PPP1 Evaluation

In this module, I learn to develop my personal skills such as reflecting, researching for the things that interest me, and doing oral presentations. I enjoyed this module because it engages me with the up to date information about the animation industry, and helps me arrived to an informed decision of what I wanted to focus on in the future. I found that I am keen to do animation that is experimental in nature, and does not have a definite outcome, and that I am interested in the art of communicating messages to the audience. Although I enjoyed slapstick animations, I don't think it is right for people to just narrow down animation as slapstick entertainment.

I was not a reflective person, and I just go with the flow without thinking of the things that I have done. In fact, I am always on the run, keeping myself occupied even though I am not doing college work. The PPP module helps me to make time to reflect on things that I have done. Through my research, I also learnt that artists often keep journals and derive project ideas from the thoughts that they have written in their journals. This evidenced that a good artists generate ideas from their thoughts on big and small issues that happen in their day to day life.

A major mistake that I made while doing this brief is underestimating it. I always think that I have a year to finish this brief, and as usual, I procrastinated. As a result, I am still typing out this evaluation at home 30 minutes before the deadline. I would like to address this problem next year, and force myself to be more disciplined so that I can produce a work that I am proud of, instead of making a rushed product that does not satisfies myself in the end.

Understanding Copyright

Copyright

• Depends on the scale of its usage
• Authors have the right to object the use of their materials
• In the UK, copyright is automatic, and there is no registration system.
• Who owns the copyright? The one who made the work, but sometimes contents posted on social networking sites and image hosting sites might have terms and conditions regarding this. So, as artists, we should not be indifferent to these terms and conditions and read it prior to posting any content to avoid future problems.
• The duration of copyright in general: Life + 70 years
• Duration for sound recordings: 70 years
• Copyright is a sensitive issue in the commercial business, such that we should respect the owner of the intellectual property that we want to include by getting the owner and the organisation/company's permission if we were to use it for commercial purpose.
• How to prove that I originated a piece of work? Solicitor owns it, prove when you made it, authenticity, and the easiest way is to just post it to yourself.
• How to set a copyright into your work? Simply put ©Your Name and year of publication

Fair Use

• To make a statement based on a pre-existing content
• Educational purpose

Copyleft

• Non-profit
• Author may give every person who receives a copy of a work permission to reproduce, adapt or distribute it.
• Something that is freely available

Creative Commons

• Share, remix and reuse, even for commercial purpose as long as artists are credited
• Simple, standardised - straightforward (opposite to 'All Rights Reserved)
• Non-derivatives - not changed, gets credits
• Non commercial

Reflect Presentation

What have I learned?

I learnt that animating is a tedious process, that I have to associate an animator with a hermit. Not being familiar with the software used to make an animation might be a contributing factor for this tedium. For instance, I tend to do things the hard way because I have no clue of how to do it in the fastest way. Fortunately, many people in the class gladly point out my mistakes, and help me figured out how to use the tools that could make the process even faster.

Outside the course, I learnt some basic survival skills such as cooking and getting a place to stay in for the night when I got locked outside my place (and my phone died when I was just about to ring my flatmates) after a night out. I never cooked in my whole life before I came here mainly because I spent the past 5 years living in a boarding school and food had always being served three times a day. Although I am far from being a professional chef, I am happy with what I cook. Moreover, cooking has become a ritual for me to unwind after a busy day of animating in the studio.

Here goes the long story of me getting locked out for a night: I was out with some people in the course, and apparently I dropped my key at one of their place (oh lucky me). So, I went back to my place without knowing that I dropped my key. I arrived at my place without my key, but my phone died when I tried to call my flatmates. So, I went to a nearby takeaway place to take shelter like a hobo ,but unfortunately, they were closing at that time. Luckily, there are these two guys called Issac and Dinko who were still waiting for their food to be served. I was reluctant to ask them to let me stay at my place, but I had no choice. So, I decided to go for it, and they both treated me well, lend me a charger and let me sleep on a couch in their living room after a little bit of friendly chat. I went home the next morning with my phone fully charged. Ultimately, this incident reminds me to check on my key every now and then and restored my faith in humanity.

