SWOT which stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats, is an analytical framework that can help your company face its greatest challenges and find its most promising new markets. I was absented on that day so I draw a SWOT illustration to analyse myself. I discussed with my boyfriend so I can have others opinion as well.
Opportunities:Hand drawn animation, using photoshop and watercolour with versatile style and mostly retro
Threats:Using computer programmes like maya and flash and too influenced and stay in comfort zone
I understand more about myself and want to find a way to improve those weakness. I noticed that I am not an active person and being passive is my fatal problem which needs to be removed from me if being an animator is my dream. Having no excuse that I need to know more people and to expand my friend zone which can start by talking more to the classmate and involving in more societies or meetings. I really hope there will be a significant improvement at the end of this academic year.
Studio Ghibli influences me so much and this is probably what I want to be in the future: Traditional drawing animator in Japan. I was doing the research two days before the presentation so it was quite brief and basically I am saying what I think about the company and so facts so I was not doing much research except going on wikipedia.
Then I remember Max has recommended me to watch this documentary about the studio. It is a long video about two hours and it is more than worth to spend that time to watch this which basically record the production of When Wind Rises and take about Mr. Miyazaki's work ethic and his insist of quality of work. This can not be explained well by any words so if you who is reading my blog now, go watch it because you will gain so much by watching this.
My notes and interpretation of the information for the presentation.
I need to keep tracking other Japanese animation studios that I am interested in and try to contact them by email. I know it will be quite difficult to get into the Japan animation career but I will try my best contacting while equipping myself with better drawing skills and practicing daily.
The Five Things I have learned so far on the programme:
I am able to use professional softwares I have never used before to animate for instant like Aftereffects, Maya, Photoshop and Premiere etc. The courses and the projects require an enormous use of technical devices and therefore learning to use them is unavoidable and something that I would eventually master. Since the increase of animating methods, more choices are given when processing the animation.
I have learned how to reflect efficiently and effectively. As we have to blog everyday about the working process, it is very useful to reflect briefly in order to find out the problem hence solve it. Reflection enables myself to spot what needs to be improve and how can I do better which improve the quality of the work and also the quality of myself.
I pay more attention to the current animation industry and how to study a piece of art. I look at animation in a different way by studying the technique and the concept behind while being more critical and providing constructive opinion. Studying from the professional triggers creative ideas and a good way to learn new techniques.
I learned to be prompt and to manage my time effectively. Scheduling the work and set an efficient timetable is extremely essential in order to be organised and hand in work on time.
I become more confident at public speaking as I learn to relax and present loudly and clearly in front of the class. Also giving out constructive feedbacks and suggestions as an audience and interact hormonally in the class.
The 5 Things I want to know more about:
I want to learn more about Maya. I am not a computer person but it would be changeling for me to use a 3D computer programme widely in different projects as well as increasing the 3D work in my portfolio.
I want to know more about the basics of animation for example go deep into the 12 principle of animation and have a intense project on it so as to build up a stronger foundation and drawing skills.
I want to know more about the filming of the animation. It would be exciting if we can visit the actual production of the animation studios and learn about the reality of the industry as well as how much we need to prepared ourself before stepping out of school. I do not think I am well prepared for the future and the course does not really linked to the reality of this industry in my own view.
I want to know more animating methods and techniques. There is a lot of possible ways to animate and I wish we could all try them out.
I want to know wether I am prepared to be an animation in the future. To be honest I sometimes doubt about that and I want to find out the answer for it. I hope there will be an answer at the end of this year so that I can set up an aim and eventually reaching it.
The 5 skills that I think are my strengths:
I am well prepared for everything. I like preparing and this is what I feel most confident about for example I will like to do a lot of research and brainstorm before I start. One thing I hate is working close to deadline which gives me panic and stresses me out.
I am good at observing people's features and facial expression. I always like to study other's emotion and guess their feelings which provides a lot of interesting information about the person and what they have experienced. Psychology intrigues me a lot.
I love drawing anime character. This does not only benefit me when drawing cute girls but this set a foundation for drawing a well-structured body. I have learned how to get the right proportion and gesture of a person which ease the reaction of a character.
I am multi-cultural which brings a lot of interesting elements in my animation and my opinion would be a huge different to the local students. The education system and the experience I had makes my ideas stand out from the class sometime and I am quite proud of it.
