Interview with Heebok Lee, Creative Director of Giantstep, US

The biggest challenge we had was an incredibly aggressive deadline. From the start we had around 10 weeks to finish everything from concept development, supervising the shoot to asset creation, design, animation, composite to color grading. We literally finished the work the morning of the presentation day.An additional creative challenge was blending the two inspirational concepts in a way that felt authentic. We first laid out the development phases throughout history of the story of Gemini. Then, we had to find common factors of media, connect them, and finally visualize them.

It was a great promotion to our client for sure. But it also gave them confidence in our ability and unending expectation for the highest quality. Another plus, it’s always very rewarding at the end of a passion project to have those creative and technical efforts be recognized by our peers.

I encourage students to explore as many areas as possible. It all becomes the source of creativity in the future. From my experience, I’ve found literature to be a great source for my inspiration. How people use metaphor in poetry, this especially helps me learn how to visualize something abstract but make it tangible, and relatable so as to maximize the emotional impact.

I believe our studio, Giantstep, has been very successful due to its work ethic: Though we have very high standards for excellence, we treat our team members and clients with honesty and fairness. We have endeavored to create an environment where we support and respect each other, because we believe each project can be successful only if the people involved bring the requisite dedication.

Thank you so much for giving us the chance to share our work and thoughts.