Last Updated on February 28, 2024
Well-known for its k-drama and k-pop, many people tend to forget that Korea also a country that has many talented illustrators work for game, publishing, fashion and animation industry.
Highly skilled and unique art style, many of them are highly educated as they attended university (some attended overseas university) studying illustration or fine art.
However only few of them received international fame. Korean creative industry rapidly producing candy entertainment, like pop music and television drama. It’s very likely that creative products that take a long time to produce gonna be left behind. it seems that illustration industry is one of them.
Fortunately, super massive game industry in Korea still need a lot of talented illustrator creating concept art, characters and game world. Many of those game received international fame, and it also bring fame for illustrators involved on the making. And that’s how some Korean illustrators received their international fame.
Let’s not forget publishing and fashion industry. Many Korean illustrators specialized on creating arts for storybook, many of those books are published overseas and many of them have won an international competition.
As recently many people mentioned that Korea will be the next fashion mecca, many Korean fashion illustrator already in the business for quite long time, creating arts for fashion brands or magazines.
What we love about Korean illustration is their skills and presentation. High drawing skills combined with intricate details and colors choice that provide moods is really fulfill a human desire for good illustration pieces.
Their unique individual style makes it easy for audience to differentiate one illustrator’s work from another. We really hope that these illustration become great inspirations for creative people out there, especially if you are illustrator.
Chun Eunsil
Chun eunsil illustration take us to the time when we were small and there’s this very beautiful children storybook that we used to read before sleep and hug during sleep.
Pastel colors and unique characters combine with perfect composition, visual flow and balance, her works will amazed both children and adults. Do you notice that funny signature in the corner of each illustration?
Seon Ai
Seon Ai is female illustrators, with distinctive childish character design in bright solid colors. Working almost exclusively for printed media, her artworks featured in many fairy tale book, history book and Korean folklore book.
Kim Jung Soo
Kim Jung Soo better well-known as Cocobroccoli always depicting herself as a white rabbit. Her illustration will take you into her imaginative world that bright and full cute characters. Little girls would really love her artworks, because they’re so beautifully created and have playful taste.
Shin Jae Won
Shin Jae Won, as known as Wona, said that he want to bring happiness to everyone who see his illustrations. Happy is the right word to describe the feeling arise inside you when you see cute and lovely animals in a bright colors.
Mari Kim
Mari Kim have degree of Multimedia and Animation Studies from Melbourne, Australia. She draw cute girl character with big eyes that will remind us of Betty Boop. Her international fame arise when she created album artwork and music video for Korean girl band, 2NE1.
Yang Yusung
Calling herself as Yusung, her illustrations are full of intense colors. Sometimes it looks very moody and dark, the other time it looks so light with bright colors. Although many of her arts show childish drawing style and character, she can also draw realistic objects. Check out her portfolio for very realistic birds and dinosaurs illustration.
Minjae Lee
Minjae Lee was born Jan 11, 1989 in Jinhae, South Korea. He is John Galliano fans and self taught in drawing. His drawing is full of model like women combine with colorful abstract mosaic style. He has totally unique style that you might never found it done by somebody else.
Yong Joon Cho
Yong Joon Cho working mainly for printed material like children book, book cover, brochure and text book. You may notice his unique brush technique.
Tae Querney
Tae Querney was born in Seoul, but grew up in Seattle and currently living in New York City. Models in her fashion illustration, mostly drawn only from the waist upwards.
Suran Park
Suran Park is very famous among teenage girls. She created fictional character called Jennie Enakei for brand Enakei where she work. Despite her only name Jennie, actually Jennie character was draw based on real Korean models and have many looks. Her artwork always show adorable and fashionable girl in very cute color scheme, that looks like glowing.
Amy Sol
Amy Sol spend her childhood in Korea then moved to Las Vegas, USA, where she currently lives and works. She is a self taught artist influenced by manga and folk art.
She has dedicated many years of her life mixing pigments and mediums to achieve a unique muted tones color palette that become her signature today. Her final arts always looks soft and full of imagination of beautiful female character in exotic landscape.
Noir Song
Many asian illustrators love creating characters in super big eyes, but character in Noir Song’s arts have small eyes, make them look very asian. Her illustration is showing girl staring with her emotion or thought portray as abstract object and background.
Yu-Ha
Yuha’s illustration subject is almost always female. Most of her works shown the daily life of women. Combine with feminine color choice and illustration style, her illustrations seemed have emotional feelings on it.
Kim Ok
Kim Ok arts usually show some parts of grayscale pencil illustration. It is because she works mainly on traditional media using non-digital technique. Surrealism is her arts main theme.
