(Minghui.org) Greetings, Master. Greetings, fellow practitioners.
I would like to share my cultivation experiences that occurred while I was designing backdrops.
From Oil Painting to 3D Animation
I began practicing Falun Dafa in 2000. I have a fine arts degree, and my major was video editing. I moved to the United States in 2001 and worked part-time in Chinatown in New York City. I also participated in the establishment of the New Tang Dynasty Television station in New York.
I was fortunate to work as the stage backdrop designer for the first NTD Chinese New Year Gala in 2006.
Early on in preparing for the gala, the supervisor told everyone that they hoped to create a 3D animated flying horse to appear in the show’s backdrop.
My fine arts experience was mainly oil painting, which is 2D art, and I knew nothing about 3D animation. Although I had the opportunity to learn 3D animation when I was in school, I wasn’t interested, and had avoided it.
When I was helping out at a New York TV station, the only entertainment I had was going to the movies. At the time, 3D special effects were very popular, and they showed previously unattainable imagination and magnificent scenes. So I convinced myself to start learning 3D animation, and was determined not to give up until I could do it.
In the beginning, I felt it was too difficult to learn and I quickly gave up. However, the new job requirement meant I had to learn this skill and couldn’t avoid it. Besides, I am a Dafa disciple and must do my job well.
Master told us:
“When it is difficult to endure, try to endure it. When it looks impossible and is said to be impossible, give it a try and see if it is possible. If you can actually do it, you will indeed find, “After passing the shady willow trees, there will be bright flowers and another village ahead!” (Lecture Nine, Zhuan Falun)
An Arduous Path from Graphic Arts to Animation
I was determined to learn 3D animation and design the flying horse in time for the show. I first needed a model for the horse. At that time, 3D resources were not as abundant and easy to obtain as they are now. I had to learn how to sculpt a clay model of a horse. So I found a lot of reference pictures and was ready to start learning how to sculpt.
My only experience was in graphic arts, however, and I couldn't do sculpting at all. I found it was not easy, so I read books that taught sculpting. It turned out that those techniques required years of practice to master. I felt despondent, but I couldn't give up, so I started to practice sculpting every day. As time passed, I sometimes doubted what I was doing and felt uneasy, yet I also felt that my sculpting seemed to be improving.
After learning the basics of sculpting, I also needed to become familiar with the materials I would use for the horse. Working on materials was also a very complicated component, including the refractive index, skin transparency index, special material settings for hair, and biological material texture settings. I thought I had entered a world of physics, full of things I couldn’t adapt to.
At the time, I was 35 years old, but my face was covered with acne, and I felt depressed. What I was facing was utterly contrary to the world I was familiar with. Should I continue moving forward, or should I just give up and quit now?
Fortunately, I studied the Fa every day with fellow practitioners. I felt cleansed and encouraged each time we read together, and I knew that difficulties could not hold me back for long. I firmly believed that if I kept moving forward, I would make a breakthrough. I continued to do this day after day. Although I felt that the work was beyond my understanding, I continued to forge ahead.
After the horse was made, I thought I could relax a bit. I knew there must be some technology I could use to make the horse move, but at the time, there was none; it had to be done manually, and an adjustment had to be made for each frame. Before the animation, I had to connect the horse bones, which meant understanding how each bone of a horse functions, set each bone and connect to the finished horse sculpture, and then move the bones one by one so that the horse looked like it was moving.
Good heavens! Was this medicine or some biological science? I felt like I was going to collapse. How long was this road? At that time, several practitioners who had promised to make animations with me had to work to make ends meet or support their families, so I was the only one left. But I couldn't give up.
I studied the working principle of each bone of a horse. I checked a lot of information and films and was finally able to bind the bones together. I then had to start animating, but there were 24 frames per second, and I needed to make the movements frame by frame. I felt that animation was a massive project, and I really couldn't do it alone. I needed support, but there was no one around who could help me.
The only way was to pay for online teaching because YouTube was new and didn’t have any videos on the subject. It was not as prolific as it is now. Physics, anatomy, and so on were fields that I knew nothing about, and I felt like I could not take it any longer. Still, I had to animate the horse frame by frame. Every step forward felt painful, lonely, and desperate, but I could not stop now.
In the end, I continued studying the Fa. My pessimistic mood gradually dissipated, and the more I studied, the better I felt. In this way, I finally animated “a flying horse.”
But earthly horses don't have wings, so I had to make a giant pair of wings. Again, I referenced many pictures and the structure of wings, then modeled it and worked on the materials. Step by step, I finally completed the wings.
Although I felt stuck in a painful cycle, as if I was spinning in circles without knowing what to do, my skills and understanding of the tasks improved. The cycle repeated itself over and over again, and I gradually became better and better.
The Flying Horse was finally completed, and after watching it for a long time, I felt it was pretty good. I thought it would surely impress everyone, so I played the video during a dance rehearsal.
Unfortunately, everyone in the audience burst out laughing. I didn’t know what was going on. A choreographer I respected said, “That’s not a flying horse, that’s a flying dog, haha!”
Afterward, I looked at it more closely, and it really did look like a dog. I had deluded myself. Of course, the animation I made was not used in the end.
I was very sad. I had put so much effort into the project, and yet it was a complete failure. I felt so disheartened that I wanted to give up. It turned out that I was just a silly boy who loved to daydream.