I am a good listener in group. It might be considered as quite and not so constructive but I like to come up with an idea that everyone like. Overall it is important to have a idea that group member feel happy and confident to work with and I am alway being that position in a group.
The 5 Things I like to improve:
I want to improve drawing skills which could enable a more refine character or background of the animation.
I would like to increase my motivation. Sometime laziness drives over me and this year I am going to fight back.
I want to improve the quality of all my work by working delicately toward perfection(but efficiently!)
I want to speak out more during group discussion so as become more interactive.
I want to improve on the animating skills especially in Aftereffect. This is because I feel like there would be a lot of opportunity to work with Aftereffect in the future while it is a amazingly good software therefore I want to master it in order to achieve more variety of style in my animations.
The 5 practitioners that demonstrate my interest in Animation:
Hayao Miyazaki-Studio Ghibli, they have a tremendous inspiration on me in both the way I approach to the story line and the conceptual character creation.
Tim Burton
Disney and Pixar
Nintendo SPD game- Fire Emblem, by creator Shouzou Kaga
Macross Project
The 5 websites/online resources that demonstrate your areas of interest within the creative industries:
Since there are so many videos of the umbrella revolution on youtube, I decided to extract a sound track out of a selected video which is full of the voice of protesters which I think is realistic and appropriate to be used in the animation.
I used this sound effects as the voice of the island. I have also added waves and running sound effects. There are not much short sounds effects of waves (most of them are like an hour relaxing sound of wave) so I quickly select the one I need. For the background music, I look for some adventurous type of music that can be play quietly at the back. In fact, I have a few more options but they are too ''battle'' music that would be too aggressive for an animation like this.
After editing the music, I can finally see it as a finished animation and I am very pleased with!
This is a chance for me to present what I like and what I am interested in to my peers and tutors and I have chosen to talk about the Amazing world of Gumball. This is an animation I watched on the plane which is absolutely fun and amazing! I have not watched cartoon network at least a decade and it is incredible that the graphics and contents have changed so much in a good way.
I will be preparing notes, a powerpoint with funny pictures to attracts my audience so as to make the presentation less dull. Additionally a video that can give a overview of the cartoon. More research on the characters are needed so that I can be more confident presenting them. I will focus on the mix-media animating method because it might interest our class and I think it is a innovative way to entertain children,
We had a talk in the Bradford Animation Festival by Mark Shapiro, the marketing manager of LAIKA animation studio and talked about the behind scenes of the hand-crafted and stop motion feature animation The Boxtrolls.
We had chance to look at the actual muppets they use in the film which is SUPER cool and it is very valuable to look at professional work in a very close distance. The hair, the costumes and even the material of it are done so perfectly, so much details and really realistic.
Shapiro introduced a lot of information about the behind scene like how long it takes to finish each shoot and the time management etc and I understand it is very hard to finish a stop-motion animation. There are so much to prepare before hand like sculpting the models, prepare different facial expression parts for each characters and creating the backgrounds. It sounds so crazy that they can only film 2-3 seconds of the film per day so the animation is full of precision and patient.
After the talk, we watched the actual film which is such a huge bonus! I have noticed so much details especially after the talk and start looking at some details like the clothes, the facial expressions on each character which is something I will never do before. I start appreciating the producers and animators even more because it is a extremely immense project that people usually neglect. The animation is very enjoyable and I especially like the character design of the trolls. They are unique and every troll has its own personality and characteristic which flavour the story and the relationship between the main characters. Stop-motion is such a crazy thing! I have never did a proper stop-motion before and watching The Boxtrolls motivates me to try out this as a new animating method.
A group of logs is about to freeze to death in a cold, icy desert. When they realise that the only fuel for warming fire is their own body, things starts heating up. The animation is mostly hand drawn I believe by computer programme, the species of the logs could be differentiate by their colours and texture and it is more interesting that just logs in the same type. The characters are designed quite simple but showing a lot of characters for instance the thin little stick is definitely the youngest one while the short, wrinkled log is the eldest. I learn that using body shape to bring out an character and allow them to be more diverse, letting audience to understand their act in the story is very important. I think this animation is reflecting the environmental problem of deforestation and desertification that why only a few logs are left in this server condition. This also makes me wonder what if this situation is applied onto human, will human sacrifice their friends and family for survival or we shall be moral to help each other, escaping the tragedy together? This animation has encourage me to animate something more meaningful rather than just for fun. If I can submit an animation and which would then go viral, it is better to be meaningful and have to power to make people think.
