Jennifer Yuh Nelson
Jennifer Yuh Nelson
Jennifer Yuh Nelson, also known as Jennifer Yuh, is an American director and storyboard artist. She is best known for her directorial debut Kung Fu Panda 2. Yuh is the first woman to solely direct an animated feature from a major Hollywood studio...
NationalitySouth Korean
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth13 June 1972
art style portfolios
As I said, i'm very quiet, i don't go around saying "I'm awesome!" but when I brought in my portfolio into DreamWorks and showed them what I could do, my art style is a lot wilder than I am.
thinking skills introvert
I think the best thing I have is the introvert's ability to listen when you're working on something as complicated as this and you have to really be aware of everyone's specialized skills.
artist advice listening
Aside from that i'm an introvert and i'm a quiet person. The benefit of that is I listen. It's not like my mouth is open and I broadcast everything and i'm drowning everyone out. When I'm listening to the incredible artists I work with and i'm hearing their specialized advice on what they would do with something then we can, all together, as a big collaborative group.
thinking people decision
I think more than being a woman is the fact that i'm an introvert. In the environment I work in people forget that i'm a woman which is wonderful it just shows what a wonderful environment i work in, no one treats me differently. They don't think that because i'm a woman i'll make decisions differently.
people support remember
Lots of people support me and I forget. But sometimes things happen and I remember, and they say I encourage them, it makes me feel very happy.
cute girl growing-up
8 year old young girl came up to me when I went to speak at an elementary school, and she gave me a drawing. It was great and she said "I want to be just like you when I grow up and direct movies". And that just made me choke up. It was so cute, and the reason why she's looking at me is I look like her.
space giving kung-fu-panda
We have those new environments [during Kung Fu Panda 3] that give a scale to the movie, that are the spirit realm and the panda village. The spirit realm, having no gravity, having this massive space, allowed us to do huge action shots. All that we just couldn't do before. We just couldn't get the scale, we'd have to cheat them. This time we found ourselves more free.
thinking order years
I think we had to push forward to make sure it was different, do something that we had never done before and yet still have the consistency to stay in the same world. This was our chance to do all the things we didn't get a chance to do before. We've been working on these movies [Kung Fu Panda] for twelve years and we have to keep things exciting for us in order for us to devote that many years of our lives to do this.
roots kung-fu-panda wish
Po's [Kung Fu Panda] unending enthusiasm is something we wish we could have. We can't help but root for him because of his geek energy.
mean thinking kung-fu-panda
I think it's because Po [from Kung Fu Panda] is such a geek, and he is so relatable. He is so excited by life and is excited to learn new things. I think that accessibility is something that we all can relate to, there are so many things we wish we could do but don't have the means to achieve it.
children personality tigress
Tigress is my alternate personality, especially with children. I love animation because you get to do things you don't normally get to.
voice people acting
You have to make sure that people are still motivated and happy and creatively challenged so that it can all be stitched together. The voice acting starts after a lot of the storyboards are done.
character forever kung-fu-panda
You're right, we both have been working on these films [Kung Fu Panda] forever and we know these characters so well that literally we will react to the same note in the same way. We will have the same answer most of the time.
play kung-fu-panda rolling
When you see all of the pandas in this movie [Kung Fu Panda 3], they are rolling because that is exactly what they do. Not only were we able to watch the pandas play but we had free range to walk around and get a feel for the architecture and get a sense of where they lived ,so there's a lot of firsthand exploration.