Today we’d like to introduce you to RUXIN LIANG.
RUXIN, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I’ve always been the person who builds worlds in their head – characters, places, little stories that feel like they could keep going after you look away. 3D became the way I finally got to walk around inside those worlds – and, increasingly, to make them interactive, so other people could step into them too.
I studied at SCAD and later at the School of Visual Arts in New York, where I leaned into animation, character, and the craft of making digital images feel alive. While I was studying, I directed an independent animated short called Unsurpassed Team. It was the first time I carried a project all the way from a private idea to something that lived out in the world – it went on to receive a MetroCAF Award, recognition at the ASIFA-East Animation Awards and the Young Ones ADC (Gold Cube), screened across nine international festivals, and has since been viewed more than 1.2 million times online. That experience taught me how much I love taking a story all the way through – from something private in my head to something other people can actually feel.
In 2022 I joined BUCK in New York as a 3D artist, and that opened up a whole second side of my practice. Since then I’ve gotten to work on projects for Apple, Airbnb, GitHub, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Beats, Riot Games, and Netflix – things like the Dunkin’ Little Holiday Munchkin film, Get an Airbnb, modeling and texturing for the Meta x Takashi Murakami AR experience shown at The Broad museum, Google Doodles, Love, Death + Robots, and the League of Legends World Championships. Commercial work matters to me in a way that goes beyond the final image – it keeps me on the front edge of new technology and pushes me to really dig into it, often deeply enough that I start building my own tools and workflows along the way. And even inside that work, I can still bring my own sense of character and feeling to the screen, using texture, material detail, and light to shape how a story is built and what it makes you feel. That’s a big part of why I love this craft. My own films just let me take that same instinct further and chase the story itself more freely. So these days my career runs on two tracks at once: high-craft commercial and cultural work that reaches big audiences, and independent, authored work where I get to direct and tell my own stories – and honestly, moving between the two is what keeps the work sharp, each side feeding the other.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It’s not always smooth. Beyond the design and styleframe stage, the work always comes down to polish – grooming, look-development, lighting – the layer that decides how an image actually feels. On even a short piece, we’ll pour an enormous amount of effort into the details: reworking every single strand of hair, every material, iterating a lighting comp fifty times or more. It’s painstaking, and it rarely goes in a straight line – but it’s exactly the kind of detail I love sinking into. Every small step forward, every version that lands a little closer, gives you this huge sense of accomplishment, and honestly nothing compares to that feeling when it all finally comes together.
Building a creative career in the U.S. as an international artist added another layer on top of that. There’s a lot you have to prove, and you get used to doing your best work while the ground under you isn’t always steady. The newer challenge is speed – and it actually comes from a change I welcome. AI has started to reshape how fast we can work, and I see it mostly as a positive: I use it in my own process, and it speeds up the toolwork, opens up more room for inspiration in the early and middle stages, and takes some of the grind out of the repetitive work. The challenge is that the same shift means we’re increasingly asked to deliver, in a fraction of the time, work that used to take much longer. That time pressure is real, and learning to move that fast without losing the care the craft actually needs has become its own discipline.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I specialize in look-development and lighting – the craft of hair, fur, surfaces, and the way light sits on them. Lighting is where I’m fastest and most instinctive: I read what a scene needs, build the mood quickly, then refine the materials and textures inside that light until it feels right. I work across a wide range of looks – stylized, photoreal, atmospheric – and just as many material styles. If I’m known for one thing, it’s that: folding my own style into very different briefs and coming out with work that feels both inventive and beautiful.
You can see it across very different projects: the character grooming on the League of Legends World Championships; look-development, lighting, and grooming on Airbnb’s Get an Airbnb and Dunkin’s Little Holiday Munchkin; and the modeling and texturing on the Meta x Murakami experience at The Broad. Much of it comes down to problem-solving – finding where technical skill, artistic judgment, and the right tools meet – and I’m quick to build or adapt what I need, often turning those solutions into workflows and documentation other artists end up using.
What I’m most proud of is getting to do two very different things well. On the personal side, my short Unsurpassed Team is the most fully me, and it’s gone on to earn awards and pass 1.2 million views. On the other side is reach – work I’ve had a hand in has reached huge audiences, from the Worlds broadcast peaking around 6.7 million concurrent viewers to Google Doodles that hit entire countries’ homepages. Getting to live at both of those scales still feels rare, and I don’t take it for granted.
If anything sets me apart, it’s that I pair a director’s instinct for story with deep technical craft. I’m not just solving a shot or chasing one striking frame – I think about the feeling the whole piece should leave you with, then build the look, light, and detail that gets there. That mix of storytelling and technical depth is what I’m proudest of, and what I love doing most.
Alright so before we go can you talk to us a bit about how people can work with you, collaborate with you or support you?
I’m always open to collaborating. On the commercial side that usually happens through studio work – brand films, animation, immersive and interactive projects – especially where character, look-development, and lighting can really shape how something feels. I’m also developing my own authored projects right now, including a cross-platform interactive narrative and a character-driven animated short, and I’m genuinely excited to keep pushing into new media and formats, well beyond short film.
So if any of that resonates – whether you’re a studio, a festival, a collaborator, or someone who just wants to build a world together – my portfolio is below, and you’re always welcome to reach out.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.behance.net/ruxin-liang
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/liarx.art/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ruxinliang/
