The most important thing animator, filmmaker, and fine artist Mo Mo Wang said at Upscale Conf had nothing to do with artificial intelligence.
“When everybody has access to the same tools,” she told the audience, “the only thing that makes a difference is you.”
It was a striking observation at a conference devoted to the rapid advancement of AI. New models are released almost weekly. Production pipelines are becoming faster and cheaper. Tasks that once required teams of specialists can now be completed by individuals working from a laptop. Yet Wang’s argument is that technology is becoming less important, not more.
As access to tools becomes universal, competitive advantage shifts elsewhere, towards experience, perspective, character, story and ultimately authenticity.
For Wang, this is not a theoretical position. Raised by a single mother in China, Wang grew up in a 170-square-foot home with no running water or internal sanitation.
Wang remembered one winter when my classmates came to school in new shoes. She only had old summer shoes. “When I asked my mother why I didn’t have new ones, she looked at me and said everything you have now is everything I am able to give you. Anything else you want, you will have to go and get for yourself.
“That idea, somehow, shaped who I became. Most of the opportunities in my life I went out and found myself,” she says.
Early on, Wang discovered she had a talent for art but could not afford art supplies. By the age of twelve she had set aside her dream of becoming an artist and focused instead on finding another path forward.
That path eventually led to one of China’s leading animation schools and later to the creation of Tuzki (兔斯基), the rabbit character that would become one of Asia’s most successful digital franchises. It was China’s first cartoon character to reach international audiences, and for years was the only default emoji set on WeChat, which means virtually every WeChat user has interacted with the character at some point.
Success, however, did not arrive as a neat upward trajectory.
During her first internship, Wang experienced a humiliation that remained with her for years. After slipping into a river during a company outing, she found herself being laughed at by the very animator she most admired. While others rushed to help, her idol encouraged colleagues to photograph the incident. Looking back, Wang remembers making herself a promise.
“If one day I ever become successful, I will be very kind to my fans.”
The story is revealing because it captures something that runs through her entire career. Rather than becoming hardened by setbacks, she repeatedly transformed them into fuel.
The same pattern emerged when commercial success arrived. By twenty-one, she had achieved a level of recognition most creators spend decades pursuing. Yet behind the public success was a young entrepreneur managing contracts, partnerships and expectations with little support. The pressure became so overwhelming that she found herself standing at the window of her ninth-floor apartment contemplating whether she wanted to continue.
What brought her back was not business ambition but responsibility. She thought about her mother. Then she walked away from the window, returned to her computer and discovered an email from Turner, part of Warner Brothers, expressing interest in taking her work to a global audience.
Many people would have treated that experience as something to forget. Wang turned it into a book, which became one of China’s bestselling business titles.
That ability to transform experience into creative material appears repeatedly throughout her work. To research a comic series called Normal Dating Diary, she went on 300 blind dates over two years. She even attended dating classes. The exercise was not about finding a partner. It was about collecting stories.
“If you want unique stories, you have to get unique experiences,” she says.
It is perhaps the clearest explanation of why she remains optimistic about AI despite spending much of the past three years working at the forefront of AI filmmaking.
Wang readily embraces the technology. Her latest productions use AI-assisted workflows that dramatically reduce production timelines and allow smaller teams to accomplish work that previously required years of effort. Yet she remains convinced that technology cannot replace the raw material from which stories are made.
“Good stories and characters are a reflection of real human experience,” she says.
Towards the end of her presentation, Wang shared a story that, on the surface, had little to do with artificial intelligence, animation or franchise building. Yet it may have contained the most valuable business lesson of the entire talk.
Having spent decades building successful characters, directing animation and embracing new technologies, Wang had recently returned to a childhood dream. After years away from painting, she used an AI model (Hunyuan) to turn her original hand-painted artwork into 3D models (in collaboration with Studio MMR), which were then experienced as augmented reality. This art was selected to be exhibited at Zona Maco, one of Latin America’s largest and most prestigious art fairs.
Like many artists receiving such an invitation, she arrived full of excitement. That excitement lasted until she saw where her art had been hung.
The booth had three walls. One was a prime location, directly facing visitors and naturally attracting attention. Another was effectively invisible. It was on this less visible wall that her art had been placed. Looking around, she realised she was surrounded by established galleries, recognised artists and work of exceptional quality. By comparison, she saw herself as an animation director who had only been painting seriously for a couple of years.
Most people would have accepted the situation and hoped for the best, Wang immediately began analysing the problem.
“I realised the chance for me to sell my art here was zero,” she told the audience and so she came up with a strategy.
Rather than standing beside her art waiting for visitors to discover them, she decided she would have to bring visitors to the paintings. Armed with an iPad, she walked away from the booth and positioned herself in the middle of the exhibition where the foot traffic was highest.
Then she created a hook: “Who wants to see the only AI painting at Zona Maco this year?” she called out.
People stopped and full of curiosity, they followed her back to the stand. At that point, most people would have started talking about the artwork itself. Wang did something more sophisticated. She understood that she was not simply competing against other paintings. She was competing for attention, memory and emotional engagement.
Her strategy included three points: visibility, uniqueness and connection.
Visibility had brought people to the booth. Now she needed to differentiate herself. The first layer was craftsmanship. She explained the physical materials used in the work, describing how the paintings combined natural materials from China, specialist gels from Japan and multiple layers of 24-carat gold paint applied to wooden panels. Visitors were no longer looking at an image on a wall. They were beginning to understand the process and care behind its creation.
The second layer was culture. Wang explained that the creatures appearing in her art were inspired by alebrijes, a traditional Mexican fantastical creature, but composed entirely of animals from the Shan Hai Jing (山海经), a Chinese book of mythology written more than a thousand years ago. Each creature carries a specific meaning: good luck, prosperity, protection of the home, and so on. Wang wanted the work to be a bridge between two ancient visual cultures.
As a result, the paintings were not simply decorative works but part of a larger cultural narrative, connecting ancient stories with contemporary artistic expression.
Only after establishing craft and culture did she move to the final and most important layer: emotion. She explained that the series centred on lucky monsters because she considered herself a lucky person. Having grown up in poverty, overcome hardship and built a remarkable career, she saw the paintings as a way of sharing that optimism and positive energy with others. The artwork became personal.
What is striking is that Wang was not really selling paintings at all. She was taking visitors on a journey. First, she captured their attention. Then she gave them something unique. Finally, she created an emotional connection.
The process mirrors the way she built Tuzki into one of Asia’s most successful character franchises. Throughout her talk she repeatedly returned to themes of differentiation, storytelling and human experience. Whether she is building a digital character, directing an AI film or selling a painting hidden on the least visible wall of an art fair, the underlying principles remain the same.
Technology may attract attention, but it is rarely enough on its own. Stories create meaning. Human connection creates value. As Wang put it, people do not invest in technology, they invest in the world they believe in.
