Animating for impact

As a 10-year-old, Ejun Hong, a rising fourth-year from Edmonton, Canada, faced health challenges that put her through a difficult time. What comforted her? Animation. 

“I remember watching a lot of animated films and TV shows in general with my family, and they helped me a lot in terms of learning how to love myself, and a lot of life lessons and values that I currently hold,” says Hong. “That was the moment I realized how powerful animation could be.”

With an eye toward helping others and “making people happy,” she says, she began experimenting with filmmaking. During a gap year in Slovakia—she moved several times with her family during her upbringing—she created two animated films, one about her own hardships and another about her grandfather’s experiences with Alzheimer’s and the familial love that came to the surface in the process. 

When Hong came to Penn, she created a third film about the division of Korea during her time in a hand-drawn animation class with Joshua Mosley, a professor of animation in the Weitzman School of Design. In the College of Arts & Sciences, Hong is double majoring in cinema and media studies and fine arts, with a minor in design.

Her experiences at Penn recently led to an internship with Sony Pictures in Los Angeles, as part of the Povich RealArts@Penn Prize, funded by 1962 Penn alum Maury Povich, which provides a stipend for Penn students who have been chosen for summer internships that would otherwise be unpaid. More broadly, RealArts@Penn partners with creative businesses across the country and provides a stipend for students to have summer internship opportunities, including in theater, film, music, journalism, advertising, and museums. 

This summer, after previously doing two other RealArts@Penn internships with All Ages Productions and the Walt Disney Family Museum, she got accepted to a position with Sony Pictures as a social and digital design intern, creating videos and animation assets for “Wheel of Fortune” and “Jeopardy!” She’s also taken the opportunity, while in Los Angeles, to meet with Penn alumni who work for Marvel Studios and Sony Animation. 

“[Recently] I went to a RealArts happy hour they host every year in Los Angeles, and I met a lot of Penn alumni and Penn students who work in the entertainment industry, so that was really great,” Hong adds. 

She’s also been able to get feedback on her senior thesis project, an animated film about lymphoma patients in Korea. She explains that, in the past year or so, she’s taken an interest in tackling societal issues in her animation: In 2023, she created a short film called “Echoing, it doesn’t stop …” that reflects on the Russian invasion of Ukraine by loosely adapting Serhiy Zhadan’s poem “So, I’ll Talk About it.” 

It applies techniques of stop-motion and sand animation, skills she learned while working with Mosley in several design courses. 

Now, she hopes to raise awareness of—and make an impact on—the cultural, societal, and psychological struggles people experience in Korea while ill. The impetus, she says, was the experience of a family member who received the diagnosis and struggled. 

“I wanted to help them tell their stories; in Korea and Asian countries in general, it’s hard to be open about your illness, because people see it as a weakness and it adds obstacles in society,” she explains.

“I want to encourage people to be open, and I see animation as a tool for that.”

Linda Simensky, a visiting lecturer in Cinema & Media Studies, met Hong through her fall 2022 course, The Animation of Disney. She recalls Hong as someone who stood out because of how upfront she was about her interests. 

“It’s always very interesting meeting people in the class who really want to work in the industry. They always make it clear and try to pick topics that will help them as they’re moving forward, and she was one of those students,” Simensky says. “And they stand out to me.”

She describes Hong as “highly motivated, and very knowledgeable about the industry”—adding that she was extra impressed when Hong came back for a visit the following year and had worked as an intern at the Walt Disney Family Museum. 

“She has a good understanding of what she wants to do, and she’s interested in the education side of it, teaching people how to animate,” Simensky adds, referring to Hong’s work with Penn’s student-run animation studio Pencilbite and the Netter Center for Community Partnerships, where she mentors West Philadelphia high school students. “She’s really just doing the full 360 of ways you can be interested in and involved with animation on campus.”

Eventually, Hong says, she’d like to teach university students about animation. But for now, she’s continuing to learn through her internships, and network and refine her animation style, which she says has “evolved a lot.”

“What I’ve learned as an artist is the medium and the style itself could also deliver a message other than the content itself, so I’ve been trying to different mediums and styles and techniques,” she says. “I’m still learning and developing my styles.”