Mute is directed by Job, Joris and Marieke in 2013
MUTE is short animated film about a world populated by people without a mouth, a gory accident gives their lives a turn for the best. Job, Joris & Marieke is studio for animations, illustrations, character design and music and is the most popular Dutch spoken music video in Holland. This is a 3D computer animation and the graphics are so good. I can see the texture on the characters' face and even details on their clothes which is so realistic and delicately created. The lighting of the characters shows their shapes and texture and improve their 3D appearance. The concept and idea behind is good fun and extremely innovative and it has successfully turn violence into fun and enjoyable to watch. The animation runs fluently without any boring part and can clearly explain the world in only a few minutes and allow audience to share the joy of their 'new invention'. The music at the end makes me smile and the silliness is bringing so much fun to the audience. Although it might not have much deep message behind, I would like to make a interactive animation like this in the future to make people laugh.
''A woman engulfed in her inner world enjoys her strange love. We accompany her to a surreal space-time dominated by black, white, and red colour, and „auntie”. The secret of „zero” can possibly be deciphered only by cakes.'' by Fantoche.com
Madly in Love by Ikue Sugitomo
We watched this animation in the section of Japanese girls animation in the Bradford Animation festival. The whole section of these animation is focusing on the ambiguity of girls in contemporary Japanese indie animation and showing the difference between girls drawn by men and girls draw by women. There are a lot of weird and awkward contents like animating *ss and mental creepy drawings which make me feel uncomfortable. There are nearly no happy endings or hero types character which is unlike normal anime and perhaps most of the anime are create by men so I can see the huge difference in between. This is reflecting the social condition of Japan as well since gender is not equal and there are less females animators. It is clear that female in the females' sight is completely diverted to what male see and this programme has successfully helped to spread their inner thought and aesthetic. It is important to know the meanings behind when watching the animation but most of them are quite abstract and ambiguous. In the different aspect, the style and the use of colours are very nice which is very enjoyable to watch.
My sister has set up an online petite online last year on facebook and she asked me to design a banner for the shop. This is quite challenging because she is looking for a cute style like shown below and I need to meet my customers need. The characters are mostly likely asian who is the shop's target audience and the style of the clothes are girly and cute. This banner attracts me because of its use of colours which is creamy and pastel and there is no harsh out line on the characters so it is very comfortable to look at.
This is like a job so I do not want to mess it up. I planned very carefully by studying the sample she gave me and divided the character into layers like hair, eyes and clothes.
The finished products are these. Obviously the characters are not as good as the sample which makes me wonder how they have done it. I am not happy with two characters because their clothes do not look fashionable therefore I look at some trendy clothes online and search for patterns that can be put onto the clothes.
I am so proud it is used on her facebook page!
This is last year halloween special banner. I reuse the body of the characters and redesign clothes for them.
I would not say I am absolutely loving this job but I am happy that I had a chance to help someone's career and present my art online. There are a lot of things need to be concerned when making an illustration for commercial use like the copy right, the size and the content etc that I have never noticed before. After all this is an useful experience and it is good to practice illustration skill using photoshop out of the animation class.
I have borrow the book- Art of Wall-E in the school library when looking for reference for my COP essay and it inspires a lot of thoughts from me. The book has a very deep details about the idea behind, the preproduction art and obviously the character designs and environmental drawing etc.
I am so bad at mechanical drawings like drawing robots and machines and the book motivates me to experiment with different robotic drawings. At the beginning, it was difficult to think of the details without looking at the book. I have followed all the details, the size,the order and even the electrical supply. After that, I tried to draw my own robot which were quite unsuccessful because the mechanism is wrong and I do not believe in them, I still need to practice this more frequently in order to understand the basic of drawing robots. I think the reason why I am so bad at this is due to my gender? I seldom have connection with machines or never fix an electronic equipment before... I am not really interested in technology unlike my father or boyfriend. It might be a good opportunity to help or just watch them fixing electronic equipments in the future so as to understand more about machine. It might be also good to study car or pipes to get myself familiar with this 'stranger'. After all, I think trying out different drawing would be useful and become more flexible as an animator. I can change my style to satisfy different kinds of clients and requirement which is definitely needed to start practicing from now!
