We recently connected with Bea Qian and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Bea, thanks for sharing your insights with our community today. Part of your success, no doubt, is due to your work ethic and so we’d love if you could open up about where you got your work ethic from?
When working on collaborative projects, the most important thing is to be responsive and proactive. My work ethic is to always communicate, despite how unconfident you’re feeling – for example, when you’re not finishing something on time during a teamwork project. Many people would be afraid of letting the manager or producer know that this is happening, but it will lead to a bigger misunderstanding if you don’t tell it. In team projects, it’s always you and your colleagues versus the problems, not versus each other. Being honest about your progress will always help, compared to leaving everything to yourself and procrastinate further and further. As for the ‘proactive’ part- working with people is hard. Sometimes you just can’t receive assets you need for your work when the other teammates are not responsive. In this case, complaining is not the solution. It’s important to be proactive and think about how to bypass the problem, or get some other things done so that you’re keeping yourself busy during the work time. This is a good way to leave a nice impression in the workplace. Time is always ticking in entertainment business. I tend to always calculate the remaining time I have for certain projects, and if I see it’s not going to be done if I keep waiting for things to get to my hands, I will figure out a way to get what I need so we can move forward with the progress.
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
Currently, I work as a cinematic artist for AAA games. I worked on the launch trailer for the Forza Motorsport game last year, focusing on cinematic storytelling, video editing, and camera animation. As an animation student in my senior year, I’ve been directing a 3D animation short film, named Tall Wall, telling the stories hidden underneath the “smallpox” pandemic, and how people are increasingly distant from each other. It is a mirrored world of ours as the covid outbreak hasn’t been far away from us, and by stating a distinguished disease, smallpox, I’m implying to the never-learning nature of human to our own mistakes. History is happening again and again, and it will continue to go on. Technical side, it’s a combination of 2D projected matte paintings and 3D character animation, rendered in Unreal Engine 5. We’ve created an intriging world for Tall Wall with the unignorable presence of CCTV everywhere, buildings are growing higher on top of the old ones, as the people underneath continues to sophicate. This film will be finished by the end of April. I’m very excited for this to get finished, and hopefully show the world what I have learnt from the past pandemic soon.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
I think the three most important qualities for people are being kind, being bold, and being responsible. It sounds like an old record, but I haven’t seen many people being bold enough or responsible enough in their career journey, and if they are, they usually tend to be pretty successful in their area. “Bold” as if not afraid of failure. I have many friends who are in their early careers like me, they are afraid of applying for work and reaching out to people so they always do that when it’s super late. I’ve been getting rejected since I started to apply to work, it happens to everyone, and you get better when you experience more and more failures. You get better at handling them, and better at avoiding them. Also, don’t be afraid to ask things, state your opinion when you want to say them. Early career is the time when you’ve got nothing to lose, use this as your power and you may impress people with your thoughts. If you don’t say it, no one will know what you’re thinking. Being responsible is another important part, especially if you’re leading a team. Responsibility is a scary thing, and that’s why people tend to avoid it unconsciously. But as a team leader, you need to be responsible and very importantly, let people know that you’re responsible for things. This creates more trust among the people who are on your team, and who are collaborating with you.
As in the important areas of knowledge, I think it’s always good to know about laws and rights. Despite the industry you’re in and the things you’re working on, you need to know your rights. And protect yourself from being abused by the lack of knowledge of laws.
Is there a particular challenge you are currently facing?
For anyone who’s in the Entertainment business, especially artists, we all know that the recent layoffs of studios are scary. As someone who’s in the early career, it’s often frustrating to see that after all these years of training, when it’s finally time to “shine” in this dream industry you want to get in, everything is falling apart here. It’s hard to get a job anywhere, AI is changing the ways we work, and there are fewer spots for people to work in this industry. Unfortunately, I’m also still thinking about my backup plan for this situation. As artists, it’s kinda different for us to think about changing a career, because most of us have always wanted to get involved in great projects, get on that credit list, and proudly tell our friends which parts we did. But it’s getting harder. I’m considering the opportunity of creating my things and getting them into a business, which could start from small, but getting better over the years is what I’m planning for. It’s better to be relying on yourself rather than anything else. That’s my take on the current situation of our industry. Hey, we, the new kids, have got nothing to lose, as I said in the previous ones.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.beaqian.art
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beaqian_art/
- Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/chen-q-a061511a7
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@beaqian1398
Image Credits
Art Director of Tall Wall: Linka Guo Character Designer: Keyna Gao Modeler: Tracy Li Texture artist: Gerile Yang
