Ryan Chen

Encore (2025)

Encore is a 3D animated short film about the struggle of a lone knight against an ancient evil that threatens humanity as a whole.

“I am Ryan Chen, a 3D generalist, meaning I deal with models, textures, occasionally animation, rigging, lighting, and VFX. I am the director of Encore, a 3 minute 3D animated short film. I am also the lead modeler of said film, modelling the main character, Adine, as well as the props and environment.Encore is a film about self-realization, deep introspection, and the persistence of the human spirit. The film follows Adine, a knight of some forgotten kingdom, battling against an ancient force of evil that threatens to end humanity. In some manner the film is about the battle for what you believe in. The message I send out to my audience is one of standing strong even when you think you can’t. I say this because this film is an example of my steadfast belief in that virtue. When I first began the project I had 8 people in my team, though, due to creative differences, my VFX producer decided to leave with 2 other members to start a new project 2 months into our 6 month production timeline. I was left in a very difficult situation. I did not have enough people to go into my project full force, and the other members I initially gathered had other commitments to other projects. So, I was faced with an incredibly difficult decision: Do I drop the rest of my project so that the rest of my team can focus on their other productions? Or do I push through the rest of my project and take away their time from their own films? After many long conversations with my mentors, and even my mother, I eventually came up with a plan: I let everyone on my project go, and I push ahead myself to see what I could feasibly do in 4 months. I had already scheduled time to work with Beyond Studios, a resource VFS students have for motion capture production, so I started auditioning actors and actresses for the two parts in my film. I rehearsed the choreography and lines with them many times before the actual shoot so there would be no trouble on the actual mocap stage. I worked with them on what fit, what didn’t, and I was deadset on letting them decide what was best for their roles. I didn’t want ‘perfect’, what I wanted was ‘the film’ that we got to get done. Thanks to our rehearsals we got the shoot done in a third the time most productions needed. I thanked them immensely for their time and got the mocap actors to reprise roles later on as the voice actors. Once I had the mocap footage I quickly got a 3D animatic of the film done to re-recruit my team members. I pitched them a new idea and a new timeline. We would take all the resources we had from the previous version of the film and fit it into the new version. I was only able to get a portion of the force I initially started with. Because of that I needed to take on the responsibilities of various roles in the production. I was learning rigging, lighting, camerawork, VFX, simulations, compositing, and many more minor roles I needed to fill. I burnt myself out to get things moving along. I fought tooth and nail, 16 hour days, putting out fires as they came, and morally supporting the team through it all. When all was said and done we made a film everyone is proud of. I came out of the project with one thought: ‘If you don’t DO it, it doesn’t get done.’ And not to say that you should do everything, but there is no point in lying down and taking the loss, you need to get back up and fight for what you believe in. In some ways I feel like Adine, the main character. I feel that whenever she got hit, I got hit; When she fell down, I fell down; And when she stood up in triumph, so did I.I want the audience to really breathe in the themes of this film. They are simple, but powerful: Stand up when you’re knocked down, look your problems in the eye, and don’t ever look back. You are the hero of your story, so fight like you mean it.”