Alen Lai Gallery

Fall Colors

2010-10-30T14:22:00.004-04:00

Fall is always too short. These are from couple weeks ago.

Lunch time painting

2010-09-25T18:48:00.003-04:00

it was a nice overcast day, Jack, Bill, and i went out to do an one-hour-lunch-time-painting. i painted the tree. Bill Painted me painting the tree. Jack painted Bill painting me painting the tree.

Backyard

2010-09-25T18:43:00.004-04:00

it's been a long while since i have any time to paint. this is a quick sketch one morning in my backyard. clayboard sucks the paint so quick, it tends to have a dry brush look to it.

Ice Age 3 (2009)

2010-09-25T01:02:00.012-04:00

Ice Age 3!!! i can't believe this is the third Ice Age movie i worked on. thinking back when i worked on the first one nine years earlier, it's a funny feeling.

one of the early developing task i worked on is snow accumulation on fur. we wanted it since first Ice Age film, but the technology wasn't ready. in Ice Age 2 the technology was closer, so we really wanted to have it for this film. here are some of the explorations on different techniques and looks.

this is a wedge test to find out the best amount of snow

it ended up much more subtle in the the final shot. i also created the snow prints for Sid here.

a similar but more involved setup, in this shot Sid wipes off the snow on his body. i pruned out the accumulated snow on his fur on specific timing, and added additional particle systems to create the illusion the powder is being wiped off.

dust is another common effects in this film. here are some of my early test frames (some are not with final material and lighting)

and some heavier impact dust from the climax battle sequences

since this is "Ice Age", you can't avoid snow powder and snow chunks all over the place.

snow prints is one of the most fun effects to work on. R&D developed a tool to simulate the footprint based on the animation, it will dynamically tessellate the topology to add more detail as needed. we can tweak the setting the get the amount of berm around it. we can then go in and sculpt or smooth some of the details after the sim to address problematic area.

goo is another fun effects. i developed a workflow that start with a paint over image from Art department such as below:

i then use 3D paint to paint the regions to match the design

and populate particles to stick to the surface

these particles get mesh to a poly mesh

and here is the final image in the film

some saliva shots i did with similar technique

the challenge of this whole bubbles sequence for me, as a sequence lead, is to make sure the continuity from shot to shot matches, as well as sync with audio cues. since there are many people work on different shots at the same time, we spent a lot of time reviewing and tweaking individual shots so they cut together in a nice flow and rhythm.

one of my shot is also a good example that some times we need to make changes when rendering with the final lighting and suddenly realized the contrast might be too much and draws audience's attention from where we want them to focus.

this tar pit is one of the most complex effect i've ever worked on... multiple departments, multiple people, and up-stream changes all the time. there are hand-animated bubbles from another TD, i was responsible for the fluid sim, particle tar dips off the hero bubble, procedurally generating animated signal for Material department to drive the area of crest vs. liquid tar, and integrating everything together. another TD generated the smoke, and Animation department animated the hero bubble.

this is another early developing to procedurally generate snow chunks and trailing snow powder based on the penetration (feet) of an animated character.

in the early design, the mist monster was one point be more like a Chinese dragon, so i made this test as a proof of concept. the design was completely changed later. so this didn't go any further.

Sid Short (2008)

2010-09-25T00:29:00.013-04:00

This is the short film included in Horton DVD, centered around Sid's summer camp.

the important thing on hand-animated splash is to create a strong silhouette of asymmetric shape.

i did the debris flying off for the giant glacier carving out the Grand Canyon in these shots

also added the dust puff of the background cracks in this last shot.

"Brownstones to Red Dirt" postcard

2010-01-26T10:23:00.011-05:00

Brownstones to Red Dirt is a documentary about a group of children in Brooklyn and orphans in Sierra Leone in west Africa found one another through a pen pal program, that not only shapes their lives, but shows they can count on each other.

i was invited to paint a postcard for the art auction in a fundraising effort to build a school for the orphans in Sierra Leone. here are some other feature artists' postcards.

Adirondack Mountains & Lakes

2009-08-30T17:28:00.016-04:00

Just came back from a painting trip to the Adirondacks in northern New York state. The mountains and lakes there are really worthy the effort of hiking up summits with my easel and paints. i picked the easiest trails possible, still, some of them i had to use four limps and my rock climbing skills.

Mt. Baker is about an hour hike. The first day i went up, i didn't stay long at summit because the weather was closing in fast. Not only i came down with empty hands, i got caught by the heavy rain and was soaking wet. So i went back up the next day, and did two paintings. One facing West:

and one facing North. I was experimenting to put focus at far back, and keep foregroud loose.

Water is always fascinating to me. There are so many lakes around this region. The next is a short nature trail by Lake Placid... in fact, the only public trail around large lakes. Most of the area around lakes are private properties. That's no fair.

Owls Head is also famous for top-roping. Couple groups were climbing on the cliff i was painting. Of course i omitted them.

My first time trying to paint sunset. I've always afraid that there won't be enough time to finish the painting since lighting is changing so quick. Finally on this trip, i decided to give it a shot. It surely was changing way faster than i expected.

