Meet Yuki Li

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

Hi Yuki, have there been any changes in how you think about work-life balance?
When I was an undergraduate, I believed that weekends were meant for completing assignments and studying, so I often turned down invitations from friends to focus on my work. However, having more time didn’t necessarily make me more productive. Instead, I often procrastinate because I have too much time to complete tasks.

After completing two summer internships, I noticed that my colleagues take a good rest on Friday evenings and weekends, spending time with family and friends. It made me realize that work isn’t the most important part of life. Other than sitting in front of a computer screen for a whole evening, experiencing the beauty of life is what truly matters to me right now.

Now, I understand that to work well, I need to rest well. When I feel anxious, I try to keep calm by watching movies, reading books, or visiting art museums. I believe true balance is about keeping my energy up and staying in a good mood, which helps me stay creative and productive in both work and study. A little bit of anxiety can improve work efficiency, so it’s also important not to be too relaxed.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
I consider myself a motion designer and illustrator, and I also want to learn more about visual development, storytelling, and compositing. For my artwork, I love to experiment with different media and styles to make some innovations.

The feedback I get from the audience means a lot to me. Knowing my art can connect with someone and make them feel something is the motivation that keeps me creating. After I graduated from Ringling College of Art and Design, I interned at a Tech company for three months, working on advertisements for mobile games. I enjoyed this experience, and everyone I met was talented and supportive. During this internship, I realized that I feel uncertain about my future career path, especially since my current work is quite different from what I imagined in high school, and I had never created an animation longer than 3 minutes. In high school, I was excited to design characters and storyboards while preparing my portfolio for animation school, with so much enthusiasm for the future. As a result, I hope to regain my previous passion for creation during my studies at USC.

I believe it’s necessary to find the motivation to keep creating, even if my work isn’t fully mature yet and I’ve received strict feedback. After all, there is not a perfect work that will please everyone. Through learning and revision, the most important lesson I’ve gained is to find the meaning to keep creating.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
My friends are visiting LA next week, and I’m excited to show them around the USC campus and explore some great restaurants. Since they’re curious about my classrooms and labs, I plan to give them a tour of the cinematic arts building in the morning. For lunch, I’m thinking of taking them to a Chinese hot pot restaurant, as they haven’t been back to their hometown in over a year, and it’ll be a comforting taste of home. In the afternoon, we can head to Koreatown or Little Tokyo to relax and enjoy some desserts.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
I really want to give a big shoutout to my undergraduate instructors coming from different art backgrounds, specializing in design, animation, film, and advertisement. I appreciate their critique during each class, which significantly improved my design and animation skills.

I’m especially grateful to my concept instructor, Jared Greenleaf, and my music instructor, Kelly Warner, for their invaluable help with my thesis animation. My animation is about my hometown memories in China which was hard for them to understand at the beginning, but they gave me helpful advice based on my original idea and improved the clarity of my story. Kelly also composed the music inspired by my mom’s lullaby and created amazing sound designs for my animation, giving my film a unique look with a very sensorial sensation.

Website: https://yukiliart.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yukiiii_youqili/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yukiliart/