Yutong Deng
yutong070412@gmail.com

Table of Contents

Animation
Game Design
AR Interaction
Interactive Installation
Illustration
Sculpture
Painting
Drawing
Printmaking
Graphic Design
Photography
Sketchbook Tour

Animation

Self-Portrait
2023
Adobe Animate, Procreate

The loss of my parrot gave me, someone who used to stay in my house, the opportunity to look directly at and listen to nature. We needed to pay attention to every bird that flew across the sky. There were low sounds, sharp sounds, rhythmic sounds, all around us. I felt like I had entered a new world. The experience of finding her inspired me to explore when pet birds leave human life and return to the original ecosystem. Which one is the real one before or after domestication?

Where Am I
2024
Adobe Animate, Procreate

In this animation, I explore why I feel uncomfortable with ladybugs and the relationship between individual and group. The process of making this animation helped me locate myself within a large group. I visualized myself in a crowd and how isolated and connected I felt simultaneously.

Shore
2025
Adobe After effect, Procreate

I was inspired by a part of my childhood memory or dream where I remember I was at a beach and people were sucking the ocean water out after a sunset, and I was lying on the beach feeling the ocean water gradually disappear…
When I try to fix this part of memory, I wasn't sure if it's a dream or just my memory.

Selected for PennMuseum Exhibition: The animation work "Connection". The theme of the exhibition is "On the Critical Point." Exhibition opening, November 3, 2024.
Connection
2024
Dragonframe, Stop motion animation, Adobe Premiere

I use discarded gum papers and fold them into paper cranes to give to my friends, teachers, and classmates. The reaction I get from people who receive my paper cranes inspires me. Whether people cherish my paper crane or drop it on the floor, I feel an emotional connection.

Excitement to Nervousness
2024
Dragonframe, Adobe Premiere, Clay, Silver wire

An experimental exploration of emotional changes from excitement to nervousness

Ripple
2023
Adobe Animate

Motion of lines, and the imaginative world

Shapes, Lines, Colors, Music
2023
Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Media Encoder

Experiment with relationships between shapes, lines, colors and music. The interaction is satisfying.

Game Design

CaveLink
2025
Unity, Adobe After Effect, P5.js, Procreate

CaveLink is a narrative, two-player 2D video game built primarily in Unity. Its visual world is driven by hand-drawn animation, created using tools such as Adobe After Effects and Procreate, and used as a core storytelling element. At the end of the game, players transition into an interactive p5.js experience that functions as an AR facial digital photo booth. This section allows players to actually become the two characters who stepped into the real world in the game story. The system combines p5.js for on-screen visualization, ml5.js for real-time hand tracking, and MediaPipe FaceMesh for precise facial-landmark detection.

AR interaction

My mask
2024
Procreate

Sometimes my mask will appear when I see strangers or I join a new community, but my mask will be gone when I'm with people who I love and am familiar with?

CaveLink (facial masks)
2025
Procreate, p5.js

Click Here To Try

Interactive
Installation

Birdman
2025
Arduino, cardboard, paper

The Birdman monster that can trace people's pass.

Digital Painting

Untitled
2025
Procreate

Maybe not all the artwork have a meaning.

Fish?
2026
Procreate

Drowning
2024
Procreate

Direction
2024
Procreate

Birds lose their direction at night because the moonlight and stars are replaced by the bright skyscrapers created by humans. This piece imagines a day when we will also be lost in all the man-made objects. What we do nowadays because they can “benefit” us could have a negative effect on humans in the future.

Sensitivity
2025
Procreate, p5.js

When starting a new relationship, we are all risking a chance of hurting each other, but we are still trying to accept each other’s sensitive parts, and time can help us be healed. We are all just sensitive in a different way.

Click Here To Try

Sculpture

Appearance vs. Identity
2024
30in x 13in x 13in
Cardboard, Paper, Tin foil, Foam

People's impression of me used to be the girl wearing glasses. In the upcoming year, I started to wear contacts. Without telling anyone, I didn't wear my glasses on the first day of senior year and wanted to test if people still recognized who I was. Some people could tell, but somebody saw me as a stranger. Those reactions inspired me to explore the relationship between appearance and identity.

Embrace the Chaos
2024
30in x 10in x 8in
Cardboard, Paper, Tin foil, Foam, Yarn

Whenever I have nothing to do to stimulate my brain, my memory will become a mess. Those memories' sounds and sensations will always trap me inside my past emotions. I tried to get out of the chaos of how my emotions were fighting against each other, those things randomly surrounding my head and sometimes popping up. Instead of working against the chaos, working it along it. The beginning of this folding book is wrapped with red ropes, towards the end, my imagination is bowling out.

