LogInDuong Nguyen shared with us the working process behind the Doraemon: The First project, a fan art for which he researched the culture of Japan to recreate and honor the legendary character.
Introduction
Hello everyone! I'm Duong Nguyen, a Lighting and Compositing Artist. Since our previous conversation, I've continued to evolve both technically and artistically as a self-taught CGI Artist with a specialized focus on Compositing, Lighting, and CFX Simulation. So far, I've contributed to a variety of projects across feature films, cinematic trailers, MVs, and TVCs. In addition, I've been passionate about developing personal projects that challenge my boundaries. Some of my most fulfilling personal works include Doraemon: The First (2025), Assassin's Creed: Eclipse (2023), and Vegeta Super Saiyan (2022).
I'm always eager to engage with established teams and cutting-edge productions that push the boundaries of what's possible in our field. Please check out my demo reels to see what I have worked on:
Inspiration for the Project
When it comes to Doraemon, he is a character that so many of us, especially Asian kids, grew up with. Doraemon was first introduced in 1969 as a manga series. The story follows a robotic cat from the future who arrives with many magical futuristic gadgets to help a young boy (Nobita) improve himself and change his destiny. Alongside Nobita's friends (Jaian, Suneo, and Shizuka), they experience extraordinary childhood adventures together. For over five decades, this blue-and-white cat has been more than just a manga icon, he has been a symbol of childhood for millions, myself included.
After a long period of self-learning and the positive reception of my Assassin's Creed: Eclipse fan-made project, I recognized the need for a new idea that would advance my core skills (compositing, lighting, and CFX simulation), as well as take on some new challenges (texturing and look development).
From the very first day of my CGI journey, I had a dream of creating 3D scenes about my favorite characters. My beloved character is Doraemon, and my main field is CGI. That's why I decided to start Doraemon: The First, recreating the iconic room where Doraemon and Nobita live together. My ultimate objective was to complete and release this tribute precisely on Doraemon's birthday, honoring the character who gifted us such treasured childhood experiences.
Three featured animations inspired me most. Initially, I drew inspiration from Stand by Me (1 & 2) – the very first 3D movies about Doraemon. These two Doraemon movies provided the foundational concept for the room.
However, I'd like to challenge myself with something new. While the look of Stand by Me is charming, I've always been drawn to Pixar's visual style. Consequently, I aimed to craft a new Doraemon scene, a cute, cozy, nostalgic animation. For this style, the movie Soul became my key inspiration, not only in lighting and compositing but also in texturing and look development. Pixar is so famous for its crazy attention to detail. Soul aligned with my desire perfectly.
Additionally, I took inspiration from Minions and Despicable Me, which are also among my favorite animated features. They always bring us vibrant, visually stunning sequences with a positive and cute mood.
Armed with these, I started gathering references from all of these animations, focusing especially on interior scenes, which helped me shape the foundation of Doraemon: The First.
The Design
About the composition, I started with a simple blockout using cubes, then gradually replaced them with polished assets. Day by day, the room was filled with details and props.
I had some references from both the manga and the cartoon series to guide the layout of the room. However, I needed to make adjustments to balance between photorealistic quality and artistic composition. For that reason, I sketched my own layout, ensuring that the core elements of the original design were preserved while refining other aspects to achieve a more appealing shot.
In terms of texturing, I divided all assets into two groups: the first one required painting in Substance 3D Painter, the second one could be handled through procedural texturing techniques in Maya and Arnold. Regarding the first group, I still followed the traditional workflow: unwrapping in Maya, gathering references, importing models into Substance 3D Painter, and doing as usual.
The second group turned out to be much more interesting. During the texturing and look development phase, I realized that my scene contained a large number of assets, especially items that shared similar material properties (like manga, toy cars, etc.). Following traditional methods would have required creating a ton of materials and manually importing and connecting numerous texture maps. More critically, any material adjustments following this method would demand an extensive time investment, manually tweaking each material. It's such an inefficient and time-consuming approach.
