#2D/3D Animation
#Scriptwriting
#Production Design
I, Artist is my final year capstone film at Lingnan University, centered around an artist's internal struggle between embracing AI and preserving human creativity.
For this project, I took on the roles of Director, Art Director, and Lead Animator, challenging myself to build a complex hybrid production pipeline. By blending traditional 2D animation with dynamic 3D scenes.
This not only pushed my technical abilities in Maya and Adobe Creative Suite but also tested my leadership in guiding a creative team through a unified artistic vision.
Story brief
In this story, we made Alan, a graphic designer who uses AI to generate ideas
Which represents the mainstream mindset of modern creativity.
He gained many achievements through his work, and he’s proud of what he has and decided to stay this way. Eventually he faced a title that could only be best described through human emotions, which proved to be a big bottle neck in his career.
At the end, after breaking down at the AI agent, he snapped back to reality, and decided to give human creativity another shot.
Setting
In the story we created a creation world with floating islands, which is Alan’s imaginary world.
Within his creative world, we introduce a data tree, which he uses to generate artworks, combining online imagery to create a completely new artwork.
Character Design
Alan in real life
Alan in digital world
To create an impression of different style between the imaginary world and the real life
We chose a more cartoonish style for the imaginary world
In the Imaginary world, Alan was joyful and proactive.
In real life, he looks dull and depressing, the exact opposite. to create difference between his ideal form and his own reality as an AI artist
Experiments
In early development, we adopted a full 3D direction for our protagonist.
One unique UV swapping method for Alan’s face, creating frame animation of expressions without putting effort into face rigging.
However, this method fell short with difficulties such as rigging problems with short-limbed models, performance issues with UV swap faces, and tedious workflow.
This forces us to retreat to find more labor-effective approaches to utilize our skill set.
We eventually tried a new approach: Fusion animation, which we can use to combine both of the strengths of 2D and 3D into production.
This approach allowed us to separate workflow between 2D and 3D crews: 2D handles the character, and 3D handles the scene.
Storyboard
Scene Design
Scene Design
Alan’s imaginary world is always vibrant in color and dynamic.
To create contrast in real life, we chose a much more depressing dark tone as he retreated to real life due to his recent failure on an order.
Renders (selected)
Self-reflection
I, Artist" challenged both my technical and leadership abilities.
While I am proud of the experimental 2D/3D graphics we achieved, I underestimated the importance of proper storytelling, resulting in a narrative that was ultimately confusing.
Additionally, my leadership was flawed—poor task distribution and moments of arrogance tested our production momentum. Overcoming these hurdles provided invaluable lessons in humility, narrative structure, and project management, fundamentally shaping my growth as a mature minded designer and director.
.png)
.png)