Liaoyu Chen is a film director and a professor at the Beijing Film Academy. Known for his unique teaching methods and sharp points of view, Chen was one of the few animation professors in the country to teach the subject after China established animation as a university major in the 2000s. For over 20 years he has been engaged in the research of various forms of visual art, especially in animation and multimedia. Chen was proclaimed, by the Chinese media, as the pioneer of shooting a film with simply a mobile phone camera.