Warsaw-based artist Bozena Rydlewska aka Bozka creates vivid 3D pop-ups that wow us by their beauty and detail. She started the series after finishing her work 'New Botany' that made her curious how her illustrations would look like in three-dimensional form. She was tired of working on the computer and eager to do something with her hands so she made some research and each work needs 3 to 4 weeks to get finished.
I have cut up a book in layers before in GCSE art and I could only achieve some easy shapes and patterns. I understand the difficulty of making a pop up book/decoration and I suddenly think that pop-up might be a good media to make an animation. Although there have been so many pop-up book like animation like the title sequence of Enchanted, it would be unique to film the actual work using stop motion or even pixilation for further development.
If I am animating a pop-up book, I want to use so many colours as these art because would be fun to confuse their eyes with complexity hence let them to pay attention to every details. I like the layering of paper which is classical and vintage. It is very interesting to see how the artist twist the traditional pop-up book content and develop into her own unique style.
I especially like this one below because it is very dreamy and colourful. Pop-up books are recognised by their fantasy and fable style in major. Therefore in order to be different, I think trying different style and texture of the pop up might be a good method. For instance use acrylic board with a spacey, cyber theme.
Monument Valley is a mobile phone game that is developed by Ustwo. It is a puzzle game and player needs to solve absolutely beautiful optical illusions to enable the main character to complete different stages. I have played the game once on my friends's phone and I was totally amazed by the though behind and the unbelievable art. Such popular game has made a huge success mainly because of the innovational and unique style that could be seldom seen on mobile phone game market. As a game developer, know the target customers is a vital thing to lead to success and this game is exactly getting more popular in the group of teenagers or artist who like solving puzzles and enjoying beautiful graphics at the same time.
As a student, earning money from game is still an aim that is quite far away but I feel motivated looking at this success. Also I understand the importance of innovative mind and keep pushing boundaries. Although money is essential, satisfaction is even more important to encourage creative thinking and maintain self esteem.
Bendik Kaltenborn and Espen Friberg created this fantastic animation for Todd Terje’s “Alfonso Muskedunder”. I have listened to this music before and the animation has a style that is very similar to what I have expected. The causal and simple illustrations have increase the fun when enjoying the music video, compare with complicated illustration, the non-decorated and childish drawings could present the song boldly and straight follow to the audience. All the scenes are not really linked together or related but they all common in the rhyme and drawing style which unify the illustration. If I were the creator, I would try to include or hide a mark or an object in every frames that can allow audience to find and to interact with, obviously need to sync with the music as well! I really enjoy sharing thoughts with audience therefore I think this is could spread the joy easily.
On his tweeter, he shows some of the design work which is incredibly amazing. I will see his style in game design or commercial for electronic equipment. The illusion cubes create can fool humans' mind hence introduce a lot of interesting effects like what is shown in the video. What is more, the way the camera is pulling backwards could make an intriguing story and allow audience to bath in the story of the illusions. I think this is an amazing technique and the style is definitely something I want to try. I am so used to telling a story by a character so maybe next time I can challenge myself by creating a non-character story and study the style of him.
As a big Disney fan, I feel so shame that I have never heard of this Documentary or the Disney Renaissance. This lesson provides a good opportunity for us to know more about the history of this big animation company, what it has faced and how could it get over the difficulties.
The film documents the history of Walt Disney Feature Animation from 1984 to 1994, covering the rise of a period referred to as theDisney Renaissance.The film covers the fall and rebirth of Disney's animation division, the effects the new corporate team of Michael Eisner, Frank Wells, and Jeffrey Katzenberg. I noticed that the importance of cooperation between the creators and the position of the creators and animators in the animation company. They are the soul and the success to Disney and also the weakness just like a two-side blade. During the film, I understand the conflicts the animator has when they try to put in personal ideas within the restrictions and he leader of the department has to be a good listener. After all the animation is not a one man band but teamwork. I am amazed by Disney past and understand why it is so popular because there are so many talented artists to support it who have incredible enthusiasm and determination which is vital to animate. This is such an inspiring film that encourage the class to work hard and never stop dreaming. The woken up sleeping beauty is still a beauty and I believe the dream I wish will come true no matter how diverted or hard the way is going to be.
ummm...copyright is something I do not understand and quite boring but I know it is very important to a creator and company those sort of things. To be honest, I did not really paid attention to this lesson because there are so many difficult phases and terminology but I try to conclude the lesson in a few sentence.
