Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Yeonha Park. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Yeonha, thanks for joining us today. Are you happier as a creative? Do you sometimes think about what it would be like to just have a regular job? Can you talk to us about how you think through these emotions?

I’ve usually thought about this topic when I struggle with something, like life issues or going into a slump. In my job, I always have to think about what I really want to put into my work. I chose my job because I love creating something and showing it to people. However, sometimes it makes me so tired. I have to consider more than one person’s view (myself) -I consider what other people would love and feel interested in my work. At that moment, I started to imagine if I chose I decided to do besides animation. I had experience being a barista before, and I was interested in doing computer programing when I was young. I enjoyed both of them. Even sometimes I wanted to be a soldier like my grandfather. But none of them made me feel really touched or thrilled me. I just enjoyed or was interested in it. But animation, when I watch or create animation and watch it through the screen, it always makes me feel thrilled and alive. Not often, always. I know I’ve been struggling and I will keep struggling. But this job is the only one which makes me feel alive, thrilled, and fun inside of my soul. So, I can confidently say I’m so happy as an artist!

Yeonha, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I’m an animator. I do almost all kinds of animation, like traditional animation, motion graphics for promotional projects, and anything which has movement, I create them. As many people would think about animators, I also wanted to do traditional animation, like what Disney and Pixar animation studios do.

I was looking for a job after I graduated my college. Then, the Pandemic came and the animation field was frozen. I needed to do something, but that happening was not something that I could deal with. I looked up all the animation job positions, and I submitted over 300 resumes at that time. But there were not any companies who wanted to hire an international person at that harsh moment. Whenever I had an interview with someone, being international was always the issue to get hired. Then, I finally got a call from one, and it was an NBA team. I’ve never even imagined that I would work in the sports entertainment field, and I got a call from the NBA which was a huge part of the sports industry in the world. Everything was unbelievable, but it was all true. I started my first career at Charlotte Hornets in NBA as an official intern, and now I’m keeping my career as an official part of a team in the NBA G League, Greensboro Swarm-minor League of Charlotte Hornets)

Obviously, I mostly do animation for my team. When you go to watch a sports game, you can see the bit screen and it always plays something, like a promotional video, fun cam, noise meter animation, player stats, etc. Every single animation through that big screen is from my department. It could be really short like 2 or 3 seconds, some of them are long like 1 or 2 minutes. However, all of them need to be created by someone.
Many partnership or sponsorship companies support our team, so I created some thanks-to promotional animation. Also, people come to watch our game, so I create something to cheer people up too. Like this, I create almost all video and animation stuff for the sports game.

What sets me apart from others is having a different view. I’m not from the sports entertainment field, so I can think of something from the side who are not interested in sports. Also, I have so much experience in traditional animation, so I could mix that experience and the sports media which really works well. It always becomes something new and fresh. It was hard to think how I could mix two different art styles at first, but I had a lot of feedback from my current field and also had so many experiments. it brings better and good quality outcomes, and I believe this is how I can keep my career at the same organization.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

When other people watch my work and feel happy about it, It’s always been a huge honor and my motivation.
I chose this job because it makes me happy and alive.
I want to hear that people love my work and they enjoy it.
When I was young, not only me, young kids loved to watch the animation.
Since then I decided to be an animator to make other people laugh and feel happy.
So if they feel so, that’s my huge motivation to keep this work hard happily.

When other people watch my work and feel happy about it,
It’s always been a huge honor and reward to do this job.
I chose this job because it makes me happy and alive.
I want to hear that people love my work and they enjoy it.
When I was young, not only me, young kids loved to watch animation.
Since then I decided to be an animator to make others laugh and happy.
So if they feel so, that’s my motivation to keep this work hard happily.

People would not really care who created which one, but that’s totally okay.
I know who create all of those. That’s me.
That’s enough that people just see my work, enjoy and be happy about it,
It’s okay for me if they don’t know or care about the artist.
Because the memory will last for a long time, and they will bring enjoyed and happy memories when they get back home.
And it’s a great honor for the artist if the audience brings special memories after seeing my artwork.

That’s my motivation and reward to do my job.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

When I decided to come to the U.S. to study and do animation, my dog died in a car accident and my father passed away. I had never got any acceptance letter from any art school. I was only 18 at that moment. I wanted to give up everything, and I thought it was time to accept that I had no talent and go on the non-creative path.

However, I couldn’t just give up. There was no reason I couldn’t give up. I just couldn’t.
I knew it was only 18, and my life was not going to end at that time. If that’s not the end of my life, then I didn’t want to have any regret in the future life. So I just didn’t give up.
Many people looked up to me as foolish, useless, and arrogant. But also, many other people supported me and believed in me.
Time passed, I graduated from art college in the U.S., and working on the NBA team now. I don’t want to say I was different or special from others. I know I was lucky to have all the chance to have this amazing journey. But I also got this chance because I didn’t give up hope. I always have hope that my life is getting better and live happily.

I want to tell people life is always difficult. My life was all about the collaboration between tragedy and happiness. But we need to know if we give up something during the tragedy part, it is wasting the time of life which we must not do. How I could overcome everything was I knew the life can’t always be happy or sad. It’s always a swing between the two of them.

If you keep this in mind and remind it when you are going through the difficult part of your life, I would be happy so much.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.yeonhapark.com/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yeonha-park-6bb8b11a0/