Month: November 2025

Self Arrival

Thoughts and Reflections

First, I’d like to give my personal definition of the term “animation,” a term I’ve gradually come to understand through practice and reflection while creating FMP.

Scientifically, animation is an art form and technique that creates the illusion of movement by rapidly displaying a sequence of still images, or frames, in continuous succession. This process leverages the biological principle of “persistence of vision” in the human eye, which blends these discrete images into a fluid sense of motion.

But to me, this technical explanation only scratches the surface. I believe animation, in its essence, is not merely about imparting movement to static objects. It is, more profoundly, the art of drawing motion itself. An animator does not manipulate a pre-existing, static puppet as a puppeteer would; instead, we stand before a blank canvas—digital or physical—to capture, create, and define a fleeting moment of life that has never existed before. Every line and every frame is a deliberate act of giving form to time. In the act of creation, the animator becomes a creator in the truest sense, possessing the power to reset time, reconfigure space, bend mechanics, and rewrite the very laws of physics that govern our reality. From a metaphysical perspective, this elevates animation beyond mere imitation. It is not a replica of reality, but a revelation of its underlying essence. Animation has the unique capacity to bypass superficial appearances and directly depict the intangible—the spirit, the idea, the core truth that often eludes the lens of a live-action camera. This, I am convinced, is the fundamental distinction that separates animation from film as a distinct and sovereign art form.

Secondly, I would like to elaborate on my own views based on the theories of Lacan and Freud.

I’ve already explained Freud and Lacan’s theories in a previous blog post, so I won’t repeat them here. Freud and Lacan share some commonalities in their understanding of humanity, such as their use of structuralist methods, but they also have many differences. First, in terms of perspective, Freud primarily explored this issue from a physiological and biological standpoint, while Lacan approached it from a more macroscopic and philosophical perspective. Second, Lacan recreated the academic concept of “the Real” based on Freud’s work, something not found from a biological perspective.

From my perspective, as an animator or director, I use pragmatism and structuralism as core principles for shot arrangement, determining the frame, and ensuring the rationality of forms in animation. I can use red to represent danger, or blue to represent stability and wisdom. I can use wide shots to depict the entire scene, or close-ups to portray the inner world of a character. This is an important means by which I feel I can concretize Freud’s ideas. I personally believe this is applicable to most modern computer 3D animation production. However, when I tried to visualize Lacan’s ideas, I encountered a problem: I could hardly visualize them because Lacan’s definition of the Real is that it cannot be labeled or described in language. So, although I defined my final scene as the Real, the true Real resides within me; I find it difficult to contemplate because it disappears when I try. It has already manifested in the real world and in my animation. For example, when I want to bring the protagonist from the real world into her dreams and fantasies, I can use different editing techniques and animation methods to depict it. But this is merely a code between me and the audience watching my animation, allowing my thoughts to be conveyed to the audience through techniques like cross-cutting montage. However, I have never been entirely satisfied with the use of this shot because I feel that this transition cannot be achieved with current mature animation techniques; it requires a more abstract approach.

Final, I want to talk about the Final Major Project (FMP) I have created.

At its core, my FMP serves as a deeply personal vessel for exploring my own ego—my identity, my fears, my aspirations—and for envisioning its potential future. The project is an introspective journey, a dialogue with myself mapped onto the screen. Yet, I firmly believe that this process of self-interrogation and forward-looking imagination is a universal experience shared by most ordinary people navigating their lives. Therefore, while the work is personal, it is not solitary. This FMP is also a message I wish to convey to the audience: an invitation for them to see a part of their own reflections, struggles, and hopes within my animated sequences. It is my attempt to create a bridge between my inner world and the collective human experience, using the unique language of animation to communicate what words alone often cannot.

Editing

While editing, I reflected on my animation techniques. I’ve always been fascinated by film editing techniques and the use of montage, because each editing method and montage technique can effectively portray a scene or a character’s psychological changes. However, from another perspective, all editing techniques and montage techniques essentially label the storyline, and these labels are categorized. I wanted to innovate my editing approach, especially for my animated script, because some concepts inherently cannot be categorized.

