Musings on Mir: Finding a name in American animation

At first glance, Studio Mir seems like the cutting edge of animation. The world-renowned studio – known for favorites like Avatar: The Legend of Korra (2012-2014), Voltron: Legendary Defender (2016-2018), and Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts (2020) – perches above 20-plus stories in a glass-and-steel building placed in the heart of Gasan Digital Complex. The studio interior is as sleek as its edifice; two floors sport state-of-the-art Macs in each cubicle, and each carrel is decorated according to its sitter’s whimsy. It is hard to imagine that just fifty years earlier, Korea’s animation industry relied upon expired filmstock thrown away by the US Air Force and home-made animation cameras mimicking those in the US Eighth Army Base (Lent & Yu, 2001, 101-103).[1] In half a century, the Korean animation industry has massively evolved from extreme scarcity to the third largest producer of animation today (Guoqiang & Weijie 2010, 1901).

There is one similarity between these two images, however: the shadow influence of the US on Korean animation. In S. Korea – where little domestic demand exists and over 50% of its animation work is funded by international projects – local animators largely view US (and Japanese) outsourcing as a source of reliable income (Yamamoto 2014, 48). Certainly, this comes with a variety of other related benefits. In 1971 for example, animation giant Hanna-Barbera funded, built, and trained a studio in in Sydney, Australia, and subcontracted much of their work to local LA studios like Hutten & Love, Ron Campbell, Peter Aries, Fred Calvert, and Kubiak/West. Hollywood executives paid for and trained locals out of their own pockets – sparking the fire of commercial TV animation abroad.

On the other hand, the active avoidance of more equitable co-productions remains a major downside for the subcontracted. “Above-the-line” managerial roles, featuring “irreplaceable” individuals involved in ideation, storyboarding, directing, key frame animation, and art direction stay in the United States. Grunt work in “below-the-line” labor is sent abroad; it consists of more easily replicable manual work like assisting, inking, painting, backgrounds, checking, and camera work (Sito 2006, 250-251). While some entities today like Studio Mir are increasingly involved in pre-production processes – notably more directorial agency in choreographing fight scenes in Legend of Korra – one key similarity remains nonetheless: their inability to retain intellectual property (Kim 2017) (Fig. 1).   

The outright denial of ownership has openly been noted as well. In 2014, animation industry magazine Cartoon Brew describes Studio Mir’s four-year contract as an equal partnership “co-producing” and “co-developing” shows with DreamWorks Animation. A DreamWorks representative was quick to correct however, underscoring that the relationship is strictly a “‘work for hire’ basis, meaning [Studio Mir] are not co-producers nor will they gain any interest in DreamWorks’ intellectual property” (Amidi 2014). Although Studio Mir could be involved with visual preproduction processes, the storyline and franchise afterlife is ultimately DreamWorks’ own. The televised episode is both a commodity (with appropriate use- and exchange-value) and intellectual property – or that is, the work of an auteur.

Fig. 1 - The Legend of Korra (image credit: Nickelodeon).

The impulse towards an authorial fingerprint is especially prominent in the animation studio, where labor is codified and segmented amongst many individuals (Wells 2002, 73-86). Walt Disney set precedent with the production of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937). He infamously referred to himself as a “little bee” – roaming around the studio, disengaged with the manual work of animation, but strictly maintaining a continuity of style (Pallant 2011, 4-8). Subcontractors today observe a similar level of codified oversight, though with less tacit interaction. Korean studios have noted the widespread use of animation “bibles” distributed by US studios. These pre-production packages include storyboards, x-sheets, character design, background and color design packs, and pre-recorded voiceovers. Korean studios tend to build consistent relationships with their US counterparts for ease of information flows. Just in case, however, US “bibles” are also standardized so that any individual who has previously worked for a US production can read the next despite language barriers (Lee 2017, 690).

Studio Mir presents itself as different from the rest, though. Its founder Jae-myung Yoo fondly notes that Mir’s connection to Korra is due to his own prominent role as a lead animator for Nickelodeon’s Avatar the Last Airbender (Kim). As others have noted, the studio makes regular attempts at making itself visible; it interacts with its fanbase regularly over social media. To top it all off, Mir is regularly commissioned by Netflix. Mir rose to fame thanks to Netflix Originals, a tripartite subbranch of an over-the-top (OTT) platform that focuses on acquisition, commission, and distribution. In 2020, Netflix re-contracted four Asian studios directly; three Japanese (Science SARU, MAPPA, Naz Studios) and one Korean (Studio Mir) (Dudok de Wit, 2020).

