Step into the vibrant realm of animation with Sean Tan Zheng Wei and Kuan Yue Tong, graduates of The One Academy (TOA), the creative minds behind the thought-provoking short film, "All We Have Left." As the director and art director of 90 GB Productions, respectively, Sean and Yue Tong have assembled a talented team of 40 individuals to bring their vision to life. Their artistic journeys, ignited by a lifelong passion for drawing and creativity, have led them to explore the depths of animation and storytelling.
Join us as we delve into the inspiration behind "All We Have Left," uncover the challenges faced during production, and witness the impact they aim to leave on audiences. Discover the unique qualities that set this talented duo apart and explore the captivating world they've created, brought to life with the power of the market-leading render farm, Fox Renderfarm, that provides cloud rendering solutions for big studios, small teams, as well as individuals.
Fox Renderfarm: Hi, 90 GB Productions! We're excited to have you with us today. Could you please introduce yourself and your team? Maybe share a bit about your journey and what sparked your passion for art too.
Sean: Hi, my name is Sean Tan Zheng Wei and I'm the director of our animated short film - "All We Have Left". Our production is called 90 GB Productions and we have a total of 40 members including illustrators, animators, and modelers. My artistic journey started since young, I have always had this passion for drawing, going to art classes, and joining art competitions. When I decided to join The One Academy after graduating from secondary school, I was thankful that my parents were supportive of my decision. I like being creative hence why I love the freedom of art. It's a place where you can be creative and create something that has never been seen before.
All We Have Left © 90 GB Productions
Tong: Hello! I am Kuan Yue Tong and I’m the Art Director (DG) of "All We Have Left". My role involves overseeing the visual aspects of the film, ensuring that every visual detail aligns with our art direction and enhances the storytelling. Ever since I was little, I’ve always been passionate about art. I sing, dance ballet, act in dramas, write, and draw. Animation, in particular, fascinates me because it’s a complex combination of many forms of art. That ultimately sparked my passion for pursuing animation, as I can incorporate the things I like and the knowledge I have into it.
Fox Renderfarm: Could you explain the inspiration for “All We Have Left” and what message you wanted to convey with this story?
Initial story board © 90 GB Productions
Sean: The initial inspiration for "All We Have Left" was the future of humanity. Back in the initial story pitch I had created, it is quite different from the current story although we have the same settings, characters, and all. Initially, this story heavily included the fact that the wealthy left Earth for a better life on another planet, while Lily and her father are the leftovers on this current dystopian Earth. That had me thinking, what if yes we succeed, we finally found a better planet that is sustainable for humanity, and at the same time yes our planet Earth is suffering from many environmental issues, we have an alternative, okay but what about the people who are not fortunate enough to leave? Do we think that by that time people will care enough about the environment? Or is it too late for planet Earth? That's why I wanted "All We Have Left" to be a thought, a topic of discussion now, if we don’t appreciate what we have now on Earth and do our part to save it and preserve it now, we are gonna end up like "All We Have Left," that’s the impact I wanted to leave with the audience. Initially, in pre-production, we did go through many alterations with our lecturers on the story, but unfortunately, we had to leave the whole planet's backstory as it might be a bit too confusing since we have a duration limit for our short film and limited resources. But it is still the setting of the story, just that we did not go in-depth to explore it, instead we focused more on the environmental issue part of the story.
Fox Renderfarm: Can you share a favorite scene from "All We Have Left" that you are especially proud of? Perhaps there's a hidden detail or a moment that viewers might miss on their first watch? We'd love to hear the story behind it!
Glitching scenes © 90 GB Productions
Sean: My favorite scene is the glitching scene towards the end when everything unravels. The animation and acting of that moment, we’ve spent a lot of time getting it right. To convey Lily’s feelings of realization, fear, and the father’s thoughts of whether he messed up, what has he done, and sense of guilt type of feeling through subtle acting without using any verbal communication. It was a big challenge for our animators and I'm glad we pulled it off. A Fun Fact was that the glitch VFX was very challenging for us to figure out especially since we are not VFX students. It was a very big concern to me during production because if the glitch doesn’t work, it's not gonna convey the whole feeling of the plot twist to the audience properly. After trying many different methods and many back and forth feedbacks and changes from the lecturers and myself, we finally got the desired outcome of how we wanted to tell the story.
