FYP Presentation I

Today was the first presentation for all final year animation students. People from companies like Lucasfilm and Double Negative came by to offer critique as well. It was a pretty big affair. And we can probably expect a few more of these throughout our final year.

Needless to say, all of us didn’t get enough sleep. For me, I was awake since noon on Wednesday. Right now, it is 11pm on a Friday. Minus off the four blissful hours that I’ve had the chance in snooze-land this morning, this makes about fifty-five hours of dying neurons so far… and counting.

(Okay, so I deserve it for slacking off for the whole of Wednesday to only start editing my animatic at 4.30am on Thursday, but still. And srsly FYP was on my mind for the whole of Wednesday yo. I was merely paralysed by the thought of it. Yea. That’s it.)

For those who say they never see me post my work here nowadays, here’s the stuff that I showed for presentation, i.e. everything that I made yesterday to show for something for my FYP:

Concept art x 4

And a mock up claymation showing the locomotion of an earthworm and the various methods of animating fish surfacing from the waters (all unsatisfactory methods, I may add. Have come up with a new plan to animate these nasty buggers).

The guy from Lucasfilm asked how long I took to animate this, and I hazarded a guess of 2 hours.

Well I just checked the EXIF data and apparently I did it in one hour and eleven minutes. Wow! Considering that I took lots of breaks in between to lie on my bed and mould the clay absent-mindedly, and including taking time off to consider how I could animate the f*ing fish (damn hard), this is not bad, not bad at all. It was defnitely the longest one hour and eleven minutes of my life though.

The presentation itself was blah. I got tongue-tied in the beginning from being so nervous (hello, one whole row of tired angmohs plus a stern-faced asian guy as critics? No tq!!! Hahaha actually the angmohs were friendly la).

After I presented, I was painfully aware of the silence. For a moment I thought that they had nothing to comment because I didn’t offer enough information, or my animation sucked so much that they were stunned into silence. And then the questions came. Boy, was the platinum blonde scaryyyyyy! I really had no intention of attributing meaning for my animation, but she somehow managed to make me crap out some semblances of meaning on the spot– the one where I randomly spouted that the shot of the baby birds eating the mum and then turning into a book could probably be taken as a commentary of Singapore’s strict education system was seriously off the top of my head. Random crap is random.

Now I need to conjure up more of such ‘meanings’ and incorporate into my animation, possibly even changing the whole thing. Because being a simple visual aesthetic animation isn’t good enough :( Also, she accused me of with-holding such meanings from them, pretending that my animation was merely superficially interested in aesthetics.

But I am innocentttttt! I also dunno why I use clay! And I really thought that a book would be cool that’s why it was there… Lucasfilm guy laughed when I said that, and said he at least appreciated my honesty… he also said that the meanings in my choices could probably be subconscious. But random choice is random…

She even said that she wasn’t trying to be horrid to me, because she couldn’t do the beautiful things that I did (er okay?), but she merely was tired and hungry… lol that disclaimer only served to make me more traumatised. Dunno la, overall I still respect what she said. It’s always the harsh critics that get me going I guess. Btw she was as fierce as my primary school English teacher. Scared stiff? You bet.

After I presented, Jerms and Kenken asked how my lungs were doing, because I smoked so much. I couldn’t hear them at all (probably selective deafness from the after-shock of the presentation) until Shasha repeated what they said and then translated the lame joke to me. Because in Singapore lingo, ’smoking’ has another meaning besides the literal Marlborough kind. To ’smoke’ is to pull the wool over someone else’s eyes, i.e. to crap the shit out of a presentation/exam etc. Think of a smoke-screen and there you have the meaning ^^; And then a few other people said I was power lol tqtq! But lame animation is still lame :((((

I suppose this is my wake up call to getting serious about FYP. Time will tell how my motivation fares.

At the end of it, I really do work best under stress and deadlines. As quoted from a cute stamp printed from a gift shop in Australia many many years ago when Ti and I wandered into a shop to buy some stickers- Hassle me, I thrive on stress.

Now I go to sleep.

Virgin Earrings

Erm I first mentioned making earrings at the end of April, and probably made these babies in early May… I guess you’re all attuned to my procrastinating habits :P

This symmetrical one was made with gold.

This asymmetrical vanity pair was made with silver.

This was for my aunt. She wanted a conservative pair, and I used my precious jade lotus beads with rustic gold.

Another symmetrical gold pair.

Rustic gold green rings and the last of my lotus beads.

This rustic gold super asymmetrical pair is my favourite and belongs on my ears :DDDD

That’s about it. After this batch I bought more beads and pendants but I haven’t been in the mood to start making somemore.

