Projects — Eunchae Won

Selected work / 06

Selected Projects

Games and digital works developed independently from programming and systems to 3D art, animation, and presentation.

Animation & process ↓

01 / faces-within-the-wheel.pngWinner · Best Animation

A blue multi-armed digital figure surrounded by angular lines

A silhouetted digital character holding a glowing light outdoors

2025Real-time 3D

Faces within the Wheel

Winner — Best Animation at the Kraken International Film Festival, Autumn 2025. A looping gameplay-derived work of unstable bodies and morphing identities.

The work begins as a game space but is presented as a single-channel looping video assembled from recorded gameplay. Rather than moving toward a conventional win state, it follows bodies that split, multiply, and morph through unstable environments.

Eunchae Won produced the game, creature modeling, rigging, animation, sound, gameplay recording, and final video. The work won Best Animation at the Kraken International Film Festival, Autumn 2025.

01

Challenge

Build a coherent moving-image work from a game space designed around unstable bodies, transformation, and repetition rather than a conventional win state.

02

What I built

The complete real-time work: game space, creatures, body-morph sequences, rigging, animation, sound, gameplay recording, and final looping video.

03

Technical implementation

Original 3D creature modeling and rigging, animated transformations, real-time scene production, gameplay capture, sound construction, and single-channel video editing.

04

Result

Winner — Best Animation, Kraken International Film Festival, Autumn 2025, with the official festival listing naming Eunchae Won as director.

Role: Solo production

Single-channel looping work built from gameplay capture
Original character morphing, animation, and sound
Winner — Best Animation, Kraken International Film Festival 2025

A blue multi-armed figure surrounded by angular branching forms — Recorded gameplay frame from the looping video

Close view of a red multi-limbed creature model against a black background — Red creature modeling and anatomy study

A layered winged figure surrounded by pale organic forms and angular fragments — Layered figure and winged-form composition

Layered figures emerging from a large flower-like structure — Multiplying bodies inside the game space

02 / nowhere-now-here.png

Nowhere, Now Here main menu with an orange cat beside a candle

A black cat standing near a plate in a brick-lined interior

Early Access (Beta) · In active developmentUnreal Engine 5

Nowhere, Now Here

An atmospheric cat game about small needs, quiet rooms, and the uncanny feeling that someone is about to arrive.

Built in Unreal Engine 5, the work turns a cat's ordinary needs—waking, eating, exploring, and searching for an exit—into a sequence of small narrative interactions. The domestic setting gradually shifts from familiar to uncanny as the player follows those needs.

The project is developed through an end-to-end original 3D pipeline: ZBrush sculpting and optimization, Substance 3D Painter textures, MetaHuman costume fitting, modular room assets, and gameplay logic authored in C++ and Blueprints.

01

Challenge

Turn a cat's ordinary needs into a readable gameplay loop while letting a familiar home gradually become uncanny.

02

What I built

A cat-led exploration game with original characters, costumes, modular rooms, environmental interactions, and a developing narrative progression.

03

Technical implementation

Unreal Engine 5 gameplay systems in C++ and Blueprints, supported by Blender and ZBrush modeling, Substance 3D Painter textures, MetaHuman costume fitting, and performance-aware asset preparation.

04

Result

Released in Early Access (Beta) for mobile and PC on itch.io. The game remains in active development, bringing its original characters, gameplay systems, and atmospheric world into a publicly playable experience.

Role: Solo developer & 3D artist

Cat-led environmental interactions and daily-needs loop
Custom C++ and Blueprint gameplay systems
Original character, costume, texture, and environment pipeline

A black cat encountering the Spider Monster through a doorway — Early Access (Beta) — Spider Monster encounter

A cat character standing beside a lit candle in a dark room — Gameplay study: cat, candle, and domestic scale

Textured and untextured cat character models shown in a 3D workspace — Character sculpting and texture development

A softly lit living room environment created for the game — Modular interior environment asset

A dark multi-limbed creature model with a hollow rounded head — Spider Monster character study for the expanded game world

03 / swan-in-lake.png

Collage of Odette, a swan figure, and a blue illustrated lake

Close-up of Odette against a surreal blue lake landscape

2021—20263D PC game

Swan in Lake

A chain-of-choices game where Odette gathers memories and decides whether to leave the lake.

In a quiet forest, memories, dreams, and values become links in a visible chain. The completed chain leads Odette toward one of two endings—leaving for an uncertain future or remaining with those bound to the lake.

01

Challenge

Turn a personal decision about leaving home into a playable chain of memories—not a dialogue menu.

02

What I built

A forest journey where found memories and values form a visible chain leading to two endings.

03

Technical implementation

Original character, feather costume, animation, and branching progression built for a 3D PC game.

04

Result

A playable autobiographical work about migration, memory, and the choice to leave.

Role: Solo developer & artist

Memories form a visible narrative chain
Two endings shaped by the collected links
Original character and feather-costume pipeline

Odette beside layered black swan silhouettes in a blue illustrated landscape — Early cover collage and visual direction

A swan crossing a still lake beneath narrative text — Ending I — Odette remains beside the lake

The alternate ending where Odette leaves the lake to pursue her dream — Ending II — Odette leaves to follow her dream

Odette in a feathered white dress beside a blue lake — Odette's journey through the choice landscape

Full-body 3D model of Odette wearing a layered feather costume — Feather costume modeling and character development

Grayscale sculpt of Odette wearing a crown and feather costume — Odette sculpt and feather silhouette study

04 / in-the-forest.png

A large pale digital creature crossing a distant forested hill

Performers moving together in a green forest clearing

2024Blender / Film

In the Forest

A dual-channel performance film and animation where five live roles are reinterpreted through uncanny digital creatures.