What I Want to Learn?

I would like to learn how to use lighting which can influence the mood of my animation and make the flat 2D characters look solid, which has been done really well in My Family and the Wolf and  Disney's Feast. Despite the latter involves modelling and animating the character in 3D, and having the final outcome being painted over so that it looks 2D.

Although Mike told us that comparing our work with Disney animation and those made by professional animators is toxic, I still think it is a good to aspire and work towards making a professional-looking animation. From the graduate films that I watched in Manchester Animation Festival, it could be observed that their films have the quality of professionally made animated films. Hence, I still think that having a high expectation of myself when making a project is important, even if I have to figure things out by myself.

I would also learn the process of making my own audio for an animation. I've not taken much consideration of the audio that I put into my animation because I often leave it to the last minute. I took a small step forward by helping Tom (Hallgarten) with the sound effects for his E4 ident.

What Have I Enjoyed?

Model Making

We had an induction on plasticine model making last January. I really enjoyed the induction because I am doing other things apart from producing an animation. Initially, I made my character, Diedre, out of a joke that I made up with Natalia (Eristavi), but I ended up enjoying sculpting her butt and breast, and managed to make it perfect!

Manchester Animation Festival

Apart from events, MAF gave me the opportunity to get to know the second years and get along with my classmates.

Visual Language

Environmental Storytelling

Perspective drawing has always been my weakness because it looks complex, and that's why I don't usually draw backgrounds, or rather made them flat if I have to make one. However, the study task have changed my perception of background drawing. I considered portraying the same environment in 5 different styles, although the process is rather experimental, I am really satisfied with the outcome that I get.

Life Drawing

I've never got a chance to do life drawing back in my home country because they usually cost more than 20 quids per session, whereas it is ten times cheaper to do it in college. Hence, I took the chance to train my observational skills by attending them regularly. Life drawing drastically changed the way I draw, and it makes my drawing more solid. Also, it keeps me mind of the solid shapes of the characters that I'm animating.

Pixilation
I really enjoy making my pixilation at the beginning of the year. Although, it is simple it has vast benefits. One of the time when pixilation saved my life is when I could not find a royalty free footage online for my Hallmark ident. I decided to make my own pixilation of a teapot pouring tea into a cup. The benefit of recording a pixilation is that it can be tweened on Photoshop to create a more fluid looking movement rather than slowing down the speed of a video.

Motion Graphics
I made a motion graphics (mograph) for my Context of Practice animation, and again, I decided to play around a software that I am unfamiliar with, After Effects. I was highly motivated to try out and make a mograph when I saw Elliot Lim's the Wire title sequence, which I did for my PPP Disseminate presentation. The process of making the assets on Adobe Illustrator takes a long time, but animating in After Effects is really quick, even quicker than making an animation on Photoshop as it has more varieties of tool to play around with to make a good animation.

Dislikes?

Presentation
I gets nervous really easily, and therefore I often go off script. It does not seem too obvious when I have to present about myself, but the problem comes when I have to deliver a presentation about factual information to the audience, which is why I screwed up my PPP Disseminate presentation. Also, as strange as it sounds, I feel insecure if I had a script with me, such that I kept on referring to it as I am presenting, even though I know what I am talking about. I have not found a comfortable way to do a presentation, and that's why I dislike it.

Unfinished Animation
I did not manage to finish my animation 'The Other Side' brief, which upsets me and discouraged me to continue making an animation. It took me a while to recover from being disappointed in myself, and force myself to get back on animating for the next module. This is also contributes to my decision in making Idents for the Applied Animation module because I felt overwhelmed as I saw the requirements in the other briefs to produce 30 seconds animation.

