This is not a short film with character animation; it is an experimental short film that leans more towards digital art. I got to know this author in my junior year of college. At that time, due to my poor mental state, I was taking a course on Buddhism and Taoism in the philosophy department. The course covered many perspectives on the universe and the world, which helped me better understand my own situation and circumstances. Meanwhile, I was introduced to Kanoguti’s work through a video website in China. He started creating content independently after dropping out of junior high school, including videos, music, and game programs. Sometimes I think this kind of completely independent creation is more full of a strong desire for life than the works of professional students.
In the following months, I watched many of Kanoguti’s works, and this is my overall favorite one. In this piece, he doesn’t focus on personal experiences or social relationships. Simple, repetitive geometric abstractions express the concept of the world’s order, clean and concise, like the “return to one” concept of the universe in Buddhism and Taoism. The distortion of the images symbolizes the noise and chaotic elements in the world, and this is a significant element, similar to the three poisons in Buddhism and the desires in Taoism. Through the progression of the music video, we can see how these chaotic seeds affect the operation of the world. This part is like entering the inner world of a person with encephalitis. The final part emerges from the extreme chaos, like a person who is at a loss in society due to mental confusion, responding to the environment in a dull manner. Because of these disorderly and chaotic seeds constantly occurring, our world is actually a somewhat rigid and not smoothly running beautiful world according to order.
In addition, among the types of animated short films, Music Video is my favorite. The main reason is the way music and visual segments tell the story together, maintaining a certain level of abstraction, allowing me to make many imaginations and often providing inspiration. Another reason is that I really enjoy listening to music. The melody of the music ensures a rational and beautiful rhythm for the video, and the sensory experience of the editing timing is also very comfortable, making it easy for me to enter a state of flow.
Author: Keyi Cheng
Content
When we talk about 3D animation, most people think of big studios, big budgets, and very emotional characters. The Hollywood formula. It looks great. It sells well. But lately… it feels a little tired. And when a small studio from Latvia wins Oscar awards with Flow, we suddenly realize: maybe 3D animation doesn’t have to stay in the box.
Historically, 2D animation grew through experimentation. Early animators drew directly on film, broke rules, played with abstraction. 3D animation, however, was born when the rules were already written. It skipped the rebellious phase and went straight into professionalism. Efficient, yes. But also… cautious.
And caution is expensive.
A single person can make a 2D short film in a few months. But 3D animation requires modeling, texturing, rigging, animation, simulation, lighting, and rendering. Becoming a 3D generalist is like trying to learn five languages at the same time. So 3D production usually depends on teams. Teams depend on budgets. And budgets prefer safety.
That’s why artistic expression in 3D is often limited by commercial logic. Studios don’t ask, “Is this new?” They ask, “Will this sell?” The result is that many films look impressive, but feel predictable. They don’t always offer something that only 3D can do. And that leads to audience fatigue.
But now, something is changing.
Creators are beginning to use cinematic camera language. Shorter shots, stronger movement, more dramatic framing—thinking like filmmakers, not stage directors. Digital artists are entering the process, breaking models, using glitches, fragmentation, and mathematical motion to express emotion and abstract ideas. At the same time, 2D and 3D are merging. Hand-drawn lines, painted textures, flat compositions layered onto 3D forms. A new visual language is being invented.
And finally, the tools are becoming accessible—but this is more than a technical change. This is a structural shift.
With Blender, Unreal, and open resources, one person can now do what once required a studio. The industry is becoming decentralized. Small teams and individuals can follow their own aesthetic paths instead of safe mainstream styles. Assets can be shared, licensed, reused. Collaboration can happen through attribution, not employment. Creativity becomes modular. Art becomes networked.
So yes, 3D animation started in a box. A shiny, expensive, very safe box.
But now, the box is opening.
And what comes out of it… is where the future really begins.
Assets used
This week I wrote down the rough ideas of my thesis. I still need to read more books during the vacation to refine and revise it.
The main points are:
- There is no experimental history behind 3D animation.
- The technical and cost reasons that make 3D animation difficult to experiment with
- Some preliminary experimental results of 3D animation at present
- The reasons of technology and cost are gradually disappearing, and 3D animation can have new ways of being used.
At the same time, based on these arguments, I associated them with corresponding artworks, mainly those related to point 3, which are also the ones I prefer.
Works by Alberto Mielgo, director and producer
Death Stranding
Kanoguti
When I was trying to figure out how to introduce this topic, I encountered difficulties. Although these works all fall under the category of 3D animation, they basically do not belong to theatrical films and cannot be classified in the same category. Or they do not have the ability to prove the decline of mainstream works. At this point, I thought of the film “Flow” released in 2024. When I watched this film, I did so because it was a “3D animation that is not quite like traditional 3D animation”. After searching, I found that it outperformed many 3D films from major companies that year and won the 97th Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, which is a very good example.
During my reading, I discovered that Disney and Pixar represent the mainstream aesthetic of the 3D animation industry the most. So, I found some movies to rewatch and also got a new book, which is The Art of Pixar : The Complete Color Scripts and Select Art from 25 Years of Animation. It includes the color scripts of Pixar over the past 25 years. This allows me to understand the company’s early concepts. Since a lot of it is 2D content, including concept designs, illustrations, and storyboards, I can relax while comparing different mediums.
In addition, another book called “Animation” was found. This book is about animation production. It would be more beneficial to read it in conjunction with “The Alchemy of Animation: Making an Animated Film in the Modern Age”.
Based on the feedback from last week, I think I should focus on collecting literature in the following areas: the history of animation (which is a weak point for me), the animation production processes of 2D and 3D, and the animation industry.
