Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Hanzhang Mao. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hanzhang, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to hear about the things you feel your parents did right and how those things have impacted your career and life.

I am so grateful that my parents mentally and financially support my career as an illustrator and animator. They are big fans of my art. My mom is a chemistry teacher, while she is so good at storytelling and appreciating art. She bought me drawing tools and many picture books when I was super young, which triggered my interests in storytelling.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Since I was in primary school, I enjoyed reading stories in my free time. My mother bought me a lot of small picture books, about snake spirits, clam shell fairies, gods and strange cases. I loved to read Liao Zhai Zhi Yi, The Tale of the White Serpent, Grimm’s Tales, Anderson’s Tales, and picture books by Jimmy Liao about romantic city life. I loved the various character designs, plots, and world building in those books.

In addition, I really enjoyed watching cartoons including Tales of the Mole, The Adventures of Tintin, and various productions of Shanghai Animation Studio; various films by directors including Tsui Hark, Hitchcock, and Roman Polański. My reading & watching experiences and playing as a child in nature made me really enjoy the characters and their stories, so I drew various characters and their stories myself. Nature fascinated me. Nature has nurtured my ability to make wild associations.

In high school, I was very fond of San Mao, Eileen Chang, Gu Long, and Lilian Li. They took me to the enchanting world they created. I want to lead people to my world too. Then I went to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, for my undergraduate studies. I was not planning to study art at first because art had always been my hobby and I wasn’t prepared to make a career out of it. I took calculus, psychology, computer science, and basic art classes. Then I was going to double major in art and psychology, but I didn’t think I had enough energy to handle two majors, so I ended up choosing art, which I had been good at since I was a kid, as my major. In art school, I gradually picked up what I loved most as a child: narrative. I can go back to my childhood while making art, as a naive, carefree, happy kid.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

I love leading people to the world I build, and introducing them to my characters when they read my stories, which is the most rewarding aspect of being an artist. I love watching people, thinking, smiling or laughing when they read my stories.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

I think that one thing an artist should learn is to focus on things they are interested the most. A person needs to know when to give up, how much to give up, in order to spend most time on limited fields. In Maryland Institute College of Art, I got access to different workshops including wood, fiber, and clay. I did not know how to choose between these media and my own practice to experiment different media on paper. I was spending too much time on wood and fiber, which squeezed my time for my own practice. One artist should be confident about their own practice. Sometimes less is more.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://hanzhangmao.com/
• Instagram: @hanzhang_mao
• Other: Vimeo: @Thunder Moon