Korean name
Hangul
Hanja
Revised
Romanization
Jeong Geunsik
McCune-
Reischauer
Chŏng Kŭn-sik
Peter Kunshik Chung (born April 19, 1961 in Seoul, South Korea, as 정근식 (Chung Geun-sik, or alternative spelling Jeong Geun-Sik or Chung Geun-sik)) is a Korean American animator. He is best known as the creator and director of Æon Flux, which ran as shorts on MTV's Liquid Television before launching as its own half-hour television series. He studied animation at CalArts from 1979-81, one year at the Character Animation program, and another year in the program in Experimental Animation.
Chung's directing credits include the Matriculated segment from The Animatrix, and, most recently, The Chronicles of Riddick: Dark Fury. Chung served as lead character designer for two animated series, Phantom 2040 and Reign: The Conqueror. Both series feature lean angular characters inspired by the art of Egon Schiele, a look which has become Chung's trademark character design. He also, along with Arlene Klasky and Gabor Csupo, co-designed the characters in the Nickelodeon series Rugrats, as well as directed the pilot for this series, "Tommy Pickles And The Great White Thing" and the opening sequence.
Chung's animation, particularly Æon Flux and Matriculated, tends toward the artistically and thematically experimental and is an example of progressive animation. Chung's stylistic influences uniquely include European expressionism such as Moebius combined with Japanese animation. Currently, among other unannounced projects, he is working on new direct-to-video episodes of Æon Flux and a full-length animated feature entitled Luvula. In addition, it is announced that he will be directing a three-part episode for GameTaps' ReVisioned: Tomb Raider.
In the animation field, he admires Yoshinori Kanada, Koji Morimoto, and Igor Kovalyov.
Ralph Bakshi, one of the first to hire Chung, has stated that one of Chung's favorite artist is Toulouse Lautrec.
Chung has also been a participant in online forums, where users and asked and discussed with him about his creative work and creative process. Two of the most prominent forums include ILX and Monican Spies.
Peter Chung was married in 2005.
