Our website has detected that you are using an outdated browser than will prevent you from accessing certain features. We recommend that you update your browser, simply click one of the following to download a new browser:

Skip to content Skip to navigation
Graphic Design and Visualisation

Chaolun Shi

Graphic Design and Visualisation

Major project

Nobody is perfect. Everyone is unique. [Read more]

Stills from "Perfect"

Commercials often promote the perfect female body and can create or contribute to feelings of unease and anxiety. As target audiences grow younger and adverts grow more pervasive, it is important to be aware of the potentially harmful effects adverts can cause. Everyone is different, and the expectation that our bodies should pursue the same ideals of beauty, a beauty of artificial sameness, comes at the cost of appreciating the beauty of natural diversity. Chaolun’s research interests focus on championing ideas of natural beauty through promoting positive images of young women. The value of animation against written work or live-action film, is its ability to reveal the invisible thoughts, feelings and sensations that underpin desires of beauty and self-loathing using accessible languages. Its digital nature only compounds its ability to be screened globally, providing encouragement to women to re-examine and accept who they are, and how they look. As an aspiring Advertising Creative and Illustrator, Chaolun believes that sometimes it is important to counter the inescapable messages and adverse effects of typical advertising with the nuanced sentiments of independent animation.

The stills on this page are taken from "Perfect", an animated short (1min 50s) that questions the psychological and subconscious effects of advertising on young women. The full animation is available clicking the youtube link at the top of this page or watching the embedded video below.

Chaolun Shi

Chaolun uses motion graphics and illustration to tackle issues of feminine beauty.

Though Chaolun’s undergraduate studies were in environmental design, landscape and architecture design, she cultivated an interest in graphic design. In her spare time she experimented with motion graphic posters, illustrations and hand-made books, developing her softwares and drawings abilities which would become the cornerstone of her current practice. Chaolun hopes her research project can challenge the dominant ideas perpetuated about women’s beauty and subvert the male gaze through animation.

Major project

Nobody is perfect. Everyone is unique.