FX Artist Reel

CONTACT INFO: ollie.y.yao@gmail.com

1. Zootopia 2 Effects Animation & Effects Apprenticeship

Created at Walt Disney Animation Studios. All shots animated in Houdini, and rendered with Hyperion. The style of Zootopia 2 called for cartoon-y realism - physics that still obeyed real life principles, while also directed and sculpted to deliver on comedy. One of the most important instincts I honed was knowing when to let the effects steal the show, and when to scale back to allow the acting and story to shine through.

I executed on a wide variety of effects on the film, most notably a large snow simulation when Nick and Judy drive a bulldozer through a snowy hedge maze, creating a "catnip" softbody simulation to cap off the first sequence, and creating and executing the FX rig for Nibbles' wood chips, balancing the timing of my effects with the needs of the story.

During my apprenticeship I tried effects with many different techniques, including fire, water, snow, rigid body dynamics, cloth, soft bodies, and smoke.

2. Rainy Day

Created in Houdini, rendered with Solaris and Karma. I wanted to tackle photorealism with a simpler simulation I'd be able to polish, and so I chose to do raindrops beading on a window. Raindrops were created with POP simulations, with additional splashes generated using FLIP fluids. This project marked my first foray into Solaris, Karma, and USD workflow, something I'm very excited to learn more about in the future! Window sill was modeled in Maya and textured in Substance Painter.

3. Caterpillar's Day Out

Modeled in Maya, fur simulation done in Houdini with Vellum, then exported back into Maya for render with Redshift. The project was inspired by a Dr. Seuss look, but rendered in 3D.

4. Twin Sparks - Animated Short Film

Twin Sparks is an animated short film I directed, which premiered in May 2023. I also created the stylized look of the film, using Houdini, Blender, and Nuke to bring our vision of a moving painting to life. 

5. "Bad Apple!!" On An Apple

FX Animation and source images for texturing generated in Houdini. Texturing, lighting, and rendering done in Blender Cycles. A loving recreation of the Bad Apple!! animated music video originally created in 2012, which has spawned countless reimaginings. I wanted to create a carved apple look, and so I used Houdini to generate a set of displacement maps automatically sourced from the black and white images in the original music video, then projected it onto a series of randomized apples to give a stop motion look.

Music is "I Lost All My Eggs" by Shawn Wasabi.