To solve this, I built custom parameters to control how a material interprets input textures and generates procedural noise variations. With this approach, instead of managing 100 separate materials for 100 manga, I worked with only one. Most importantly, I ensured the complete visual variations. Each book would still look unique because of differences in base color, imperfections, and roughness driven by the parameters and random noises. All of them are changed procedurally whenever I change the input of a custom parameter. I implemented this method so many times, which allowed me to make quick adjustments during look development without being drowned in a sea of materials, ultimately saving me a lot of working hours.
For the Doraemon model, this project was something I had dreamed of for a long time, so I often searched online for rigged versions of Doraemon. After reviewing several, I chose the one created by Sgwa Yang and purchased it.
After downloading, I made some topology adjustments in Maya. At first, I considered using the original look development version from the author, but later decided to create my own look. I redid all the texturing and look development, using a mix of seamless maps and procedural noise to craft a version that matched the style and mood I was aiming for.
Lighting
I could break my lighting setup into five main light groups: Sun, Sky, Fill, Rim, and Bounce. Each of these groups had a very clear role in shaping the final look.
I started the light rig with a Skydome light. This acted as the base, simulating the effect of a natural sky and providing a subtle overall illumination. It helped establish the initial shaping of the whole scene and made asset reflections much more interesting before I even introduced the Sun.
The Sun (also the key light in my case) is the dominant light source that illuminates the room with its huge energy. It defined the time of day, clarified the focus of the image, and provided most of the visual interest and depth. On top of that, the sun emphasized the material properties of both the environment and the character, producing strong specular responses that added realism and appeal.
Next came the Fill light, which is essential for softening the shadows cast by the Sun/Key. By reducing contrast, it ensured the details remained visible even in dark areas while preventing the scene from feeling too harsh.
For the Rim light, I used it for subtly outlining certain elements to enhance separation and depth. In my scene, the Sun already created beautiful rim effects on the background assets as well as on Doraemon himself, so I mainly used additional Rim Lights to highlight objects in the foreground that needed a bit more definition.
Finally, the Bounce Light is also worth mentioning. It was used to reinforce the directional influence of the Sun. However, I used it sparingly. If overdone, it could easily break the realism and make the lighting feel artificial.
This systematic approach provided comprehensive control over the scene's lighting narrative while maintaining photorealistic qualities throughout the composition.
After completing the lighting, I moved on to rendering. Obviously, rendering an interior scene is far more time-consuming compared to an exterior one. Therefore, I optimized the setup as much as possible to make the scene practical for rendering.
Firstly, I carefully assigned samples individually to each light, keeping them just high enough to achieve an acceptable image quality without wasting render time. Then, I took advantage of Arnold's Mipmap system, which helped speed up texture loading and memory usage. Finally, I divided the scene into multiple render layers and set each one with its own optimized render settings. This allowed me to maintain quality while still keeping the rendering efficient. More specifically, I split the scene into four main layers: Background, Character, Foreground, and the Sleeping Bubble.
With this foundation in place, I had all the ingredients I needed for the "cooking" stage of compositing. In the compositing phase, I applied an additional round of denoising to ensure flickering noise would not affect the final frames. From there, I fine-tuned material properties (Diffuse, Specular, Transmission, Subsurface Scattering, etc.) to bring more realism and richness to the image.
I also adjusted the contribution of individual light groups, both by region and by asset, to maintain proper balance. On top of that, I added volumetrics, dust motes, and lens effects. Altogether, these steps gave me the best possible final frame in terms of visual quality and aesthetics.
I faced some critical challenges during the production of this project.
Cultural Difference and Research
As a Vietnamese artist working on a project rooted deeply in Japanese culture, one of my biggest challenges was bridging that cultural gap. The scene I created offered a wide-angle look into a traditional Japanese-style room, so it demanded a deep understanding of native culture.
I did spend many days immersing myself in articles, images, and videos about Japan. Over time, I even became familiar with Japanese names of iconic objects such as Tatami (floor mats), Fusuma and Shoji (sliding doors), Zabuton (cushion), Futon (bedding), Randoseru (school backpack), Kendama (toy), Daruma (doll), and many more.
I also researched traditional Japanese patterns commonly used in interiors, including Seigaiha (blue ocean waves), Tsuru (crane), Sakura (cherry blossom), Asanoha (Hemp Leaves), Hishi (diamond), Ichimatsu (checker), etc.
