Liu Zhiyuan: Turning the Fully English After Effects Interface into an Entry Point for Taiwanese Creators

30-Second Overview: Liu Zhiyuan did not start by learning to please the algorithm before making special effects. Lu Ziyuan began with the fully English After Effects interface in high school, breaking down the initially inaccessible software into individual tutorial and experimental videos. When special effects became his channel’s language, he moved those same skills into freelance projects, the sixvfx special effects tutorial website, and Infinite Design Academy. This is the story of a Taiwanese creator turning behind-the-scenes processes into public courses.

Image Caption: This is not a photo of Liu Zhiyuan, his studio, or his activities. It is a freely licensed contextual image from the 2021 Taiwan Book Fair Design Brand Exhibition Area, used to depict the scene where digital creation meets Taiwan’s creative industry. The image author is Natsu621, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International. Original details can be found on the Wikimedia Commons image page. This article uses the Wikimedia Commons hotlink; no download, rehosting, or modification of the image was made.

In 2011, Lu Ziyuan was still figuring out what he wanted to do next. He began self-teaching from the English interface of After Effects, later posting his learning process and visual experiments online. Public interview records show that he would break current events into visualizable concepts, use Notion to list props and storyboards, and then complete videos in stages using Premiere and After Effects. ¹

The counter-intuitive aspect of this personal story is not that "a young person succeeded via the internet." More worth recording is that Liu Zhiyuan turned the work most easily ignored by audiences—special effects, storyboarding, props, editing, and teaching—into the main theme of his channel. By laying out the software interface, shooting process, and post-production time in front of viewers, they see not just the result, but how the result is made.

📝 Curator’s Note: Most influencer stories begin with the persona in front of the lens. Liu Zhiyuan’s entry point is behind the lens; those technical tasks usually not written into the end credits have become his most recognizable language.

How a Fully English Interface Became a Starting Point

Interview records released by the Department of Fine Arts at National Kaohsiung University of Applied Sciences (NKUA) in 2024 note that Lu Ziyuan had already self-taught Adobe After Effects in high school. The page also distinguishes channel growth by timeline: approximately 3,000 subscribers in January 2016, 100,000 in January 2019, and 1 million in January 2024. These figures are records compiled by the university page at that time and should not be treated as current, unchanging channel statistics. ¹

According to book introductions compiled by Gengzi (Villaboard), Lu Ziyuan was not originally a model student pushed forward by the school. The author describes him being questioned by classmates with remarks like, "Isn't it just editing a video and adding subtitles?" This mockery prompted him to confront the fully English software interface. This is a secondary article summarizing content from the book; this article treats it as the book’s narrative and does not rewrite it as a direct quote from Lu Ziyuan in another interview. ²

He later did not keep learning the software as a personal secret. The sixvfx special effects tutorial website and Infinite Design Academy transformed "I can do it" into "others can follow along." The Apple Podcasts episode description places him in the context of parent-child career dialogues, discussing how families face dreams, skills, and uncertainty when children want to become YouTubers. ³

📝 Curator’s Note: Self-directed learning is most easily described as a myth of individual willpower. But what makes this distinctly Taiwanese is that he left behind the walls he hit, allowing others to take fewer detours.

Special Effects Are Not Decoration, But a Content Philosophy

In creative interview materials, Liu Zhiyuan stated that he treats special effects as embellishment, keeping the video’s main axis focused on the content to be conveyed. He also mentioned that when a topic cannot be completed after more than two days of thinking, he seeks alternative solutions, because once a video goes live, it exists permanently. ¹

Placed together, these two statements reveal a work ethic that does not resemble that of a "show-off influencer." The quantity of special effects is not the goal; it must serve the story the video tells. The creator’s technical ability must therefore submit to the rhythm of the content. This is why his works can simultaneously approach tech tutorials, life experiments, and entertainment, rather than remaining confined to the narrow category of software tutorials.

