Yang Xiang

Project Overview

Corvus Ex Machina is our capstone short film project — an animated story set in an abandoned train yard, where a vengeful enforcer named Adriel hunts down those responsible for his sister’s murder. As he descends into revenge, his past and present begin to collide, forming a fragmented journey of loss and redemption.

This project explores how hybrid 2D/3D lighting and rendering techniques can merge the visual realism of hyper-realistic rendering with the expressive aesthetics of stylized animation. The entire lighting process was completed in Houdini and rendered using Arnold, with compositing done in Nuke. I worked as the Lighting Artist and Compositor for the project, and also contributed to the Look Development of the hair shader. The final output is a proof of concept, expressing potential for its continued development into the future.