Unlike its Japanese counterparts however, Studio Mir remains a subcontractor to US companies. Its future seems condemned to the outsourcing cycle, despite its aspirations. In an older interview, Yoo reveals his desire for his own Disneyworld-esque theme park and campus for Mir characters (Kim). This ambition, however, would necessitate actual or partial ownership over the products that they produce. It also would necessitate popular demand and investment in its own products, rather than in the foreign IPs it has become famous for before.

I wonder, then, about the feasibility of future growth. Why should visibility matter when the outcome – thankless production and no ownership – remains the same? Autonomy sounds like an impossible dream. Despite their brand visibility, Mir is vulnerable to a more volatile existence without the grounding of long-standing IPs. The outsourced can dream of being like their outsourcer, but under these current conditions… to what extent can that dream come true?

I remain optimistic however. Compared to years of literal forced erasure – where outsourced studios were commonly left uncredited for reasons of directorship, nationalism, and so forth – staking out a name for oneself is already one step in the right direction. Studio Mir’s emphasis on branding (even without ownership!) is not only assertive, but subversive. By underscoring its own reputation, Studio Mir already begins where so many previous studios had failed: it gives itself a name. In so doing, Mir renders the globalized animation pipeline more transparent; it also reveals the underlying complications of purely US-centric auteur-like work. It too stresses the financial and creative necessity of cross-continental collaboration –whilst building up its own reputation. In place of so many subcontracted studios before it, Studio Mir emerges from the shadows to take credit where credit is due.

**Article published: August 27, 2021**

Notes

[1] In this vignette, John Lent interviews Shin Dong-heon, one of the first known auteurs in Korean animation. As a pioneer of independent Korean animation, Shin outrightly rejected subcontracting culture during the 1960s. Ironically however, his studio – Universal Art Company – eventually ended up subcontracting for both American and Japanese companies from 1974-1980.

References

Amidi, Amid. 2014. “South Korea’s Studio MIR Signs Co-Production Deal with DreamWorks (Updated).” Cartoon Brew, 30 August 30, 2014. https://www.cartoonbrew.com/business/south-koreas-studio-mir-signs-co-production-deal-with-dreamworks-103158.html.

Dudok de Wit, Alex. 2020. “Netflix Strikes Partnerships with Four Animation Studios from Japan and Korea.” Cartoon Brew, 24 October 2020. https://www.cartoonbrew.com/streaming/netflix-strikes-partnerships-with-four-animation-studios-from-japan-and-korea-198026.html

Guoqiang, Ren, and Jin Weijie. 2010. “The Comparison of Animation Industries of US, Japan, South Korea And China.” In 2010 International Conference on Logistics Systems and Intelligent Management (ICLSIM), 1901–4. Harbin, China: IEEE.

Kim, Matthew. 2017. “The Studio behind Voltron, Korra, and more cult cartoons is just getting started.” Polygon, 20 Jan 2017. https://www.polygon.com/tv/2017/1/20/14323386/voltron-netflix-studio-mir.

Lee, Joonkoo. 2017. “Three Worlds of Global Value Chains: Multiple Governance and Upgrading Paths in the Korean Animation Industry.” International Journal of Cultural Policy (20 July 2017): 1–17.

Lent, John A., ed. 2001. Animation in Asia and the Pacific. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.

Pallant, Chris. 2011. Demystifying Disney: A History of Disney Feature Animation. New York: The Continuum International Publishing Group.

Sito, Tom. 2006. Drawing the Line: The Untold Story of the Animation Unions from Bosko to Bart Simpson. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.

Tschang, Feichin Ted, and Andrea Goldstein. 2010. “The Outsourcing of ‘Creative’ Work and the Limits of Capability: The Case of the Philippines’ Animation Industry.” IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management 57, no. 1 (February 2010): 132–43. https://doi.org/10.1109/TEM.2009.2028325.

Wells, Paul. 2002. Animation: Genre and Authorship. New York: Columbia Universty Press.

Yamamoto, Kenta. 2014. The Agglomeration of the Animation Industry in East Asia. Vol. 4. International Perspectives in Geography. Tokyo: Springer Japan.

Biography

Grace Han is a PhD student in Art History (Film and Media Studies focus) at Stanford University. She has previously received the Society for Animation Studies' Maureen Furniss Best Student Paper on Animated Media Award for a study on animated melodrama. She's still concerned with animation’s relationship with the banal.