Divine Inspiration
Just a few days before the New Year’s Eve performance, my father became critically ill. However, I couldn’t go to Taiwan because I had not completed the designs I was working on for the backdrop. I have six sisters, and they couldn’t understand why I didn’t go home to see my father one last time. My father passed away the following day.
The day before the final rehearsal, I needed to create a backdrop of the Heavenly Kingdom. I had no idea what heaven looked like, and I was very distressed about what to do. It was three or four in the morning, and I still hadn’t finished the scene. At that moment, a deep pain welled up in my heart. I was not only heartbroken that I could not rush back to see my father before he died, but also heartbroken that I was so useless. I felt helpless and desperate, and I cried and cried until I fell asleep in exhaustion.
I had a vivid dream. I floated up in front of my computer desk, rising slowly, and then passed a gorgeous five-story pagoda surrounded by a fairy mist. I passed through layers of clouds, and I saw a majestic gate. There were many people on the other side of the gate. I didn’t know what the place was. I felt that the people inside were kind, good, and elegant. They were completely different from the people on Earth. I had a feeling of infinite peace and kindness. There was no pain or worry. An indescribable feeling embraced me.
Love, a vast, selfless light and energy of love, embraced me. I cried, but this time, I cried for infinite peace and love. When I woke up, tears stained my cheeks. I immediately exemplified that feeling as well as I could in the backdrop.
Later, during the rehearsal, everyone recognized the Kingdom of Heaven on the backdrop. At that time, I felt encouraged like I had never felt before. This encouragement was significant because I understood that I was not alone. I knew that Master Li was quietly comforting and helping me. I felt delighted, and that I was not at all alone.
Persevering Despite Adversities
After the performance that year, no one mentioned a flying horse or 3D animation, but I didn’t want to give up so soon. I still wanted to do 3D animation well because making a 3D flying horse would inspire everyone. However, I faced a problem. If I continued to stay at the TV station, I would have to help produce advertisements. I couldn’t ask the TV station to let me develop 3D because I didn’t know if I would succeed.
When I left the TV station, I had only a small amount of money in savings. I rented a basement room in New Jersey for $200 a month, which was all I could afford. During heavy rain, water would accumulate on the floor, and the bed had only three legs, so I had to prop it up. I didn’t complain; I had a simple goal—to make an animated flying horse for the backdrop.
I refined each part of what I had done before, but it was just a very amateurish framework. For example, the shape of a horse can be infinitely beautiful. The texture of the horse I was creating should be delicate and lifelike, and the animation of the horse should be full of endless vitality. In this way, I re-examined the steps one by one. However, after a few months, my money was almost gone.
I asked my mother in Taiwan for help. Our family is poor, and my mother said that only my insurance money was left, and I could get a little money back, about 100,000 Taiwan dollars (about $3,130). My mother sent the money, and I was very grateful to her because I could now continue honing my skills.
I spent most of the money on tuition. My English is very poor, and I regret that I didn’t work harder when I was younger to learn it. I also didn’t lay a good foundation in 3D. Otherwise, this job would have been so much easier.
When I watched the teaching videos, I had no idea what was being said. I just followed wherever the mouse pointed in the video. Sometimes, I didn’t even understand the Ctrl, Option, Shift, and other keys that needed to be pressed at the same time. I could only guess. It took me a long time to comprehend the content.
When I left the TV station, it was hard to explain to the practitioners what I was doing. Even though I had no contact with others, I still studied one lecture in Zhuan Falun per day. I might not have necessarily understood the connotation of the meanings, but studying the Fa made me feel optimistic and invigorated.
Just like that, nearly a year went by. One day, I felt that the Flying Horse was ready. I tried to be as objective as possible and thought that it no longer looked like a dog; it was much better than before in all respects. I felt like this was as far as I could go with it.
That night, I dreamed I was in a low place, but a magnificent cloud was high above me. From the cloud, I heard a loud, deep voice that sounded like it was calling my name, but I was afraid to accept it was true. I must have heard it wrong because I felt so lowly that someone above could not be calling me. So I kept my head down and pretended I didn’t hear it.
But a cultivator next to me turned his head and said, “Hey, it’s you; he’s calling you.” I timidly looked up and saw a radiant light shining from behind the clouds, and then I woke up.
The next day, I received a call from the TV station manager asking me to support the backdrop production, and saying they needed 3D animation talent. How did he know that I could do animation? No one had come here, and I hadn’t told anyone that I was learning how to do it. How could such a magical thing happen? I realized that all of this was the compassionate grace of the Creator, and that I was not alone.
I have now supported the backdrop production for twelve years and have trained a group of production staff to animate images.
Due to the pandemic, I returned to Taiwan and participated in two newly-created projects. Both were challenging, almost impossible tasks, but I no longer feared participating in such projects.
I realized that we humans don’t have much ability, but with Master and the Fa, as long as we study the Fa diligently, correct ourselves, and move forward when encountering difficulties, we will succeed.
These are my cultivation experiences; please point out anything that is not in line with the Fa.
Thank you, Master. Thank you, fellow practitioners.
(Speech given at the 2024 Taiwan Falun Dafa Cultivation Experience Sharing Conference)
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