READERSVOICE.COM: Your black and white comics look great, too. How do you decide what shape or size the panels are? Are they just like shots in animation?

CINDY YANG: Thank you! I didn’t know anyone would look at my comics as well, I’ll translate them One day when I have time. The comic panels are a bit like shots in animation, but also quite
different. In animation, you only need to worry about the wide-screen composition. But for comics, it depends on the emotions you’re creating: you would need to think about the composition for the whole page. That is, before compositing the drawings inside the panels, you would have to composite the panels first. Compositions in different panels also create diverse feelings as well. To me, a comic is more like a medium between illustration and animation – you don’t have to direct the movement of the character, but to direct the eyes of the readers of where to look to follow the stories.

RV: How do you make the little animations like “Just keep swimming”? And your travel impressions, like the kid sleeping in the car, and the cat hitting at the insect. How many drawings would go into these, and how long would it take to make these?

CY: Sometimes I do these little animation just for fun! It usually takes me two to three hours, with a limit of 10-20 drawings. I wouldn’t spend too much time on these, so usually I would
animate them straight-ahead. Sometimes I don’t even have a layout for the piece. I like to think about the piece in my head and go straight into it in TV-paint. Sometimes I draw backgrounds in Photoshop too.

RV: Where do you live now and what are some of your plans?

CY: I currently live in the US studying at CalArts. I’ll graduate in a year and I’m planning to try and find a story job, to practise more on my storytelling/film-making skills. But in the meantime, I just want to take a break from film-making. It’s been almost eight years I’ve been studying animation. I feel like it’s time to have other experiences in life. I would still make animation films in the future or create other forms of art. I would love to direct a Taiwanese animation feature film, but that goal is still pretty far away from me… I still need more practice and different experiences.

– copyright readersvoice.com
– See Cindy Yang’s animations on Youtube.