I am Qianhui Yu, an animation director, illustrator and creative visual designer born in Guilin, China, currently living in London. I graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2020 with a Master of Art's degree in Animation. I love Cantopop, cute things in life, light, nature, and unnatural energy.

I always loved drawing since I was a child, and then I found that the moving image is a powerful method to express myself to the audience.

Actually, I stayed at the China Academy of Art for seven years, including my three years with an affiliated high school over there, beginning with live drawing to contemporary art practice. Then I decided to study New Media Art in my final three years. We had a lot of fun using different mediums and art practices to connect with the local Chinese traditional architecture, and then I found that it was animation that truly appealed to me as it’s an avenue I can use to express my dreams, thoughts – the things I can’t express in words. So I decided to attend the Royal College of Art and study Animation.
RCA is always full of exceptionally talented students and tutors – very inspiring! I also had more freedom to work on the things I like, and it is very exciting to have enough time to direct the whole animation project. Universities in the United Kingdom seem to love research and method before you start your project. I found it annoying before as it seemed very conceptual rather than practical, however, it really is a good way to look into yourself, to think about what you really want to do, which made me discover and continue to develop my own visual language.
It became clearer when I was making my graduate animation project Wastopia, which has a ‘sugar-coated’ visual style, with candy-coloured playful characters, surreal stylisation, highly detailed textures, and the use of sarcasm meant to juxtapose with the crucial topic of environmental issues.

My goal didn’t change much from my original intention. For the visual language, my first Master’s animated film, 1 Day in Bodyland, is an experimental and surreal dark tale. It impacted my mood sometimes creating it, so I decided to make a ‘delightful’ visual film in the final year. The topic is still serious, but I hoped working with colourful, playful characters would cure me. I call it ‘the cinema therapy’ – when the real world is disappointing us, I hope my audience can tune in to cinema therapy with me.
For the film topic, I always have complicated feelings about food, after watching some 'mukbang' live videos, a weird but very popular video genre on the Internet which is basically live footage of someone eating large amounts of food in front of the camera while interacting with their audience. This whole phenomenon made me realise how little concern I have about food waste. Then I broadened my approach to investigate the nature of the damage caused by the garbage we throw away as a result of hyper-consumerism. I started to think, what if the wasted food and garbage have feelings? Rethink before you throw them away.

It mainly comes from my personal taste – the ‘pastel fairy tale aesthetic’ cheered me up, which gave me more motivation to draw the whole project. Sometimes decisions you make for almost pragmatic reasons have a disproportionate effect on your work. If this makes the message more accessible to the audience, then that’s a good thing too!

Her Digital Avatar series is my unexpected baby; I started it after I finished my grad film. It continues my previous visual style and opened up a new possibility for my career. I created it and it influences me imperceptibly. It is definitely important to my current life.

Countless! I watched many ‘80s and ‘90s Cantopop music videos, interesting product/fashion design, some childhood Chinese traditional animations like Havoc in Heaven and A Deer of Nine Colours (the culture we have sadly forgotten), sci-fi and cyberpunk films, plus many more! I was also inspired by lots of brilliant artists like Sophie Koko Gate, Ramhan and Lu Yang.

I didn’t mean to bring a message of hope with the film. I used the candy aesthetic to present the imagined garbage world, which represents one of the many issues we’ve been ignoring.

After finishing my grad film, I decided to take some time to focus on myself. Currently, I am working on my personal project, Her Digital Avatar, in my free time. I see it as a self-identity project, the look of the avatar changes regularly and is influenced by my personal status, including future materials, natural elements, my film elements and fashion makeup that inspires me. It reflects my current feelings. However, I might still go back and work on environmental issues in the future!

I am doing a part-time design job for a company, and work on creative commissions in the meantime. For the future, I’m hoping to continue work as an animation director or freelance artist so I can have more chances to work on interesting projects. I will continue to develop my current visual style and character design, and also try to have more opportunities to continue making work that deals with environmental issues. I have an Augmented Reality facial filter and sci-fi animation that will both be released around the end of this year, so keep your eyes peeled!