Jennifer Zheng
Jen learned to draw the normal way: bydrawing the same boiled egg for a month because her dad told her “Davinci started that way”-he didn’t*. After eggs she drew exclusively Hollywood A-lister headshots with the grid method: her Angelina Jolie was spectacular. Now Jen has found a career where drawing the same thing over and over isn’t considered crazy: Animation.
She grew up Chinese in the rolling concrete flats of Belfast, Northern Ireland where it was so White she would sometimes forget that she was Asian…so the other girls at school would complain that their fake tan kept rubbing off and she’d say back “I dunno what’s wrong with you girls because mine never comes off.” The prejudices she experienced growing up taught her the importance of empathy, which is a theme that permeates her work.
Her short film Tough on her and her mother’s conflicting cultural identities was nominated for a BAFTA, won 17 awards and screened at over 80 international film festivals including Sundance and SXSW. She is currently an Associate Creative Director at BUCK and has worked with clients like The White Stripes, Netflix, Headspace & Google Deepmind. Notably, she’s led the design of genitals & illustrations for OMGYes, co-wrote & creative directed a short for GitHub starring Phil Wang and recently directed the animated portion of David Wilson’s music video for Mabel ‘Look At My Body pt.II’ - a psychedelic feminist retelling of the original sin.
On the side, she is an award-winning standup comedian, Playgrounds In Motion London host, erotica zine publisher and t-shirt tiedyer.
*Da Vinci never repeatedly drew eggs, this seems to be a China-specific conspiracy.