Today we’d like to introduce you to Hailing Liu.
Hi Hailing, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I am a visual artist, an animator, and an experimental filmmaker. Now I am doing freelance work on animation and motion graphics, and also working on my individual project. I was born in China where I spent most of my lifetime. After I got my BFA degree of Art History there, I finally decided to become an artist which was a dream since my childhood. Then I studied at School of the Art Institute of Chicago and got my MFA degree of Film, Video, New Media, and Animation. This is the best decision I made in my early 20s. Two years of study there trained me to be an artist with openness to different mediums and possibilities, it became a good start for me to step into an art career. After I graduated from school, it took me some time to think about my next art project and finding jobs. During this time to present, I find my true passion in making animation and motion graphics, and I believe these are the areas that I feel most comfortable in art making, but also the areas where I am specialized in and could make a living.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
As an emerging artist who is still under lots of exploration, I feel lucky that I met so many art/ creative professionals that encourage me to explore different things during my early art career. The biggest challenge for me now is finding specific art/ creative mediums that I could really focus on since I am so curious about a lot of things when I just started. That is something about finding my own strength. The encouragements from these professionals makes me realize that trying a lot of things and making mistakes is not a bad thing. It inspires to give myself more chances and time to figure out things that I truly love and am capable of.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I am an experimental, conceptual artist & animator, and a freelancer open to commissions relevant to animation. These are two sides of me as a creative.
As a conceptual artist, I am known for my playfulness and social-political awareness in my work. I explores the meanings behind cultural surfaces in our society and how media representations influence our perspectives to something happens around us. Most of my previous artwork are digital moving images – they are combinations of found footages, motion graphics, and visual effects. There are also a few of my work are object-based, such as on-site installation. Now I am focusing to work on animated, narrative short film as the main form, which is a very different workflow from what I did before.
As a part-time freelancer, I am passionated in helping people to turn their promotion/ marketing ideas into effective and creative visual language in my expertise of animation.
Can you talk to us a bit about happiness and what makes you happy?
Warm sunlights and smiles from people make me happy.
Doing rock climbing makes me happy.
Accepting different challenges from creative field makes me happy.
Seeing my art projects get done and have them shown to people makes me happy.
Getting feedbacks of my artwork from people makes me happy.
Making genuine conversations and communications during casual life and work both makes me happy.
Helping people in all aspects makes me happy.
Contact Info:
- Website: liu-hailing.com
- Instagram: hailingjo
- Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/user106646401
- Other: https://www.upwork.com/freelancers/~018ce29fc11c8715ab
