Huanhuan(Milian) Chen

2025 rigging and animation showreel: Link

Overview

It’s a stylized 6-minute animation. Created with Maya + RenderMan mainly. All visuals crafted independently; music composed collaboratively.

Watch it on YouTube or Vimeo.

Concept & Storyboard

The project started from a simple question: how does an unlikely creature want to fly?

I built the narrative around an ant, then developed the full ecosystem: blue-tree forests, walnut-house interiors, and daily-life vignettes that support the emotional arc.

3D Modelling & Rigging

Asset creation (characters, props, sets, etc) was done in Maya. Character and prop rigs were designed for deformation quality, and animation efficiency. Textures were hand-painted and stylized, inspired by Arcane.

Animation & Compositing

Animation workflow: layout, blocking, polish. Then the simulation and 2D FX elements. All shots were finalized in Nuke, where lighting, and compositing pulled the look together.

Final Clips

Overview

This desktop pet is fully Python-based with no external game engine.

Source code on GitHub

Pet Behaviours

I designed and painted pixel animations: idle loops, interactions, expressions, and behaviour variants. To keep the pet believable, behaviours are state-driven and context-aware.

For example:

When the pet is focused on a task, interrupting it with food triggers annoyance.

Idle behaviours branch into multiple variants for natural randomness.

Hover, click, meal-time, and birthday states all drive specific reactions.

Core System & Animation State Machine

The desktop pet runs on a custom framework that I engineered end-to-end in Python: configurable behaviour system, animation state machine and UI system (PyQt).

Overview

A Python-driven kinematic hair-binding tool for Maya, designed to accelerate character production and remove repetitive manual setup.

Source code on GitHub

Workflow and main code

Core stages:

Curve Extraction – Convert the hair mesh into guide curves, aligned along the mesh’s central axis rather than surface flow.

Curve Rebuild & Joint Generation – Rebuild clean curve topology and procedurally generate joints along each strand.

Kinematic Hair Physics System – Build a lightweight physics hierarchy to drive secondary motion.

Mesh Skinning – Bind the hair meshes to their joint chains through a streamlined batch-skinning routine.

Overview

This project explores a biopunk world-building concept set in a fantastical post-apocalyptic landscape.

In this universe, creatures survive by scavenging industrial remnants scattered across a ruined world and grafting them onto their own bodies. Over generations, this behavior drives species-wide mutation and gives rise to hybrid biomechanical organisms.

Map Concept

Creature Concept(3D)

Game Concept(3D)

Concept

A small town inhabited by worms who live peaceful, contented lives.

Character Design

Aili and Devin are police partners and … soulmates.

Aili is impulsive and high-strung, acting before she thinks and showing no emotion.

Devin, a bird-folk boy who wears every feeling on his face, constantly worries about her.

Overview

This character is inspired by a book called Shui Hu Zhuan (Water Margin). The project covers a full end-to-end production pipeline: modeling, rendering, 3D printing, surface prep, and hand-painting.

The goal was to translate a traditional character into a stylized digital sculpt and a physical collectible while preserving character personality and historical aesthetics.

My interests?

– Rock ’n’ roll and bass guitar (RHCP yes!!).

– Games (RPG and shooting).

– Strength training and anything that gets me outdoors.

– Sudoku.