Melody Li is an animator/animation director, teacher, and researcher. She worked over a decade in the animation and design industry before moving to her academic role. Her industry notable projects such as motion graphics campaigns for Optus, data visualisation for Commonwealth Bank, branded animation for NBN, and animation/art installation for Hilton Melbourne. Her animation projects span across 2D and 3D animation, motion graphics, film, light projection, hologram, virtual reality, and augmented reality. She has also collaborated with film directors, artists, and musicians on feature films and animations that were exhibited at the Japanese Film Festival, Sydney Film Festival, MCA Sydney, ACMI Melbourne, In Between Time UK, etc.

Melody is enthusiastic about contributing what she learned from the industry back to the community and helping students to achieve their dream. She is researching methods of work-integrated learning for students and how media arts practitioners could partner with professionals from various fields to work toward the world's sustainability goals. She led a group of UNSW animation students to animate and collaborate with documentary director/filmmaker Kathy Drayton and producer Tom Zubrycki for the feature film “The Weather Diaries” on the impact of climate change. During the pandemic, Melody led her UNSW animation students to work collectively with Dr Diana Chester and sound artists on experimental animation “Pandemic Vibrations” for mental health relief of the community. Through collaboration and research, Melody also explores and experiments with digital innovations in relation to communicating our perception, memory, and feelings through the art of storytelling.