The 2024 NKUA interview adds another temporal dimension. The university page recorded his YouTube subscriber count as 1.5 million and Instagram followers as 2.48 million as of April 26, 2024. The page simultaneously preserved discussions between the interviewer and interviewee regarding the market, entrepreneurship, and value accumulation. These figures should remain in their specific dates, because a creator’s scale changes, but the source’s timeline does not. ¹

From Creation to Teaching, Then to Team Building

Public interview materials mention that Liu Zhiyuan’s team connects remotely and has planned tools for automated editing and subtitle generation, hoping to reduce the time creators spend on trivial tasks. His direction has moved beyond one person making videos; he is attempting to address the workflow issues creators face daily. ¹

When a YouTuber begins building educational platforms, tools, and teams, the question shifts from "what to shoot next" to "where exactly do creators spend their time every day." Liu Zhiyuan’s direction raises at least three work questions: which processes require human judgment, which repetitive tasks can be handed to tools, and which knowledge is worth organizing into courses. This makes his channel not just a showcase of works, but also a response to content labor.

In a 2022 Podcast episode, the episode description described Liu Zhiyuan as the founder of sixvfx and Infinite Design Academy, linking his self-directed learning experience with Your Dream Might Be a Bit Risky. This is the program’s introduction to the guest and does not constitute an independent financial audit; therefore, this article uses it only to support his career identity and the episode’s theme, without expanding the income claims in the episode description into precise commercial conclusions. ³

Articles on Gengzi (Villaboard) summarize several methods from the book: using competitions, client feedback, portfolios, and search results to turn skills into services recognizable by others. These are the author’s summaries of the book’s content and serve as material for understanding how Liu Zhiyuan brought technology into the market, but they are not success formulas that all Taiwanese self-learners can copy. ²

📝 Curator’s Note: Teaching skills to others does not necessarily mean losing one’s own advantage. Liu Zhiyuan’s case instead shows that teaching can turn an individual skill into a community, a service, and a professional language.

The Cycle of Works, Courses, and Community

There is another easily overlooked detail in Liu Zhiyuan’s creative path: works are not the endpoint, but the entry point for the next learning question. Parent & Child World’s Turnover Education used his experience to discuss self-directed learning and mistakes. Gengzi placed the book’s summaries of competitions, client feedback, portfolios, and search results in the context of "how to make skills visible." Putting these two sources together reveals a cycle: first create works, then identify problems from feedback, next organize those problems into teaching, and finally return the teaching to new works. ^{4 2}

This cycle also explains why his content is not merely displaying special effects. Displaying only proves a specific result. Teaching must break down the result into steps, acknowledge where failures are likely, and allow another person the opportunity to redo it on different equipment, at different times, and with different experiences. The NKUA interview places this continuous value creation in the context of entrepreneurship and the market, not just in software operation. ¹

📝 Curator’s Note: True publicness does not lie in everyone becoming Liu Zhiyuan, but in whether an individual’s expertise, once organized, allows the next person to spend less effort finding the entry point.

After the Traffic Arrives, the Story Does Not End

In October 2024, DailyView reported that Liu Zhiyuan received the "YouTuber with the Most Network Leadership Value of the Year" award. This award’s evaluation context is based on network interaction, positive sentiment, and related data. This award proves he won in that year; it does not directly prove he is Taiwan’s most important or influential creator. ⁵

Sanli News Network’s report on the same day supplemented that Liu Zhiyuan discussed short-form video and overseas markets at the ceremony, describing traffic expansion with the claim that one video reached 150 million views. This is the interviewee’s statement in the report; this article retains the attribution and does not write the highest view count of a single video as the channel’s average performance. ⁶

Zhi Xin Wen’s report on the same day also listed Liu Zhiyuan as the award winner, mentioning he won at age 27. Together with Sanli’s report, it shows the award event was indeed covered by multiple media outlets, but both revolve around the same ceremony and should not be mistakenly counted as two independent awards. ⁷

Liu Zhiyuan’s traffic growth thus has two different faces. One is subscriptions, views, and awards, which can be listed as numbers by platforms or media. The other is what he was already doing early on: breaking videos into prop lists, storyboards, editing, special effects, and teaching, then organizing personal experience into knowledge usable by others. The former makes him visible; the latter makes him worthy of being written into Taiwan’s internet culture history.

