By Honorary Reporter Oshini Navodya Jayamuni from Sri Lanka

The World Illustration Awards, organized by the Association Of Illustrators of the UK and the Beverly Hills, California-based Directory of Illustration, selects a longlist of 500 works and a shortlist  of 200 among 5,000 entries from 77 countries. This year's honorees announced on Nov. 1 in an online ceremony covered 20 categories and four cross-categories with two overall winners.

Illustrator Kim Soo-jin, a senior visual design major at the College of Fine Arts at Hongik University in Seoul, won the New Talent Alternative Publishing Category for her work "Scales and Shards." In a written interview on Nov. 28, Kim described what went into her winning piece. 

Kim Soo-jin won the New Talent category of this year's World Illustration Awards.

What has influenced your illustrating style?
Nothing specific because everything I've experienced and seen has influenced my style. I'm still trying to find my style. As a child, I watched a lot of animated works by Studio Ghibli and Disney, and I think they influenced my storytelling method.

What things do you pay most attention to when working on an illustration?
External things such as completeness, color and detail are important when working on an illustration, but I focus on the internal aspects. External elements change over time but an illustration's meaning and presentation method do not and can thus greatly impact viewers.

This is from Kim Soo-jin's work "Scale and Shards." (Kim Soo-jin)

Why did you enter the World Illustration Awards? 
"Scale and Shards" is a work I submitted as an assignment last year and the class professor advised me to enter this year's contest. I didn't know about the event and had no confidence in my work. "Scale and Shards" is the first complete comic I made after entering university. I'm still a student so I have few high-quality works, but this is my favorite. 

What inspired your award-winning work "Scale And Shards?"
I saw many marine-related documentaries and YouTube videos and found many of them contradictory. Many are aware of sea pollution but not all realize that it comes back to damage humans. My work is a reminder that plastic waste in the oceans harms sea creatures and the beauty of the seas. I've long been interested in the sea and marine life, but have grown more aware of environmental pollution and marine debris. So I used marine debris and the relationship between the sea and people as inspiration for my work.

Kim Soo-jin's "Scales and Shards" won the New Talent category at this year's World Illustration Awards.

What about your other project, "The Daily Life of the Chubby Urban Pigeon?"
When walking on the street, I like to observe and take pictures of the fat pigeons common in downtown Seoul. My graphic novel "The Daily Life of the Chubby Urban Pigeon" is a project I started by compiling these images. The pigeons in my work eat, sleep, rest and socialize like humans. The birds are often seen as dirty by Koreans, but I felt proud when a classmate who read it said she found pigeons a little cuter after reading it.

"The Daily Life of the Chubby Urban Pigeon" (Kim Soo-jin)