amanda

Here comes my favourite part of every term whenever there's a film project to work on: schedules! Oddly enough, scheduling seemed like a very normal task for me to do whenever we have a film to work on and to abide within a certain time frame.


Production schedule
Individual task sheet

Overall shot list (close-ups are below)

Close-up of shot list (i)
I learnt from our Crew Project sessions with Rosa to name our shots at least by 100s (e.g.: sh0100), just in case that we might have to remove or add extra shots in. This system will allow the production to add in whatever shots that may be required in the long run or remove them as see fit without disrupting the numbering sequence.

Close-up of shot list (ii)
I decided to add in the lip-sync criteria which will help the production know which scenes may require lip-sync animation, alongside with the line of dialogue. The duration of each shot has also been added into the shot list to ensure that we stick with the length of the voiceovers and also the timing that we have set for the animatic.

Info sheets for animators & colourists

Concept arts... are always a tricky thing for me. I decided to give it a go and see what I come up with. Initially, when we were giving our practice pitch, the lecturers said that the concept art didn't seem 'dance-y' enough, which, ironically– was in the title of the project. So, Emma, Ting and I started coming up with ideas, making sure that each concept art was a dance pose that's not only exaggeration of what the character was feeling but also ensuring that there was a constant dance pose or movement through the film that the audience can perceive that the film would be a dance film.

Here are some of the concept arts that I have done:

After weeks of having a good rhythm of animation to clean-up to colouring to exporting, we finally have reached to the end of the production! We managed to finish a week earlier than planned as we were all working on the film over Easter, which helped in giving us more time to fix any errors or inconsistencies that have popped up.

So... here goes!:


Overall, I'm really happy with what we have achieved over the weeks. Despite having to constantly worry about keeping up to schedule, I would say that we worked fairly well as a team. Initially, we had our misunderstandings of how the style was going to be and all, including the fact that we wasted a little more time than we wanted to on determining the art direction– but in the end, we all came together and produced this film.  Live briefs are in fact really fun to do and also having the opportunity to be working with real clients and real briefs is also another plus of being on the course. With the right team, anything is possible as well!

With the initial idea in mind, we came up with mood boards to set the tone of what we were going to go for. These are the moodboards that I've compiled together:

Throughout the live brief, other than taking charge of the schedules and assigning tasks, I took up the role of colouring layouts with Ting.

The layout artist for this project was Majua. Honestly, he's a very talented person when it came to layouts and they all looked superb! He managed to capture the essence of a kindergarten well. I remember watching Gakuen Babysitters one evening and asking him to get some of inspiration from it.

Snippet from Gakuen Babysitters.
P.S.: If you have not watched Gakuen Babysitters yet... give it a go! It's a very heart-warming series and I highly recommend it.



So, with our pastel colour palette in mind, these are how the final backgrounds that I've coloured looked like:








We added the 'Noise' effect to give the backgrounds a little more texture. For the background with the view of the lights, I added in the effect of 'Outer Glow' to show that the lights are on instead of leaving it looking flat.

Onwards to animations!

Turns out... this will be the final term that I'll be having life drawing classes! I'm not too sure how to feel about it, to be honest. It's quite nice to have a 2-3 hour shut down from staring at computer screens and just loosen up a little. Also, this doesn't mean that life drawing ends at the end of second year. In third year, we can join in life drawing sessions with the first & second years if we wanted to!

This term, our life drawing classes are quite weird in terms of schedules. Some classes were cancelled or postponed due to the snow, and some were due to unforeseen illnesses that the tutor was facing. So... all in all, it was quite a mixed term of life drawings. We've had sessions with Andy, Kathy and Jason– all of which were amazingly fun.

These are the few that I'm quite happy with:







The last picture was essentially my last drawing for life drawing classes and I'm really really really proud of it as I've never really played around with the chalks or different coloured paper like the other students have. 
Tata for now, life drawing! Thank you to all the amazing life models and tutors that made the sessions so worthwhile and fun.
Fun tip: If you ever come across a masterclass/session with Martin Morris or any life drawing sessions in general, GO FOR IT!

When it came down to choosing between the Kresen Kernow and the Diversity brief, our team went for the latter. Since then, we laid out a concept of an idea and decided on how we were going to approach the brief. Our team ended up looking at the root of the issue and for us, it seemed clear that the best way to go about this was through children and how it causes a domino effect. As children are naive and parents being their model in life, whatever a parent says or does, ultimately their child would then learn from them, and with children being as naive as they are, they wouldn't know the difference between right or wrong because in their eyes, their parents would never do a wrong thing, would they?