​DELROY KINCAID: Artwork. Ho Che Anderson and Jason MacKay

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​From the beginning, we held back on making the images look too good, too sophisticated, as it had to look like it came from the mind of an 8-10 year old child.  

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As temping as it was since we had artists from two different worlds, styles and schools of thought: celebrated  graphic novel artist veteran Ho Che Anderson-who created King, and  fresh faced Jason MacKay-a recent graduate of the prestigious Sheridan College we all kept that in mind. Serve the story not ourselves.

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Ho Che did more pen, pencil and charcoal to paper.  Jason mostly used his computer designs. They both had different looks and strengths and the film uses them intentionally.  Ho Che is black, fairly politicized (with a name like Ho Che how can you not be?) and at least a decade older than Jason and his work  usually lends itself to hand drawing and organicy. textured.  Jason is white born in North America, a younger generation than Jason and his work tends to favour fantasy.

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They both are exquisite talents and I respect them for what they do and how it works for the film. I didn't go out looking for a black and white artist, I was more keen on their styles and where they had come from. One being black and the other white, may not be as important as one being Canadian born and the other Caribbean born. If it even slightly helps come across in the artwork how a place should look when familiar and when foreign, then I think they succeeded well.

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For the past scenes when Delroy is in the Caribbean island and making his transition to being in North America, the art is more organic, textured. old school, referencing the work Delroy's late grandmother taught him.  This was Ho Che. After she dies and Delroy goes to look for her in the great outdoors, For the fantasy North America scenes the work favoured computer animation. More dreamlike. a different texture. less organic and while beautiful, in Delroy's eyes a bit foreign to what he is used to.  This was Jason.

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While Ho Che and Jason had never met and were working about 80km away from each other in different cities, I would try to be the bridge between both of them so that while their styles were very different, I wanted them to have a hint of similarity. When we got what was in my head, my editor Jeff Howard was the glue that blended it together so well.

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Hmm. Can you guess who did which?

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