Painting the “Deep Sea ”: How Yih Yao is Reshaping the Language of Animation

Within the global animation industry, few artists are shaping the future of visual storytelling with the same precision and originality as Yih Yao. A lighting, compositing, and look development artist whose influence spans some of the most visually ambitious animated films of recent years, Yih has become an essential creative force behind the camera—bringing not only technical mastery but a rare, cohesive artistic vision.

Her most celebrated contribution to date is her work on Deep Sea, the 2023 animated feature produced by Octmedia Animation. The film marked a major turning point for Chinese CG cinema, lauded for its experimental visual language and emotional complexity. While Deep Sea attracted headlines for its painterly aesthetic and breathtaking underwater sequences, industry insiders know that its most iconic visual innovation—the expressive, ink-inspired ocean—was largely shaped by Yih’s leadership.

Serving as a lighting and compositing artist as well as Ocean shading development lead, Yih Yao played a foundational role in defining how the ocean looked, moved, and communicated meaning throughout the film. At a critical point in early production, she proposed that the ocean be rendered not as a realistic background element, but as an emotional extension of the protagonist—animated using principles drawn from Chinese ink wash painting. With the director’s full endorsement, Yih guided the FX and shading teams to build an entirely new visual system that allowed the water to flow with brushstroke-like movement and layered translucency. Her lighting setups became the production’s benchmark, enabling other departments to maintain aesthetic cohesion across scenes.

The impact was immediate and far-reaching. Deep Sea premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival and went on to win Best Visual Effects at the Shanghai International Film Festival, as well as the Gold Panda for Best VFX in Animation at the Sichuan TV Festival. It grossed over $130 million USD domestically and became one of the most commercially successful animated features in Chinese film history. Its visual style—anchored by Yih’s ocean sequences—became the defining imagery used in trailers, festival campaigns, and international promotion. Reviewers consistently cited the ocean’s emotional resonance and visual beauty as central to the film’s success.

What distinguishes Yih’s work is not simply her eye for composition, but her fluency across the animation pipeline. She designed lighting strategies that balanced realism and abstraction, developed shading systems that could scale efficiently without sacrificing visual richness, and composed highly complex scenes that integrated volumetric FX, hand-painted textures, and CG assets into seamless narratives. Her work was instrumental not only in meeting artistic goals, but in building production infrastructure that supported Octmedia’s broader creative ambitions. As fellow VFX artist Gen Li put it, “she wasn’t just executing scenes—she was helping define the visual identity of an entire studio.”

Beyond the Frame: A Voice That Shapes the Future of Animation

Her influence continued into her tenure at Ain Star Studio, where she was brought on as Key Shot Lighting Artist for the forthcoming film Endless Journey of Love. In this leadership role, Yih was responsible for crafting the film’s most emotionally significant visual moments—those used as stylistic references across the production and as key scenes for marketing and festival use. She coordinated closely with directors and department heads, implemented advanced lighting strategies using Solaris, and developed templates that improved render efficiency across the board. Her contributions helped shape the film’s narrative tone and solidified her reputation as a lead visual strategist in high-stakes environments.

What’s especially notable about Yih’s trajectory is how consistently she has been trusted with visual decisions that affect entire productions. That level of responsibility is rarely extended to artists at her stage in their careers—yet Yih has repeatedly demonstrated the creative initiative, technical depth, and collaborative agility needed to carry it. Her resume reflects a broad and evolving skill set, spanning stylized rendering, real-time lighting, interactive media, and traditional CG feature production. But more than that, it reflects a professional whose work does more than solve problems—it sets direction.

As animation continues to evolve across platforms, geographies, and technologies, Yi Yih represents a new kind of visual leader: one equally at home with finely detailed, photorealistic CG rendering and painterly abstraction, capable of translating emotional narratives into meticulously crafted images that resonate far beyond the frame. Her work on Deep Sea has already influenced new approaches to stylized rendering in China and beyond. Her ongoing contributions promise to shape how audiences experience story through light and texture for years to come.

In a medium built on constant reinvention, Yih’s artistry stands as both a technical benchmark and a creative statement—one that continues to redefine the possibilities of animation on the global stage.