amanda

After weeks and weeks of discussion, adjustments, reediting, tutorial sessions and keeping up with production schedule, we finally managed to piece our entire title sequence project together.


This is our final animatic:



This is our final piece:


Things that I've learnt after working in a group:
1) Learn to compromise.
2) Have faith in your team members.
3) Accept criticism.
4) Learn to accept that sometimes things happen.
5) Try to stay calm at panicky moments.
6) Google Drive is the best invention for a group project.
7) Snacks are a group best friend (this is so important!! Make sure everyone is fed well!!)
8) Remember that you're doing this as a team and not as a solo project. Everyone has a fair share in workload and also in opinions!

In the beginning, we were pretty much struggling with coming up with a proper storyline and sequence for this project. Slowly we were starting to see the bigger picture and it was genuinely nice that every team member could also envision how the title sequence was going to be like. Surely along the way there'd be some obstacles but as long as one deals with it in a civil manner, soon enough, things will definitely work out.

We were also struggling with not having enough to fill out a minute worth of title sequence footage but at the end of the day, we managed to have 65 seconds worth of footage which exceeded our expectations! I personally think that after this project, my 2D skills have improved by a few steps. Before this I couldn't even animate a head turn properly!

Another main thing to end this project on is that one should always remember that when you're in a group project together, everyone should play a part in keeping each other sane (especially when you have so many other deadlines to cope with), and also that it's a group project whereby everyone has a fair share of sharing their opinions on everything that goes in and out of the project!

Overall, I'm honestly happy with the outcome of this project and am grateful to have the opportunity to work with very crazily nice and talented people from my course. Also, doesn't that soundtrack sound amazing?


This is my personal showreel for this title sequence project:



Have a nice day!

After all those practices that we were given in Motion Studies class, it was all mounted up into this final piece of production sequence called 'Dog Wants A Kitten'. We were all told to design a dog armature and build it using wires, polymorph, foam, and some other bits and bops that were given to us. Other than that, we were also told to do a lip sync with the audio file that was given to us alongside with eye blinks for the characters.

This was my dog armature:




My dog in these pictures didn't have a head to go with it as the foam that I wanted to use started to corrode with the fixative that I used and it didn't hold the wire steadily. In the end, I ended up using polymorph for the dog's head and also its ears.

Unlike my other stop-motion buddies, their dog is so much more complete than of mine. What was important to me was that my dog survived through the entire production sequence! Although its tail broke off after shooting 3 scenes, it was alright as I had some black tack to stick it back together.

Here goes:



I keep making the mistake of not checking the set-up and making sure that all the unnecessary objects were out of shot (e.g., pen/paper/wires). In some of the scenes, the blinks were also too quick which really bothered me but I didn't have enough time to spare to re-do those scenes again.

Overall, I'm fairly happy with the outcome, but I believe I could have done better! Also, the quality of images that come from using DSLRs make me not want to use those webcams for even just general practices! I mean, look at those quality images.

Have a nice day!

When it came to being given a background project, I was stuck for a little while and knowing that I could do any sort of background with a realistic painting style, I decided to go with my theme of fishing village. I sourced for pictures online, of references of mountains, fishing boats, fishing boathouses, wooden bridges and such, to make up my background project.

In the beginning, I wanted to incorporate the technique of Chinese calligraphy painting into my background project. After trying out certain brushes, I still couldn't figure out how I could make it work. Before heading on to the next style, I decided to look up into Impressionism, one of the art movements that I was fairly intrigued by back when I was attending college. The artist that I chose was Eugène Boudin and the reason why I chose Impressionism was that I loved how patchy it looked and the colours were also very subtle and almost pastel-like.

I also decided to do a panning shot instead of a zooming-in shot as I felt like a long pan would allow me to make different parts of the background shot move separately. I found this project to be fairly soothing to do as it just meant painting without having to worry about technicalities in the beginning. Towards completing it, the one and only worry was "How do I pan it?" and instead of using After Effects like most of the people in my course have done, I went forwards with using TVPaint as I had to animate some of the elements.

Here goes:




When I realised that I had to animate a flag waving in the wind, I almost smacked my head a little too hard, but I did it in the end! The flag represents my state– and no matter how far I go, I'll always only have one true home where I'm born & bred and also where my family belongs. I'm so happy with the outcome of this project! It made me realise that I can do (almost) anything that I put my mind to.

Have a nice day!