📝 Curator’s Note: Traffic is not the end of a creator’s story. For Liu Zhiyuan, the real question is: after view counts grow, can the technology still be taught, can the team still work, and can the content still clearly tell one thing?

After One Video Goes Live

In a 2020 interview, Liu Zhiyuan used a very specific metaphor: once a video goes live, it exists permanently. Seeing an unsatisfactory work later is like having something in your body that is uncomfortable whether you cut it out or not. This is not mere perfectionism, but the special sense of time inherent in platform content. Traditional work is handed in, and teachers or clients may only see it at one point in time. YouTube videos, however, are searched, recommended, and re-watched; creators find it hard to pretend it only exists on the day of publication. ⁴

Therefore, his editing process has never been about piling special effects at the end. First, do a rough cut in Premiere to see if the video flows smoothly, then use markers to separate segments needing special effects, and finally enter After Effects according to the topic. This process divides creativity and engineering into two stages, letting team members know when to join. To the audience, this might just be a few-minute video. To the maker, it is a project requiring scripts, props, storyboards, editing, and post-production to cooperate. ⁴

He does not describe "having ideas" as innate talent. In interviews, Liu Zhiyuan said he practices finding things in life and current events that can be turned into visuals, but also admitted that not everything can become a video. Sometimes he is just particularly moved by a topic, finding excitement in the production process. This description is closer to the actual work of creators than "inspiration exploding every day": inspiration requires habit, and also requires abandoning unsuitable solutions. ⁴

There is another layer to this technical education. When Liu Zhiyuan breaks special effects into watchable steps, he effectively lowers the psychological cost of the first attempt for many Taiwanese students unfamiliar with post-production software. In interviews preserved on the NKUA page, he spoke to students about continuously creating value and finding a position to exert one’s value in the present. This sentence should not be treated as an inspirational slogan, but understood within his work experience: value is not abstract talent, but something gradually becoming "only you can do it." ¹

From Student Identity to the Market Scene

The NKUA interview also preserved his reflection on his student identity. He mentioned that even when failing in school, one might still have time to readjust, so he viewed the schooling phase as a trial period for setting goals and bearing costs. This idea is easily misinterpreted as requiring students to earn money early, but his conversation actually discussed direction, professionalism, and value accumulation, not treating income as the sole standard of measurement. ¹

Gengzi’s summary of Your Dream, Might Be a Bit Risky broke this path into several observable actions: participating in competitions, leaving client feedback, organizing portfolios, and making oneself searchable. These suggestions share a common point: they require creators to turn "I feel I can" into externally verifiable works. For design and special effects work, a portfolio is not an add-on, but a menu allowing unknown clients to know what problems they can handle. ²

But portfolios also bring new pressure. When skills are packaged as services, creators must respond to client constraints, deadlines, and budgets. When services are placed on YouTube, creators must respond to audience expectations and platform rhythms. Liu Zhiyuan later simultaneously made videos, tutorial websites, online academies, and tool development precisely because a single work cannot bear all work. Some need to see results, some need to learn steps, some need to complete editing faster. Different products handle different needs, but all are built on the same special effects and visual capabilities. ^{4 2 3}

Apple Podcasts placed this experience into parent-child dialogue: a child says they want to become a YouTuber; should parents support or oppose it? Liu Zhiyuan, as a guest, was not invited to guarantee this path will definitely succeed, but to discuss how to find direction, how to self-direct learning, and that without dreams, one need not be immediately judged as lagging behind. This moves his story out of the single framework of "influencer inspiration" and into the question of how Taiwanese families imagine new work. ³

📝 Curator’s Note: Liu Zhiyuan’s story not only answers "how to become famous," but also answers a harder question: when school, family, and the market have not yet prepared a name for a new profession, how does an individual explain their skills to others?

