Lingering Summer Day (2025)
Lingering Summer Day is a 5-minute 3D animated short doc, a story of trying to say goodbye properly. A former student. A professor who passed during the pandemic. One last ordinary afternoon, reconstructed from memory. I wanted to hold onto time, so that I could always find him again inside this film.
Made with 3D animation and mixed media. Some frames are unfinished on purpose. Memory never is. Solo production, 8 months, pre-production through final delivery.
Someone cried and told me it extended his life a little longer. That's the one review that made me freeze.
Based on my personal experiences.
Length: 5 min 23 s
Creator: Zixin Yang
Responsibilities: Character Design, Modeling, XGen Grooming, Texturing, Lookdev, Lighting, Rigging, Animation, VFX, Compositing
Software: Maya, Arnold, ZBrush, Substance Painter, Nuke, Photoshop, Premiere
Awards:
Selected — London Vision Film Festival
Selected — Alpine International Film Festival
.. FULL FILM ..
.. STILLS ..
.. CONCEPT ARTS ..
.. STOP MOTION ..
Gary taught me traditional 2D animation. When it came time to make something for him, I wanted to use my hands.
The problem: in paper stop motion, moving background and character together frame by frame is nearly impossible to control. So I shot Gary's paper figure separately on green screen, then keyed and composited the layers in Nuke with Keylight node, giving each element its own life.
The result is a sequence that lives inside a 3D world, but carries a different texture. The texture of something made by hand, for someone who taught me what hands can do.