In this animation, my editing process was as follows: first, I filmed the characters from different angles; then, based on the needs of my storyline and pacing, I selected and spliced ​​the shots. This is something difficult to achieve in 2D animation, and for film, continuously shooting multiple shots is also very time-consuming and energy-intensive. However, this operation is easily achieved in 3D animation. I used many editing techniques commonly used in film and animation, such as various montage techniques and the coordination of sound effects and visuals. But I feel that in some shots, I can find my own unique visual style.

Effects

After editing, I made post-production adjustments to some shots, adding effects. This was a crucial step, as it further enhanced the immersive experience of the entire film.

First, I blurred several first-person perspective shots. This reflects realistic eye movements and also improves the overall emotional atmosphere.

The transition from Act III to Act IV was a particularly challenging shot. My plan was to use white space for the transition between the two shots. Ahe, who was watching my production, suggested that the characters walk from the stairwell to the rooftop. I thought this was a good suggestion, and I would have done the same if the final scene was the rooftop. However, the final scene reflects my understanding of reality, so I couldn’t physically connect the two shots together.

Ultimately, I chose to use my initial method, employing a pure white shot for transition. In doing so, I achieved what I wanted to express. Lacan once described the Real as a door, one that can never reach the other side. I connected the symbolic order and the Real using this door, but I disagree with the notion that the Real is unreachable. Therefore, I chose to let the characters enter the Real.

Lighting

In my previous works, I usually used only one or at most two light sources for lighting. However, in this project, I used multiple light sources for almost every shot to make the characters appear more three-dimensional on screen. Because the entire work has four acts, each representing a different meaning, this required a higher level of attention to lighting. The use of light is a very profound subject, and I only used the lighting techniques within the limits of my abilities for my work.

I felt that light provided most of the color, so I decided to work on light and color grading together. First, I used different color schemes for each scene. This gave me an overall intuitive feel for the scene. I defined the first scene as melancholic yet rational, so I set blue as its main tone. The second scene is the Imaginary, and based on Lacan’s theory, I set purple as the main tone because it’s my favorite color. The third scene is the Symbolic, representing institutions, language, symbols, and also what Freud called the Superego—oppression, a direction to strive for, a ladder to climb. So I used red. And for the final scene, I used the sun’s own color, yellow or gold, which represents my beautiful aspiration for the Real.

Fog

When I was thinking about what elements to include in my work, my first thought was fog. I was heavily influenced by The Mist and Silent Hill, and fog can represent confusion and disorientation. This perfectly fits the theme of the story. However, many problems arose during the production process.

1. The first type of fog I created was made using a material ball, which is a moving material ball. So it only has surface material, and there is no fog inside. However, my character can pass through the fog, so this method is not feasible.

2. The second type of fog is what I found online. It can change its size, shape, wind speed, and brightness, and it can interact with light, but it cannot interact with my character.

3. The third fog I created was quite complete. Although it was also made using material spheres, it had its own volume, interacted with the character, and its size and wind speed could be adjusted. However, the entire fog appeared pixelated when zoomed in, so I had to abandon this approach.

4. After that, I searched for various tutorials online and finally created a fourth type of fog. This fog was made using Niagara, and it perfectly solved all the shortcomings of the previous fogs. It can interact with the character, and can be zoomed in and out. It can not only change the fog’s range but also its density. This will also be the fog used in the final animation.

Rain

There’s no particular reason I added rain to my work; I simply like rainy days, and they lend a melancholic mood to the overall atmosphere. Initially, I used Ultra Dynamic Weather in Feb, which has very powerful effects, so I used it frequently. However, I encountered a problem midway through animation production: these raindrops don’t interact with ABC format animations, resulting in no effect of rain splashing on the characters. So I had to find another solution.

