NIN - 2020 Angouleme - Comic Artists Featured in Taiwan Pavilion

NIN

LI Yu-ning's pen name, NIN, is inspired by part of her Chinese name (凝, Ning), which means "coalesce". NIN channels this concept in her art, as well as in her life, by concentrating on and bringing into focus anything worth cherishing.

NIN has loved to draw and paint ever since she was little,
and she was deeply influenced by Japanese manga and anime growing up.

After taking art in high school,
she went on to earn a degree from the Department of Visual Communication Design
at National Taiwan University of the Arts. Driven by an intense desire to tell colorful stories about life,
NIN often experiments with fusing together elements of drawing, painting,
and graphic design to create illustrations and cartoons that convey fun and quirky perceptions.

With a knack for watercolors and pen sketching and her diverse style reflecting Japanese and European influences,
NIN's spirited, stylish art captures imaginations and stirs emotions.

Awards and Exhibitions:

2019  Twenty-Four Seven Illustrators' Exhibit / Eslite Bookstore Dunnan Branch

2018  Xing Xing, Best Comic Plot Award, International Comics and Animation Exhibition, Changchun, Jilin Province

2018  Moving, Watercolor illustrations exhibit / King Car Education Foundation

2017  Something Broken, Watercolor illustrations exhibit

2016  6:59 NIN x RCC, Interdisciplinary visual art exhibit

2015  Journey on your desk, Illustrations exhibit

2012  NIN x Lino: Pieces of Rainbow, Illustrators' duo exhibit

2012  Notes & Rests, Solo illustrations exhibit

2012  Lead Visual Designer, National Museum of History x Handcrafted Style, History Museum Section at Creative Expo

Selected Works:

2018  You Are the Apple of My Eye Comic strip / Self-published

2016  NEVER GONE Comic strip / Self-published

2013  Sleeping Tale of Them Comic strip / Self-published

2012  Nightmare of the Lost Comic strip / Self-published

2011  Echo of Dew & Snow Comic strip / Self-published

2011  Dew of Dawn Compilation of selected images / Self-published

2009  Shining Night Comic strip / Self-published

2008  Counter Clockwise Comic strip / Self-published

2008  Birds in the Cage Comic strip / Self-published

2007  In the Cabinet Comic strip / Self-published

2006  P I P Compilation of selected images / Self-published

2005  Homemade Cookies Compilation of selected images / Self-published

WU Yu-Shi - 2020 Angouleme - Comic Artists Featured in Taiwan Pavilion

WU Yu-Shi
吳宇實

One of Ever Glory Publishing's most promising young artists,
Wu's individual style emphasizes hand-drawn elements stemming from her love of the unique textures and feelings that come from illustrations by hand.

Wu's stories feature intricate, detailed plots, and she enjoys depicting the inner feelings
and emotional connections between characters while sprinkling her own views on certain
issues into stories. Her first standalone comic, Ocean-Colored Polaris,
was published at the 2018 Taipei International Comics & Animation Festival,
was selected for showcasing in numerous overseas book fairs and won the
10th Golden Comic Awards 'Best New Talent' award in 2019.
Her latest comic, Farewell, Pinocchio!, is currently published as a web serial.

Awards and Exhibitions:

2019 Invitational exhibit sponsored by Tainan City Cultural Affairs Bureau, PLUS Creative Tainan

2019 'Best New Talent' award for Ocean-Colored Polaris, 10th Golden Comic Awards

2019 Ocean-Colored Polaris featured in 41st edition of K-8 Extracurricular Reading List, Ministry of Culture

2014 Candy New Star, featured in 11th Ever Glory Publishing Open Call for Submissions

2014 Special Jury Award, 'Teenage Girls' category, 4th Sharp Point Press Comic Star Awards

2011 Candy New Star, featured in 8th Ever Glory Publishing Open Call for Submissions

Selected Works:

