One day, I was walking by a classroom and casually saw that a short animated cartoon was being played.  It turned out that the animation was based on a single classical Chinese water- color painting.  I had never seen this type of animation before!  It was director Wei Te’s final masterpiece. After watching “Feelings of Mountains and Waters” twenty more times, I realized that although a painter does not necessarily need to be a cartoonist, a good cartoonist must understand painting. From that moment on, I decided to put my full effort into making an authentic Chinese animation.

My first piece of work titled “Encounter” is also the one in the portfolio.  After the project was finished, I found out that although it required a great deal of effort, I really enjoyed this type of stop-motion animation.  However, it required much personal control and was very challenging.  I felt that my future direction of development would be in doing this type of animation.  In retrospect, I feel that the numerous pitfalls of the project demonstrated that my knowledge of stop-motion animation is somewhat limited still.  Therefore, I felt the need for additional studies.  I decided to pursue my MFA abroad.