It was pouring that morning, so i wondered to art galleries in town. Saranac Lake is an amazing cute little town full of great artists. One of the painters recommended this place called Visitor Interpretive Center in Paul Smith, which has numbers of trails by the marsh. So i went to check it out, and the weather turned to a great sunny afternoon just in time.

After my first attempt the day before, i started to feel a little more confident on painting sunset. I drove by a farm with an old barn bathing in the sunset lighting. It was so beautiful that i immediately pulled over by the high way and started to setup my easel.

Mt. Jo was a very tough trail (or maybe i was just tried from the continuous hiking the past few days). Although the view wasn't that satisfying comparing to the effort getting up there.

The closer to the moment sun meets the horizon, the more dramatic the scene becomes. It was an intense race with time. It was only about 30-40 minutes before it became so dark that i couldn't even tell what color i was mixing.

Copperas Pond is the bigger one amount the triple lakes in this trail. I found the complex reflections and submerged rocks in the water composed a very intriguing challenge.

I discovered that the Adirondacks has so many gorgeous mountains and lakes. It also has an inspiring artists community. It's a wonderful place for plein-air painting.

Lake Skanatati

2009-08-02T18:25:00.002-04:00

Lake Skanatati is one of the lakes on the beautiful Seven Lakes Drive that pass through Harriman State Park. This is the first time i try to paint on clayboard. The board seems to absorb paint a lot quicker than gessoboards that i used to. It makes more rough dry brush effects. This is also a slightly bigger painting, so i try to keep it loose.

Painting chickens

2009-07-31T15:45:00.011-04:00

A few weeks ago, i tried a small painting on live animals for the first time - chickens! i went to a chicken farm close by. it took about an hour or so. the experience was challenging and at the same time lots of fun. it's quite different from painting landscape. these chickens seem never stop moving!

today, i decided to do a slightly bigger painting. and this time, wet chickens! this one took about 2 hours.

here is a photo of the painting with chickens:

chickens & geese sketch

2009-07-30T23:30:00.000-04:00

here are some of my studies before i started to paint these chickens

and also some Canadian geese:

Piermont

2009-07-26T23:44:00.001-04:00

Piermont is a peninsula on Hudison River.

Autumn Colors

2008-10-23T21:39:00.005-04:00

New Hampshire painting trip

2008-10-08T20:58:00.010-04:00

Finally, got my paintings from August's New Hampshire trip scanned. Enjoy the beautiful paradise of White Mountains!

This is painted from a cliff by the Echo Lake. The valley behind the lake is the Franconia Notch.

The second day we went to a hiking trail called Elephant Head. It's a short vertical trail goes up to a cliff that's the shape of an elephant head. This is the view from the top of it, looking towards Crawford Notch.

Silver Cascade is a long cascading water fall by the road, not too far from Elephant Head.

We patiently waited one extra day for a good weather to go up the highlight of the trip - Mt. Washington. At 6000 ft, submit is constantly surrounded in the cloud. I had to stop several times during the painting, because cloud's closing in, and everything became white out.

After 4 hours of tough hiking on rocks, with an easel on my back, i was completely exhausted. But I had to paint this. There is no way i am going home with empty hands after seeing such a view!

Arethusa Falls is what they call the longest fall in White Mountain area. However it was not as big as i had imagined. so i put the waterfall as the background, and painted the little stream instead.

This is an unfinished painting in Sugar Hill. Storm came out of blue. I was socking wet in 30 seconds. you can see water marks on the lower right side, there was so much rain the paint just couldn't stay on the board.

Another unfinished painting. Shower came fast, all the people enjoy sunshine on the beach was gone before I can put them on, left me shaking alone in the cold rain and freezing sea wind. The weather in NH sure changes fast!

The next three paintings are in a small town called Wilton.

Horton Hears A Who! (2008)

2008-09-29T22:10:00.009-04:00

It was really lucky for me to work on some of the most spectacular effects in Horton. I worked intensively with R&D and Fur departments to iron out the voxel pipeline for effects. Here are some of my shots.

Flying dandelion seeds is the first voxel effect in the production. Directors want an air bombing quality to how the seeds burst. I developed the technique and animated the seeds being knocked off by the nut.

Horton is running through snow like a locomotive. I worked on the steam puffs from his trunk.

Here Horton becomes a snow blower. I worked on the snow powder coming off his trunk.

The voxel system was originally designed for generating fur on characters, I helped adapted to be used more broadly in effects. Here i made the impact clover debris with it.

I was the sequence lead for this clover sequence. I also developed the technique for populating piles of clovers and designed how they erode away by the wind. Here are the shots i animated.

Duryea Farm

2008-07-22T17:15:00.000-04:00

Merry Christmas

2007-12-06T12:35:00.004-05:00

my first painting this winter. from last Sunday, near by my house. i stood in the freezing 28 degree for 3 hours. fresh snow is so beautiful.

it started to rain in the middle of the painting. rain droplets froze to ice flake the moment they hit my palette, turned into an icy smoothie. i had to scrape clean the palette to continue. quite an experience. ^__^

Autumn is too short

2007-12-06T12:31:00.002-05:00

it's gone before i realized it...

