Hi! This is Hanwen Xu, from China. It is an absolute pain to come all the way from China to the State and I have to do it on a yearly base. I am a Junior in IMGD Bachelor of art, so it kinda goes without saying I would probably end up in an art-related job in the future. I have been doing traditional arts since I was a kid. I generally enjoyed traditional art, and I made a lot of them. But I just knew that it was not my thing. Starting from high school, I reached out and try different medias. I had experience on digital painting, graphic design, video production, and even some audio production. I feel I am much more comfortable when creating on different medias. I am trying out 2d and 3d animations and 3d modeling now and they are also a great fun.
I started learning programming after I came to WPI. I would say I am more at the art side of the spectrum, but I do have some knowledge in programming. I enjoy programming a lot and I am more than ready to learn more about it.
My creative inspirations come from a lot of places. Music, movies, manga, game, etc. I am particularly into some East Asian subcultures. I like my inspirations and aesthetics, and I hope I can share them in this course.
My recent art-related works are some 3d animations and a bunch of keyboards I built, check them out:
Inventive – I really like the different designs that you have made for your keyboards. I also really like how you built many of the keyboards to fit those specific design.
Shiny: Your animations look sleek because of the lighting effect you added-nice touch. The keyboards you built surprised me! super interesting to look at-it was refreshing because of how unexpected it was. The “newness” of this type of art display of something physical is why I leaned towards shiny. I mean shiny in a new and eyecatching way.
Familiar – Recently, I’ve been getting into keyboards as well so it’s cool to know that there are others in the class who share the same interest. I like the skipping animation too as it was very well done!
Clever – I’m a big fan of the different keyboards! I like the varied colors and styles. My favorite is the yellow, gray and white one – though I’m personally partial to that color palette.
Shiny: Your keyboards are so well put together, each one captures a different vibe. Keyboards have always fascinated me because of the level of detail and style you can put into each one- something you definitely achieved with yours. The pixel-letter one is my favorite- Its so cute and professional looking!
Shiny- I like your keyboard designs!
Colorful: your keyboards look great- I especially love the yellow, dark blue, and white one. The color choice is superb.
THOUGHT-PROVOKING: Your bio certainly has a lot to consider, and even though there isn’t a breadth of work you can show off, what you have made is certainly diverse and intriguing. Your life, from how I read it, is quite eventful to say the least. I could only imagine what it’s like to move very literally across the world just to get here. Whatever the case is, I certainly wish the best for you, and that WPI lives up to expectations.
Familiar: The 3D animations look just like the cycles that would be created for one of Farley’s animation classes. The keyboards are definitely something unusual though, I can’t say that I have seen art of that kind before.
Unrelated, but I always find it impressive when foreign students succeed at WPI. It takes a lot of drive to bring yourself across the world every year, especially since English likely isn’t your first language.
Familiar – your 3D work and animations is super impressive and the walk cycles are quite familiar as I’ve seen a of of people animate them as practice on YouTube and etc. 3D is tough and despite that they’re super realistic and impressive!
Shiny – The keyboard work you’ve done is so pleasing to the eye! The photos your shared make me want to click the keys and find out what they sound like…
Inventive – I love all of the keyboard designs, they’re really cool! Each one is unique and has a different vibe.
Gorgeous – I really am digging how cool the keyboard keys are. I would throw out my keyboard right now and replace it with yours.
Clever – I love how you included your keyboards because a lot of time and care can go into them and yet they are often underrated. I love how you framed the pictures with accessories to make the theming of the boards more cohesive. The animations are also really good!
I think I may go with ‘quirky’ because I did not expect to meet someone who designed keyboards.
Clever- I think the fonts and design of the keyboards are cleverly and carefully built. They look amazing!