Keika Lee
Keika Lee is a female Asian American filmmaker who loves the magic of animation. After she immigrated to the United States from South Korea, she saw her first animated film and knew she wanted to create animated films from that day on. Keiko went to art college to learn traditional animation and then realized she really enjoyed producing and directing. She continued her production career at such companies as Electronic Arts, DreamWorks Animation and Zynga. After 15 years learning about film and game production, she decided to start her own animation studio called Greyscale Animation where she would produce and direct her first award winning animated short film "Odd Dog" (2019) and now "Oren's Way" (2023). Keika's vision is to bring the magic of animation to audiences of all ages and encourage more female filmmakers to be influential in the animation community.
“I was born in Seoul, South Korea. I immigrated to the U. S. when I was two years old. My parents and I, we immigrated with not a lot of money. [We], grew up kind of, not well off, but we made it. My mom actually went to the U. S. Army for a few years, and then got out and became a nurse. And my dad, he did a lot of odd jobs before becoming [an] entrepreneur. He owned his own business. That was their American dream, and that's how they became successful.I grew up with that. And became an entrepreneur myself, just like my dad. We lived in a lot of parts of the U. S. because my mom was in the army, and so we had to move a lot. But we settled in Castor Valley when I was 9 years old, and I basically grew up here.
I loved it so much that after college and living in San Francisco for 10 years, I moved back here with my son because I wanted him to grow up in a good community. I'm back and I started Grayscale here. And so the rest is history.”
Keika at Comic Con - Photo from Keika Lee
“When I was seven years old, I saw my first Disney film, which was Cinderella. And when I saw that, I knew I wanted to be an animator. I loved that movie so much that I drew it frame by frame when I was seven. I begged my parents to send me to art school. And I went to Academy of Art University to study 2D animation. I got a 2D animation degree. But afterwards, I ended up getting a job at Electronic Arts as a production coordinator because I fell in love with production. I realized I loved getting artists together to create something instead of actually being the artist. I followed that path for 15 years before I jumped ship and created Grayscale Animation.”
Keika’s animated short film Odd Dog
“It all started with my first film, Odd Dog. I started creating that short back in the summer of 2017. I just started drawing pictures of a boy and a cat based off of my son and our cat.
And from there, I thought, wouldn't it be awesome to make a short film about these two characters? I started contacting friends, and friends of friends, to see if they would be on board to create a film with me. And I thought, you know what? Ever since I was a little girl, I've always wanted to make an animation studio.”
“So, I established Grayscale Animation in June of 2017 and that's how it began. The mission statement is creating characters from the heart because not only is it about creating it from emotions, from deep down in your heart, but also the nostalgia of 2D animation, what kind of emotions it brings out of you.
I think the mission statement does attract people to the studio. I get applications. Many applications a day from people who visit our website. I mostly get a lot of BIPOC women applying to my studio, which I find refreshing. And [for] our last film, Orin's Way, the team was mostly BIPOC women, which I'm very proud of.
We're working on our third film. For the first time I'm not directing it. I have a colleague directing it because I wanted to give her the chance to show off her work. We've been working on it for the past year. And we've done character designs and we're doing some animation tests already. We're probably going to announce it next year.”
“As a director when I think about what my next project's going to be, I always start with the characters. I think about what's gonna make an interesting character that people are gonna fall in love with or that people are going to relate to.
And I study that character. The character usually takes about a year to develop. A lot of people think [of] characters, [and] just whip them up. But actually, for me, the character is so important that it takes a year. After the main character is developed, then I go to storyboards. And then I go to script and create a story based off of that character. From there, it goes into the, the regular storyboards, then layout, animation, the rest of the process.”
“I think like any other startup, you always need funding [as an animations studio]. Animation is a very expensive filmmaking medium. It's always tough to find people or investors for animated shorts because animated shorts are known to not make enough money, whereas feature films do and series do.
I guess I could say to anybody who would consider investing in me, I'm going to work hard and I'm going to do everything I can to make the best film. No matter what it takes and with or without you.
I do want to say that for other filmmakers out there that it's easy to dream about making films, it's easy to dream about building your own studio, but it takes a lot of heart to actually do it. And if you can just take that first step, you'll be amazed at how easy it is.”
Watch Keika’s full interview here:
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