Panamaman
Panamaman is a famous for his art for the online free videogame “S4”. In a glance, you might mistaken his art as Japanese illustrator artwork.
This collection is continued from: The Best Korean Illustrators
Kim Sang-Hui
Kim Sang Hui, calling herself Kiki, is illustrator and manhwa (Korean comic) artist. She has very unique characteristics of manhwa style illustrations. Doing arts for magazine, cover and poster, many will categorize her arts as fashion illustrations.
Yoon Myong Kim
Kim Yoon Myong is a founder and owner of Manus Eugene Art Studio, Korean based creative studio that doing works for book cover, book illustration and art posters. Kim’s art is very realistic in anatomy and adapted painting style.
Dean Holdeen
Despite his western like name, Dean Holdeen is one of the most famous concept artist from Korea. His works of character design and concept art for game is perfectly done in very realistic colors, textures and shading.
Kkuem
Jiyun Chae is Hyung Tae Kim’s wife, is a concept artist who goes by the alias Kkuem. Her artworks is usually show cute girls in frilly sexy dress with bright colors and sunny background.
Hoppang
When you see Hoppang illustrations, you will think that he likes strong woman. Many of his arts portray a girl in mecha suit or holding a gun or alone enjoying her freedom. One thing for sure, he also like sexy girls.
Jung Yeon Min
Jung Yeon Min is really famous in Europe especially in France. First she went into Hongik University, Seoul, then she enter Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris, France. As a painter, she have held eight times solo exhibition. Her works are world of high imagination and rich beyond space and time.
Jam San
Jamsan in korean could means “Sleeping a lot” or “Mountain of Potentials”. That’s where Kangsan get his famous alias Jamsan. Studied painting in high school and animation in university, Jamsan widely known in Korea as Master of Painter, from his favourite drawing application.
Tae Young Choi
Tae Young Choi was dreaming of becoming a comic book artist. However, in interview with ImagineFX he revealed that “… becoming Concept artist is the best work in game industry”.
Have a degree in fine art and computer graphics, he sketches mainly on paper and then finished digitally on Photoshop and Painter. Movie is his biggest inspiration, and he said that he have a movie library in his brain and he can recall specific scenes from it whenever he need inspiration.
An Jung Sik
An Jung Sik, also known as Ziro, is 30 years old concept artist and art director for games. His working mainly on photoshop, however first glance at his works make you feel like it’s a 3D model with amazing detail and texture and solide control of lighting. Shown here are his concept arts for characters of Webzen’s MMORPG Soul of the Ultimate Nation.
Kyonghwan Kim
Kyonghwan Kim, also known as Tahra, is illustrator whose really social. You can easily find Kim’s work in social media like DeviantArt and Tumblr. As concept artist, his arts usually have brownish blueish color scheme that make them distinctive.
Lim Haksu
Lim Haksu, a.k.a Limha Lekan a.k.a Maxx Soul is an illustrator, concept artist, and character designer. He creates art for big game like Blade & Soul, Granado Espada, Forgotten Saga 2 and ARCTURUS. His arts have clean looks with superb detail.
Ahn Byounghyun
Ahn Byounghyun, also known as Moosn, had been working for some famous project like JTAM Animation and NEXON game. His also doing his own graphic novel. Different from usual manhwa style, character in his arts have more realistic anatomy, some of them looks very european.
Kim Hyung Tae
Hyung-Tae Kim (born February, 1978, Seoul) is one of the most famous illustrator/Concept artist from Korea. He is widely known for his work for video game such as the Magna Carta series and the later installments of the War of Genesis series (War of Genesis: Tempest, War of Genesis III and War of Genesis III: Part 2).
Kim Jae-Hong
Born in 1958 in Gyeonggi-do, Jae-Hong Kim studied Western painting at Hongik University. He loves drawing nature. Because of his ultra realistic illustrations, many website mistakenly put his arts on photography session.
Kwon Yung-Yup
Kwon Kyung Yup, a graduate from Sejong University, Korea, always begin her creative process by taking photographs of a model. She then making draft of the photo and paint it in canvas with oil.
Even though her arts have sensual feeling on it, she actually wanted to portray struggle and trauma. That’s also the reason of pale white skins she always used on her objects’ skin.
Seok Jung Hyun
Seok Jung Hyun is famous as animator for online game RF-Online and Tantra-Online. His illustrations are so realistic that they almost seems like photographs. Facial expressions and hair style is draw in high technique which make them look like a living picture.