We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Xinyi(Lin) Huang a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Xinyi(Lin) thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you recount a story of an unexpected problem you’ve faced along the way?

One of the most difficult things that I’ve faced as an artist, and in fact as anyone trying to find a profession in America, has undoubtedly been my struggles with moving to Canada from China for high school as an international student. This struggle has also become my biggest source of strength, as I’ve overcome tremendous cultural differences, language barriers, and social rifts. Some assimilation has been inevitable, however my everyday life has been uniquely created in a way that I have defined as my true self. Multicultural growth from my adolescence to adulthood has fostered my ability to find creative outputs, and has helped me to have a more well rounded understanding and approach towards what artistic styles I tended to prefer or avoid.

After graduating high school in Canada, I decided once again to move. This time, I decided to move from Canada to America in pursuit of my dreams to become a visual artist. College helped me to really confirm that my life trajectory has pointed towards creative arts, and I gained a lot of confidence and refined my art techniques even more through the art program that I enrolled in.

Xinyi(Lin), before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I first entered into the entertainment industry when I joined Gaumont Animation, a production studio that created the show Stillwater as a visual development artist. StillWater is a children’s TV series which debuted on Apple TV in 2019. Stillwater was nominated for an Emmy award in 2019, and won!

This was my first job out of college as an aspiring concept artist and illustrator, and I am very proud of my contributions to the world of visual entertainment.

I currently work for Riot Games as an Environment Concept Artist, and have been creating a wide variety of environments and maps for unannounced games. It’s been incredible to work with a world class team of game designers, artists, engineers and producers to create an incredibly rich and engaging gaming experience.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

I think the most rewarding part of being an artist and a creative is having the ability to conjure something that has never been done before. Everything that I make, if it’s a drawing, painting, animation, etc. is something that is uniquely mine, and has never been done before. I can draw inspirations from the real world, and reinterpret them in a way that is my own, using my own creative voice to influence my artistic outputs.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

Learning to let things go, if they’re mistakes or inadequacies in my artwork has been a big struggle when I first started as an Artist, especially when I began presenting my work. I used to take things very personally, since I spent hours of my life creating these pieces of art. I have learned over time, that no matter how much I strive for perfection in my work, and even if I achieve it, my audience might not ever recognize this, nor would they necessarily care. This was quite the epiphany, and allowed me to let go of my tendencies to fix things, and to celebrate mistakes or missteps as part of the process in creating anything. I think this has actually positively affected my work, helping me to work faster and worry less, and as consequence, increasing my confidence.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.artstation.com/linhuang_xy
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/linhuang_xy/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/xinyi-lin-huang