Hologram scene © 90 GB Productions
Tong: My favorite scene is the hologram scene, it was one of the most challenging scenes to make and everyone worked very hard on it. During its developing stage, storyartists had to draw many versions of storyboards to visualize the entire scene. Lily had a run sequence in that scene. Our animators filmed themselves as Lily, running around and chasing an imaginary butterfly to get the animation reference. It took a lot of trial and error to coordinate Lily, the butterfly, trees and plants, and even prop placements. To make that happen, everything was carefully planned and placed to look good in front of the camera.
Some fun facts about the hologram plants - we sneaked in some plants and flowers that do not exist in the utopia outside world. These were originally scrapped designs or unnoticed elements, but when we made them glow, we noticed that they fit right in and helped balance out the overpowering glow of the trees.
Fox Renderfarm: Could you talk about some of the major obstacles you encountered during the production, how you overcame them, and the lessons or tips you learned along the way?
Sean: I think one major obstacle we managed to overcome was, back in pre-production, things weren’t looking as good and as promising. I felt that there were a lot of things we could improve on and fix. But at the same time, we only had our illustrators collaborate for our pre-production stage and we were also working towards a schedule and deadline going into the production stage. So I had to make a decision, whether we just move on with it and make it on time, or make the changes and improve on whatever we can with our remaining animators and modelers. So after some discussion with our team, I’m glad that we are on the same page in putting that extra effort and time into making all the improvements we can. So there are many changes, for example, some major changes are like we went back to the drawing stages to improve on some designs for Lily’s and her father’s costumes, and we redesigned some props like the flower and pot. Redesigning meant that we not only had to draw a new design, but the modelers had to remodel it, riggers might have to rerig it and all of that takes a lot of effort and most importantly time as we have to get the production stage done by our deadline. I'm glad and grateful that at the end of the day, my members decided to work those extra hours and we managed to make as many improvements as we can and somehow we managed to pull it off in time.
One tip I would say is, to just start by listing down what are the things you are not satisfied with or think can be improved, write it all down, and then reorganize them from highest to lowest priority, like which is more important, and start from the top and work your way down. As you work your way down, if you can’t get some of those done and fixed in time, just take comfort in knowing that you tried. At the end of the day, we may not get to fix everything a hundred percent and have everything be perfect but at least we know we tried our best and that’s all that matters.
Utopia isometric © 90 GB Productions
Tong: One of the major obstacles we encountered during production was creating a utopia outside the world. As the main focus of the story, it has to be visually stunning and convincing to resonate with Lily’s longing to go outside. Therefore, we had to go all in for the environment, creating a utopian world inspired by the skies and mountains from Ghibli movies and Genshin. The use of all the trees, bushes, and grass made our project files very large and difficult to work on, and it was impossible to extend the forest into the background.
To address this issue and complete the environment, we created matte paintings for the backgrounds and sky. They are painted in 2D and brought inside the 3d environment in different layers of planes. We created a special rig to control the plane layers so the positions of the backgrounds, clouds, and sky can be adjusted freely to tailor each shot’s composition. This greatly enhanced the look of the outside world by creating an illusion of depth, making the background seem very far from the window.
Fox Renderfarm: How did you handle feedback? Any tips for making it useful?
Sean: For feedback, it is quite tricky I would say, because not all of the time we agree with every feedback we get, no matter if it is from the lecturers, director, or our department lead. So I would say for external feedback like from the lecturers, I think what I personally learned as a Director is to take feedback as suggestions and advice, as it is not a must-follow. Feedback is more like advice that you and your team should communicate to filter out which suits the direction you’re going with. Internal feedback is very important for us also, so one thing we do is that we have meetings every week to keep in check on the progress and discuss any feedback on our work. I think definitely communication is very important, and to know that feedback is not personal in any way. Yes, maybe some we agree some we don’t but at the end of the day communicating with each other with an open mind would definitely be the key to a better outcome.
Tong: Our team handled feedback through a structured, multi-stage process. Initially, we received feedback from lecturers, directors, and leads in weekly meetings and reviews. The leads and directors would then discuss possible solutions or troubleshoot problems. Once there’s a clearer idea, the leads delegate tasks to the team members. As a big production group, everyone takes on multiple roles, and almost everyone has a lead role. It’s common for a person to be assigned tasks from different roles while leading a group of people at the same time, which can be challenging in terms of communication and planning. However, by maintaining clear communication and constantly updating and checking the progress of each other, we do our best to ensure feedback is constructive and beneficial.
Fox Renderfarm: How did Fox Renderfarm help your project? Did it help to speed things up?