2019 Farewell, Pinocchio! Vol.1 / Ever Glory Publishing

2018 Ocean-Colored Polaris / Ever Glory Publishing

GAO Yan - 2020 Angouleme - Comic Artists Featured in Taiwan Pavilion

GAO Yan

高妍

Born in 1996 in Taipei, Gao studied at the Department of Fine Arts at Okinawa Prefectural University of Arts in Japan for one year and graduated from the Department of Visual Communication Design at National Taiwan University of the Arts. Focused primarily on illustrations and cartoons, she is intimately involved in indie publishing and productions as well as design publications. Gao has worked with numerous Taiwanese and Japanese magazines and periodicals including Monsoon, Creative Comic Collection, Studio Voice, and Illustration, and her self-published works include Sukima, Room Diary, and Green’s Song. She intends to hold her first overseas solo exhibit at the indie bookstore TACO ché in Tokyo in 2020.


Awards and Exhibitions:

2020 GAO Yan Solo Exhibition at TACO ché, Tokyo, Japan

2019 'East Asian Independent Comics' Art Book Fair / Popotame Gallery, Tokyo, Japan

2018  GAO Yan Solo Exhibition "Room Diary" at Mangasick, Taipei, Taiwan

Selected Works:

2019 The Rain Falls in Silence, Monsoon Vol.4 

2019 Sukima

2019 Front Line in Peace, Monsoon Vol.3 

2019 Beware of deep water, Creative Comic Collection Vol.15 

2018  Room Diary

2018 Green’s Song ( Japanese Version ), Mangasick

2018 Green’s Song

2017 The Unimportant Year of 1982

Animo CHEN -2020 Angouleme - Comic Artists Featured in Taiwan Pavilion

Animo CHEN
阿尼默

"One day, I mistook a dab of paint for a piece of chocolate and devoured it up.
Much to my surprise, I found it tasted heavenly.
Naturally, I gobbled more down every day, coating my stomach in layer upon layer of pigment
until I threw up a mess resembling a cast of my own innards.
The intestines, the stomach, the heart—they were ever so beautiful.
I'd truly cultivated myself from the inside out."

Animo has a degree in Visual Communication Design from Da-Yeh University
and an MA from the Fine Arts Department, Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague, Czech Republic.
His work is as diverse as it is prolific. With experience as a still photographer, TV and film art director,
animation director, and an 18-year track record as a professional illustrator,
Animo excels at cerebral imagery and piercing prose,
and his work is often featured in periodicals and on book covers.

Highlights include working as art director on the short film Fancy 25—Black Butterfly,
art director on the TV series We Don’t Have a Future Together,
the short comic The Sky at Forty-Seven (featured in the compilation Taipei Cafe),
the illustrated book The Disappearance of 366, the animated series Bus 366 ,
and a collection of photographs titled Let it Ring.

Notably, the TV series We Don’t Have a Future Together was nominated for
Best Art Director at the 2004 Golden Bell Awards,
and in 2005 the animated series Bus 366 won first place and a NT$1 million cash prize
at the World-Class Animation Prototype Awards held by the ROC Industrial Development Bureau,
won the Special Jury Award for Web Animation in Changzhou, China,
and was nominated for best animated short film at the Taipei Film Festival.
That same year, Animo's illustrated books The Disappearance of 366 and Swanky Boy
were also respectively awarded "Best Illustrated Book of the Year" and "Best Illustration of the Year" by Eslite Bookstore.
In addition, his essay Sometimes I Am Among the Lilliputians, Sometimes I Am Gulliver was selected as the 2010 "Essay of the Year" by Chiu Ko Publishing.

Animo has held many solo and joint exhibitions in Taiwan and the Czech Republic.
The most recent one was Flemingia, an exhibition of illustrations held in 2018,
and he was also featured in the Illustrators Exhibition at the 2019 Bologna Children's Book Fair.

Published at the tail end of 2019, The Short Elegy is the first-ever exclusive collection of comics by Animo, representing the essence of over three years of intense creative energy. Soup du Jour, published around the same time, is a series of postcards illustrated by Animo featuring quirky and highly stylized satirical images dating back to 2005. Together, the two contrasting collections showcase Animo's evolving artistic style from before and after his sojourn in the Czech Republic.

