goodbye!
Kipo Pop-Up Experience
Universal CityWalk | December 15, 2019
In December, we had a surprise crew reunion to celebrate the upcoming release of Kipo on Netflix in January. There was a pop-up event at Universal Citywalk in Hollywood to advertise the show, and we had the chance to go together and check it out. Whoever had designed the experience had done an amazing job nailing the look of the props, backdrops, and character costumes, and it was genuinely so cool to get to see the trailer for the show on a massive public screen.
Kipo Wrap Party
The Federal | January 14, 2020
At long last, Kipo debuted on Netflix in January 2020, and Dreamworks threw a premiere party for the cast and crew at a bar in North Hollywood called The Federal.
The drinks were on the house, all the screens in the bar were blasting the show on Netflix, the karaoke machine was revved up, and I had an absolute blast. It was amazing getting to celebrate with everyone and look back on what a journey it had been making this show together!
With the first season of Kipo finally out on Netflix, I also got to share something I had worked on with my friends and family for the first time. I hopped onto a remote Teleparty with a group of my high school friends and we watched the first few episodes together - it was so special getting to see their reactions live!
End of an Era
I genuinely don’t think I could’ve asked for a better work experience for my first full-time job in animation - I’ll always look back on it fondly. It’s never easy to uproot yourself and move far away from your friends and family to start a new life across the country, but that’s exactly what happened to me in 2018 when I moved to LA.
I remember all of the mixed emotions that I felt from making that big move - excitement and apprehension for sure, but also occasionally a sense of wistfulness for my old life and the people that I had left behind. If it weren’t for this job, and for the way the crew welcomed me with open arms, I think I definitely would’ve had a much rougher time adjusting to this big life change. At the end of the day when a project is done, it’s not really the work that I remember (although there’s a lot of it for sure), nor is it the feeling of accomplishment at making something cool. What sticks with me the most through the years are the people that I’ve met and the friends that I’ve made at those jobs, and I know I wouldn’t trade those friendships for anything. Thanks for walking down memory lane with me, and I’ll see you all next time!
Thank you for sharing this! Especially the rates because I think a lot of people are afraid to talk about that publicly, but new artists can’t learn it if they don’t know. I really enjoy this newsletter keep up the good work!
Hi Kat, this was such a lovely post and I loved all the details about your experience! I also loved Kipo and whenever I’d tell people about it I’d always be like “omg the color design is amazing!”. I also loved Voltron so it’s cool to hear they were all being produced nextdoor to you! I think Voltron actually helped me with a breakthrough in my art journey at the time. I recently landed some remote freelance with Dreamworks, and my dream (aside from working with them haha) is to have that same kind of lovely in-person community that you built someday. I’ve also only been on the job a few weeks and so I 100% feel the “I don’t know if I’m doing things in the right way” thing lol. I transitioned from concept art in the game production pipeline to visdev in the TV animation pre-production pipeline, but the small team I’ve been in contact with have been so nice and welcoming so far <3 On a sidenote I’m also glad you included your pay rate and that it was lower than it should've been so that ppl who are new can get a better idea on what they should shoot for when onboarding. I made $30/hr in my first full-time (contract) concept art job, but I’m living in Philly which is way cheaper than LA!! Also RIP unseasoned broccoli loll