According to wikipedia, Copyrightis a legal right created by the law of a country that grants the creator of an original workexclusive rightsto its use and distribution, usually for a limited time. The exclusive rights arenotabsolute; they are limited bylimitations and exceptions to copyrightlaw, including fair use.
Copyright is a form ofintellectual property, applicable to any expressed representation of a creative work. It is often shared among multiple authors, each of whom holds a set of rights to use or license the work, and who are commonly referred to asrightsholders.These rights frequently include reproduction, control overderivative works, distribution,public performance, and "moral rights" such as attribution.
So basically it is a system to protect creator that their work would not be stolen by any random people who claim the work is done by them. There are a lot of materials that can be copyrighted like films, games, animations, music, computer apps,drawings and illustrations etc and nearly anything could be copyrighted as long as it is produced as the result of independent intellectual effort or a collaborative effort.
We should not copy, adapting, distributing the work that is copyrighted because we do not own those work. To use their work, it is essential to contact the owner to ask for permission or to pay for it.
We are also introduced with the creative commons license which is a non-profit organisation that provides a legal framework to allow people to share, remix and reuse work legally. I think this is an useful license for poor people like myself who want cool music in the background so badly but every music is licensed. This encourage the share of art and the creativity among the world that I think is something important to do! Stop being so selfish and share your work to the public unless you are wanting money so badly. I think art is priceless so why not share it and see how your work turns out on the others hand?
Presentation is...
about a communication of a story;
a vehicle for sharing ideas, thoughts and concepts.
It is an opportunity for gaining and giving constructive feedback to/from peers and tutors
so it is better to know my audience!
In this lesson, we learn tips about how to make an effective presentation. Mike has done a very good job in this lesson try to use some good examples and bad examples to explain to us what people do their presentation. Colours will stress audience out so the use of colour should be careful with; the typography will have an effect on the audience, the type should be clear for them to see and should not be too much; the speaker should be well-prepared, knowing clearly what to say and assume the audiences know nothing; He suggested avoiding bullet points!
The most important thing is to relax and take your time because audiences are nice and they are wanting to know the content of the presentation. The key is to be enthusiastic about the topic and do not feel anxious about it.
It is the most useful PPP lesson so far, I feel relief about making an presentation. I must rehearse the presentation before hand and know my audience, prepare a script and be confident so as to make the best presentation in the world!
We had a lesson about knowing ourself within the community and how we can take this as our advantage to be part of the team. We were first introduced about the different types of personality like a leader and a team member, extrovert and cooperating. Looking at rather I am judging or perceiving and thinking character or a feeling character. All those tests had helped me to understand myself and also my classmate. I could see there are so many different type of personality and ways of approaching the work which might create a lot of chemistry when cooperating as a team. This lesson not only teach me how to know more about myself but to know about the people surrounded hence make good connection with them as well. This is very important at school and in the future. Since I am an introvert and a feeling person, I believe animation can speak for me and act as a link between the classmate. I will be a good advisor and a good listener if anyone needs me and I will try my best to explain and express myself to them.
The lesson of reflective practice is basically teaching us how to correctly reflect on own work, it is also way of looking at oneself critically to identify our work in the community. We need to reflect on our work experience and to think about what to improve and how. I have learnt how to make a good reflection from the foundation year so I am rather prepared for this and reflecting daily is the best way to improve myself and to analyse the strength and weakness of the work.
The lesson introduced the gibbs reflective cycle which I have a copy and stick to my wall to remind myself to make an effective reflection.
Basically not just describe but to face my disadvantage and tackle it by thinking a solution which is the way to improve the work and critical thinking.
I am surprised with the final outcome, I have never thought I could achieve an animation like this. During the process, I have challenge myself a lot like animating in difficult camera angles, Photoshop-ing photos and 3D effects of after effect. I think the story is more important than anything and in this story, it is suitable for people who know about the umbrella revolution and the ones who does not. They can still enjoy the story as if it has no background story. The animation has included my thought of the year, what I have learnt in the animation course, which brief I want to take it further and the highlight of my year. I want to audience to experience my year and see what I have learnt that the animation has successfully presented this message for me. The animation could have improved by adding music and sound effect which I will do after other PPP blogs.