Awards and Exhibitions:

2019 Selected for inclusion in the Bologna Children's Book Fair Illustrators Exhibition, Italy

2018 Flemingia Solo exhibit

2013 ART PRAGE Joint exhibit / Young Art Taipei

2013 Known Work That We Can't Stop Laughing At Joint exhibit / Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design Gallery, Prague, Czech Republic

2013 Style Established Joint exhibit / Central Gallery, Bratislava, Slovakia

2012 ART PRAGE Joint exhibit / Young Art Taipei

2010 Sometimes I Am Among the Lilliputians, Sometimes I Am Gulliver selected as 2010 "Essay of the Year" by Chiu Ko Publishing

2009 Napping Solo exhibit of prints

2009 Alone Joint exhibit

2005 Bus 366 won first place and NT$1 million cash prize at World-Class Animation Prototype Awards held by ROC Industrial Development Bureau; won Special Jury Award for Web Animation in Changzhou, China; nominated for best animated short film at Taipei Film Festival

2005 Swanky Boy awarded "Best Illustration of the Year" by Eslite Bookstore

2005 Footloose 366 awarded "Best Illustrated Book of the Year" by Eslite Bookstore

2004 We Don't Have a Future Together nominated for Best Art Director, 2004 Golden Bell Awards

Selected Works:

2019 The Short Elegy / Locus Publishing

2019 SOUP DU JOUR - Animo Chen Postcard Book / Locus Publishing 

2016 Let it Ring / Self-published

2007 Taipei Café  / Dala Publishing

2005 Footloose 366  / Business Weekly Publications, Inc.

Monday Recover - 2020 Angouleme - Comic Artists Featured in Taiwan Pavilion

Monday Recover

星期一回收日

In 2016, she collaborated with TTV (Taiwan Television), PTS (Public Television Service), and GTV (Gala Television) to release a comic book adaptation of the Taiwanese TV drama Qseries under the title Love of Sandstorm, which received critical acclaim by viewers and readers. In 2017, she began the original serial Pink Ribbon, a girls' love (GL) inspired work, in Tong Li Publishing's magazine Star Girls. Featuring exquisite illustrations depicting quaint scenes of school life, adolescence, and Lolita costumes, and embellished with the perfect blend of sweet and sour stories of young girls, the comic quickly garnered a loyal following.

From February 2018 to March 2019, her serial comic So, This Is Food! was published in Future Magazine for Kids. The comic features an alien visitor named Yami who helps readers learn fun facts about food.

In 2018, she began to collaborate with popular lesbian novelist Yang Shuang-tzu to publish various short comics in the Creative Comic Collection, including Heaven on Earth and Last Night's Dream of Blossoms Falling Over the Still Pond.


Awards and Exhibitions:

2019 'Comic of the Year', 10th Golden Comic Awards

2019 'Best Comic for Teenage Girls', Golden Comic Awards

2015 Gold, 'Young Comics' category, Tong Li Publishing 3rd Annual Original Comics Contest

2015 Bronze, 'Comics' category, Bahamut ACG Contest

Selected Works:

2019 Nine Lives Man: Wallow in Light / Tong Li Publishing (Unabridged)

2018 Deep Courtyard of the Beautiful Island / Gaea Books / Creative Comic Collection Vol.19 (to be continued)

2018 Last Night's Dream of Blossoms Falling Over the Still Pond / Gaea Books / Creative Comic Collection, Vols.13 and 14

2018 So, This Is Food! / 

Global Views – Commonwealth Publishing Group / Future Magazine for Kids (February 2018 to March 2019)

2018 Pink Ribbon / Tong Li Publishing / Unabridged

2018 Heaven on Earth / Gaea Books / Creative Comic Collection Vols. 4 and 5

2016 Love of Sandstorm / Primal Beat Creations Music / Unabridged

2020 Angouleme International Comics Festival Artists Taiwan Pavilion: Key Vision