Mistakes

Unfinished Animation
My diligence only last up to the pre-production process because I felt the instant gratification of finishing the pre-production, and do not feel like jumping into the production of the actual animation, often not being aware of the fact that I am in an animation course, and I have to present a finished animation for the final outcome. This resulted on a bad mistake of not finishing an animation for 'The Other Side'.

Planning Great Things but Ended up Not Doing It in the End
Sidetracking is a bad habit that I always made. I always came up with an interesting idea, which I simplified to the extent that it does not seem extraordinary to me anymore. This is makes me unsatisfied of the work that I produced.

Strengths

I like to Experiment

I could not say that I am Jack of All Trades since I have no prior knowledge of industry standard softwares, but I process and apply new skills quickly, which is why I like to try out new things and explore the possibilities that I could achieve from learning to use these softwares. If I am interested in a medium, I tried to go beyond what have been taught in college, and challenged myself to learn new skills made available in online learning platforms, such as tutorials on YouTube. 

Affable Personality

Coming from a foreign country, I settled down and fitted in to the environment pretty quick because of my chirpy personality. I like to engage myself with productive and unproductive conversation, and respect my classmates' opinions. 

Perfectionist

A strength that I have to compromise most of the time because of my bad time management, but I still has it in me. Instead of incorporating this strength to my work, it helps me to be critical of my other classmate's work when they asked for feedback. 

Weakness

Bad Time Management

Time management is always an issue in every brief that I do. I tend to leave things to the last minute and succumb to the cramming culture. I can't escape from the adrenaline rush of chasing the deadline even though I tried to make work commitments because I am a rebel, and I like to deviate from my schedule.

Get Nervous Easily

It is hard to maintain eye contact with people, especially during a presentation because of this. Having an eye contact intimidates me, and resulted on forgetting the information that I am presenting.

Not Planning Ahead

In the beginning of the year, I made schedules and targets to organise my work. It does not work because I often deviate from the original plan, so I am not doing it anymore.

Goals

Achieved

• Make an animation with different medium
• Improved my drawing skills

Not Achieved

• Work-life balance

Manchester Animation Festival: The Remaking of Danger Mouse

Why reboot the Danger Mouse now? Would it lives up to the expectation of the audience who have seen the original series? There are many other questions that we raised when it comes to making a remake of classic animated series. At Manchester Animation Festival, the production team of the new Danger Mouse came to talk about how they remake the films and make a fresh image of Danger Mouse that caters to present day audience.

Their reason for rebooting the series is to look for new content based on the what they remembered from the old show. Furthermore, it could potentially encourage the audience to look back and re-watch the original series. These forward looking incentives gave confidence to the team to bring back the comedic superhero series back to the television screen.

In the production stage, they took a more careful approach developing the script by having minimum 4 writers to revisit the script and make some changes to get the best outcome. The writers also need to take vulgarity and adult contents out of the film so that it is appropriate for younger audience. Main characters in the series have been redesigned and given more structure so that their shape could be consistently drawn by the animators which is necessary especially if they outsourced labour from another country.

Manchester Animation Festival

We went to Manchester Animation Festival (MAF) last November, where we attended some master classes and watched the some animations that is nominated to be given an award. Coming to MAF is an eye-opening experience for me because, initially, my knowledge of animation is limited to mainstream animated films and the videos of animated films uploaded by CGBros, but now I am aware of the independent animation which shows that an animation artist can do so much more rather than working on 3D CGI animated films. This gave me a relief since I am not a tech savvy person, and solely working on 3D seems overwhelming. Also, I figured that I would like to make animations which focuses on the building up of suspense more than the character because I am impressed with an animation titled 'Teeth', one of the short film entries that made into the festival. Without exposing the face character, this animation effectively builds up the horrific suspense throughout the film. 

teeth from holbrooks on Vimeo.

