Small is beautiful

According to Liang, Getting Hot (with Thermal Imaging) was the most challenging film to make. Using a thermal imaging camera, his team hoped to visualize temperature changes in the chemical reaction.

"For each reaction, we shot both the normal visible light footage and infrared thermal imaging footage. We couldn't see much under the visible light but we could see a lot more in the thermal imaging, and the comparison made the film a little more interesting," Liang says.

Liang has been fascinated by all kinds of chemistry experiments since junior middle school and he majored in chemistry at Tsinghua University. In his spare time, he developed an interest in computer graphics and even published a book on image editing software Photoshop with his classmates.

While studying in the United States, Liang was also greatly inspired by Janet Iwasa, a biologist and animator who explores the intersection between science and visualization. He realized he could combine his background in chemistry and his hobby in computer graphics for a career in scientific visualization.

"Scientific visualization is a very broad concept, which is used in many fields such as medicine, physics and astronomy. The basic idea is to visualize scientific data or processes that are invisible to the naked eye," Liang says.