Yingdan Lai is a director, animator, and textile artist, originally from China and now based in Los Angeles. Working in hand-drawn and hand-sewn animation, she wraps discomfort, unease, and the unspoken in deceptively childlike lines, whether drawn or stitched. Rooted in childhood memories, her films linger on small moments that might otherwise go unnoticed, blurring the line between memory and imagination. Through the pull of the line and the transformation of characters and everything around them, her work explores the dissonance of growing up. Her short films have screened at festivals worldwide, including Slamdance and the Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival. She holds an MFA in Experimental Animation from CalArts (2024) and teaches animation in community arts programs in Los Angeles.

Yingdan Lai is part of Studio Smirr, a handmade animation studio based in Los Angeles. Everything here is hand-drawn, frame by frame.

Smear is the in-between frame where a shape transforms. Smirr is the Scots word for the lightest rain. Somewhere between a passing frame and passing rain, we find their shared rhythm. The interesting and the mundane both live in the small things.

Studio Smirr makes frame-by-frame animation across digital, paper, and textile. We take on commercial work including ads and music videos. Occasionally, a frame from the animation gets made into a handsewn object and finds its way into the world.