Another Career Imagination for Taiwanese Creators

Liu Zhiyuan’s significance lies not only in that he made special effects videos, nor only in that he once won a network word-of-mouth award. He made a path usually cut into different professions appear on one person: self-learner, freelancer, YouTuber, lecturer, published author, educational platform founder, and tool developer.

Fully English software requires time; content creation is affected by platform distribution; team work requires management; educational products must also face the market. Liu Zhiyuan himself discussed in interviews that creators must first understand the audience and topic, then decide how to modify works. These conditions show that self-directed learning is not excluding school, but putting feedback, trial-and-error, and the market into the learning process. Writing his experience as "just persist and you will succeed" would instead erase the technical barriers and uncertainties he encountered.

His work method provides an observable set of steps. Start with one software interface, break down what you don’t understand. Then organize problems left by freelance work into teaching, turn audience questions into works, turn works into courses. Finally, courses return to new creative needs. This is a work sequence accumulated by a creator over years, and also his way of turning personal skills into public resources. ^{4 1 2}

In 2024 award reports, Liu Zhiyuan said he had increased subscriptions in a short time due to short-form video and overseas markets. This reminds readers that platform changes can indeed rewrite a creator’s scale, but also reminds us not to retroactively attribute all of a person’s early technical accumulation to their later traffic secrets. ^{5 6}

📝 Curator’s Note: What is worth leaving in Taiwan’s internet culture is not just who is most popular. More worth leaving is that someone turned abilities originally hidden behind the scenes into public resources that others can learn, use, and continue to rewrite.

The Narrative of Family, School, and New Work

Liu Zhiyuan’s story does not only happen in front of a computer. Apple Podcasts placed him in a parent-child dialogue: "A child wants to become a YouTuber; should parents support or oppose it?" This arrangement is important because it pulls internet creation back from personal interest to family decision-making: does the child need a word of support, or first need to understand skills, time, income, and risk? The episode page can confirm the discussion topic and guest identity, but cannot provide a universal answer for all families. ³

The NKUA interview returns the question to school and career. The conversation recorded on the university page includes continuously creating value, finding a position to exert value in the present, and thinking about the market and entrepreneurship. If these words are only extracted as inspirational quotes, they lose their original work context. Viewed through Liu Zhiyuan’s experience, they refer to a method of repeated adjustment: first break down software you cannot do, then obtain feedback through works, and finally decide which capabilities are worth teaching to others. ¹

📝 Curator’s Note: Influencer articles often write school as a place useful only after the creator has left. Liu Zhiyuan’s materials show that school, family, platform, and market are actually simultaneously naming new professions, just using different languages for each.

Putting Traffic Data Back into Dates

2024 media reports created another turning point in Liu Zhiyuan’s career. Early materials focused on After Effects, self-directed learning, and teaching. Later reports discussed short-form video, Instagram follower growth, overseas markets, and high view counts for single videos. This is not a contradiction, but the result of the same visual capabilities entering different platforms and facing different distribution logics. ^{5 6 8}

However, traffic numbers cannot alone explain a creator’s value. Award reports record evaluations for a specific year; media-cited view counts also have their statistical time and narrative purpose. Taking "videos created hundreds of millions in traffic annually" directly as long-term income or stable influence exceeds the scope the sources can support. A more prudent reading is: Liu Zhiyuan once transplanted mature special effects capabilities into short-form video and overseas content, and was seen in 2024 public reports for this shift. ^{5 6 8}

📝 Curator’s Note: What truly needs to be preserved is not a forever rising traffic curve, but how a creator re-explains their technology, audience, and work method when platforms change.

Further Reading

• Parent & Child World Turnover Education: Liu Zhiyuan Discusses Self-Directed Learning and Special Effects Creation
• Apple Podcasts: Liu Zhiyuan Discusses Self-Directed Learning and Parent-Child Career Dialogue
• DailyView: 2024 7th Network Word-of-Mouth Star

References