Experimental Animation
Ruyi Ling
Ruyi Ling was born in Shanghai. Ling's mother noticed her strong interest in moving images and illustration art during her early childhood, so she sent her to study fine art since the fifth grade of elementary school. Several years later, Ling learned video art and public art at the ECNU in Shanghai and was also an exchange student who learned illustration and animation at Santa Fe in the USA before going to study animation at the Royal College of Art. Ling found animation was the most comfortable and also the strongest way for her to express ideas.
Selected Film Festivals
The One Minute Film Contest, China(2016)
Wirksworth Film Festival (2019)
Animator FEST - European Youth Festival of Animated Film (2019)
Screentest: The National Student Film Festival (2019)
London Short Film Festival (2020)
Ruyi Ling's style of drawing and animating is flexible, childish, and spontaneous while the theme is actually painful and annoying. She always prefers hand drawing with different materials such as pencil and crayons which bring more energy and unpredictable effects on her art. Creating art is her way of communicating, complaining, and also a process of reflecting on her own. She is interested in the feeling of troubles and worries. Before she noticed it, Ling had started interviewing and making documentaries about the troubles of people around her, and she was looking for her own exit unconsciously.
Comedy has occupied a large proportion of her works. Her animations are inspired by BluBlu, Priit Parn, Manabu Himeda, Hoji Tsuchiya. Ling hopes her audience could be saved or relived by watching her works because people may laugh at their own pain and regard their negative emotions as an interesting thing while watching her animations.
During 2020, Ling has been working on her Y2 project in Shanghai because of the coronavirus. She tried digital drawing and coloring for this time, which is unfamiliar to her. She challenged herself no to relay on the special texture of hand drawing on papers but to pay more attention to the structure of her story and the movement of the cameras.
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—————————Fight now! Try harder! Grown-up babies!
Loser's Song is an experimental opera animation, and it is also a comedy.
The inspiration of the story came from social pressure an Asian young adult's real life, a grown-up baby, a lazy bone, and even an idol addict's life. Asian parents, especially Chinese parents, are always trying to control their children's life by using peer pressure, which means they used to criticize and belittling their children while praising other's children. As a result, a large number of Chinese children become grown-up babies, they have low self-esteem, lack of independence, and regard themselves as losers. Ling, the animator, was one of them. She refused to grow up and refused to take responsibility for everything.
The synopsis of the animation is divided into three stages of the character's life. After suffering the failures and pressures from the school, the family, and the society, she escapes from reality and then chases her fantasy. Until she lost everything, she finally recognized the hypocrisy of the Mirage and accepted that reality has returned to the right track of life. Feeling pleasant to be a normal loser, a grown-up adult.
Size:
06:09In Collaboration with:
Ruyi Ling's Year 1 project Money’s My Daddy (2019) is based on different people's attitudes (or habits) to money. This project contains a quirky subject and has the potential to communicate the very macroscopic concept with her audience through animation language.
The film illustrates several deep desires, and the story is based on written answers on a printed questionnaire. Ling interviewed passers at different areas including the Royal College of Art campus, the tubs, and even on the streets randomly. Ling has been reflecting on herself and her own desire while animating.
Medium:
Oil pastels, Mark Pens, Crayons, Pencils, Charcoal, Acrylic Paint.Size:
02:59The Hair of London (2018) was Ling's first documentary animation she ever made. Since then she started to keep making documentaries. She believed that is the most effective way to obtain the most vivid materials for her films.