Leeds Animation Workshop (25/11/2015)

Leeds Animation Workshop (LAW) is a feminist independent animation studio based in Leeds known for their post World War II short animation. One of the animators from LAW came to our college to share their stories on developing a studio which mainly produces animations that condense messages on social and political issues. Despite the feminist nature of the studio, they still portrays beauty in a stereotypical way by putting emphasis on women's sexual appeal. I think it is a good strategy to capture the public attention. Other than addressing issues faced by women, they also see international issues and racial discrimination as worthy subjects to cover in their animations. They are not just an animation studio but also a social activist group that represents the marginalised. I am really amazed by how they want to have autonomy and control over the film that they made. After all, this uniqueness is what made them different than big animation studios, and their success is a result of a collective effort to promote their animation to those who are interested with the subject of their films.

Aside from being a social activist studio, LAW highly regards the traditional medium of doing animation. Their first few animations are done on transparent plastic sheets while their recent ones are made out of paper cut-outs. The reason that they do not want to do their animation in digital medium is they still want to preserve the natural touch in making animation that cannot be felt in artificially polished CGI animation. They also argued that they do not want to change their approach because they think that human are not meant to work with technology for a prolonged time as it will ruin their physical and mental well-being. I relate to this argument as it is evidenced by the drying up of eyes as we stared on the computer screen for a long time, but I think that taking breaks periodically will solve the problem. Although not being fond of working digitally, I still think that it is the current industry standard to be an animator.

Will Becher's Masterclass (18/11/2015)

I went to a talk by Will Becher on Aardman's newest feature animation film Shaun the Sheep the Movie. Will Becher himself is an animator from Aardman who worked on it. I can feel his strong passion towards producing an animation, especially stopmotion, which he started doing when he was just a teenager. He has been on a long journey to pave his career path as a successful animator. As a young animator, he said that the job is quite tasking because begginers usually started off as either a middle runner or a junior model maker. His passion makes his presentation even more engaging to the point that it convinced me to watch Shaun the Sheep the Movie for the second time.

Will told us that the challenge in making Shaun the Sheep the Movie is to convey points because the characters are talking in a jibberish manner. They solved this problem through the use of diagrams to explain process and the surroundings to make us understand what is going on in the scenes. 

Creating the world

Design set dressing and model making

The film is set in a typical metropolis city where stray animals are not supposed to roam freely and people adhere to trends. This concept is successfully applied with a humorous touch by the creators. The set of the city is a combination of bits and pieces of big cities architecture in the UK. Not all of the buildings are fully made because those can be seen by the camera is the most important. Will also explains the roles of set artists and model-makers in the creation of the settings. Set artists decides which textures work best for the background while model-makers will make the character concept into puppets which will be used for the filming. The model makers usually make the armature of the puppets from and connecting their joints. This is followed by mixing of the latex batter which is then poured into a tray shaped like the character, baked and coloured traditionally with paint. To make a character stand firmly, screw holes are made on the feet of the characters. Will explains that they decided to dress up the sheeps in human clothes in a quirky manner to show how the sheeps are blending into the settings through the ways they interact in the city. 

After the concept is finalised, the scriptwriters made the animatics which will be printed as panels. Panels are used to summarise what is happening in the scenes and to track the filming progress.

In the Studio

Lights, camera and audio

Will says a lot of useful tips on animating  stopmotion animation in this section. He brought up rigging which helps the puppets to stand still in unstable poses which assists the animators in doing the inbetweens. Rigging the puppets can also be useful as the camera moves because it stabilises them so that they do not shift. He also showed us some clips of Aardman's crew acting as characters in the animation as a reference for the real animation. I think this is the best and the funniest part of his presentation as he joked about his colleague, Golly, being all jibberish and ridiculous. He concluded the presentation by touching a little bit on the soundtrack recording which is done by a British orchestra group in an auditorium.

Contains Adult Themes - An Exhibition by Joan Cornellà (11/11/2015)

Totally unrelated to animation, I went to an exhibition by an infamous Instagram artist, @sirjoancornella, in Munro House. Cornella is well-known for his adult humour comic strips which often revolves around dark and/or vulgar themes. He never fails to make me laugh when reading his comic, and I think it may be caused by the straight faces of his characters as if they are desensitised from what is happening to them or their surroundings. I appreciate Cornella's artworks even more as I saw his exhibition since I found out that all the pieces of his work are painted with solid coloured paints (either gouache or poster colour), perfectly lined with no single accidental jitters on it. I find this discovery amazing as, if I were him, I might keep on giggling at the jokes, which I created, hence it is basically impossible for me to produce a single flawless straight line or curve. 

