CONTENTS
Who am I Exercise Nurturing 10 ideas Business Thesis Brainstorming
I’ve been drawing since the year of four and am still be in love with it. To me, drawing means a lot: it gives me inner peace, let me discover more about the world, as well as let me know how to concentrate. For me, design means exciting and inspiring stuff. It is art but not only art. Design is more like artwork that conveys wisdom.To balance my enthusiasm of drawing and design, I found illustration to be a perfect destination.
I am fascinated by the beauty of nature and how everything in the world are conneceted together.
I’ve been curious about the world since I was a little child, I drew everything around me and enjoyed it a lot.
Before I came to MICA, I made a wide range of artwork. From photograph to hand lettering, typography, advertisement and so on. I’ve been trained about marketing as well. All of them prepare me with strong background about big picture of the design world and the ability of doing business.
The different chances I got for trying new stuffs out is very helpful at opening up my vision.
QRcode gives me inspirations about how we can make our art connected to the current technology.
Mash-up project seems very hard at the beginning. But I did it for several times and then I was surprised at how many possibilities there could be. And I even benefit from it to application on digital coloring my illustration
Illustrating with letters gives me insights on how illustration can be connected to graphic design.
The reaction to the book-binding project is one of my experimental work trying to express the dependence and independence of women relationship.
The yellow train together with the blossom project generates my interest for print media, especially the mixed media books. I am surprised by how print media can express an idea in an innovative way. This actually lead to my new interest to continue creating new selfpublished print media work.
The munny doll project gives me the first chance to draw on a 3-D object. I’ve experienced the inspiring part as well as the difficult part. I created a new character for the project and it give me space of imagination about new stories. However, drawing on 3-D surface is not as easy as I thought, it makes you rethink about the tools and technique for drawing.
Words on Wheels project is my first contact of editorial related assignment. I was a lot of fun. It gives me a chance to go over all the procedures that are needed, from brainstorming, sketch, critique to final artwork and digital coloring, which I enjoyed a lot.
The Child abuse center project is one of my favorite. It interests me a lot for the possibilities of helping others with illustration. It also inspires me how can a designer turn some drawing on the sketchbook into a brand new concept and apply it to different media. It corresponds to my ideal direction of making art towards clients but still keep personal voice.
The stop motion workshop is one of the most inspiring projects for me. It is very interesting to find out the magic of cut paper stop motion, which is a pretty easy way to animate simple illustration. The time limit of two day makes the work process more like an assigned job, which not only push me to think about idea much faster, but also get good timing on the whole process.
The Insane Kitchen is a series of character design about raw food in the kitchen. Each character has their own personality, hobbies and life goals. They are a group of happy buddies and want to cheer up your kitchen environment.
leading to my gif animation
GOAL To delight and inform
influence:
Content+Concept
Story character visual journalism science
Daily life stories about the hidden side of life surrealism+absurbism zen philosophy
Technique
Drawing Zine Video
VI system
Daily drawing of objects
Daily drawing of faces and animals
California travel journal
Chinese hand lettring
Chinese mask and popcorn
Cute Monster
Dragon study
Moo
You know what
Earring see
Story structure reference
character
Media
Book/Zine Animation/Motion Graphic Interactive/Web
My inspiration mainly comes from observation and reflection of everyday life, study of my favourite artists, and research about the Chinese and American Culture. I am always curious about the stories happened in our daily life, I also like to think about the meaning of life according to the knowledge of Chinese Zen philosophy. There are several major influences of my artwork. The first one happened during my internship at Super Nature Design. I’ve met a group of fantastic artists there, who did artwork by means such as collecting and rebuild old stuff into interesting installation; scanning the tiny plant then enlarge and edit it into amazing beautiful fine art piece. I learned how artists are able to act as the communicator to uncover the hidden and amazing side of the world. Similar philosophy has been used by Milton Glaser as well. When I watched the documenting film “to delight and inform”, I was very impressed by the wisdom and playfulness art and design can convey and spread. The mural he designed at the student lounge of Stony Brook University, uses the phenomenon that when s a circular begin to roll, the separate abstract shape on it will mix into beautiful illusive images, brings a lot of fun an inspiration for people. It also has a strong influence on me for how design can use some scientific fact to spread delightfulness. After seeing a lot of his work I decide to make my own pursuit of art as “to delight and inform”. I was also fasinated by the surrealism as well as the absurbism style of drawing and painting. I admire the way they express the world in an illogical yet inspring way. I love the message they convey, that the world is not exactly as what we see in reality, there are much more space for imagination. When finding inspirations to make my own artwork. I collect other people’s story. I enjoy talking to people, especially strangers. I believe the most charming part of our life is people’s story and emotion. Even a homeless guy could be a wonderful storage of interesting stories. I keep a sketchbook of image and a diary of writings about the serendipity about everyday life, such as some story I heard from a friend. Sometimes by looking back at old record of life, you will find new inspirations as well. I also keep a record of my own reflection of life, which closely connect to my interest of Zen Buddahism. I find inspirations when reading about Zen Philosophy as well as the Meditation of Yoga. My process of making art include both hand work as well as digital work. When doing hand work, I feel the original smartness of our ancestor as well as the fun of experimenting new technique. I appreciate the book media a lot and are always trying to make it updated useful. For the digital part, I care about the current communication media and am trying to make the visual information spread in a more effective and interesting way.