Some other animations that I liked from the festival (which I'd like to go through but I don't have time to do it):

• Guida
• We Can't Live Without Cosmos
• Klementhro (Skwigly)
• The Moustache

Rilla Alexander

The Best Book in the World does live up to its name as Rilla has successfully incorporated innocence and fun into an illustrated children storybook that even adults can enjoy. In an interview, Rilla said that all the books that she made revolves around a character called Sozi, which is inspired by a doll that her grandmother made for her when she was little. Sozi represents Rilla in all her books, who travels in a wonderful fictional world. The unique storyline made the reader want to read the book all over again as the story does not end on the last page. Instead, at the end of the book, Rilla encourages the reader to read it again and again. The illustration in the book is also fantastic as they seems to be in a continuous movement despite being still imagery, which reminds me of Dr. Seuss's storybook. It is because the Rilla drew the characters when each of them is in the middle of doing an action. 

My Family and the Wolf

A teaser of an animated film by Headless Production about a boy on a summer vacation with his family. The golden lighting in the film gives off a nostalgic feeling to the audience, and the narration also enhances the vibe. I really like the environment design with rough textures on objects, such as those on the trees and houses. Textures and lighting in the background made the whole animation looks solid, despite having flat characters on the foreground.

The lighting plays an integral role to the change of mood in the trailer, and foreshadows something mystical that is going to be revealed at the end of the trailer.


"MY FAMILY AND THE WOLF" teaser from Headless Productions on Vimeo.

Scratchy Scratchy Scratch Like Steven Woloshen

At first glance, abstract animation seems weird to me. The first abstract animation that I watched is Scribble Dub by Ross Hogg, and after finished watching it draws my curiosity towards the making process of the scratchy aesthetic in his animation, and figured out that the artist scratches on top of a film, and is 'scanned' into a machine that will process it into a film. I'd like try some experimental things like this just because it looks fun to make.

I saw this banner earlier when I opened up Skwigly's main page and looked up the artist who made it as it reminds me of Scribble Dub. Apparently, the animator, Steven Woloshen, has been a pioneer of this abstract animation movement since the 80s. His work shows coherence between animation and sound as if he made the animation as he listens to the music, but that might just be my own speculation. Also, the scratching over used films worked really well with the beat of the music.

Steven Woloshen Tumblr: http://scratchatopia.tumblr.com/


Absolutely Monstra from steven Woloshen on Vimeo.

Jean Jullien

Jean Jullien is an illustrator based in London who drew funny characters that communicates his opinion on small and big issues in the current society.  I still enjoy browsing through art accounts on Instagram that showcase elaborate and polished work, but I could appreciate his work better because of their simplicity. Jullien's work inspires me to keep my work simple yet meaningful for the target audience. I used to think that details contributes to the audience's appreciation towards artwork, and I tend to neatly draw elaborate pattern so that my artwork looks 'completed'. (which seems frivolous after I think about it again)

I found this excerpt of Jullien's sketchbook on his portfolio blog that contains his daily illustrated journal. This is pretty similar to Ross Hog's animated sketchbooks in which both artists took down notes of what they did or what do they think of in a day. From what I observed based on these artists'sketchbook, making a daily journal makes the things that happens in a day count, and might possibly be an inspiration for future projects. I've been diligently filling up some observational sketchbooks this year, but maybe I should record down my personal life and thoughts more because it might be interesting to look at in the future.

Jean Jullien has proven that an illustrator can also be an animator by collaborating with his brother to make some animated shorts on Vimeo. The storytelling element in illusration and animation is closely related,and there are some illustrators making their own animation. This combined with the fact that animating took a long time to finish often give me the dilemma to change course to Illustration. I could safely say that I have resolved this problem now as I could extend my talent in illustrating to make animation that stands out because of its unique aesthetic quality. 

the phone from Jullien Brothers on Vimeo.

Edinburgh College of Art Print Fair (24/03/2016)

During the Spring break, I went to Edinburgh and visits different art venues, one of which is Edinburgh College of Art as they are having an Open Day and Print Fair that is open for public. 