Ultimately, I chose to use Houdini to simulate raindrops. My understanding of Houdini has always been somewhat limited, as mastering it is very time-consuming and labor-intensive. However, this time I wanted to try using Houdini. I did encounter some problems. After completing the simulation in Houdini, I needed to import the simulated particles into Unreal Engine. The method for importing was using the Niagara Houdini plugin for Unreal Engine, but it crashed every time I imported it into Unreal Engine, which was incredibly frustrating. My compromise was to convert the raindrops into ABC format animation files before importing them into Unreal Engine. However, this created another problem: the imported animations didn’t render with motion blur in Unreal Engine. I tried importing the V values ​​from Houdini into Unreal Engine, but that failed. So, I changed my approach; I adjusted the shape of the raindrops, turning them into lines, which prevented any awkwardness in the Unreal Engine rendering.

Regarding animation, I want to explain my process for creating and rendering animations.

First, I align the character to the center point in Maya, and then create the animation. During this process, my primary consideration is that I need to simulate the clothing in Marvelous Designer, so I leave 20 frames of space before each animation to allow my character to transition from pose A to my animation frame.

Then I export the completed animation by selecting all the polygons and exporting it as an ABC format file, which will make it easier to manipulate in Marvelous Designer.

The third step is to import the ABC file into Marvelous Designer. I need to zoom in on the ABC file; otherwise, it will affect the realism of the clothing simulation. Then, I align the clothing with the center point of my character’s A pose animation and perform the simulation. There was a problem during the first simulation because the character’s hair always affected the clothing simulation. So I further optimized the process. When importing Marvelous Designer, I no longer import the hair, but only the body. This saves space and time, and the clothing simulation is more realistic.

After the simulation is complete, I will export the clothing animation in ABC format, import it into Maya, and then scale the clothing down to a suitable size for the character; in my case, it’s 0.2 times.

Then, in Maya, I exported the aligned clothing, character animation, and hair animation together as an ABC file, and deleted the reserved frames at the beginning.

Finally, I imported the exported ABC animation file into Unreal Engine. I paid special attention to the following: I used geometry cache for importing and did not select Flatten tracks. If I selected it, my ABC file would not have the texture property after being imported into Unreal Engine.

Then, I matched all the animation materials in Unreal Engine and placed the animation into the scene for comparison. Since I had already calculated the size between the character and the object beforehand, I think my workflow is quite complete.

Finally, import the ABC animation into the sequencer and add a geometry cache to it.

Rigging

I started creating the character rigging, and I used Advanced Skeleton to rig my character.

Hair Rigging

My idea was to make the hair flow with the wind, which raised technical issues, as I had never done hair simulation before.

I used ncloth in Maya to simulate it, but the effect was not ideal in the beginning. The hair did move with the wind, but the original hairstyle also changed, causing all the hair to move towards the ground.

Based on information I found online, I restrained the roots of my hair.

While this allows the hair to hang down naturally, it also alters the original shape of the hair.

Solution：

After searching online for more related documents, I decided to use rigging plus nhair to create it.

First, I added several joints based on the hair.

Then, curves are plotted based on these joints.

Then, based on the curves and joints, Ik handle is created.

Finally, add an nhair to this curve and pass the value to the skeleton. And change the values ​​and add gravity.

This way, the hair can be physically simulated according to the movement of my character’s body.

Texturing

I encountered some problems while creating the character “ID”.

I didn’t create the texture in Substance Painter; instead, I used Unreal Engine because I wanted the entire texture to have a certain rhythm and to give the character a sense of mystery.

To achieve the desired effect, I enabled Substrate in Unreal Engine, but I’m using version 5.4.4, which doesn’t have all the features of Substrate yet.

After using a material, the material will be divided into two parts, top and bottom, and each part can use a different texture.

I created four versions, which allowed me to compare them in a scenario. After comparing them, I used the last version.

In this part, I plan to build all the scenes. My scenes are divided into four parts:

The first chapter is about the real world, while the remaining three chapters correspond to Lacan’s three realms: the Imaginary, the Symbolic, and the Real.

I have visualized Lacan’s three realms based on my own understanding, and at the same time, I have labeled these realms with my own unique interpretations.

To enhance the overall expressiveness of the animation, I specifically divided the four chapters into four different colors: blue, purple, red, and yellow. This allows the audience to clearly feel the psychological changes of the characters in the four chapters.