For my study of animation history, I plan to read Stephen’s “The World History of Animation ” and also compare and read Scott’s work as a reference.
In the animation production process, apart from the 3DCA textbook “Survival Kit”, I plan to read “The Alchemy of Animation: Making an Animated Film in the Modern Age” to learn about 2D animation. This book was published in 2008, but it still maintains classic authority in the field of 2D animation and its content is still of reference value to this day. For 3D animation, I plan to read “Acting and Character Animation: The Art of Animated Films, Acting and Visualizing”, which covers a large amount of content related to 3D animation, including hand-drawn animation and motion capture animation, and it also has a set of aesthetic standards for these two types, which is of great significance for me to understand the mainstream aesthetics of 3D animation.
In the field of animation, I was recommended a book called “The Anime Machine: A Media Theory of Animation”. This is an analytical book about Japanese animation. However, after reading the summary and the table of contents, I realized that this book is not merely an introduction to the animation industry; instead, it purposefully analyzes why the Japanese animation industry has developed in a completely different form from those in Europe and America. What are its technical dependencies and what are its aesthetic foundations? The author also uses philosophical means to analyze the common cultural symbols in Japanese anime. Although this may not be directly addressed in the content this time, I believe the author’s analytical method is very interesting.
This week, I made an appointment with Nigel for his tutorial session and received feedback on my research direction.
- The topic is suggested to be “Why 3D Animation Should Be More Experimental”. Compared to the other topic, this one is more academic and has greater research value.
- Regarding the increased experimentation in 3D animation, Nigel believes that I should elaborate on the differences between the experimental aspect of 3D animation and the commercially-oriented 3D animation, as well as the 2D animation that is diverse and flourishing. These differences have led to distinct results in the presentation of the two types of animation.
- Nigel also added some practical suggestions to this discussion, including the technical difficulty of 3D animation, the development history of 3D animation, and the shortage of talents.
I will reorganize my thoughts based on these feedbacks and search for relevant literature again.
This week, I drafted two research topics. One is about “Why 3D animation should become more experimental?”, and the other is “Why awkward emotions are crucial in 3D animation?”. 。 The former leans towards the industry and form of 3D animation, which will be of great help to my understanding of the 3D animation industry. The latter focuses on the content and film language of 3D animation, and this will be very beneficial for my animation content creation. I can’t decide which one I should write. I hope to receive some feedback, such as which topic is more valuable in terms of academia.
Introduction to the Two Topics
Keywords
Reference artworks
Documents that might be used
I am sorry the video doesn’t have music due to the copyright check of Youtube.
You can serve it here by playing the music as soon as video starts.
Or Clicking the link of Google Drive.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/15C_d9K1qdTPWum_kc2-ecwgTBNuJ_fIy/view?usp=drive_link
The Showreel includes both Maya Animation and Unreal Engine Program.
For the summary section, I’d like to start with the part on character animation. As a beginner in animation, I feel extremely fortunate to have received such excellent guidance from the teachers at UAL. This has enabled me to progress rapidly throughout this semester. In terms of character animation, I have now learned some habits that need to be followed at this stage, including:
- Start the animation from the main Control of the character first, followed by Hip Control and Spine, and finally the head and limbs. This animation production sequence can help me clarify the logic of FK animation and make the animation more beautiful and appealing.
- Handle the ending poses carefully, as this will bring a lot of added value to the completion of the animation. This semester, I only did a decent job with the Stepping animation in this regard. Although the other animations were satisfactory in the beginning and middle sections, they always seemed to end abruptly.
- When making animations, it’s not just about relying on vision; instead, one should also learn to perform the same actions themselves, feeling the muscles that exert force and how to make the movements more beautiful, which can make the animation production process smoother.
Then came the UE project. I believe that working on this project greatly enhanced my understanding of animation production. Serra provided a lot of help throughout the process, and her assistance was like a compass guiding me to find ways to achieve certain effects. However, despite the considerable time and effort we both put in, the production of this project was fraught with difficulties and moments of giving up. I realize that artistic creation does require randomness and making choices based on the current situation. But if I can’t express 80% of my ideas, the result will be somewhat disappointing. Therefore, I understand that to fully realize my storyboard, the number of models, animations, and software and functions I need to learn is extremely large. This has made me realize that if I want to complete the Lilac project in FMP, I should start planning from the next semester’s Storyboard course, combining my knowledge and creating my own models and animations. Metahuman allowed me to preview the completed result of my model and provided many conveniences, such as one-click rigging and FAB’s hair and clothing assets. However, my computer’s video memory is not sufficient to support the personalization of the character’s clothing. Additionally, UE’s effect blueprints are also one of the areas I hope to focus on learning in the future, such as motion blur, splatter, flow, and glitch. I hope to advance in this aspect of UE in the next semester.
Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to the teachers and classmates for their help. I really enjoy being here. Happy New Year!
This planning should be given up due to it has a turn around in the air that does not fit the criteria of this class.
Blocking stage
Feedback from Ting
- It is realistic, but it can be more appealing with more C curves.
- When heel is touching the floor, the leg should be straight.
- Hip should be up and down before the last frame.
Refining 1
Feedback from George
- Turing left a bit so audience can see a more informative silhouette.
- More preparing pose and overlap of the left hand.
- Left foot should be flat before jumping.
Refining2
Feedback
- The right hand can follow an S curve instead of a C curve to make it more fluent.
- Head overlaps.
- When right foot touching the floor, the Spine curves and overlaps.
Hand Poses
Feedback
- The right hand can bend over more.