Sean: Yes, Fox Renderfarm did help us a lot by speeding up our workflow towards the end, because we started using your render farm for like our last month in post-production, at that time we had to rush to meet our deadline and it helped us speed up the process because of its efficiency. Our biggest resource is time, and we actually manage to save a lot of time with Fox Renderfarm because our renderers could just render in the comfort of their home instead of having to go to school every day. With Fox Renderfarm, one of the benefits in our case is that, for example, if there is a texture issue for a few frames in a scene, with Fox Renderfarm my renderers can just start re-rendering it at home overnight and I can get it the next day instead of having to wait for a few days to get our renders because of all the complications.
Tong: Fox Renderfarm has definitely improved our workflow speed. We have many shots that require a large amount of time to render. Not only do we have a large number of trees and grass, but we also have VFX and simulations like hair simulation, tree simulation, grass simulation, hologram tree growth, etc. Fox Renderfarm is able to render heavy shots in a short time while ensuring good quality on the render passes. In the rendering stage, we renderers prioritized rendering our heaviest and most time-consuming shots in Fox Renderfarm, and that greatly improved our workflow speed.
Fox Renderfarm: Any challenges using Fox Renderfarm? Was it easy to get it on hand?
Sean: Based on my team’s renderer we didn’t really face any difficulties with Fox Renderfarm and I don’t think it is hard for my renderers to get a hang of it. Once we had some guidance from our lecturer and we made a guide, soon enough our renderers started using it and even some other members started coming in to help with rendering also because it eliminates a lot of unnecessary headaches like going to school, making time in our schedules, etc.
Tong: We had a very good experience in rendering in Fox Renderfarm. Rendering our film on normal desktops always had issues that caused the renders to crash or lag, which required our renderers to constantly go to school and monitor the rendering progress every day. It was a hassle to re-set up the renders whenever they crashed. It’s the renderer’s worst nightmare. However, things are able to progress much faster when we render with Fox Renderfarm. It doesn't have crash/lag issues and it’s able to handle heavy shots. And it renders very fast!
Fox Renderfarm: What do you think of the render farm service of Fox Renderfarm? Would you use it again or recommend it?
Sean: Yes, I would definitely consider using Fox Renderfarm’s cloud rendering services again and also recommend it to other students and professionals. I think our team definitely wished that we could’ve used Fox Renderfarm sooner as it would’ve helped speed up our process even more and saved us a lot of setbacks during post-production.
Tong: I’m really glad that we’re able to have a chance to use Fox Renderfarm’s cloud rendering service on "All We Have Left". I’m also a renderer myself, and it’s really a lifesaver for our project as we were struggling with many issues and rushing our deadline. I would definitely recommend to other students and professionals to try it out, especially for Juniors who will be doing their final-year projects.
Fox Renderfarm: We've heard that many students don't complete their studies at TOA. Is it truly challenging for them, or are people exaggerating the situation? What advice would you give to make sure the incoming students can graduate smoothly?
Sean: I think it’s not that fair to just judge the dropout rate and say whether people are exaggerating because they might have their own reasons. Personally, I’m not going to deny that I have had quite a few friends who dropped out for various reasons, some left early on some left later in their TOA journey because they felt like this was not what they wanted to do, like they don’t think they are suitable for this industry and they have a passion for something else. In that case, I think it is totally fine for them to make the decision to drop out and pursue something they like more. Some of the students might be dropping out because of some personal issue or even financial issues. I don’t deny that toa is difficult and some people will drop out because of that but I think the same applies to many other different courses you’re studying whether doctor lawyer etc.
If I were to give any advice it is to have a goal in mind, what is something that you really want to achieve? It may be as an animator you want to one day become a Disney Pixar animator, you might want to join a certain studio like Riot Games, make your parents proud, no matter how big or small it is, it would definitely help out a lot when you have a clear goal and passion to achieve it.
Tong: I would say it depends on every person. For me, I genuinely enjoyed my time at the one academy. Starting with zero drawing experience, the first year was quite challenging, but as I advanced to year 2, things became more specialized. I slowly discovered my strengths and weaknesses and had a clearer vision of my future career. It’s true that there are times that are difficult and stressful, but the most important thing is to enjoy the process and be passionate about the things you work on. As the semesters go by, you might find yourself improving your skills and techniques without realizing it. Sometimes, I look back once in a while, there were moments in which I thought, “Oh? I understand it now. It’s not as difficult as I thought.”
