Text/Hou Yaochen
"I am a person who thinks and creates with pictures. At the Art Institute of Chicago, I also took some art therapy classes, trying to observe images and thoughts that were emerging deep in the subconscious mind without adding subjective will. "These experiences have helped me understand the needs and ideas of the audience and users, transform abstract ideas into concrete pictures and emotional logic, better support and accompany others, and improve the visual performance and user experience of my works." ”
Richan Li is an animator and illustrator who balances the purity of digital art with its commercial value. From 2013 to 2017, she studied film, video, new media, and animation at the Art Institute of Chicago, and after receiving a master's degree in electronic art animation from Pratt School of Art in 2020, Li Yangyuchen worked as a commercial animation and illustrator at String and Key.
Animator VS Illustrator Li Yang Yuchen
In recent years, Li has impressed the industry with his sense of originality and personal style in character and overall art design for animated films, animated commercials and illustrations, as well as dynamic interaction design. AVAMEOM by Li Yang Yuchen and her partner Angel Liu won the MUSE Creative Awards, the London Design Awards, and was shortlisted for the ADC Game of the Year UIUX Award in 2023. Another online reading app, Meteor lodge Mobile Application, also won the Silver Award and Audience Favorite Award at the Creativepool Annual Award, and the Honorable Mention in the UX Design Awards for the A′ Design Contest and UX Design Awards.
In 2023, Li Yangyuchen and Liu Anqi will once again usher in their peak of awards. From July 18th to 20th this year, the online chess and card game AVAMEOM became the only shortlisted game APP in the Mood Museum of Design, Italy and Sala Bianca, Italy. In the second half of 2023, Avameow won the Best User Design Platinum Award and the Best Visual Design Platinum Award at the Vega Digital Awards.
Avameow
In addition, their original illustration series YaBer &DD Duck Beer and Sea Bream also won the Gold Award for Electronic Illustration at the 2023 Vega Digital Awards.
The art of empathy at Babble Bubble
In addition to a number of award-winning works in collaboration with Angel Liu, Li Yangyuchen's solo work "Babble Bubble", and the main staff involved in the creation of The Gate, the brand Star Wish Wysh has also attracted the attention of the animation and design circles.
Among them, Babble Bubble has won the Best Student Experimental Short Film Award at the Los Angeles Animation Festival, the Rome Independent Prism June Short Film Award, the Best Student Best Short Film at the International Face Changing Animation Festival in June, the Best Animation Nomination at the 11th Short Stay International Film Festival, and the Honorable Mention Nomination at the Vienna Pixel Animation Festival.
Babble Bubble
"Horn Whispering" is Li Yang Yuchen's graduation work, and it is also a personal independently produced cartoon that she likes very much. The cartoon explores the mental distress of the information cocoon caused by the digital age: the behavioral characteristics of the "keyboard warriors" such as the separation of digital identity and personality online and offline, as well as the way people handle information and credit.
"When you have more and more accounts, or in different social situations, you will have different ways of dealing with your online digital identity and social relationships online and offline. Which one is the real self? When talking about the creative motivation of "Horn Whispering", Li Yangyuchen mentioned the art therapy course he participated in during his university years, with "finding oneself" as the main content. Li Yangyuchen applied some of his methods of digging out the deep inner information of the characters in the classroom to the film, and presented and explored the physical and mental transformation process of the protagonist of the film "being himself" from a third-party perspective.
The main character of this film is a girl who has multiple corresponding accounts on different platforms. She set up five animal avatars for these accounts, including peacocks, pigeons, lizards, and Yunnan golden snub-nosed monkeys, representing different personas and personalities such as beauty bloggers, food bloggers, yoga bloggers, and art bloggers.
Babble Bubble
In order to compete for the opportunity to connect with the body (subject), these animal avatars gradually enter a state of frantic competition around the unfolding plot. When the "peacock" appears on the screen as the owner in reality, several animal avatars such as pigeons, lizards, and Yunnan snub-nosed monkeys will jump on the screen with their unique images and movements, all trying to squeeze the peacock down and obtain its main position online and in reality.
These animal avatars also have a matching relationship with the real personality and behavior they represent, which comes from the creator's real-life related experiences.
Li Yang Yuchen is a native of Kunming, Yunnan Province, and "peacock" is also an adjective in Kunming dialect, with various meanings such as "stinky beauty" and "self-inflicted amorous". Therefore, Li Yangyuchen's character for the "food blogger" is expressed in peacock, and its image has a sense of cuteness and narcissism.
On the streets and in some squares in the United States, there are always chubby pigeons, their necks shake rhythmically when they pick up garbage to eat, and in the film it is abstracted by Li Yang Yuchen as a "crazy egg-beating" food blogger image.
Babble Bubble
One of the classic asanas in yoga is the lizard, and when the lizard plays the role of a fitness blogger, its movements and shapes look cool and have a special sense of mystery.