Father & son time

2007-12-06T12:27:00.001-05:00

my parents visited me for a month, my dad and i had a fun time at my front door. he was drawing, i was painting. afternoon sun is bright and beautiful.

Summer is here

2007-12-06T12:26:00.001-05:00

54th St at 9th Ave

2007-12-06T12:16:00.001-05:00

this is the last painting before i moved out the city. it's been a wonderful 4 and a half years living in Manhattan. i sure will miss Hell's Kitchen!

No Time For Nuts (2006)

2007-11-29T21:56:00.004-05:00

No Time For Nuts is a short film released on Ice Age: The Meltdown DVD. I worked on many of the dust effects in the film. Below are some of my shots.

Plein-Air Landscape Paintings

2007-04-27T10:38:00.001-04:00

Sculpture

2007-04-27T10:37:00.000-04:00

Figure Drawings

2007-04-27T10:34:00.000-04:00

Robots (2005)

2007-04-27T10:33:00.007-04:00

After the first Ice Age, I moved to fx dept. I really enjoy developing techniques and writing tools for effects. Robots presents many new and unique challenges. Here are some of the shots i worked on.

The steam in this film has a heavy, industrial look to it. We developed a special volumetric shader to render it.

I was involved in the developing of sparks since the beginning. These sparks are voxel curves with lights attached to them, so they can really illuminate the surrounding environment to give subtle realism.

i developed a special rig to do huge number of sparks in chop shop.

the sparks of this whole sword-fighting sequence at the climax was my solo work.

Another really fun effect in this film is the crowd. I often study and analyze crowd movements in Grand Central, for inspirations to apply on crowd sim.

Confetti is one of my favorite effects in the film. It adds a happy, festival feeling. The most tricky part is how to make them land nicely like a piece of weightless paper.

This domino sequence is the most complex effect in the film. It requires significant planning and Layout, Animation, Fx departments all working together to get it done. i worked on the surf board spray dominos in this shot.

I also worked on some of the rigid body sim for junks on convey belt.

Dark diesel smoke has a very different characteristic from steam:

Ball Bearing effect:

This is an early proof-of-concept test for wielding effect. It was not used in the film:

Ice Age (2002)

2007-04-27T10:33:00.005-04:00

At the end of year 2000, I joined Blue Sky for the film Ice Age, my first feature animation. I started out in Lighting dept designing lighting and compositing for shots. Here are some of my shots:

this is a key moment where the whole lighting scheme shifts from a more ambient lighting to a strong golden sun breaks the horizon lighting. i animated between two sets of lights to achieve the effect.

some other shots from the same sequence:

I used a localize spot light to give the punch of Zeke's scary face at the end of the shot.

There are many comp treatments to make those icicles looked lethal.

During the production, I also helped out fx dept for some of the cool effects in the film, such as falling snow effect:

and snow prints effect:

Ice Age: The Meltdown (2006)

2007-04-27T09:50:00.002-04:00

Ice Age: The Meltdown was on a fast track. We had to come up with many creative solutions to create a melting world with all kind of fluid effects. We wrote many custom code and tools during the production. Here are some of the effects I worked on:

This was the very first bubble shot in the production. I worked with R&D and Lighting to iron out techniques for under water rendering.

I designed and animated all the bubbles in these shots. they are carefully choreographed with characters:

This is the first fur-related effect in the production, where the Crash takes off, but its fur remains behind. A very cartoonish effect. There were many unknowns on how to control fur to do this. I spent about an month on this shot.

I also developed the Campfire effect in this film. It has lights attached to the particles, so it illuminates the objects around them realistically:

Dust are usually subtle. You want to feel it without paying attention to it.

Flood was one of the most complicate effect in the film. It consists so many different elements:

i

Water noise is another frequent-used technique in this movie. It uses layers of procedure bump to bring life to calm water surfaces:

I also did some early tests during the pre-production stage:

a simple stylized water curtain for small background waterfall:

developed a technique for instancing pre-animated splashes based on character's foot penetrations:

this is a cute little proof-of-concept test for floating leaves on a river. I used a river flow sim R&D originally developed for adding bump noise on water surface to drive leaves:

I prototyped the first bird nest and handed off to Set Dressing department:

i did some early wet fur tests and developed tools for animators to setup wet fur:

this was a look-development for stylized campfire smoke, not used in the production:

SWAT (2000)

2001-04-05T20:13:00.007-04:00

SWAT is my thesis animation in school. It's a sci-fi short film about a special force turtle. I was integrating a full CG character into a miniature live-action set.

Here is my original character design:

I designed his turtle shell to look like a bullet-proof vest.

I built the miniature set with balsa wood, card board, and plaster. It is built as forced-perspective to make the hall way appears to be longer the it actually is. Window side of the wall is removable, so i can get camera in there to shoot the angle i want.