I also studied iconic Japanese artworks and even integrated Hokusai's The Great Wave off Kanagawa into the wall calendar inside Doraemon's room.
I wouldn't claim that my final scene is 100% accurate to Japanese culture, since I am not a native and my research was entirely online, but I can confidently say that it represents my best effort to recreate and honor Japanese cultural aesthetics from a foreigner's perspective.
Looping
From the very beginning, my goal was to create a seamless looped scene that would allow viewers to immerse themselves in the nostalgic world of Doraemon without interruption. That meant every moving element in my scene (curtain, dust motes, etc.) had to maintain visual continuity between starting and ending frames. Achieving this required much more effort than simply animating them in a straightforward physical manner, as I had to carefully design each motion to loop flawlessly.
Render Time
Render time was another significant obstacle. As mentioned earlier, interior scenes typically take much longer to render than exterior ones because the lighting requires more expensive calculations in a confined environment. To make the project feasible, I optimized all possible aspects: light samples, Arnold's mipmap texture system, render layer separation, and fine-tuned render settings.
Before optimization, a full-frame render could take 1.5-2 hours. After refining my setup, I managed to reduce that to around 25-30 minutes per frame. Once I had pushed the render optimization as far as possible, any remaining problems had to be handled later in compositing.
Noise
Hand in hand with render time came the issue of noise. Even after all my optimizations, the rendered frames still contained a noticeable amount of noise. I couldn't simply raise or lower the render settings. Otherwise, I might incur one out of two issues (or even both): steeper render time or lower image quality. I had to strike a careful balance between render speed and quality, accepting that the raw renders would inevitably contain noise. Fortunately, after experimenting with various methods, I found a solution in compositing that helped me achieve a clean result.
Working in Free Time
Another big challenge was time management. This was a passion project, so I could only dedicate 2-3 hours a day to it, sometimes more during weekends. There were even entire months when I was too busy with jobs and didn’t touch the project at all. Naturally, this prolonged the timeline, and completing it required a lot of patience and persistence.
Areas Outside My Expertise
There were also parts of the production that were not my strongest skills. It had been quite a while since I last worked on modeling and texturing, and I still needed help with rigging and animation. Luckily, I had good friends who supported me: Ninh Bui, who assisted with modeling and texturing, Thanh Nguyen, who helped with rigging, and Khang Truong, who contributed with his capability in animation. I am deeply grateful to them for helping me bring this long-cherished project to life.
Conclusion
This project taught me a lot, and most of those lessons are highly technical. Sharing them all here would be too lengthy, so I hope to make a YouTube video in the near future where I can dive deeper into the fun facts about the project as well as the lessons learned from it.
However, the most significant lesson, and also the first piece of advice I'd give to any beginning artist, is this: if you want to get valuable lessons learned, you have to "DO". And by "DO", I don't just mean studying tutorials or learning techniques. Theory without practice fades quickly, and true understanding only comes when you put knowledge into action. Give yourself exercises or personal projects which better go beyond your current limits. When you force yourself to complete them, even if it's tough, you'll come out much stronger, and those struggles will give you real, valuable lessons. A friend once told me, "Everything seems easy until you actually do it".
Problems only reveal themselves once you start, but if you keep your patience and solve them one by one, you'll collect insights that no amount of passive learning could ever provide. That's exactly how I've approached self-learning throughout my journey.
I also believe it's crucial to research your subject matter deeply and infuse that knowledge into your project. Don't just create generic things, make them more lived in. That's why I spent so much time studying Japanese culture for this project. Without that cultural grounding, the scene would have lacked the spirit and authenticity that make an image stand out. Make your image worth the audience's time.
Finally, one of the most practical lessons I've learned is: "Work smarter, not harder". Always look for ways to optimize your workflow. If you find yourself spending much time on the same task over and over, that's a sign you need to find a smarter solution. In my case, I built procedural materials, split renders into layers with optimized settings for each, and streamlined my rendering pipeline. Time is one of the most valuable resources we have, so using it wisely is essential.