Thought Bubble 2015

I love comic books as much as I love animation. The comic books I am into is not the typical superheroes comic series, so I went to Thought Bubble yesterday which is a comic convention held yearly in Leeds in the hope of finding quirky independent comic books artists. It is a really eye opening experience since this is my first time going to a comic convention. I realised that there is a plethora of independent comic book artists who creates artsy or even 'trippy' pieces. And, of course, I could not resist to get one of the Nobrow magazine which is a compilation of eccentric wordless comics.

Nobrow 9 Magazine and Postcards

At first, I did not know where to go except the Illustration students zines booth since I could not recognise any familiar names. However, as I stroll around the venue, I do not feel like leaving empty handed. Luckily, I managed to hold my desire to shop impulsively, and selectively choose what I am getting. Apart from Descender, these are all made by independent artists. I got a rhino poo Astro Boy print (because I find it exotic to have rhino poo paper hanging on my wall), some free postcards and Badger's Day Out.

Science Fictions

I talked to Howard Hardiman, the maker of Badger's Day Out which is a friendly person. Hence, I kind of regret not having him to sign the Badger book that I bought. He explained to me about his Badger series that accounts a silly adventure of a badger that he made for fun in the beginning and how he managed to pave the way for his success. He uses post-its to draw the panels, take a picture of them and upload them to Instagram on a regular basis. He thinks that the series got to the heart of many people because it simply shows the innocence of the everyday life of a badger hence gives a calming effect to the audience. He even joked that his readers often read Badger's Day Out as a bedtime story. To bring variety to the series, he uses different medium to draw. In this book, he uses pencil while for the other two books he uses ink & watercolours and brush pen separately. He also enjoys to animate and he made an gif animation of the sleeping badger, and he gave me the postcard of the frames that he uses instead since he could not show me the animation at that moment.

Howard Hardiman's Badger's Day Out

Who Am I? Why Am I Here? What Do I Want to Learn?

What Do You Want to Learn During Your Time on the Programme?

Drawing in digital medium

Digital painting is really challenging to me because I do not know the techniques to do so. I tried to watch tutorials online, but I cannot learn them through watching as they have presets that enables them to blend the colours. I admire lot of concept artists' speed paintings and want to get as good as them.

Which animation I enjoy making

I would like to find out what I enjoy making through experimenting different medium as I do not have a particular medium preference at the moment.

Appreciate theories of animation

In my opinion, an animation that successfully engage the audience have certain formula. Hence I want to learn and be aware of the theories of animation so that I can apply it to my animation projects.

Professional practice

I aspire to work in an animation studio based in the UK or France after I graduate, and I want to build my portfolio along the way.

Dealing with people while collaborating

I really enjoy interacting with the people in my class so far, and I cannot wait to collaborate with them. Collaborating is fun if I know how to  get the best of it, and having good people skill will be helpful to avoid conflicts.

Who Am I? Why Am I Here? What Do I Want to Learn?

What Ways I Will Evaluate My Progress?

Reviewing my sketchbooks

As an artist, I bring my sketchbook everywhere and sketch many things. The good thing is that I never tear out a page from my sketchbook because it is a Moleskine; Moleskine is expensive, so I do not have a heart to tear it apart. Therefore, it is relatively easy to check my progress. I just have to flip through my past sketchbooks and reflect on what I have done better than before.

Setting expectation

Expectation makes me start working on a project because I feel obliged to fulfill it. I make expectation through looking at professional's work, and I set a realistic one for myself based on that. At the end of the project, I will usually refer back to my initial expectation compare that to the end product.

 Keep track on what I have been doing

Checklists are essential to discipline myself so that I can finish my work on time. I make them on daily basis by writing each of them on a sticky note. Hence, I can evaluate my day-to-day productivity and reflect on what I can do better for the next day.

Crosschecking my work with the learning outcomes of a module

Despite what I went through on the preparation of working on a project, I am still paranoid about the quality of work I am doing. So, I often look at the learning outcomes which I perceive as guidelines to evaluate whether my work has reached the expectation.

Criticism

I am a little bit extreme feedback seeker because I always go to the most critical friend of mine to give an opinion on my artwork. One one hand it seems like I am hurting myself by doing so. One the other hand, I value such criticism the most because they make me realise where I stand.

Who Am I? Why Am I Here? What Do I Want to Learn?