Roller Coaster
2024
45in x 27in x 20in
Cardboard, Paper, Flocking

I use the wearable sculpture as the representation of my emotions, "the roller coaster" that surrounds me. The transition of color from top to bottom is to show how when something good happens, something bad must follow, and I am trapped in the endless cycle of guessing what will happen next. The softness of a thin blue paper at the bottom curves up, trying to articulate the idea that things will get better after a bad thing happens. I feel imprisoned by the sharpness of the cardboard.

Umbilical Cord
2024
20in x 15.5in x 1.5in
Tin foil, Hemp rope, Model Magic, Acrylic on glass

The purplish-red scars and stretch marks on the skin of my mother’s belly inspired me. The circular shape resembles both my mother’s stomach and a clock which gives a sense of time; the time when I feel my body changing uncontrollably is like a tropical plant. The umbilical cord is always the connection between me and my mom which gives me nutrition and helps me grow.

Cats
2025
12in x 16in x 16in
Acrylic paint, plaster

Painting

Spotted
2024
12in x 16in x 1in
Acrylic paint on canvas board, Rubber stamp print, Tin foil, Paper towels with white glue, Silk ribbon, Yarn, Plastic bags

In this piece, my fear of a crowd is captured in the Ladybug's black dots. In my first year of high school, I was scared to go into the cafeteria because it was so crowded. The moment I walked into it, I became one black dot on the back of the ladybug. This makes me wonder how social norms classify people. If people are separated, put in small boxes, and then re-assembled again, will the social norms still be the same? I have experience with tin foil, paper towels, and ribbon in order to create more dimension.

Reflection
2024
16in x 20in, 16in x 20in

Acrylic paint on canvas, Newspaper collage, Gum paper

I used to hate the freckles on my face. I used to hate my crooked teeth. I used to hate my smile with my braces on. I was never confident enough to show my real laugh in front of the camera, but my freckles, crooked teeth, braces, and laughing with leaky teeth are my identity.

Summer Kitchen
2024
9in x 12in

Watercolor, Color pencil, Paper

In this still-life of the summer kitchen, everything is melting. The piece of watermelon saves me from the heat.

Playground
2024

9in x 12 in, 12in x 9 in

Watercolor, Colored pencil

I enter the playground of my childhood, the toys lying in the corner come to life, they are in good order and I find here a joy that I have lost for a long time.

Drawing

Break through

2023

16in x 12in x 3in

Pencil, Black iron wire, Silver iron wire, Metal wire, Paper

Protection from my parents just like houses or shelters protected human bodies. Although my parents are taking care of me through multiple disciplines, their love sometimes can be suffocating and it would be hard for them to free their hands and let their children set out from their control or tolerance. When I am staring at the window in my room, I often have a strong sense of breaking through their help, going out into the world, making mistakes, and embracing all the difficulties to form an independent and brave person.

Surveillance
2024
8in x 10in, 8in x 10in
Charcoal pencil, Paper

In this diptych, I continue exploring the ladybugs and the feeling of the black spots that are almost drowning me. The black dots are like eyeballs: I feel like I am being watched as I assimilate. How will I find my guiding light and escape from the dots?

Dreamy
2024
8in x 10in, 8in x 10in

Charcoal pencil, Paper

Exploring the unreal world in my dream. When I woke up, I couldn't remember what was happening but the impression of the story still stayed.

Evening and morning

2024
18in x 16in

Charcoal pencil, Paper

Collage drawing of my school's morning staircase and Henri Rousseau’s Oil paint, The Sleeping Gypsy

Suspend

2024
18in x 16in

Graphite pencil, Paper

Still-life drawing of chairs

Sometimes just go crazy
2024
2.5in x 3.5in

Pen, Paper

I have 300 more pieces of these trading cards, and here is one portion. Some of them were inspired by objects that I saw, and most of them are from my imagination and character design. Instead of worrying about making mistakes, most of the time I let my mind go crazy and utilize my mistakes.

Printmaking

Ruan
2024
18in x 12in
Screenprint

Ruan is a traditional Chinese instrument that most people don’t know, but I learned how to play it when I was little. I wish to keep this instrument alive because it is nearly lost and forgotten, so I designed the tuning pegs into hands so that the instrument plays itself.

Mutation

2024
17in x 11in

Risograph Printing

The ladybugs in my room mutated both in color and size. They grew to the point they almost wrapped around me. The peculiar color reflects the deterioration and extinction of all the animals.

I am yearning to you

2024
11in x 17in

Risograph Printing

I was inspired by a recent new friendship. We could not meet each other in person, so our conversations could only be online. As conversations continued, I began to overthink and became suspicious of the emotions behind the texts. I wished to break the phone and reach out to the friend in person in order to destroy the gap that kept us apart.