Aurora Wu — Rigging & Animation Folio 2026

Call me Aurora!

I'm Yajing Wu — a rigging & animation artist finishing my Computer Animation postgraduate degree at Sheridan College, June 2026. Coming from a deep fine-art background and 8 years of design experience, I focus on Maya character rigging — skeleton setup, skin weights, controllers, FK/IK logic, and animation debugging.

I've delivered animations independently and as a Rigging Lead on team productions, and I bring Python basics and AI-assisted workflows to keep production efficient.

8 Years of Art & Design

300+ Students Mentored

✦ Open for full-time · June 2026 ✦

✦ Selected Work

Other Stories

★ Rigging Showcase · Independent

Rigging Demo Reel

A focused look at my rigging work — covering character rigs, a bow & arrow prop rig, and the rig handed off to our JAM Unreal team project. This independent reel walks through the complete rigging workflow: skeleton setup, skin weights, FK/IK switching, controller design, and animation debugging.

Character RigBow & Arrow RigJAM ProjectSkin WeightsFK/IKMaya

★ Personal Project · Storyboard → Final

BPR — from storyboard to render

A complete personal pipeline — first hand-painted as the storyboard Bumper, then carried all the way through to a final 3D render. Concept, modeling, rigging, animation, lighting, rendering, and post — all done solo to demonstrate full pipeline ownership.

Full PipelineSolo ProductionStoryboardAnimatic3D RenderMaya

Final · BPR

Storyboard · Bumper

★ Character Design · 2D & 3D

Character Stories

Two characters at the heart of my recent work — a fashionable elderly woman and a forest fairy, one drawn, one rigged.

✦ Merry & Bailey · 2D Short

A warm 2D animated short about Merry — a fashionable elderly woman — and Bailey, her beloved cat whose spirit stays by her side. Full character design, expression sheets, environments, and storyboards.

✦ Lily · 3D Character & Rig

A plant fairy from the short "Harmony of Life" — designed, modeled, sculpted in ZBrush, and rigged in Maya with a FACS face setup. Multi-angle turnaround & expression study.

2D Design3D ModelingRiggingCharacterExpression Sheets

Merry holding Bailey in a locket — click to enter the storyboard

✦ open the storyboard ✦

★ 3D Modeling Showcase

Character Turntables

A collection of character model turntables — built across Sheridan coursework and personal study. Each piece focuses on topology, silhouette, and clean UV layout for both stylized and semi-realistic forms. Click any turntable to play in full.

MayaZBrushTopologyUV

★ Undergraduate Thesis · 2024 · Watercolor Series

Garden of Quiet Things

A 24-page watercolor illustration series — gentle animals at rest among carefully observed flora, paired with quietly surreal still-lifes about remedy, fermentation, and small inner worlds. Each page is hand-painted on cold-press paper.

WatercolorIllustrationPicture BookConcept Art

✦ The printed book — Spirits of the Plant World

★ Class Project · Unreal Engine · Team

JAM — Real-Time Class Showcase

A collaborative class project built in Unreal Engine — every student in our cohort contributed assets, animation, and integration. My share covered character rigging and animation passes inside the Unreal pipeline.

Unreal EngineReal-TimeTeam ProjectRiggingSheridan

★ Facial Animation · FACS Rig Study

Expression Animation

A focused study of facial expression keyframes — joy, surprise, anger, sadness — built on a custom FACS rig. Every blendshape, brow lift, and eyelid timing crafted by hand to feel readable from a distance while staying nuanced up close.

Facial RigFACSBlendshapesActingMaya