How I get out of ruts and redesign my life through the making of "Rebirth" | Quinzel Huang

Hi! Great to see you here.

My name is Quinzel, currently a student studying at Gnomon School of Visual Effects. During the past year, transitioning from making art on paper to computers has been a fantastic journey, as well as meeting lots of amazing talented people who have become to be my everyday motivations and supports. It's great to share my first personal project here that not only signifies my first major step of learning CG as a student, but also I'm glad to make this process a memorable journey that help me mull through all the vulnerabilities that I have, build habits that routinize the things that make me a happier person than I was yesterday, and betters my decision making when it comes to facing challenges in every possible way. This is why "Rebirth" comes to a place and hope the story finds you resonate. Enjoy. 

REBIRTH 

"March, a doll who is created out of an sudden interest from a family that make beautiful hand crafted wooden dolls, was born with human emotions. Upon the long-term fear of feeling abandoned, March developed self destructive habits to fulfill the craving of love and attention from the family that she was born. She just simply wants to feel happy, or maybe, not sad... 

March then comes to a realization that she couldn't rely her happiness on anyone, but herself. Therefore, she changed to the purple dress that she's been wanting from those well-made dolls, sneaked in to the tiny dome corner in the living room, celebrating her birthday over and over, over and over, over an.... until she was found..."

Music Credit @Riyandi Kusuma

THE MAKING OF "REBIRTH"

CONCEPT AND STORY

While knowing there's a project before spring term starts, I wanted to take the opportunity create something that aligns with my birthday wish (which happened to be during the break before term starts) -- becoming a happier person, overcome past trauma and eating disorders, and bring good energy into the world. 

There I started exploring different ideas around the concept of  "wish",  "self harm behaviors", "problem solving" and "food". Finally, I went down to the idea of "Rebirth".

Then I played around with camera angles, color keys, as well as putting intentions into the composition that helps tell the story in the most resonating way possible.

GATHERING REFERENCES

After the story has set in stone, I started to gather references of the props that I'll be using in the scene that correspond to the setting of the story. --> Fancy Decorative Furniture - symbolizes March is created in a wealthy family, but she still wears a torn dress.

As well as references for dress patterns, which then helped later with making the clothes in Marvelous Designer.  --> First time used Marvelous Designer, a software that was excited and happy to learn.

LOOKDEV PROCESS OF MARCH

While I was looking for unique designs for wood dolls, I got references of English wooden dolls from the 17th and 18th century, which then becomes the main reference for how March is crafted. This includes dots on the corner of the eyes, spiky lashes and eyebrows, and significant blush. 

In addition to research on how to make wooden dolls in real life, I found color map of skin tones in reference for March's face surfacing. This made her look more lifelike and humanistic. 

Below is a slider for the Lookdev process of March that fit into the storyline. 

Base geo -> Wood Texture (enhance additional carving) --> Old Painted by the family who created her --> Paint Splash from March herself --> New Paint that she paint on herself before celebrating birthday.

Head sculpted in Zbrush. Textured in Substance Painter. --> creating March's head introduced me to ZBrush and Substance Painter for the first time.

Carving Arms  ->  referenced parallelly to an arm of mine.

Paint Splash on Body  ->  sign of wanting attentions/love from the past.

PURPLE DRESS (DOLL'S CLOTHES WITH MORE ATTENTION)

The purple dress is made for other dolls who receives more attentions. I was aiming to make the dress look well made, but not too fancy because it was made for a doll (who are not as important from the family's standpoint). --> Signify there is still a gap between the family status and the dolls. 

Therefore I choose the fabric to be linen. The purple color and layers of laces adds fanciness to it, but also doesn't take away the fanciness from the velvet table cloth on the cabinet.

PATTERNS 

I came across the flower Daffodil when considering the pattern design for the dress

Daffodil - "are some of the first flowers we see in spring time, a great indicator that the winter is over, because of this, they are seen to represent rebirth and new beginnings." -- Interflora

All cloth made in Marvelous Designer. Embroidery made in Substance Sampler. Textured in Substance Painter. -> Creating the lace and embroidery for the pattern introduced me to Substance Sampler, great tool for creating clean clothing details.