Buildings

My understanding of dream sequences is that the simpler the better, while maintaining a large sense of volume. Because I’ll be incorporating a lot of smoke and fog, I need to make the objects in the scene very distinct so they can be spotted on camera. I used assets found online to arrange in Unreal Engine, and I increased their size by 40 times. This completed the scene modeling.

I use postprocessvolume to roughly determine the main color in each scene, so that other colors don’t overshadow the main color.

Stairs

Creating the staircase was quite interesting; it required extreme precision because, unlike a flat surface, it interacts with the characters during animation. Therefore, I had to ensure that every step was exactly the same size. Here, I used Maya’s Duplicate Special to make each step equal and to increase the number of steps exponentially.

Room

The room is also the first scene, the scene where the protagonist’s body is located, so I wanted to fill it with as many objects as possible, so that it would be easier to distinguish between reality and dreams.

Here, I directly used room assets from feb; it works very well and perfectly matches the effect I wanted.

Character Hair Redo

These two pictures below are my hair style references.I believe hair provides immense emotional value throughout the animation, particularly the visual impact created when hair and clothing billow in the wind. This impact effectively conveys both the emotional turmoil within a character and their helplessness and despair in a given situation.

Science I done my Character modeling, I’m not very satisfied with character’s hair style. Because in my FMP, there will be many shot as the wind blows by, so I want my character’s hair to flow in the wind. I wish my character’s hair were in strands, but when I try to give the original one textures, I find it difficult to achieve this effect. The hairstyle i used to have was polygon, there is no openwork effect whatsoever. So I decided to redo the character’s hair using a different method.

I compared several popular hair-making methods.

So I decided to use the third method to recreate the character’s hair.

Hair Production Process

1. Created some planes in Maya.

2. Search online for some transparent hair materials, import them into Maya, and map each one to a corresponding plane I’ve created. This way, I’ll have several different hair shapes. 

3. I wrap the character’s head with large sections of hair to create the innermost layer. This effectively prevents the character’s scalp from being visible through gaps in the hair. 

4. Proceed with creating the outer layer of hair by placing each distinct strand onto the head, then making subtle adjustments. 

5. Finally, I made adjustments to the hair’s shape and details. While I generally avoid excessive embellishment of a character’s appearance, hair serves as a crucial medium for conveying the overall emotional tone of the animation. Therefore, I applied stylized modifications to the hair, following the same directional adjustments as the character’s skin. Within reasonable limits, I emphasized the character’s helplessness.

Eyes Texturing

Regarding the eye style, I also put some thought into selecting the eye texture that best complements the overall animation style. My reference was Elsa from Frozen. 

Final version of character modelling

This is the final version of my character in Unreal.

Distinguishing Visual Styles

Distinguishing Visual Styles: I will use three distinct audiovisual languages ​​to differentiate between “reality,” “dreams,” and “fantasy.”

Real World: Handheld photography, cool color palettes, naturalistic lighting, and oppressive compositions create a sense of the heaviness and triviality of life.

Freudian Dreamscape: The visuals are filled with distorted, symbolic imagery (such as ever-lengthening corridors, descending staircases, and deformed figures). Editing employs jump cuts and disjointed logic to directly visualize the chaos of the “subconscious.”

Here I must mention the artist Tomasz Artur Bolek again. I love every piece he creates. His works perfectly capture the dreamscape I imagine.

Jungian/Fantasy World: Here, the imagery can be more stylized, more aesthetically pleasing, and even possess a surreal epic quality. For example, when she fantasizes about being powerful, the visuals can become stable, color-saturated, and ritualistic, showcasing her inner yearning for order and power.

First, I’d like to define “animation” myself.

Animation is an art form and technique that creates the illusion of motion by continuously and rapidly playing a series of still images (frames) and utilizing the principle of “persistence of vision” in the human eye. This is the scientific definition.

I believe animation isn’t about making a static object move, but rather about drawing moving objects. An animator isn’t manipulating a pre-existing, static puppet; they’re capturing, creating, and defining a fleeting moment of motion on a blank canvas. When creating animation, the animator is the creator, able to reset time, space, mechanics, and everything else in the realm of real-world physics. From a metaphysical perspective, animation isn’t an imitation of reality, but a revelation of essence; it can bypass appearances and directly depict essence, spirit, and ideas. I think this is the only way to distinguish animation from film.

