Sungmoo Heo is Drawing Vibrant, Vivacious Characters
An Obvious Understanding and Appreciation for the Human Form, Expressive Compositions, and Beautiful Color Combine
I have semi-recently been conned into watching One Piece. I say conned with a lot of love, because I’m really enjoying it; both the story and the core-sample that is decades of improvement in animation are right up my alley. I say semi-recently because I’m on episode four hundred and five, and that took a significant time investment. I wanted to feature a character designer this week because One Piece has me thinking about what makes different kinds of character designs impactful.
Sungmoo Heo is a Character Designer, Concept Artist, and Illustrator located in South Korea. Heo’s portfolio consists of a wide variety of charming art, and includes a range of illustration types from black and white linework to colorful paintings. A skilled artist, Heo also created a class on Coloso that focuses on anatomy and character design. The class is available in Korean, with subtitled versions for Japanese and English.
I included a lot of colorful works in this post, because they happened to be some of my favorites. I would, however, be remiss if I didn’t point the spotlight toward a little bit of the black-and-white sketch work in Heo’s collection; in particular, this pair of works, specifically here and here, both appropriately titled [Jibaro].
For anyone unfamiliar with Love, Death + Robots, it’s an anthology series of episodes that each feature a stand-alone story, but all of which relate to any number of three specific themes: Love, death, and robots. The episode, “Jibaro,” is about a group of conquistadors in an alternate timeline/universe, that encounter a siren-like creature. The episode is colorful, features dramatic choreography, and the siren herself is draped in jewels and gold. In my opinion, Heo’s drawings manage to capture the essence of the characters incredibly well. The poses and framing of the images, the way they mirror one another, as well as the differences in their expression really got me thinking about the story of the original work. Outside the context of the story, the posing is dynamic and the visuals tell a story of their own. I like this set.
I’m looking forward to seeing where the story of One Piece is headed. I never avoided it on purpose growing up, it was just something that felt out of reach, as by the time I became aware of it and it was available, there were already enough chapters and episodes that I felt like I’d never be able to catch up. It’s a little ironic that by the time I did start watching, that gulf had become about ten-fold wider. I guess the lesson is that it’s never too late to start something that seems daunting, and it may end up being absolutely worth it to try.
Check out Sungmoo Heo on Artstation!
