Animation Guild | We are 839 Digital Magazine
Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1544997
Invincible images courtesy Skybound Animation Studio. Dou Hong portrait by Tim Sullens. It's easy to tell a person what they're doing right and make them feel good about themselves. But to tell someone what they're doing wrong and have them still feel positive is a special skill. This is something Dou Hong values about her first boss, Art Director Derrick Wyatt, who passed away in 2021. Raised in Ohio, Hong loved cartoons, but "I didn't realize that these shows were created by living, breathing human beings," she says. She also didn't know about art schools out of state, so she attended the University of Cincinnati where she majored in automotive design. But her passion for animation remained, so she would give herself small assignments, drawing and posting fan art, then tagging the shows on her social media. This got her noticed by people in the industry, and she scored free- lance work on Ben Ten: Omniverse. As graduation neared, she let it be known she was looking for a job. Offered a role that required a move across the country to Burbank, she found herself working in character design under Wy- att, who had been a Character Designer on Teen Titans, a series Hong calls revolutionary for her as an artist. Although Hong loved Wyatt's work, "doing fan art for yourself is not the same thing as working on a team," she says. She struggled to adapt to his style, so much so that she was moved off character design to props: "But I slowly got back to it because he was very patient." She recalls how he helped her correct her work while also letting her know that if she couldn't handle the assignments, he would have to look elsewhere. "It's that sort of honesty, but with kindness, that I really did appreciate when it came to him. I knew I was not doing work up to par, but he never made me feel bad about it." As Hong's career progressed, she eventually realized that she wanted to become an Art Director, but it wasn't until Invincible that the opportunity arose. Having done character design on Season 1, she returned as Character Prop Lead on Season 2 to help trouble-shoot. "We spent 11 weeks just blasting through the last three episodes of an eight-episode season," she says, calling this experience "a test I didn't know I was a part of." She was hired onto Season 3 as Art Director, a role she maintains to this day. Hong sees her job as a balance of setting her artists up for success and making sure she's able to defend their work. This means that she has to do for them what Wyatt once did for her: "Letting them know what they're doing right, and what they're doing maybe not so right," she says. Like Wyatt, she is firm but kind, an approach she real- ized also relates to her own leadership role. "Derrick was always really nice to me, but his vision was his vision," Hong says. "It was my job to do what he asked. That's what I was being paid for." As a first-time Art Director, Hong used his example to define her own space with her artists. "It's really on me to stand my ground and to be like, 'I know what you're trying to go for, I appreciate your concerns, but right now we're going with this particular vision. We'll see if it works. If it doesn't, then we'll pivot.'" "That was one thing with Derrick," she says. "A lot of ideas were purely his own, and he had confidence in them." It's a lesson she says sits in the back of her mind: "You're the Art Director. It's your job to lead. Don't let other people lead you." Hong says it was a blessing to have had such a posi- tive experience starting out. As for being able to work as an Art Director and carry on Wyatt's legacy, it's "a nice little roundabout," she says, "and a celebration of him, too." "I think the number one thing I learned from Derrick is patience." SUMMER 2026 27 KINDNESS COUNTS DOU HONG, Art Director Invincible, Skybound Animation Studio INSPIRATION DERRICK WYATT