Perhaps it’s because, unlike the last time, I have now exhausted One Piece episodes to serve as background noise. orz

What I Draw At School I

I’ve heard that I don’t post my school stuff here anymore… I think it’s because either everything is a WIP or I just can’t be arsed after rushing for submissions ^^;

Anyway, the post will be split into two parts. This first half is more of an exploration while looking for a direction for the project. I really liked drawing the female character instead of the male one :P

The character and her room. I drew a panther as her pet. Ink outline and Photoshop.

Outlined in ink and colour penciled.

Draft in red pencil and coloured in Photoshop.

This was just starting into a new direction, namely Modigliani.

Tomorrow is part two! Also the day I come back :DD

Self Ownage

This was what caused me severe pain on my right hand from gripping the tablet stylus from night till the sun rose again the next morning non-stop. I figure it was at least 9 hours worth of nerve-killing.

Because of these, I also overslept on my way to school and woke up one stop after I was supposed to get off at.

And was literally a retard when ordering breakfast at Long John Silvers’.

They still need improvements though. GODAMMIT! Hahaha pwned.

My group is awesome.

School Moments Archived

Now that I’ve finally compiled my files over from Ti’s comp where I’d been storing them because of the last desktop scare, I was tickled to find old doodles from Foundation Engineering.

Me: The Chemistry lecturer is speaking nonsense. ^{damn lecturer.}
JX: Ahaha, don’t listen and it’ll be alright.

I can’t believe I could write chinese.

Merry Christmas!

Ti burst into my room, shouting season’s greeting, giving me a shock. I nearly jumped out of my chair.

He was so enthusiastic that all I could say in response to his numerous “Merry Christmas!“’s was, “Why?”.

He even shook my hand. Again to which I went, “Why?“, but shook it dubiously anyway.

When he left he called me the grinch. OTL

After that Mum came in, shaking my hand and giving me a long hug. At least this time I was prepared and didn’t give perplexed responses.

Merry X!

Old School

He was so silent throughout the trip, that old man with the white hair and faded tattoos peeking out from underneath his patterned long-sleeved shirt.

I tore it and thrust the paper in his direction.

He looked it over for quite some time, folded it, and said, “谢谢”.

And then he left at the next stop.

To the guy I saw this evening

As I tailed behind you on our way to Cineleisure; You were walking quite fast, and so was I, partly because I wanted to catch up with you, and partly because I was meeting Pa for dinner.

To whoever you are, YOU WERE TOO COOL. (So were your bald head and leg tattoos)

What I can remember of my hazy memory space from this evening.

I’d actually wanted to stop you to take your picture, because I thought you were dressed so awesomely I couldn’t possibly let this chance pass by. But then I remembered that I had brought Fatty along instead of Super Fatty. And Fatty takes lousy shots at dim lighting; stopping you to take a blurry photo would have been a waste. And so we parted ways when you entered the building.

Also, To the Malay(?) cyclist in safety helmet and shades who was stuck in the middle of the pedestrian congestion this afternoon outside Borders:

Thank you for smiling back at me (albeit uncertainly) when I broke into a huge grin at your predicament. You totally made my day.

To Kooling, thank you for not killing me today, and for agreeing that I didn’t have to take the kind of crap the shop assistant at Valerie at Far East level 3 considered as ‘customer service’.

Doggy Dog

B&W Ilford HP5 on CFN120 Holga.
Digital negative.
Van Dyke print.

For the uninitiated, what I wrote basically means:

Black and white film on toy camera.
Scanned, inverted and printed on transparency.
Printed with poisonous brown chemicals.

But hey, poison’s not new to photography. Silver nitrate anyone? Cyanide gas hmm?

Nodame Cantabile makes me want to learn the piano, Japanese, French and Korean. (Not too sure where the Korean factored in though.)

I did something very stupid last night…

Will be wearing glasses for a while because I prematurely threw away my last pair of contacts after finding out (and despairing) that I didn’t have anymore solution to store them in. Right after tossing them did I realise I still had an unopened bottle on the shelf – I was just too lazy to place it in my usual cupboard when I’d bought it and promptly forgot its existence.

Have a craving for sushi and IKEA meatballs :(

Wah

It feels like it’s been a long time since I’ve blogged… though I did break my hiatus to complain about my stress levels. Gah.

Animation screening was this evening. Quite a number wowed me. One especially made me tear up. I think it was a senior. Michael Tay’s stop-motion/film mix piece on his late father. I forgot the title. It was in Chinese. i think 「水枪」. Robert (the skeleton in foundation drawing) starred in it too.

Stills from my 3D Production animation that was screened tonight:

Scene 1. The opening has flowers lip-synching to my background music. Deliberately kept it to low polygons because they just didn’t look right smoothed. I thought this made them look more cartoonic anyways. I like it. It’s saying how these are merely polygons made from a 3D program.