Dou Hong is an LA - based art director.
Dou Hong is a character designer who gave me a lot of insight of being an artist as a role within a larger production system. She spoke very clearly and practically about what it means to design characters for animation, not just as drawings, but as tools that many different departments rely on.
She shared her work on TMNT, Invincible, and Young Justice, focusing on the character design process. What her job involved was reinterpreting characters that already have decades of history while still making them feel fresh. She emphasized that these designs have to work for story artists, modelers, riggers, and surfacing teams, so they can’t just look good on paper.
Another thing I really admired was how easily she moves between different visual styles. She talked about working on very different IPs like Ben 10, Young Justice, and TMNT, all of which have completely different aesthetics. Instead of forcing one personal style onto everything, she finds the underlying structure of each world and rebuilds a design language that fits.