We caught up with the brilliant and insightful CHUN YAO CHANG a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, CHUN YAO thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

I want to share the behind screen story of Apple’s latest show: Sugar

“Sugar” is a contemporary, unique take on one of the most popular and significant genres in literary, motion picture and television history: the private detective story. Academy Award nominee Colin Farrell stars as John Sugar, an American private investigator on the heels of the mysterious disappearance of Olivia Siegel, the beloved granddaughter of legendary Hollywood producer Jonathan Siegel. As Sugar tries to determine what happened to Olivia, he will also unearth Siegel family secrets; some very recent, others long-buried.
I am an experienced VFX compositor and I also do matte painting in this TV show. Since the main character John Sugar is an alien under human’s appearance. One of my visual development task is to create a whole new environment for episode 8. This is quite challenging since the post production team didn’t have a concept settled that we have to start from a scratch. Sebastien Boulange supervised the project, while me and Benjamin Walant do the production which Ben did the initial concept, and I in charge of additional finalized DMP, clean plate and compositing.
We try several versions to stylized the outer space. First of all, I removed all human facilities from the plate. After reference great amount of outer space pictures, I adding difference shapes of rocks and bushes hill in to the scene, import stars and planets in the sky and change to tone blueish purple to make it looks cinematic. Our FX artist created CG birds, and we import that particles flow in the sky to make the environment feels alive and unique. I create several versions of composition, textures and color grading until our clients satisfied with it. It was lot of fun to have this chance to work on such a big project that I was trusted be more creative with the visual development.

CHUN YAO, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Chun Yao Chang is an experienced VFX Compositor, Matte Painter, and Environment Artist based in New York. With a passion for bringing imagination to life, he specializes in crafting mesmerizing visual effects for a variety of projects, including feature films, TV episodic series, commercials, and custom design endeavors.

Whether it’s conjuring fantastical worlds, enhancing cinematic experiences, or adding that extra flair to commercial campaigns, I thrive on the challenge of bringing ideas to fruition.

Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?

The methods I use to keep sharpening my eyes and skills in the VFX industry as an artist.
Love what I am doing. Stay curious, hungry. Keep my feet wet by doing projects.

As an artist, I like to challenge myself while doing companies visual effects projects including films, TV and commercials. In my free time, I know I should not stop creating arts outside my job. So I have some personal projects going at the same time which allow me to do something that is totally directed by myself. Regarding where I get my inspiration and skills from. Let me start with my daily life.

Learn from high budget projects.
When I watch movies, TV shows or play video games, I pay attention to the design and colors that make it beautiful. When I find a piece I like its art style a lot, I will search for its production credits and find out the artists who created it and learn from their works.

Learn from nature and city walk.
I enjoy exploring the beauty from the real environment. It is my way to recharge myself. While doing outdoor activities such as hiking and camping in the mountains, I take a close look at all different kinds of trees, bushes, flowers, lake, bridges, clouds, how everything looks during sunrise and sunset, how these organisms react to the environment in different seasons, attitude and humidity.
I am a NY based artist, when I talk on the street, I enjoy watching the view of train stations, architecture design, the little coffee shops, flea market, people’s clothing and activities in this big city. The awesomeness of being an observer to where I live is that this non sleep city always surprises me while all creative things are possible here. I always take photos of the views that attract me and these images would be part of my art reference library store in my brain and dive library.

Learn from the VFX community
Living in the fast paced industry. The technology improves each day. There are many great artists and technical directors willing to share their creations such as plug-in or tools on webinars and social communities. I am curious about the new stuff and cannot wait to give it a try in my projects. In the meantime, I also share my ideas in the VFX society and pass down the latest information and tools to my students. By interacting with people in the community and learning from the greatest, I can not only develop a better workflow that makes me work smartly and efficiently, but also help others to keep this community healthy and thrilling.

Can you open up about a time when you had a really close call with the business?

I was an international student who graduated from SVA in 2019. It took me a great effort when I first started my career in the US.

While holding a F1 Visa, all new graduate students have to find a job relevant to their major proficiency and that company needs to be willing to sponsor their US visa within three months. Since I didn’t have work experience in the US VFX industry at the moment. I worked for several studios as a freelancer. The short contracts were not stable and the payment was not high enough for me to rent a decent apartment. So I lived in an old apartment far from my company at the time. What makes things worse is that the pandemic happened. The film industry got hit and it slowed down the whole VFX production. Many VFX artists lose their jobs, including me.

I keep working on my personal projects and update my reel while waiting for another work opportunity. Luckily my previous supervisor Adam Schwartz referred me to his team and I worked really hard for this chance. The paycheck helped me to survive until I applied for an O1 visa. As a foreigner, I need to prove that I am a better artist in order to be chosen by companies, I appreciate all the support in my hard time. For this reason, I also help new graduate students by giving them advice and referral every year because I know how difficult it can be to start everything from an international student.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.cchunyao.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cycsdesign
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chun-yao-chang-luke-81b95b151

Image Credits

“Sugar” credit

Client: Apple TV
Company: Framestore
Comp Supervisor: Sebastien Boulange
Compositor and Additional DMP: Chun Yao Chang
DMP Artist: Benjamin Walant

Other 5 projects are my personal projects that I created everything.