DRESS ON CHAIR (MARCH'S CLOTHES)

Linen fabric, but dirty and stitches all over. The brown and muted colors adds contrast compare to the purple dress.

BIRTHDAY HAT

Here is a old birthday hat that March found in the corner of a basement that was made and hand painted by the family during their early stage of making dolls. 

Story call back ---  "To fulfill the desire for worthiness of March's existence. She decided to use celebrating birthday as a way to make herself feel like 'human' and be happy again."

CHAIR CARVING EXPLAINED

Maybe you've noticed the carvings on the side of the chair frame -- those eye looking shapes.

They were carved by March when she released the pain after fail to receive love from the family every time. Idea inspired by the high school me drawing simple eyes on tissue paper whenever I feel down.

Chair frame, Cabinet Drawers textured in Substance Painter. Chair Padding material created in Substance Sampler.

TABLE CLOTH 

After learning how to create lace in Substance Sampler, I challenged myself to make this table cloth that includes lots of layering and use of anchor points in Substance Painter, the result was satisfying. I combined a velvet shader that I made with Vray Falloff, separated the velvet part out using a mask exported from Substance Painter, layer the lace back in using Vray Blend Material.

PLATES AND ICE CREAM BARS

To make the plates looking realistic and believable to the story, I added in varies roughness of water splashes, as well as charcoal flacks from the burnt matches using decals. --> very fun and great way to achieve this kind of look. 

The making of these chocolate covered ice cream bars is probably the most challenging part of "Rebirth". From fixing the thickness of the chocolate cover (getting the geometry to not interpenetrate), to understanding sub surface scattering for the first time, as well as setting up a new surface shader given the channels I needed to mimic the water droplets effect in Substance viewport (in this case I used Emissive and Transparency).  --> Ice Cream sculpted in ZBrush (with 3 different melting stages).

Although, the process seems a bit painful, but the result has made me extraordinarily happy. I've been doing things that I won't believe myself to do a year from now, and the joy of overcoming these challenges felt amazing.

TOUCH UP COMPOSITING

After texturing, shading and lighting everything in the scene, I was able to learn setting up render passes and get my hands on Nuke for the first time. (thanks to my lovely friends and peers)

I comped in animated flame, rain, dust particles and another layer of fog to enhance the environment fog that comes with the render. 

Because the flashlight in the raw render seems a little blended in with the thunder light (I used it as key light to carve out half of March's face)  outside of the window (animated the light pass in Nuke). There were 2 Roto Paint node used to enhance that flashlight look and make it separate from the key light. --> Again thanks to my friends who introduce me to this incredibly useful tool.

PROCESS IN A GLANCE

As it was mentioned in the very beginning of this page (by the way thank you for making it here!), I was building up habits that helps me becoming a happier person than I was yesterday. Here is the result of me journaling while collecting results on a day to day bases whenever I made any progress, even just a tweak of a light, or a texture, it kept myself accountable. I am grateful for the person I am today because the decision that I made to myself through the making of "Rebirth", the skills that I've learnt from my peers and instructors remained helpful for those further projects that I'm working on; the habits that I've embed gives me the energy to live a manageable life that makes up a happier mind. 

Thank you for getting to know my experience starting as a rookie to the entire CG animation pipeline, as well as becoming a person who brings values to the world. I'm glad that I got to share this experience with you, and hope making art can be as fun and valuable to you too.

Let me know how this entry find you resonate in any possible way (whether is what I wrote, what I did), OR if you're interested in giving an ending to March, I would love to know. 

Here are platforms to reach out.

Instagram: quinzelhuang_art  https://instagram.com/quinzelhuang_art?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

Linkedin:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/quinzel-huang-890574239

HAPPY CREATING.

MUCH LOVE.