Chong Lyu

Chong Lyu was born in China in 1996. She's a 2D animator. Before studying at the Royal College of Art, Chong graduated from the Central Academy of Fine Arts' School of Design with a degree in Media Arts in 2018.

Chong began learning to draw at eight and was fascinated by drawing and storytelling. She tried to learn 3D animation and film during her BA studies and spent her holidays interning at a post-production art company. Chong has also worked on several productions as a director and scenic artist. Chong eventually found 2D animation to be a perfect combination of drawing and storytelling.

Chong's undergraduate graduation work, the split-screen animation HOLE, is in the 2018 collection of the Central Academy of Fine Arts Museum, Beijing.

Chong chose 2D animation as the medium of expression for her work because it combines visual presentation and imagination, using shape-shifting graphics to tell a story.

Chong has had a passion for fables and mythology from a young age. She loves to explore the deep metaphors in stories and is interested in fatalism and the cycle of cause and effect.

Chong enjoys dissecting the inner world of different groups of people in her work. She approaches her subject from the perspective of children with autism and Alzheimer's patients, hoping that her work will bring social attention to particular people. At the same time, Chong also focuses on expressing relationships between people, especially family members. Her inspiration comes from her own life experiences, her loved ones. Making the animation is an emotional expression and catharsis for her.

The visual style of her work is quiet and minimalist, with a single, muted palette, just like the way she tells her stories.

His Bridge Trailer

His Bridge is a tribute to my grandfather.

His Bridge is a two-dimensional narrative animation about Alzheimer's disease.

The story takes place on a bridge with twelve houses. It tells the story of an older man who lives in the last house on the bridge. One morning, his teeth start to fall out one by one, and his peaceful life begins to change. One by one, the houses on the bridge fall into the water until he is the only one left.

In this story, I see the bridge as the life of the main character, and the different houses on the bridge and the people living in them as the various stages of his life. The constant loss of teeth and the crumbling houses on the bridge are linked to the main character's disappearing memories. For example, as a toddler, he was an urchin; as a young man, he was a milkman; as a middle-aged man, he was an office worker who always quarrelled with his wife...

At the end of the story, the older man finally realises that the bridge is nothing more than a lifetime of memories for him. After saying goodbye to his mother, he is the only one left on the bridge, representing the older man's complete forgetfulness of his past.

Directed by Chong Lyu

Music by Niu niu Dou

Sound Design by Chong Lyu&Jakob Winder