We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Aria Hwang. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Aria below.

Aria, appreciate you joining us today. Are you able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen?

Personally, I suppose, earning a full-time living from creative work is hard for anyone. But I really made progress during the past few months. During college, I studied music production and tried to be a film/game composer. But things were tricky back in college. I learned a bit about composition, but still far from being a professional. Now I think, the first key for everyone who works in the creative industry must be knowing how to introduce yourself to people. I gradually learned that, learning to present yourself — and add just a bit of polish — is an important networking skill. Because people understand who you are through the way you introduce yourself. And this public persona, will definitely help you to get to know more professionals, and gradually get into this industry, instead of being an “art student”.
If I could know that back to college, I could make better use of my time — to get prepared for the real world.

Aria, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Firstly, I got into my industry through college. I went to the National Academy of Chinese Theatre Arts to study composition. And now I have gradually become an independent game/film composer. In my daily work, I provide mainly film and game scores. And for my clients(mostly independent game or independent animation), I could use music and also a little atmospheric sound to enrich their works.
Unlike many others in my field, I particularly enjoy collaborating with start-up teams, as they often offer more creative space and opportunities for my musical voice to take shape. And this is also what I really want to share with everyone.

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

Personally, I feel the creative ecosystem is a bit chaotic at the moment. Take film scoring as an example: in China, many composers run their own social media accounts to showcase their work. On one hand, it’s wonderful that everyone now has a platform to present their projects. But over time, some people realized that it’s difficult to secure actual jobs online, and their accounts don’t receive much visibility. As a result, they began offering their work for free in hopes of making connections and getting more opportunities.

This trend is happening quite naturally, but it also makes it harder for professional composers to sustain a living. I genuinely hope that our society can create more space and offer more recognition to original music creators. This would allow the creative industry to become more vibrant and healthy, creating a positive cycle rather than the current situation where people compete through extremely low prices and offer poor-quality, sometimes even AI-generated, music.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.

I think everyone goes through a similar process: when we’re children, we imagine how cool and extraordinary we’ll be as adults. But as we grow up, many of us gradually realize that we’re just ordinary people, and being able to make a living on our own is already something to appreciate.

But many people I’ve met in the creative industry feel like children who never quite grew up. When we talk, our conversations almost never drift toward “adult” topics like housing prices, promotions, or salary raises. Instead, we talk about things that might seem completely “useless” from the outside. And the people around me don’t live a linear life; even in middle age, many artists are still willing to explore the breadth and possibilities of life.

You know how some people take a gap year—between high school and college, or at some turning point in their lives? I feel that people in the creative world live as if they’re in a lifelong gap year—always exploring, always wandering, and never fully returning to the conventional path.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.xiaohongshu.com/user/profile/5f9c3edf000000000101ffad
• Other: Bilibili personal account: https://space.bilibili.com/39252241?spm_id_from=333.1007.0.0

Image Credits

Xiangguo Yu
Zhenzi Tian
Zijian Yu
Yazhi Chen
Peiwen Luo
Xiaoyan Zhang