Me and my friends talked to some of the artists who are selling zines and prints, and they passionately explained their artwork to us. Coming to the print fair encouraged me to have more enthusiasm for the work that I am doing. Although I don't have any physical product to be showcased, I could use online platform such as Vimeo to create an online portfolio to talk about my work.

I gravitate to alternative culture, such as collecting zines and admiring contemporary installation art, which many thinks as pointless and pretentious. It is an eye opening experience to see artists' work as each of them informs different beliefs held by the artist. Hence, made me aware of and able to appreciate other people's opinion. Also, it gave me a food for thought on the subject matter incorporated in the artworks.

Motion Graphics Animation

An animation that I made for Context of Practice, and my first attempt to make motion graphics. I am really satisfied with how it turned out as I managed to overcome obstacles that prevails, big and small, without much assistance. This also encourages me to make animations with After Effects because it is easier to get work done rather than relying on just one software to animate, which I used to do with Photoshop. I learned to become an active learner by looking up video tutorials online, which are really useful and easily accessible for beginners, although I need to spend more time on the software to get better at it.


The Animation Industry from Brenda Christie Muliawan on Vimeo.

Studio Ghibli Animated Films

Source: ​exploring the international appeal of japan’s studio ghibli

As a child, I always prefer Studio Ghibli's films over 'educational Western cartoons', such as Disney films, and my parents are always worried about this preference. I remembered I borrowed some DVDs from a friend and have to watch these secretly from my parents (as if it was porn haha). This is because my parents often overthink that there is some demonic elements in Japanese Animation. However, I found that Ghibli films are more interesting to watch as they portray each characters realistically as compared to heroes and heroines in general who have extraordinary attributes. Also, the plots in Ghibli Films takes into account the development of other supporting characters as well, which makes the audience appreciate the characters'contribution to the storyline, even the villains.

Animation Exercise

Ross Hog, creator of Scribble Dub, made a thing called 'Animated Sketchbook' where he created a simple looping animation weekly and post it on his Vimeo channel. The animation is made based on what he observed or imagined during a day. I want to do this weekly over the Summer Break so that I can easily animate from my imagination more because most of the time I relied on online footage or self-recorded footage to refer to when animating the desired movements. Recalling sequence of motion and translate it to an animation has always been my weakness, and I want to work on this weakness as I hate relying on references because the animation that I produce seems to be restricted to the reference that I use. I think through observing and using my imagination to make an animation would incorporate a more personal tone of voice to my animation.



Animated Sketchbook - page 23 from Ross Hogg on Vimeo.

Monster Stains

Source: Aardman Sells Persil Laundry Detergent With A Short, ‘Monster Stains’

I like this advertisement because it uses animation to communicate message which represent the brand's tone of voice. In the professional level, animation is not just a mere slapstick entertainment but it is a medium to communicate a message, be it representative or presentative in nature. The appeal in Monster Stains is the making process of the animation reflecting the idea that 'every stain tells a story'. The animators from Aardman took an unconventional approach to make this frame-by-frame animation by painting with 28 common household stains on white shirts, and wash them afterwards with the detergent.

Another way to look at it, is that they demonstrates ethical practice by reducing wastage, such that instead of drawing on paper, the animators reuse shirts in the making process. (although you might counter argue that the detergent is causing water pollution, but that's another story for another day)

Run Baby Run

Recently, I've been reading Juztapoz's website, which reviews contemporary art and culture. I found this peculiar animation of baby running as I was browsing the page. Initially, I thought it was just a dodgy CGI animation, such as those on YouTube where people make a model with Maya and contorted it, but the people making this actually went for the extra miles of 3D printing the baby figures and took it outdoor to make a stop-motion animation. 

Going back to the old way of making animation while still utilising cutting edge technology has become a trend in the animation industry. It gives back the fun in making animation and adds more value to the film itself because of its unconventional making process. I would like to engage myself in this sort of process because it gives me the opportunity to creatively combine different medium instead of restricting myself to solely rely on cutting edge software to make an animation.