Animation Guild | We are 839 Digital Magazine
Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1485933
18 KEYFRAME A F T E R H O U R S "For me, every time I do a mural, it feels like I'm learning how to do it from scratch... Every location offers an adventure. The wall surfaces are different. So it's a physical challenge as much as an artistic one." FROM MURAL COMMISSIONS TO LICENSED TOYS, DANNY "KANO" KIMANYEN HAS BUILT A SUCCESSFUL CAREER BEYOND HIS STUDIO JOBS. CLIMBING THE WALLS What would a well-established Character Designer and traditional Animator ever be doing 40 feet up in the air taking a can of spray paint to the side of a building on New York's Lower East Side? Five years ago, Danny Kimanyen asked himself the same question, and he was the man with the can. While by no means his first public art project, the four-story mural he created at the intersection of Rivington and Allen Streets as part of the Five Points Festival was definitely the largest. And Kimanyen, whose artist handle is kaNO, wondered whether he was in over his head. "I had never been up so high on a boom lift, so it was super intimidating," recalls kaNO. "I wasn't sure I should have said yes to the project. So I got up there and we did it at night and projected it from across the street. And sure enough, while I was tracing my