What Things That I Want to Improve?

Life drawing skill

Living in a relatively conservative country, I really longed for a life drawing session. I have only done life drawing once and I think it benefits me. It trains my drawing speed and makes me appreciate the three dimensional features of the anatomy which will be useful if I am animating.

Maintaining eye contact

I tend to shift my eyes away from a person I converse with because I do not feel comfortable staring at one's eyes for too long. I am fully aware that it is not desirable to do so in the professional world where I have to engage the audience with the ideas I am presenting. Hence, I hope I can work on it while I am in college.

Handling distressed people

I am no good in dealing with distressed people, and might as well ignore them so that I do not do anything wrong that will tarnish our relationship. However, I feel bad not consoling them, and I really want to improve on this skill as it will help me to deal with difficult situations that might happen during group projects.

Be active in creative events around UK

Since I am in the UK, I want myself to go to many art festivals, comic convention, film festivals and animation festivals. It will be a great experience to have because it is where professional creatives congregate and share what they are doing to the world. Moreover I try to be more active on volunteering in such events so that I might be able to meet people with the same interest.  

Being an active learner

My right hand is like a recorder as it busily scribbles exactly what the lecturers said during classes. Nonetheless, I cannot make sense of the information  because I simply cannot multi task; I cannot think and write at the same time. Despite being really challenging to improve on this since it has been my bad habit for as long as I can remember, I will try to participate more in class.

Who Am I? Why Am I Here? What Do I Want to Learn?

What Skills do I Think are My Strengths?

I am not a perfectionist.

According to myself, not being a perfectionist is good. It gives myself more time to make and experiment on other things.  

I enjoy research.

(What I mean by research is analysing while indulging myself in animation feature films, cartoons, anime and artbooks.)
The thing I love the most about studying animation is that I can see how the theories that I learn in school are applied in the animated films that I watch.

Doodling is my specialty.

Should I put this as my strengths? because the rest of the people in the Animation course might say the same thing and it will not look as special anymore. However, I do not have my own specific doodle style because my style is highly influenced by what I like at a certain point of time. I have a flexible style, which might be a strong point of myself as an animator because animators must adapt to the art style of the animation they are making.

I adopt healthy lifestyle.

I do not consider myself as an athlete but I do like to exercise, to eat a balanced diet and to have enough sleep. I consider this as a strength because having the will to do so at a young age is impressive because people normally do not do that. Furthermore, this strength of mine will help me to not overwork myself and it encourages me to plan ahead to so that I can get my job done in time and get my sleep.

I am open to feedback.

I learnt this skill when I was working on my 'O' Level Art coursework because we must work in a studio every time as we are not allowed to do our work home. So I overcome my fear of being judged, and I started to show my work to people in the class, and they give feedback which really benefits me as I would know what I can improve on and what is good about my artworks. Now, feedback is really precious to me.

Who Am I? Why Am I Here? What Do I Want to Learn?

Why I Chose to Study Animation at Leeds College of Art?

Working with images is all I have wanted in life however it is just two years ago when I found myself mesmerised by the work of big animation companies. The film that inspires me to study animation is How to Train Your Dragon Series and Big Hero 6, which are both coming of age animation films that soothe me when I am down and motivate me to try a lot of amazing things in life. I really hope that I can make an animation with such genre because I want to make the audience feel the same way as I do when I watched such animation films.

How to Train Your Dragon (2010) by DreamWorks Animation, United States.

Big Hero 6 (2014) by Walt Disney Animation Studio, United States.

Animation skills do not come over night. Although it is as straightforward as making a character or an object to move frame by frame, it has complicated theories which I do not really understand until they are taught by the lecturers. This experience has reiterated that I come to the college to actively learn and to experiment so that I can understand the animation making process.

On that note, I choose the college because drawing could not get me anywhere in the animation industry as I need to know how to use and access the equipment used in the production processes of different media used for animation. Leeds College of Art (LCA) offers a broad range of up to date equipment essential to make professional animation films hence it is a perfect place for me to try out some of them. 

In addition, the curriculum schedule helps us students to pursue our own interest as they entrust us with a lot of independent study session when we can have access to all of the college equipment and resources related to Animation.

The college also provides opportunities for me to collaborate with people from the college, not just within the Animation course, which really suits my need. It is quite rare to find such opportunities in animation schools and colleges around the world as the courses are usually exclusive. Even worse, there are those which are internally competitive. As a student, I prefer a positive and friendly environment, like what LCA offers, for learning as I easily stressed out from competition.