Climbing the Walls

What would a well-established Character Designer and traditional Animator ever be doing 40 feet up in the air taking a can of spray paint to the side of a building on New York’s Lower East Side?

Five years ago, Danny Kimanyen asked himself the same question, and he was the man with the can. While by no means his first public art project, the four-story mural he created at the intersection of Rivington and Allen Streets as part of the Five Points Festival was definitely the largest. And Kimanyen, whose artist handle is kaNO, wondered whether he was in over his head.

“I had never been up so high on a boom lift, so it was super intimidating,” recalls kaNO. “I wasn’t sure I should have said yes to the project. So I got up there and we did it at night and projected it from across the street. And sure enough, while I was tracing my outline, a party bus came by and clipped the arm of the boom so the whole thing kind of got turned. I was harnessed in, but it was traumatic, and when I went home, I couldn’t sleep. I thought, ‘Is that a sign? Should I not be up there?’”

All ended well, and kaNO finished the project. A graffiti artist in his youth, kaNO has been commissioned to do murals all over the world by the likes of Warner Bros., ABC, and Universal for promotional movie and TV tie-ins ranging from the Teen Titans in San Diego to a rendition of Wonder Woman and The Dark Knight in Tokyo. You can still check out his interpretation of Back to the Future’s Marty McFly—paint can in hand—on the side of 3D Retro in Glendale.

“For me, every time I do a mural, it feels like I’m learning how to do it from scratch,” kaNO says. “Every location offers an adventure. The wall surfaces are different. Depending on the time of year, it could be very cold or very hot, and it affects the spray paint. If there’s no shade, you’re getting beaten down by the sun. So it’s a physical challenge as much as an artistic one.”

“For me, every time I do a mural, it feels like I’m learning how to do it from scratch… Every location offers an adventure. The wall surfaces are different. So it’s a physical challenge as much as an artistic one.”

By no means is he complaining. The public art works make for a dramatic change of pace from the demands of his work in animation. A veteran of multiple titles across the Scooby-Doo, Ben 10, and Batman franchises, kaNO is currently a Character Designer on Batman: Caped Crusader. 

“I like the balance,” kaNO says. “If I spend the weekend painting a mural, then on Monday, all I would want to do is sit at a computer. Then when I get tired of pushing pixels, I’ll want to get out there and get my hands dirty. If I work on a show that lasts three seasons, that’s three years of my life. Usually at the end of that, I will have to take a year off and do my thing. Most of the time, my animation job is my financial backer for my other projects.”

Toy design, for example. In the late 2000s, while working on the series Little Einsteins in New York, kaNO frequented a huge store called Toy Tokyo in the East Village where he came across urban hip hop-style figures imported from Hong Kong that resembled the kinds of characters that populated his sketch book. 

Figuring “why can’t I do that?” kaNO found someone to sculpt a prototype of one of his figures: a hoodie-wearing dude with a fist for his head. The sculptor thought the figure might have appeal in the toy market, and he offered a connection in California to help take it into production. 

“I was like, ‘Let’s do it!’ says kaNO. “I kind of rolled the dice, and before I knew anything about distribution, I had 500 toys show up at my apartment.”

He took the figure—which would later become Moneygrip—door to door to toy stores before someone convinced him to find a distributor. The Moneygrips were shipped out to Culver City, and kaNO entered the world of toy making. He most recently debuted new figures, including his spin on the Transformers’ character Bumblebee with Sideshow Collectibles, at DesignerCon in Anaheim in November. 

One thing that helps him grow his creative efforts is his art studio. If you’re an animator and want to have a separate space in your head for other projects, he says, “I think it helps to have a [separate] physical space, too.”

Find out more about kaNO at www.kanokid.com.