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?

As some of you may know, BFX has been an annual competition and festival since 2012. I remember seeing a group of current (2018) third years making a intro video of themselves to be submitted to the competition, last year (2017). And they were better known as Team Sponge (shoutout to Thomas Wallis, Ryan Orgill, Amy Lucas, Daniel Martin & Luke O'Sullivan) on the competition.

Ever since hearing of their success story and what amazing fun that they have had in the competition, the time then came to us second years to receive a briefing from Sofronis (also known as Saf), via a Skype call in the very fancy SoFT Cinema. During that call, it really intrigued everyone from our year group and needless to say, people started shuffling into groups, planning what they were going to compile into their showreels for their applications.

I alongside with my team have already started planning for BFX ever since second year started. So, for us, it was really quite intriguing to see so many people so interested in the competition as we didn't know that there were that much interests going round. Despite it being a competition to be picked and every group having an equal fighting chance, everyone was still helping each other out and reviewing each person's showreels before they submitted. Truth be told, everyone else's showreels were amazing! I remember seeing some of them and I was just stunned by it and amazed to see how far everyone has progressed since the start of first year.

Then came the time when submissions for applications closed (28th Feb). And throughout the week, there was the sudden snow that hit us all (which I might add: was a hell lot of fun for us but not for the university, hahaha) and we all thought that this might delay in the results of the announcement of the shortlisted groups for the BFX competition. Turns out: it didn't delay anything at all.

On the 5th of March (p.s.: my birthday), as usual we were all busy doing work and I was normally just working from home. Out of nowhere, this unknown number dialled me and I ignored it because I thought it was one of those "Did you get into an accident recently, Miss?" calls (those are very creepy- what is up with those?). Turns out, that number dialled one of my team mates as well but she ignored it too because she, too, thought it was one of those calls. Then another of my team mate messaged me and asked if I were busy and wanted to let me know about something. The next minute, we were all literally screaming in our dedicated group chat for BFX, realising that we got in. So, my main question was: Was this a birthday gift? Were we on some prank show? Were we lucky or were we lucky?

Needless to say, I was stunned. I wasn't that confident in my skills especially when in comparison with everyone else's showreels that I have seen, so this was definitely... unexplainable. BUT, I'm excited to start on this journey and meet new people, work with clients and also work alongside industry mentors (we do that here in Falmouth University too, but... I'm not going to complain of having more nice things, haha).

So, here's the showreel that I submitted to them:



And so, this is where and how Team Egg's journey began...

Starring:
- Ting Loh
- Amanda Chin (hey, that's me!)
- Kuan Dang
- Kieran Trerise
- Samantha Zaleski

Will keep you guys updated!

A few weeks back, we had an entire week with the legendary Luis Cook (I'll be doing a post about what inspiring words he has left us to ponder on). Honestly, this is just one of the amazing quirks about being in Falmouth University. You get tons, and I mean TONS of amazing people from around the world to come and give such inspirational talks.

ANYWAY, onto the main topic of this post. I'm not one to develop my own ideas... wow, now that that's in writing, do I even deserve to call myself a creative? Jokes. I mean, I have ideas, but they never seem to be able to morph into a 3-minute film. Maybe because I never think very in-depth to the core of my idea. But also maybe I'm not too confident of them? Or maybe because people tend to shoot them down fairly quickly. All in all... I'd prefer to work on people's ideas and bring them to life if possible.

So, my friend, Ting, pitched this idea of hers to Luis Cook when he was in Falmouth Uni for the week, and the more we talked about it, the more Luis added more flair and purpose to the idea, the clearer we saw the film and how it would seem to be with still maintaining the main core of the idea. Initially, the idea was going to emphasise on motion, with vivid colours placing on the characters and backgrounds and then it all gets stripped away– it was going to be monotonous and dull towards the end as the protagonist's ability to move gets taken away. It's also a film that teaches animators that motion is important in animation.

After all that, Luis said that every movement can be treated like a dance (wise words from a wise man). The simple swivel of a chair whilst doing work in the studios, or a kid riding a bike, or tapping fingers on the desk, etc., they can all be seen as a dance. Even when you're in the shower, it can seem like it's a dance. He said to implement the action and the sound but without the object, e.g.: a kid riding a bike– audience sees kid cycling but doesn't see the bike, which plays with their mind.

