amanda

This term, the animation technique that I chose to have a full length experience in is stop-motion. There was definitely not a single ounce of doubt that I went through when I was asked to make a decision, a few months back. There's only 9 of us that chose this particular technique, out of the very many students in our year. I guess that's what makes us the very 'weird but special' breed of students.

To ease us back into using the puppets to animate, we were given the task of anticipation, action & follow through just as we were given in our first term (e.g., kick/punch). However, this time, we were told to shoot on ones. Shooting on ones took some time to get used to, since every tiny movement contributed to a smooth transitioning animation.

What made me excited was that we were given an induction to using better puppets a.k.a. second year puppets, which meant that we didn't have any excuses to produce a very robotic animation like we used to make, back in first term.

I chose to do the punch as it seemed like an overlooked action when it comes to animating. Having to test out how a punch was supposed to look like, I was back in my little corner in the stop-motion area throwing air punches upwards, sideways, front punch, uppercuts, etc. Animators do weird live-action tests sometimes...


This is my first try:

I was still trying to get used to the idea of taking it on ones. It still went really quickly and halfway through the shot, I really didn't like how it went but I had to finish it up before trying it out again.

This is my second try:

This second trial... the motion of the punch went too slow that it seemed like a tap on the second puppet's nose. Then it sped up really quickly at the end that made me sit in silence for a good minute, rethinking my life choices.

This is my final try:

I took this last attempt the day after the previous two shots and to be fair, it still went by really quick, but I liked how it flowed evenly. Even the punch felt like a punch! Can we also please talk about how nice the lighting was for this sequence? Bless the existence of white surfaces as a reflector.  Well, that's it for the punch sequences! I'm still trying to get a hang of shooting on ones– hopefully I'll get better at it soon. Have a nice day!

cr: Sherchle
Hello! So, after what seemed to be a long Christmas break and several inductions later... term 2 has officially begun. Not gonna lie, but there won't be as many posts as term 2 as most of the projects that will be on my blog will feature the completed versions for each module/project.

Let the journey of the final half of year one begin!

Hello, again.

So, over the course of the very empty and quiet three weeks that I had for Christmas break, I made a prior decision to stay back on campus and not travel home to Malaysia. Not gonna lie, it was a fairly tough decision to make, but let's get on to the real thing. While majority of the people that I know travelled home safe and sound, I had the privilege to experience a very, very, very, dead silent studio. Before the break started, I started making some gifs for my showreel, which were just very simple pandas doing simple motions, and I'm going to be honest with you, I'm pretty hooked on doing these little gifs!

 1) The "dabbing" motion is something that most of us first years are pretty much... invested in, during the first term- so, I incorporated that into the panda and added it into the starting title card of my showreel.

I would say that doing gifs of simple, solo characters/objects would be possible on FireAlpaca, and for more characters/objects that require different set of timings, TVPaint would be more suitable. Well, here ends the final week of the Christmas break!

Hope you've all had a very Merry Christmas, and, oh! Happy New Year! Here's to more self-discovery and exploration around animation, the mediums, and also the art form itself in 2017!

Until then.

In the module of 'Storytelling for Animation', we were allocated six sessions with Frankie, our lecturer for 'Cinematography'. After consulting with our second year peers and watching some of their cinematography final pieces, my group and I came to a realisation that most of the themes were horror and we didn't really want to tap into that.

After pitching our idea of a drunk lad coming home and somehow ending up playing a tensed up game of Jenga with a teddy bear, Frankie said he liked it a lot as it seemed like we were pitching a "Say No To Drugs" campaign. Honestly, that seemed like a good way to go about the project.

This was our final piece:



We had such an amazing lead actor in this project and we were truly grateful to him as he was so cooperative with us throughout the entire filming session. The major issues of this project was trying to handle the teddy bear. We had one of our team members to move the bear but also not have their hand in the shot. The scene where the bear slams the Jenga stack out of frustration... we only had that one chance and thankfully we did 'warm up' shots before leading up to that one sole scene.

Overall, it was a good experience and also the post-production team definitely had fun editing and compiling the footage and also had fun with the effects that they could mess about with. Hopefully you feel the intensity of this cinematography project!

Have a nice day!

Just going to be upfront and admit that hearing the entire process of constraints and how it worked, really made me need a moment to breathe. But! I watched some tutorials online, which is definitely somewhat different than what Georg has taught us all. However, we're all supposed to make our own decisions when it comes to stuff like that, and to try things out before actually admitting we're absolutely deep in a rut.

AND I MANAGED TO DO IT! Well, it's not A+ worthy, but this is the proudest 3D piece that I've done, even though it took me a mere... 7 hours... to complete it. I may or may not have forgotten to blink during the process of completing this Herc rig. Nevertheless, I like it!




Added a little flair to this little rig, didn't I?

And that wraps some of the basics of 3D up for the first study block! I'll most probably go back and work on the basics as the foundations are really important.

Have a nice day!

After the attempt on Monty's jazzy walk, this week's task was to play around with a rig called Mery! I thought we had to do only one pose, but in face, we had to do 6 key poses with the Mery rig. Honestly, compared to the Monty task... this was so much easier and so much fun.


Brief through:

1) I referenced a picture of a figurine that was holding an umbrella. I'll just put out a guess and say that the figurine was probably trying to touch rain or something.

2) This pose definitely reminded me of The Exorcist. I still laugh so much at that scene, it's great.

3) Mery's attempt at tai-chi, reaching for the inner peace within herself... kidding. Just fooling around with tai-chi, as you do.




Brief through:

1) Mery portraying a posh boss of a big company. You know what I'm most happy about of this picture? Not the pose, but the squashed ball. (Yes, I'm weird.)

2) Mery trying to be an airplane, probably to some kids at the nursery.

3) "WHY?!" (basically what my friend described this pose to be.) This is Mery expressing "why don't you love me" to an imaginary floofy doggo.



I tried referring to some pictures for these 3 sitting ones, but I ended up just messing around with the rig and creating my own poses. Georg did recommend to do some sitting poses instead of all of them being standing poses.

Overall, this post has given you insight to what goes on in my mind while doing random key poses after a huge intake of caffeine and sugar. Classic animation student I am.

Hopefully Mery's poses have entertained you in some way.

Have a nice day!

ATTACK OF THE PUGGO!:
Now that I've gained your attention with a mischievous pug, a.k.a., mission accomplished! Today's post is going to be about water splashes. Ta-da!

Just imagine those bottles of shampoo/soap that the puggo went super ruff at plopping into the tub full of water. What happens? The water goes splash.

Before I actually started animating it on TVPaint, I did some sketches for it.



So, here's my attempt at making an animated splash:



To be honest, this is my proudest work out of all my 2D stuffs because:
1) look how smooth the animation looks
2) the colour scheme


I felt that the little blobs of droplets of water were the ones that made the splash seem more of a splash. Without it, it's just some weird jelly sculpture that's floating on some blue blob of stuff. I'm really, really, really, really, really happy with how this turned out!

Have a nice day!