Probably the most common thing we hear about artists is that they can rarely make a living out of doing their art work. Junyi Zhang, the fantastic award-winning Chinese artist who currently works and lives in Los Angeles, California, can vouch for that. She knows that many of the ‘big name’ artists from the Renaissance and artists from other eras and other places had patrons who paid for everything from room and food -and all of the artist’s living expenses, but nowadays it’s very hard to find a real patron of the arts who will support an artist on such a grand level.
Of course, today is different in just about every way and even though we admit that many truly talented artists have a rough time being paid for their artistic contributions to our society, there are jobs and employers out there who recognize genius when they see it and who are willing to fork out a living wage to have the artist work for them.
Junyi, whose artistic ability is exceptional, will never have to worry about having to take a job as a cashier in a supermarket because she will always be in demand at animation studios and any companies that deal with graphic art, animation and multimedia art, among other skillsets. Junyi earned a scholarship, along with her Master’s Degree in Animation at Savannah College of Art and Design. She came before that, with a Bachelor’s Degree in Animation from the China Academy of Art.
She was a standout student wherever she attended and Junyi’s lighting project ‘Mood’ was selected for SCAD’s (Savannah College of Art and Design) promotional show reel. Her Honors Grad Scholarship was awarded to her for her ‘Demonstration of outstanding academic achievement through Graduate Record Examination.’ In the China Academy of Art, Junyi was given the Graduate Work Award for ‘Demonstation of the Best Graduate Work.’ Her Graduate film ‘WE’ was selected for SIGGAPH and her work in China was welcomed into the China Art Exhibition. Not surprisingly, her animation piece was invited to be a selection at the Xiamen International Animation Festival.
Junyi has been working non-stop in the animation and multimedia art fields ever since she left college. She is a highly experienced and unequaled multimedia artist / background design artist along with being a concept artist. She was the Designer and Painter for the incredibly successful animated series Valt the Wonder Deer, from DreamEast Pictures and she has created background designs for over 60 episodes so far. Junyi also worked for Intellipro Group for the Funplus Design Island. Design Island is a mobile game from one of the most significant companies in the interactive computer world. She worked on background designs, environment concept designs, and character designs. Junyi is certainly one of the fortunate and very talented artists who gets paid to do what they love in life.
In addition, Junyi also released her children’s book, “When Mommy’s Busy”, which recently came first place in 3 categories at the BookFest Book Awards in 2022 including: Best Cover Design, Best Parenting and Best Family book.
The future remains bright and exciting for this fabulously talented artist!
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