Kristie Kim wins Illustrator of the Future Contest

Kristie Kim accepting her award at L. Ron Hubbard Achievement awards in April. (Courtesy of Kristie Kim)

By Tae Hong

Rising artist Kristie Kim was a winner of the Illustrator of the Future Contest at the L. Ron Hubbard Achievement awards in April.

Her winning piece, “What Moves the Sun and Other Stars,” is based on the short story of the same name by K.C. Norton and was among 12 picked out of thousands of applicants.

She said she read the story, which heavily references Dante’s “Inferno,” many times in order to grasp a feel for her illustration.

“I wanted to show a chaotic atmosphere where characters were running away from all the torture and sins that the author had described in the story,” she says. “I show a lot of turmoil and chaos in my image.”

Kim had 10 days to create a thumbnail and a rough sketch and an additional 30 days to actually create the artwork.

The award ceremony, which took place at the historic Wilshire Ebell Theatre in Los Angeles, is an annual event established in 1983 that recognizes the best in science fiction writing and illustration.

Kristie Kim’s “What Moves the Sun and Other Stars.” (Courtesy of Kristie Kim)

Another Korean American illustrator, Seonhee Lim, was honored the same night for her depiction of Terry Madden’s “Animal.”

Contest winners have gone on to produce over 4,500 illustrations, 356 comic books, contributed to 36 TV shows and 46 movies and produced 594 covers of books and albums.

“I got to meet a lot of professional artists and art directors and they told me how they got started or what they had to do,” she says. “I got to meet different types of artists and got to see what kinds of art is going around in the world. … It was great for me because we don’t have that down here.”

The 21-year-old Korean American is currently a senior at North Carolina State University, where she majors in design studies.

Born in Seoul, Kim immigrated to the U.S. with her family in 1994. She has previously won first place in the 2010 Congressional Art Show for “The Chase,” which led her to hold her first public exhibition at the U.S. Capitol Cannon Pedestrian Tunnel.

She says she wants to work in the entertainment industry as a visual designer, where her primary interest lies in robotics, mechanics and futuristic scenes.

Kim grew up drawing because of her mother, who did fine arts. She says the field has changed over the years into a more diverse discipline, especially with computer fine arts on the rise.

Last winter, she studied abroad at Hongik University, Korea’s famed school of art, where she saw the reaching potential of designers in creating art for large corporations such as Sony. She says it opened her eyes to what kinds of fields she can pursue.

After graduating from NCSU, Kim is headed to Hollywood for the Gnomon School of Visual Effects, a famed program that Fast Company calls “the MIT of visual effects” — but before that, she’ll be interning at Disney for a few months.

A quick glance at her online portfolio shows Kim’s varying interests in mediums, from, of course, illustrations to graphic art to animations and character design.

“In illustration, I want to take it up to the next step,” she says. “I don’t want to be stuck in [2D] illustration for the longest time.”