As for the Yunnan golden snub-nosed monkey, it feels elegant and intimate, and Li Yangyuchen added the focus and attention to detail of his father's painting of the golden monkey on the stamps when he created the image of the artist.
When these characters, who originally had the temperature of life and emotional logic, jumped on the screen one after another and squeezed the avatars on the screen, the squeezed animal avatars would roll around on the ground, shouting "I want to go back!" ”
Whether on the screen or under the screen, there will be fierce competition between the avatars, and they will also keep talking, hoping to attract the attention of the body, so as to strive to become one with the body and replace the main personality to complete the purpose of identity transformation.
When they constantly make calls such as "I want to go back", they represent the loss of connection between these characters and the protagonist's body, falling into a state of self-disorientation and confusion, thus simulating the scene of various ideas, logics, events, and information "fighting" (or debating) in the protagonist's mind in the era of information explosion.
This is what Li Yang Yuchen said, thinking with pictures, so that different animal heads can present the conflict and reconciliation process of people from ideology to behavioral logic in reality in the chaotic fight.
As the creator and director of the film's story framework, picture and emotional logic, Li Yangyuchen has always realized the theme expression of "being yourself" and "living in the present" with her unique picture and plastic art from the perspective of a third-party observer who does not add any subjective tendencies and one-way indoctrination colors.
"Yunnan rice noodles" is also the "framework" of the concept
"Everyone's upbringing and cultural background is a small framework, and people from different places live together to form a multicultural space." When talking about the interesting life scenes experienced with roommates from different countries in the United States, Li Yangyuchen believes that these experiences have inspired her to think deeply about international cultural exchanges: after living with them for a long time, with respect and understanding of the living customs and concepts of the roommates, you will find that your "framework" is slowly expanding, which is the process of communication, tolerance, sharing and learning from each other.
Although the cultural and conceptual framework is not an impenetrable "barrier", there is also a "root" as a sense of existence, or a "comfort zone", "sense of existence" and "core values" in each person's spiritual world.
"I've been in the U.S. for more than 10 years, and I'm almost 28 years old, and if I choose my favorite food, I still like the rice noodles in Kunming, Yunnan, which will stay in my stomach and memories and never be erased." Li Yangyuchen believes that Yunnan rice noodles are also a conceptual "frame", which represents the spiritual memory and regional complex of Yunnan people, and represents the psychological consensus, emotional logic and cultural self-confidence formed by the same side of water and soil.
Growing up in a multicultural background, Li Yangyuchen also applied the scenes and feelings of living with roommates from all over the world to his animation background, character and art design, as well as the exploration of visual expression arts such as dynamic interaction design, and constantly developed his artistic personality and style.
These experiences in animation creation in a multicultural context have also enhanced Li Yangyuchen's ability to abstract and express historical themes and elements.
In the design of AVAMEOM, Li Yang Yuchen excavated some interesting clues and elements of historical figures according to the legend of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table in the Middle Ages, and applied them to the design connotation of the game characters.
These characters and archetypes include Meowlin (a staff wielder, horned archetype Merlin), Meowgana (a black cat with a crystal ball, character archetype Morgana), Meowdred Meowred (a bad cat in the image of a rabbit), and Purcival (character archetype Perishvari).
Avameow
In the design of the characters, Li Yangyuchen once again exerted her ability to understand and control the "framework" and "boundary" between life and art, reality and imagination, image and concept, and between characters and characters.
For example, the prototypes of all these cats are from Li Yang Yuchen's host family and friends' cats, and for each specific character cat, Li Yang Yuchen gives it a unique design positioning with simple and distinctive visual elements.
Take Meowlin Meow Lin as an example, this is a cat holding a staff in his hand and wearing a green star coat, this cat's green clothes and the "stars" on the pointed hat, face, hands and feet, all through the whitening effect, give people a certain shocking and mysterious solemnity.
Avameow
This is exactly what Li Yang Yuchen likes, in the animation characters and art design, for the embodiment and application of the aesthetic style of "blank space".
In some key points, local shapes with symbols and symbolic meanings, Li Yangyuchen likes to give characters and props interesting "autonomy" and "will to act". The staff in Meowlin's hand is a growing inky branch, and the branches are entwined with green serpentine leaves, which not only realizes the rhythm of the "staff" in the necessary transition on a black background, but also renders the authority and will that the staff represents.
This growing staff is inevitably reminiscent of the Monkey King's wishful golden hoop stick in the Chinese mythological novel "Journey to the West".
However, Li Yangyuchen believes that Sun Wukong's Ruyi Golden Hoop Stick represents a one-way output based on punishment, while Meow Lin's black branch staff represents respect and communication for the common order, and also represents the symbiotic state of "tolerance" and "independence" between the "boundaries" and "frameworks" of different cultures and life individuals in the context of multiculturalism. (Courtesy of the artist)