3D Generalist · Illustrator
Portfolio
2026
Quiet, dreamlike worlds — built frame by frame in 3D and 2D.
Star Dust
Animated short · 2025 · Direction, modeling, animation & rendering — Yiwei Wang
▶ Click to play · Yiwei's MFA thesis film at the School of Visual Arts — a hand-crafted blend of 3D and 2D animation.
Logline
Star Dust is a 3D animated short about a little girl who chases a star that has flown out of her own body, and is carried through a series of surreal dream worlds. The closer she comes to catching it, the deeper it draws her into the unknown — and toward a secret buried in her own life.
Concept & Story
The film grew out of a Chinese folk belief — that a piece of jade shatters to ward off disaster. A charm given by an elder is said to take on a fatal calamity in the wearer's place.
The story follows a girl who wakes, disoriented, in a vast universe. Following the glowing star pendant at her neck, she travels through one vivid, surreal world after another. When the pendant pushes her through the final door, the star goes dark and breaks. The film returns to reality: the girl wakes with a start in a hospital bed, and the star at her neck has lost its light and split in two. Not only a journey through a dream, but a metaphor for being protected — and for waking up.
Roles & Pipeline
Director and lead artist — led the full pipeline, from visual development through final compositing.
Original script and story structure, character and environment concept design, storyboards.
- Procreate
- Photoshop
Built and modeled the universe environments; co-modeled the girl; handled cloth simulation across the whole film.
- Maya
- Blender
- Marvelous Designer
Led 80% of the film's material and texture assets, and art-directed the final look.
- Substance 3D Painter
- Blender
Sole animator on the universe and ocean sequences — all character performance and environmental motion.
- Maya
- Blender
Compositing and VFX on 50% of the film's shots.
- After Effects
- Nuke
Mirror
Concept & Story
A short built around a single idea: a hallucination you can look at.
It follows a man sleeping off a drink in a bar. As he steps into the corridor toward the restroom, reality has already begun to bend — the space turns strange, and closes in. At the sink, just as he thinks the cold water has brought him back, he realizes with horror that the "himself" in the mirror is staring straight at him, and begins hammering on the glass to get out. Only when a stranger taps his shoulder does the vision cut out and drop him back into the real world.
Through a warping subjective space and the mirror at its centre, the film sits on the blurred edge between reality and the subconscious.
Roles & Pipeline
Director — handled almost the entire short single-handedly, from visual design through the final mix.
Led the concept, visual development and storyboards.
- Procreate
- Photoshop
Sole artist on the protagonist, the bar and the restroom — layout, modeling and the full texture set.
- Blender
- Marvelous Designer
- Substance 3D Painter
Animated the protagonist in the corridor, and all character performance and motion in the restroom.
- Maya
Sole sound designer — ambience edit, foley and score, sharpening the film's tension and immersion.
Funeral
An animated short reflecting on death — mysterious, beautiful and quiet — and the question of where the soul goes.
Bankrupt
3D Character Studies
Editorial & personal illustration — soft light, uncanny calm.
Rosemary's Baby
Monstrosity
This is a project about deformed cultures from different ethnic groups. A thought-provoking, horrific series: in the past many isolated, underdeveloped nations had habits we now find sensational — some still linger today. I paint these so people remember history.
Other works
About me.
Yiwei Wang is a 3D Generalist and Illustrator with a background in computer arts and illustration. Passionate about storytelling, design, modeling, animation and rendering, Yiwei brings ideas to life through visually compelling narratives — blending 2D and 3D into immersive digital experiences.
School of Visual Arts, New York
School of Visual Arts, New York
- Maya
- Blender
- Cinema 4D
- ZBrush
- Photoshop
- After Effects
- Premiere Pro
- Figma