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

Hi Waner, thanks for joining us today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

When I was working at Lava Studio I worked on a project to create game banners for MLB, the whole process was easy and fun and I learned about the logos and history of the different teams, as someone who never watched baseball I watched the whole game while the project was live, and now I have 3 MLB hats in my closet!

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

Hi, I’m Waner, hailing from the renowned culinary province of Sichuan, China. Raised in a single-parent home, my solitude nurtured a deep affinity for drawing, a solace that blossomed into a lifelong passion.

After graduating from Beijing Film Academy, I continued my animation pursuits at the School of Visual Arts in New York. Today, as a multidisciplinary motion designer specializing in motion design and UX design. I used to work for Tencent and made a lot of user-friendly animation and UI for their educational products. I also worked in many design studios, such as Lava Studio and Seen Vision. Thus, I have gotten many opportunities to work with brands such as Jimmy Choo, Tencent Game, Redmi, etc. In October 2023, my animation work was selected by the Heckscher Museum of Arts to be exhibited, and a light show was used to project my work onto the surface of the museum.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

Yes, I’m happy to share that when I worked at Seen Vision, a creative studio in Beijing, I often had to work on several projects at the same time, coordinating with different groups of colleagues. I was very distracted in the beginning, often the first project was not dealt with yet, and the next one came in, so I made a list of my daily tasks and stipulated that at a particular time, I would only focus on that project, which in turn greatly improved my efficiency.

Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?

Certainly! In the early days of my professional career, I was always a stuffy artist because I was convinced that if I kept honing my skills, I would be seen. But it turns out that in addition to having great skills, you also have to promote yourself on various social media outlets, and only then will you get more opportunities for yourself. If you are an artist, start posting your work on Instagram, Behance, etc.!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.wanerzhang.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_waner_zhang_/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/waner-zhang-6482b8184/