Fox Renderfarm: There's a perception of overwhelming workloads and lack of sleep for TOA art students. How do you manage to find a healthy balance between academics and self-care, and what tips would you give new students to avoid burnout?
Sean: Based on my personal experience I wouldn’t deny the general perception of the workload and lack of sleep, if you want the ultimate “cheat code”, it is discipline and time management, if you can master it sure, but can you? Maybe you can but I too struggled with the workloads and lack of sleep. I would say it is also because this is art, it isn’t something like math where you find an answer and it’s correct. In art, it's really like the more time you spend on that piece of artwork the better the outcome will be, especially when you're learning something new. No matter if it’s a drawing or animation, good work takes time.
To be honest, I myself did not manage to find a healthy balance, I too struggled with the workload and lack of sleep, but one piece of advice that I did was I always kept in mind is to try to find that balance. Life is not just all about doing work and submitting assignments, a good artist needs to experience life also, don’t lock yourself up or break all the wonderful connections you have with your friends and family just because you don’t have the time for it. I think what's important is you always remember to try to find that healthy balance and keep yourself mentally healthy.
Tong: To be honest, my sleep schedule was kinda screwed up. However, whenever I’m feeling stressed, I try to find entertainment for myself, like going out to eat, hanging out with classmates, and petting the cats outside of the school. It’s the tiny things in life that make me heal and recover from burnout.
A tip I would like to give new students is that when you encounter challenges like software crashing or face problems in your work, it is okay to take a break. Constantly grinding 24/7 non-stop won’t solve the problem, and it’s not healthy both physically and mentally. Take a step back, maybe a short nap, walk around, or play some games to distract yourself for a while. When you return to your work, you’ll have a refreshed brain and you'll have a better chance to identify and solve your problems.
Fox Renderfarm: Is the 'crying corner' at TOA a real thing or just a funny rumor? Whether it exists or not, how do students usually handle the tough times? (Have you ever needed to use it?)
Image taken by students
Sean: Have I? No, TOA is like a training camp that solidifies your mental strength. The answer to your question is yes and no, Does it exist, yes, I’ve seen it before somewhere I don’t remember which level but I do have a picture of it, but do people use it I think probably no, I don’t think I've heard the tradition where someone just goes to the crying corner for a good cry. I do feel bad for the people who are going through it and I think it's okay if you really have to cry it out, sometimes it does get very stressful and there is a lot of pressure. Just cry it out and talk to your friends about it if you want to. I think one important thing is to also surround yourself with a good circle of friends in class. At the end of the day, they are the ones going through the same thing as you every day, they do make your days shine a little brighter, and together you guys can help each other out.
Tong: Weirdly enough, the place does exist. I originally thought it was a rumor until I found the crying corner. I think It’s like a ritual for TOA students to search for the crying corner since it’s a famous rumor. When I was in my first year, my friends and I went to hunt for the crying corner and we took pictures like Sean did. I’ve never heard anyone cry in there though.
Fox Renderfarm: How is life after TOA? Was it worth it? How did TOA help your career and life?
Sean: It’s been well, there is more time for myself to find that balance in life and also more time to experience the life ahead of me, do the things I like, and learn and try different things. But I think it’s still too early for me to say all the hard work and stress paid off, I feel that having just graduated from TOA is like I've just successfully registered my name for the race, but I've not actually started the race yet. But with everything I learned in TOA, it definitely surpassed my expectations of what I am capable of achieving and hopefully in a few years I can say that it all pays off well.
Tong: The hard work and stress definitely paid off, I feel like I have learned so much in these three years. I never thought that I could be an animator and involve myself in a short film production that’s literally built from scratch. I feel like I have done a lot of impossible things that I thought I couldn't have done and it’s a dream come true to experience. A lot of people don’t exactly know what 3D animation is about, but when they see me explaining 3D animation stuff to them, I feel like they genuinely see my passion and feel how much I like it. I am very grateful to be here, and I wanna thank my parents and my friends and family who supported me on my journey. Life after graduating is pretty chill for me. I am currently in an internship job and will go to the UK to continue my studies in 3D animation and VFX. I will carry on the knowledge TOA has taught me and continue my next chapter in life.
Thanks again to TOA for accepting our interview! Wishing new heights in you and your team’s professional career!!
90GB Production’s social media:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/90gb.productions/
The One Academy’s social media:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theoneacademy/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/toa.edu.my
- Website: https://www.toa.edu.my/