He also gave us some inspirations to look up to:

Feet of Song by Erica Russell:


The Monk and The Fish by Michaël Dudok de Wit:



Thought of You by Ryan Woodward:



Duet by Glen Keane:


We started thinking about it and Ting wanted to do a life cycle of a man, from birth to death, all in a form of a dance. And thus, 'Dance of Life' was born.

During our introductory lecture to Design & Pre-Production for Animation 2, we had 3 students from Film to brief us on the project that they are developing for their third year, called, Curiosity. It is about a little girl that finds a dusty and forgotten robot in a warehouse. The team wanted us to create and come up with robot designs that will fit with their story. It must have a screen for a face and also have the style of a humanoid robot due to the fact that the team will be using Mo-Cap for this project.

They mentioned that the designed robot must have all 4 limbs attached as they will be using Mo-Cap. The more I worked on the design, the more I wondered about the 4 limb requirement. We were briefed about the technology, Mo-Cap, before... and couldn't a chosen limb be switched off or deactivated? Nevertheless, they are our clients and it would be best if we just followed what they wanted anyway.




The humanoid-ish robot design that I went for was a deep-sea robot. The backstory of this robot is it was created by scientists to allow them to discover new life that is in the deep sea, instead of sacrificing mankind's life to head down to the darkest parts of the unknown. This robot was dumped in the warehouse due to it being replaced by an updated version of itself that can collect more samples and dive even deeper (life is sad when you get replaced by hip, young, new, fresher versions).

The other robot design was inspired by Chinese New Year. I hosted a CNY dinner this year (TMI, but... it adds to the story), and amongst the food that was served was the glorious and heavenly dim-sum. And I thought to myself, why can't there be a robot that steams up dim-sum and serves it to you almost instantly upon request? So, I designed it. The main body is inspired by the bamboo baskets that dim-sum are normally steamed in, alongside with the legs which are inspired by the traditional outfits that lion-dancers wear.



**P.S.: Peter Lord came and gave us a talk on the 16th of Feb... Are we blessed or are we blessed? I'll probably do a post on it soon and what inspiration the great Mr Lord has given me. Check it out on the FalAnimation & VFX Blog <here>!

Ah, 2018. A fresh new year, a fresh new start. That's what we often tell ourselves when the clock strikes midnight and the number of day count hits a reset button: day 1 of 365... then we head off to bed with that mantra in our head. And when we get up, nothing feels different, then a few days go by, suddenly everything is different.

A new year meant a new term for us, university students. More often than not, we dread having to restart all over again, trying to get used to the new module guides, trying to get back into the rhythm of working and breaking our backs for projects to be completed, etc. But, deep down, we are all always excited to start on new projects and getting all those fresh new ideas out in the open.

Similar to the first term (of 2nd year), this new term, we were all going to have to complete a live brief module, a pre-production module and... here's the different one: a pre-dissertation module.

For our first week back, we were given a briefing from Kresen Kernow about their project brief. One of it was to go onto digital interactive touch screens, giving the audience an overview of the work that Kresen Kernow does, along with their archives. Another brief from them was to bring the Tregellas Tapestries to life. I almost went forwards with the Tregellas Tapestries brief, until Derek mentioned that there would be another live brief coming in, which was from the Devon & Cornwall Police.

The brief from Devon & Cornwall Police was about Hate Crime (which has now changed to Diversity). After careful consideration, I went with the Diversity brief instead. I teamed up with Ting Loh, Kuan Dang, Majua Carvajal & Samantha Zaleski for this project.

The next module is the Pre-Production round 2 (dingdingding!). For this module, much similar to before, we are expected to either work together or by ourselves to produce a pitch bible, which can be used to be pitched in our third year.

The final module is the pre-dissertation module which is Research & Method. It is what it says it is... so, do I need to go on?

Like all terms, I'm always excited for new things to occur. This term will be the same as well. I know now on how to arrange and split my time properly amongst the modules, in comparison to the previous term, and I intend to give it my best shot this term in everything that I do. :)

Until then!