Secondly, I want to explain to myself what the FMP I made is for.

The primary purpose of my FMP is to explore my ego and envision its future. I believe this is something that most ordinary people experience, so this FMP is also a message I want to convey to the audience.

Character modeling&Textureing

I removed the character’s glasses, a decision I made after reflecting on the entire film and redefining the protagonist’s identity. I felt that within the limited timeframe of the animation, if I didn’t redesign a scene and shot specifically for the glasses, their symbolic and labeling capabilities would be very limited, only hinting at the protagonist’s past. Therefore, I chose to remove this object, allowing the audience’s attention to focus entirely on the changes in the character’s facial animation.

I used Maya to rewire my model, making the entire body smoother, and added lines to the movable parts of the character. This was to prevent bugs from occurring when animating the character after rigging.

In Substance Painter, I began experimenting with rendering the character’s materials. Even during modelling, I had envisioned the character’s facial features, adding prominent dark circles beneath the protagonist’s eyes. This served the narrative arc of my animation. Within the constrained animation runtime, it proved challenging to comprehensively explain the cause, progression, and outcome of every event. Consequently, to a certain extent, I had anticipated shaping the character’s appearance within reasonable bounds.

Freud & Lacan

Lacan himself emphasized, “A return to Freud.”

At this stage, I have deeply considered Lacan’s theory of the three realms and Freud’s theory of the triadic personality, and I believe my direction of thought is correct. Therefore, I feel it is necessary to integrate their theories and project them into my work.

Id and the Real: Both represent that primal, chaotic realm, full of instinctual drives. It is the source of all psychological energy, following the pleasure principle and pursuing immediate gratification. The “impossible” quality of the Real corresponds to the predicament of the id’s impulses not being directly and fully satisfied in the real world. For Freud, the id focuses more on the biological levels of the sexual and death drives. For Lacan, the Real is more of a philosophical and linguistic concept. It is not merely a drive, but the “reality” lost before symbolization, the traumatic core. The Real is the “debiogenic” and “philosophical” transformation of the id concept.

Ego and the Imaginary: The core of both lies in “identification.” Freud’s ego is the executor of personality, regulating the id and the external world through the reality principle. Part of it is formed through identification with parents, etc. Lacan’s imaginary order, on the other hand, originates directly from the mirror stage, where the infant, through identification with the image in the mirror, forms a unified but essentially alienated “self.” This self is fundamentally a misidentification.

Superego and the Symbolic: The symbolic is the source of superlaw, but not only the superego; it is the order of language, law, culture, and social structures. It encompasses all explicit, objective rules (such as “you shouldn’t kill”). At this level, it corresponds to the ideal, moral, and conscience aspects of the superego. Lacan argues that the superego is actually the “perverted residue” or “corrupted backside” of the symbolic order’s law.

These theories laid the foundation for the core concept of my graduation project: to rediscover and understand the ego.

The two authors’ differing definitions of the ego prompted me to reflect on my work. Freud defined the ego as the physiological self-awareness generated by external stimuli, while Lacan defined it as acquired, alienated, and not authentic. In my graduation project, the ego is the protagonist—real, existing, controllable, and changeable. As the ego changes, it also influences the other two personalities, a process of instilling the subconscious. While this might seem to suggest idealism in my work, at this stage, I adhere to my own ideas, as I am the creator of this animation.

Character modeling

At this stage, I created the character’s hair and glasses. Regarding the glasses, I felt they could reflect some of the character’s personality and create a contrast with other elements in the animation. For the hair, I used Maya to create a modeled hairstyle, composed of individual polygons. I also conceived the character’s clothing. Adhering to my initial goal, I tried to use as little of the character’s appearance as possible to express her inner emotions. Considering the protagonist’s social status, I felt that a very ordinary set of home pajamas could encompass what I wanted to convey. Furthermore, ordinary pajamas would minimize the symbolism surrounding the protagonist, allowing the audience to better understand her inner feelings.