Meet tianyun lyu | Animator/Illustrator/Dreamer

We had the good fortune of connecting with tianyun lyu and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi tianyun, have you ever found yourself in a spot where you had to decide whether to give up or keep going? How did you make the choice?
Some people may think that giving up is a very humiliating thing, so they always force themselves to do certain things. Me either. But as I grew up, I gradually realized that giving up was not a shameful thing.

Sometimes you have to trust your body’s reaction. If you do something and you feel very painful, your body and your mind tell you that you don’t want to continue, and you feel that there is no way to persevere. Maybe this is your body is telling you that this thing is not for you and that you should not do it, or take some time off.

Maybe now is not the best time to do this.

So sometimes it’s better to give yourself a little time to breathe than to keep pushing yourself to do things you don’t want to do.

Giving yourself some time doesn’t mean giving up.

But for better continuation.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
Before I came to USC, my art style was very commercial and highly technical. I self-taught and mastered most of the knowledge and skills required for animation, design, effects and modeling. My specialty is art design, including character design and concept design. I have several years of professional experience, and I am also experienced at animation and compositing. My high level of animation animation allows me to visualize my unique ideas more clearly and beautifully. Studying at SCA has played an important role in advancing my studies. I have learned many different ways to create animation after the first semester, such as stop-motion animation and hand-drawn animation, which really broadened my horizons. I also tried various mediums of animation in the Introduction to the Art of Animation and Expanded Animation. I recognize that I can work outside of my comfort zone, and animation is not something only made digitally. You can see my changes and growth by looking at my undergraduate final thesis and my latest final assignments from my first semester. I am no longer bound by the digital animation form, but really tap into my heart to tell a story. So I started experimenting with film animation and combined recordings of my family and myself to create films. I didn’t just paint on film- I creatively used a unique method of film movement to tell the story. I also paint on film with gouache, blur it out with water, and then wait until it becomes dry to create a unique visual effect – a kind of blurred memory. I creatively use photos to narrate, not needing to express directly, but use the photos of the same element for quick editing, forming an enhanced effect. Different editing techniques can bring different feelings to the audience. I completed my first step to record short animations at USC,, stepped out of my comfort zone, and introduced audio recordings into animation creation for the first time. In the past my animation soundtrack consisted of either pure background music or dialogue. Documentary recordings often give the audience a more real and shocking feeling. This is a project I have been researching since I came to USC: how to animate the uniqueness of the material itself.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
I think there is a lot to visit in Los Angeles, the beaches in Los Angeles are very famous, such as santa monica or Manhattan beach, On the first day, we can visit the USC campus, then take them to Ktown for lunch/linear, and then we can get a cafe to chat and sit on the lawn very chill

The next day we can go to the surrounding the Natural History Museum and then go to the Last Bookstore in dt to have a look

On the third day we can go to the Getty Museum, where we can spend the whole day, sit in the garden if we are tired from walking, and have a meal at Beverly in the evening.

On the fourth day we can walk around on Santa monica. Bask in the sun, read a book, chat, stroll around the neighborhood, and then go to a restaurant to watch the sunset.

On the fifth day, we can stay at home all day, order takeout, watch a movie, and relax.

On the sixth day, we can go to Hollywood to see the famous attractions, and then go to the observatory to watch the sunset in the evening.

If my friends happen to visit in the second week of the month, I will take them to the famous rose bowl flea market

On the last day, we went to the rose bowl market early, and then sent them to the airport.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I actually liked drawing since I was a child, but I never thought that I could take the path as an animation artist or a director. First of all, I am very grateful to my high school teacher. She encouraged me to follow my own passion and gave me a chance to show my directing ability. Because we are basically focused on learning and have limited entertainment activities. Our parents and teachers expected us to become doctors or lawyers. I rarely have the opportunity to show my short films. At that time, the online video platform was not that popular, but my high school teacher gave it to me for the first time so that I could show myself in a different way. Second, I would like to thank my high school classmate Zhiyue. He pointed out a direction for me, the animation major. Before listening to him describe this major, I didn’t even know there was such a major. He gave me a clear goal.

After I went to college, I am so grateful that I could meet all my teachers. They really helped me meticulously and made me feel the purity of the artist.
It is very difficult to complete an animated short film, because as an animation director, I have to understand a lot of production skills, such as animation principles, storyboards, post-production synthesis, and the matching degree of sound effects and music, so to a certain extent, I The short films in college were all made by several people.

After coming to America, I am grateful to my mentors Kathy Smith, Lisa Mann, Sheila Sofian and Christine Panushika. It was they who helped me broaden my area, have the courage to try materials that I have not been exposed to before, and the production methods of animation, which made me feel that I had physical contact with animation, so that our spirits were more intimate.
Studying at SCA has played an important role in advancing my studies. I have learned many different ways to create animation after the first semester, such as stop-motion animation and hand-drawn animation, which really broadened my horizons. I also tried various mediums of animation in the Introduction to the Art of Animation and Expanded Animation. I recognize that I can work outside of my comfort zone, and animation is not something only made digitally. You can see my changes and growth by looking at my undergraduate final thesis and my latest final assignments from my first semester. I am no longer bound by the digital animation form, but really tap into my heart to tell a story. So I started experimenting with film animation and combined recordings of my family and myself to create films. I didn’t just paint on film- I creatively used a unique method of film movement to tell the story. I also paint on film with gouache, blur it out with water, and then wait until it becomes dry to create a unique visual effect – a kind of blurred memory.

Website: https://tianyunlyu.weebly.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tianyunlyu/?hl=en

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tianyun-lyu-746999219/