AJIN Trailer


AJIN , another anime title that I'm working on , and here's the first trailer.

Lighting and Compositing Reel 2014

Finally , I'm able to compile everything up after a long series that I've been working on has finished.

Sanzoku no Musume Ronja - Lighting and Compositing Reel

After half a year , Sanzoku no Musume Ronja has finally finished with a great ending. Roughly calculated that I've been involve myself into 14 episodes of it , out of a total number of 26 episodes. With completed footage , I manage to make mine own Lighting and Compositing reel out of it.


This is where it started



This is just a normal scene that you can see everywhere in the film . Everything in this shot seem to be easy to be done , it's just a piece of sky illustration with a mountain. But somehow one thing is playing tricky in this shot , and it is "Light streak".

 The interesting fact it , most every episodes we are using different method to form light streaks , either make it out through our custom Nuke nodes , or color correct and animate a light streak painting.

 Following are some sample of light streaks , some are base on the same settings and some are totally different.


From  episode 8
From  episode 8
From  episode 16


Other than light streak , we often need to add some extra effects on top of matte painting , such as water distortion , water surface glitter , stars glint and so on.

Date Night -> Date or Fight



A short that I've been working on last year , as Character rigger , Technical Director , Lighting and Compositor. 

At the beginning stage , I was low-res modeler for props and environment , which is the lovely house that you see. It's then being refine into hi-res model for most of the part , but 50% of the models are remain low-res , just happen that it matches the feeling that require for this short.

Once character models done at the same time , I moved on to Character rigging , along with some shader test , seeking for the perfect material for these characters.

Lastly , lighting and compositing , and ~ TADA ~.

Rigging Reel 2013 - Not so rigging


I was graduate from The One Academy Sunway Campus , along with completion of Digital Animation with Game Development Diploma program. For my FYP , I took the role of characters rigging , shading , lighting and compositing. After a full year of hard works, Cube Production , a team of six has finished their final project. ( Note that I fled away while project was 95% done due to other works and jobs came in at the same time, but I still did plenty of stuff and that still remain unchanged in this short. )
After characters being modeled by modeler , I took over and start rigging process as soon as possible. Both of the characters are basically "usable" after 2 weeks of non-stop speed rush work. Standing on today perspective , I would say I've overdone the rigging part to fix all possible penetration issue , where this kind of problems are usually getting fixed by vertex animation before render starts or just simply cover all the errors during compositing phase. 3D model rigs will never be perfect , because it's computer.
Next , I moved on to shading phase. For people who don't know what shading is , you can just imagine without shading , the character is only cover by plain white color. You can decide what kind of material you want your characters' model to have , color , reflectivity, or transparency etc .
It was a truly difficult task because that was my very first attempt on cel-shading. Characters' model must be simplify so that light can hit on their faces evenly without weird popping issue. In fact , a task as simple as this , a face with only 2 colors , light and dark , is the biggest obstacle that I need to get over with. In most cases , I chose direct light as it doesn't cause major issue and yet you can have a very good look of characters. But somehow when character moves his head , it will be kinda headache to keep lighting look as good as before.

 Lastly , compositing phase, and it was all done under Adobe After Effects. Honestly , if I've learnt The Foundry Nuke that time , I wouldn't be taking After Effects as my compositing software because Nuke gives me more control of everything.

 Even though I name this as Rigging reel , but yet it still involved a lot of lighting and compositing skills within this demo reel.


Rigging Demo Reel 2013 from Chan Kar Hoong on Vimeo.

Taste it , it's looking sweet yet bitter behind of it - Story of Sanzoku no Musume Ronja , 山賊の娘ローニャ



Sanzoku no Musume Ronja , 山賊の娘ローニャ is now airing on NHK BS2 , not hitting on any international TV Broadcast channel yet , and I'm not sure whether it will or not.

I've been assigned to work on even number episode , 2 , 4 , 6 and so on.Hence,  I would like to share some experience , troubles and some methods to counter with it.

Starting with Episode 4 , which is briefly talking about how Ronja found the "Gap of Hell" , and met someone that she never expected.


Birk , sitting on top of the edge of broken house.

This is an easy episode I would say , as compare with episodes after 6 , less characters , and not much special requirement for this episode.

But there is one shot that I worked on it , based on SVs request , I've made some sparkling dust that floats in the air due to strong and bright streaks like hitting surrounding atmosphere.


It's hard to observe with low resolution video quality , but somehow if you are able to get full-resolution footage , you will be able to see it.




And next , we move on to Episode 6. It was a little tough , due to bigger number of characters in one scene.

One of the requirement for this kind of pre-fight shot is , character's shadow shouldn't cover on other characters. In the end this can only be done by extract the scene into couple layers , and them back together during compositing work.


She looks so cute. ~~ This is an example of good lighting , a good direct-light with enough shadow to tell the volume of her face and nose.


A funny look of Mattis that couldn't answer her daughter's question. This shot is quite questionable in terms of light direction , because logically , they should have no light on their face with this angle , but that would look terrible for all the characters. In order to find the balance in between good look and hook up with the other shots , some minor light direction changes apply in this shot, even though it doesn't look the same as some shot , but it does not stands out too much.


Borka is always the trouble maker. His spiky fur on his shirt causes a lot of render problem , such as render will never look the same if you re-render again , or some random pop occur every certain frames , or even bad penetration occur when that fur is close to his beard or hair. For Undis (The only female character here) wise , her only issue is her extremely long nose, which could cast a very long shadow on her face.


This shot looks pretty simple , but I've been tested that streaks for some time to find the best balance for its color , strength and length, because this kind of "extra" compositing stuff is very subjective , it varies on different person , some might like it very much but others might think of another way.


Lastly , this is not my shot , but it is hilarious !! Mattis' dad , thick beard .

Next time I will talk about Episode 8 , an episode where all the difficult stuff started to surface.
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