Meet Xiyuan Wang | Motion Designer & Illustrator

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

Hi Xiyuan, how has your perspective on work-life balance evolved over time?
I don’t feel that’s an actual balance between work and life. Especially for students, there are no weekends; there are no vacations. All you do is keep improving yourself. If you stop, others won’t wait for you; you will leave behind in this constantly changing world. But I am not talking about not getting any rest or sleep. We need to rest well to have a better physical status to work. Just try to finish everything during the daytime and get enough sleep. Eat well, do exercise two or three times a week. That’s my work-life balance now as a student and an artist.

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.
As a kid, I learned the art and drawing from a traditional and academic aspect. I spent years on draw and painting from real-life objects and plasters. It gave me a solid aesthetic to create art, including compositions and colors. Growing up, I could not see the point of repeatedly drawing random objects. What does it mean? So I started to come out with stories and concepts when creating art, not just depicting something realistically from reality. Thankfully, I have a compassionate and emotional personality. I can sense more emotions than others in daily life. Those feelings inspire me to tell stories based on my experience through art. And when my people can feel the same emotions and connect to my work, it’s genuinely the most exciting moment for me. Because by then, you know you are not the only one against the world.

It was hard to think about my journey of developing my art and style. Because every piece I made comes from the deepest part of me. The creation is like flipping my skin from inside to outside to show the world what I got. It’s painful. But I can’t complain because I love what I am doing.

I always like to go through deep conversations with my friends and colleagues. They all mentioned that they felt the most creative moments were the worst day of their lives. Since their emotions were the most complicated at the time. So I sometimes feel like artists can be very depressed. So my advice is you need emotions to be creative sometimes. But if you feel like you are on edge, get help. If you can not stay alive, how can you keep creating beautiful art for the world?

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
I grow up in the city. And I used to live in New York City for a while. Most of the time, I like to be alone and exercise. I prefer to get away from people and go to a quiet and beautiful place to calm down and figure out my life. I have been to Lake Tahoe multiple times and love it, whether in summer or winter. In the summer, you can swim or kayak on the beautiful lake. In the winter, you can go skiing in the mountain. And there is a nice all-you-can-eat sushi place in north Tahoe called Sushi Pier.

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 want to thank my mom for supporting my study in the U.S.; it’s expensive as hell for international students. And all the excellent professors at Scad’s motion media design program, I learned a lot and created amazing works under their instructions. Also, I need to thank my ex-boyfriend, who broke my heart so badly that I woke up from some of my unrealistic imagination to become a better person. Lastly, I want to thank myself for overcoming many difficult situations and never giving up.

Website: http://xiyuanwang.xyz

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

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