We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Keneth Leoncito. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Keneth below.

Keneth, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?

I always grew up loving films like Sleeping Beauty and anime like Cardcaptor Sakura. Those types of films and tv shows realyl captured what I loved about cartoons and anime, really beautiful engaging stories where good triumphs over evil. These types of cool, fun stories pushed me to pursuing a career in animation and studying the craft. However that love was simple and sometimes even a little directionless. It really wasn’t until I watched Moana for the first time in theatres that it really clicked in my head what exactly I wanted to do in animation. It was the first time I saw characters and a story that felt approximate or similar to precolonial Filipino traditions. Even though I obviously know Polynesian cultures and traditions are oceans apart from where my family comes from, the designs I saw really opened my eyes and made me ask questions about how can I represent myself and my culture in this art form? And so I really dove into visual development, that is the art of creating concept art in animation, and tried to use it as a vehicle for cultural design. For the past three years, I worked at Walt Disney Animation Studios as a character designer and even had a chance to work on the new Moana sequel which felt like a beautiful full circle moment, allowing me to give back to a series that gave me such a big push while I was a student. I learned so much about what it meant to be a designer while also how much work goes in to try to make something as artistically accurate and respectful as possible.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

HI my name is Keneth Leoncito. I am a Filipino Canadian designer in animation, specifically focused in Character Design and visual development. Ive been working in the industry for over 5 years for companies like Walt Disney Animation Studios, and Netflix Animation Studios. You can see my work on films like Wish (2023), Wendell and Wild (2022), Moana 2 coming this year and many more. In my field of work I have designed costumes, characters and was well as animated sets for CG and stop motion films. The work I do is specific, well researched and brimming with a well honed sense of appeal which I’ve grown and nurtured working in the feature film industry, capturing my directors’ vision while also injecting my own sensibilities and voice in the process. I also have a great love for folklore, my culture as a Filipino, as well as narrative storytelling and table top roleplaying games like Dungeons and Dragons and Fabula Ultima.

Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?

As far as resources go I kind of wish I had more exposure to greater design. I think seeing and getting more educated about all different sorts of animation would really allow you to break through the boundaries of how something should look, how it should be represented and open more creative decisions and solutions as you grow and develop. When I first started out my foundation was really rooted in anime and manga, so I drew really closely to those styles that I admired so much. I still obviously really value what I’ve learned from those programs and my influences from those places still really inform my sense of appeal, but a large part of my own creative journey is teaching myself how to draw more exaggeratedly and more freely. It still something I want to work on. That and perhaps I should have learned more fundamental drawing skills earlier on in life (haha). But also no regrets!

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

As ive mentioned earlier on, I would love to champion Filipino stories and designs in the world of animation. Thats something I feel like I will always carry in my heart. I want to be able to contribute to and create stories that speak to how I have navigated the world: as a Filipino, as a queer person, as someone who immigrated to the west at a young age, as someone raised with Catholic values balancing it all. I think in film, seeing these representational stories are so important because they teach your younger selves and children who are first understanding the world through the media they consume, life long lessons and inform them about all sorts of people and the complex /nuanced lives they lead. I am so happy to be able to see more Filipino stories take off online in comics and short films and even in ttrpgs. I think the impact of being able to contribute something to the visual language or mythology of our cultures is so important: they help define something otherwise intangible in the medium, something I wasn’t even able to visualize when I was a kid (like how kids like my self or my family members would look like in animation) and bring them to life in a new medium.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.kenesu.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ke.ne.su/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kenesu/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/kenesu
• Other: Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ke.ne.su