I found making notes during the production helps to managed my time and to stay clear about the timing of the scene. I found it very useful to have a timetable which I have suggested to myself when reflecting on OUAN 404. This is something I definitely need to keep as a habit in the future so as to maintain good time management.
This is a scene where the lamb noticed the island is trapped and feel angry about it. The change of facial expression is emphasised in here and it will wear the goggle so as to prepare itself to help.
I did not give it any eyebrows because I think the shape of the eyes could also expression its feeling. I want to simplified my character in order to maintain its purity and innocent appearance.
The opacity of the goggle is lowered so that the eyes can still be seen when it wears it just like normal goggles. I first struggled to get an even shape and then suddenly I thought of copying one side and paste it on the other side so that a perfect shaped goggle is formed! what an genesis.
The movement is not smooth enough when I put them in after effect so I used easy ease on the layers to allow the action more natural looking.
This is the scene where the lamb preparing to jump forward. I especially use a lower camera angle to exaggerate the movement and the edginess to help the island which I think would be suitable for its character and would be a difficult challenge to animate a run in low camera angle.
For the background, I use water coloured paper just like what I did in my applied animation. I like the texture it created which is like a dull sky with moody clouds. This would match the texture of the scenes before and strengthen my style.
The ground is distorted due to the low camera angle.
The character is now bottom heavy
I have also deform the feet so as to create a fast running illusion.
Here is the act:
I am not sure if the audience will understand what it is going to do. However, I like the low camera angle shoot which is a interesting challenge for me. Overall, I think I have solved this problem using my knowledge and imagination and it has successfully presented the emotion of the character itself. I think the number of frames can increased in order to show the whole movement more clearly and slow down the running pace but it is difficult to choose between the requirement of maximum 30 seconds or perfect movement which might lead to exceed the requirement. In this case, I chose to reduce the running so that I could meet the requirement and I think in the reality, this is the most appropriate things to do.
Lastly, I enjoyed the turn around brief so much and I want to include some turn around animation. I found the umbrella is the most difficult to animate because the size and the handle changes dramatically in different angles so that I used a lot of time correcting it. I think it is a successful turn around but it could be improved by 24 frames a second instead in order to achieve a smoother spin. Nevertheless, since I start the animation in 12 frames a second, it is hard to rearrange the whole animation just for this scene so that I am happy to keep it as 12 frames a second. What is more, this sequence is going to be at the end where the black out appear with the words: to be continue...? which leave a thinking space for the audience about the next part of the story.
I came back to the running sequence and thought about a good idea. I went to at the weekend and took some picture in leeds, places that I walked everyday to school, to shop and to town etc. I feel really contacted with these places especially when photographing them. In the story, I decided to let the lamb runs from Leeds (England) to the coast, hoping to go home. Therefore I want to include some photos in the animation. I decided to take the picture in black and white so as to emphasis on the lighting and shading, the silhouette of the city and simplified the colours of the photos.
Here are some choices:
train station.Too busy, do not even have a space for my character to run.
road outside IQ. I love this photo but my character is running from left to right, it will be difficult for it to run from the back the the front.
way to town..um..a bit dull?
But I chose these ones below because...
the glass celling in the Trinity (but I have turned it up side down so the lamb can run on) which creates an interesting new environment.
way to town, building new houses? I remember there were no such constructing project going on so it was quite touching when experiencing changes without noticing.
way to town
I love this photo. There were originally people inside the photo but then I had a good idea and wipe them away in photoshop. I want my character to run behind the people which could be done by making the people into layers so that the running layer can go behind it. It was an extreme challenge as I have never done anything similar to this and which has taken so much time. Nevertheless, I am so happy with the outcome and I feel like my skill has improved so much!
Layers of the people
and the backgrounds
The last thing I need to do is to complete my idea by after effect, I really love the product which is exactly what I imagined. The lighting helps a lot when creating atmosphere and the character successfully blend into the photo. I also used expression tool to make those people wiggle as if they are walking. It turns out amazingly natural that I am so impressed with. well done people(giggle).
