Xiaolin Zeng — Visual Designer

Xiaolin Zeng, who signs his work zaoeyo, is a designer and art director from China who has built one of the most recognisable title-design portfolios of the past decade. He's featured in the Art of Styleframe library, and each entry below points at the project page he published himself.

What he does

Zeng started out self-taught in Cinema 4D and After Effects, and it shows in the way he thinks: the frame comes first, the pipeline second. His signature is dense, sculptural CG that stays legible. Metal, glass, cloth, and dust get pushed until they read as material rather than shader demos, and the compositions almost always resolve into one clear silhouette. That restraint is why the frames survive being cut down to a fifteen-second title card.

His personal site doubles as an index, pointing at project pages on Behance and at studio work published through Elastic. He also runs Momentor, a Cinema 4D education platform, which is where a lot of younger Chinese motion designers first ran into his process.

Selected projects

Look at the title sequences first. Shogun, The Last of Us, and Murderbot Diaries are the finished broadcast work, and the difference between them is worth studying: three completely different material languages, one consistent sense of pacing.

Then look at the pitches. Halo Main Title Pitch and the League of Legends Arcane Main Titles Pitch are unmade work, published anyway. That's unusual and it's generous. Pitches show you what the designer wanted before a client narrowed it down, and these two are more experimental than anything that shipped.

Awaken Akira and Pause 2017 Opening Titles are the older, career-making pieces. Resident Evil 2 Title Sequence Styleframes sits between the two modes, a spec sequence rendered to finished quality.

Game and product work rounds it out: The Witcher IV, the PUBG anniversary film, OnePlus 11 Liquid. Different budgets, same discipline about silhouette.

Where to see more

• Portfolio: zaoeyo.co
• Behance: behance.net/zaoeyo

Portfolio highlights

• AWAKEN AKIRA Awaken Akira was created by two friends, Ash Thorp and Zaoeyo (XiaoLin Zeng), who wanted to collaborate on a tribute to the iconic anime, Akira, by Katsuhiro Otomo.
• DDD+OFFF MIANLO 2018 MAIN TITLES
• Pause 2017 Opening Titles by zaoeyo I was so honored to be invited to craft this year's opening titles for Pause Fest.
• Styleframe collection - All Visuals by Zaoeyo daily practices
• OPPO TVC - Creative/Art Direction by Somei Design by Zaoeyo
• All Visuals by Zaoeyo I though it must will be a really nice project which presents the visual of what he — when I was heard the word of tyson "the most astounding fact" about the universe,
• Youku Night Opening - Art Direction by Zaoeyo Ending Board Design(2D) by Peng CeCe · A Video Festival Opening Design.
• StarAltas - All visuals by Zaoeyo Made in Cinema4D ,and AfterEffects .
• Octane Render Vol.1 - All Visuals by Zaoeyo Practicing new render engine in Cinema 4D
• All visuals by Zaoeyo Waterdrop is a spacecraft of "Threebody" civilization from the Chinese Scifi Novel "Threebody II : Dark Forest" · Its surface is made of neatly arranged met
• Light and Line Art Direction by Zaoeyo / Houdini VFX by ShuiFX — Try new Houdini VFX with my friend ,and designed in Cinema 4D ,rendered with Octane Render.
• Organic Machines - Credits : all visuals by zaoeyo Trying to combine liquid-like machine with human organs, and tiny insects to be the workers that maintain the machine functional Featured in — A Self-Practice Project .