Two synchronized videos connect a live performance in a forest with a digital animation. A narrator guides five performers as they spontaneously move through the roles of Forest, Seed, Forest Keeper, Visitor, and Wild Animal.

After filming, corresponding 3D creatures were modeled and the performers' motion was captured and retargeted to them. The score changes through the interpretations of writer, director, narrator, performers, digital characters, and audience, treating embodiment as something alive and continually evolving.

01

Challenge

Preserve the relationship between an improvised forest performance and its digital reinterpretation across two synchronized video channels.

02

What I built

A live-action performance channel and a corresponding animation channel populated by five original digital creatures representing the work's five roles.

03

Technical implementation

Recorded performer movement was captured, retargeted to 3D characters in Blender, refined through character animation, and synchronized with the live-performance edit.

04

Result

A dual-channel work in which physical gesture and digital embodiment remain visible together rather than one replacing the other.

Role: 3D artist, animator & performer

Two synchronized video channels
Motion captured from live performance and retargeted to 3D creatures
Five roles interpreted across narrator, performers, and digital bodies

A creature crossing a distant ridge in a forest landscape — Digital creature moving through the landscape

Five performers moving together in a forest clearing — Live performance source for motion capture

Black and white creature model with a rounded mask-like head — One of the five digitally reinterpreted roles

05 / cycle.png

A lone player character crossing a dark surreal landscape

2023 · Exhibited 2024Unity

Cycle

A 3D game about escape and return—entering another world to outrun routine, only to find repetition waiting there too.

Cycle reflects on escape and return: the player enters a game to flee powerless routines, only to encounter repetition once more. Its characters operate as fragments of the self and mirrors of society, turning the journey into a meditation on hardship and transformation.

Built in Unity with real-world map data, the game shifts familiar geography into a surreal space. By stepping into another character's gaze, the player is invited to test whether a change in perspective can create a path toward freedom.

01

Challenge

Make the cycle of escape and repetition tangible through navigation, character perspective, and a transformed version of familiar geography.

02

What I built

A surreal 3D PC game whose environments and characters turn routine, hardship, and changes of perspective into an explorable journey.

03

Technical implementation

Unity and C# production using real-world map data, custom 3D environments, character behavior, animation, sound, and scene progression.

04

Result

A completed game exhibited in Karlsruhe, a UNESCO City of Media Arts, in 2024.

Role: Solo producer & developer

Unity-based 3D PC game built with real-world map data
Characters act as fragments of self and mirrors of society
Exhibited in the UNESCO City of Media Arts, Karlsruhe

06 / hopeless-butterfly.png

Four stages of a butterfly transformation game

Development collage for a handmade cocoon-shaped controller

2022Unity

Hopeless Butterfly

A 2D/3D PC game and physical interface that turns the wish to transform—and the frustration of being unable to—into play.

The Unity-based game moves through four stages of transformation: larva, 2D butterfly, muscle fly, and flower-fly. Clearing a stage promises escape from boredom and melancholy, yet each transformation leads to another form of helplessness rather than a final release.

A handmade cocoon controller carries that emotional condition into the player's body. Its awkward form and limited controls resist familiar ideas of mastery and efficiency, placing the player between the possibility of transformation and the restriction of being unable to move forward.

01

Challenge

Express the desire to transform—and the frustration of being unable to—through both on-screen play and the player's physical actions.

02

What I built

A four-stage 2D/3D transformation game and a handmade cocoon controller whose awkward form makes restriction part of the experience.

03

Technical implementation

Unity and C# gameplay across four visual forms, combined with physical-computing input, custom controller fabrication, animation, and sound.

04

Result

An interactive game and physical interface exhibited at Kinemathek Karlsruhe in 2022.

Role: Solo developer & artist

Four-stage butterfly transformation system
Handmade cocoon controller that embodies restriction and uncertainty
Exhibited at Kinemathek Karlsruhe in 2022

Side-scrolling 2D butterfly stage with flowers and platforms — Stage 2: the 2D butterfly game

Two dark muscular fly creatures facing one another — Stage 3: muscle-fly transformation

A handmade cocoon-shaped game controller held in two hands — The cocoon controller as a physical interface

Open cocoon controller showing wiring and electronic components — Controller electronics and fabrication process

Selected animation / 01

Animation & Process

Guppy project presentation with a sculpted figure and animation stills

2021 · Animation · 2′23″

Guppy

An animated self-portrait, produced independently including sound. The project documentation brings together drawings and 3D imagery.

Blender · Premiere · Cakewalk

Guppy original project documentation, image 1 of 4 — Guppy · 01

Guppy original project documentation, image 2 of 4 — Guppy · 02

Guppy original project documentation, image 3 of 4 — Guppy · 03

Guppy original project documentation, image 4 of 4 — Guppy · 04

New project / In development · 2026–present

SAMSARA

Concept & preproduction · Two-person indie project

A life disappears. Its path remains.

A surreal adventure concept inspired by the six realms of Buddhist samsara. Rebirth into different bodies is intended to change how players move, perceive, and explore the world.

Its central design, Karma Shape, records each life’s explored path as a circular contour. After death, that trace joins the perimeter of an existing Wheel of Samsara. How these traces influence the Wheel and future rebirth is the next design question to test.

Current work: game and narrative design, system proposals, and visual exploration
Next prototype goal: one body, one realm, and a complete birth–life–death–return loop
Engine and final visual format undecided; no playable build yet

AI-assisted concept illustrations under creator direction—not gameplay screenshots or finished assets.

ASCII-style concept exploration of the Chamber and Wheel of Samsara — The Chamber · AI-assisted concept exploration

Concept composition of a swimmer arriving in the Chamber through the water surface — Crossing the surface · AI-assisted composition draft