The talented artist, Yu Jen Chen, was honored to present an animation of how the Empire State Building was built. The building, which was completed in 1 year and 45 days, with construction beginning in the 1930s, is popularly described as the signature of New York City. Yu Jen Chen and her team extracted the line elements from the construction drawings and made an animation to show the structure of this architectural marvel inside and out, and from the bottom to top.
“We had to determine the right size, time, and order by projecting this animation on the wall through VR.” Yu Jen Chen explained. “Our team spent months on this project. I was in charge of this animation while others were also working on other parts of the exhibition. This is by far one of the most interesting projects I’ve ever taken part in.”
Yu Jen Chen applied for the MOE Scholarship Program for Overseas Study in Arts and Design while she was studying at National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU) and the work she submitted for the application was selected by Parsons School of Design. After graduating from NTNU, Chen joined Parsons where she broadened her horizon in creating arts in multimedia and stories around the relationship of humans and technology. In addition to the Empire State Building project, she also did some brand marketing animation at Landor after finishing her studies at Parsons. Chen now works at Buncee under Capstone, as an animation and design consultant mainly responsible for animation and illustration for children’s teaching aids.
Chen’s inspiration comes from life, especially in New York. The city’s diversity has allowed her to creatively visualize the people, emotions, and phenomena that she observed and turn them into the short film, Hero, a story about how people overcome their fears and discomforts and thus are brave enough to be called a hero. Chen portrayed herself as someone that accidentally fell into an alien world just like Alice in Wonderland.
Hero won the Hong Kong Federation of Design Associations Special Prize for the 2019 Taiwan International Student Design Competition. The unique ideas and extremely resonant features have made this personal project stand out among 21988 entries from 66 different countries. As one of the twenty-two international design associations, winning this award is a milestone for Chen’s designing career.
Adopting the inspiration from life to create a different dimension and explore the possible outcome is one of Chen’s favorite techniques that could be found in her other works such as 2070: The Singularity and The New God. The word “singularity” refers to an AI that has evolved to the point of self-evolution and it becomes impossible for humans to predict its next action. She narrated a story in which a scientist creates an AI to save the environment but ends up eliminating the human race with current technology like the Internet in order to protect the environment.
In addition, Chen also has a deep understanding of the matching and use of different colors. The research about the emotions brought by different colors that she did as an undergraduate has demonstrated her ability to convey emotions to the audience through color matching. For example, black with a little bit of red and white stands for horror, fluorescent blue and green add a modern feel to the piece. For Chen, it is very rewarding to shine in her field of expertise while educating and sensitizing the masses by spreading art.
For further information about Yu Jen Chen and her works, visit behance.net/yujennana.
