N.E.mation! Bloggers' Animation Workshop

This was my first time being part of the annual N.E.mation! challenge in search of talented youths as they express their patriotism on Total Defence through animation.  This year marks the six years of success in the program, and was invited by Sara to attend the N.E.mation! 6 Bloggers' Animation Workshop!

It was held at Nanyang Polytechnic in the the evening and we were given a short presentation before getting our asses to work.  To understand animation better, first we were introduced to two traditional toys/tools that was used before the invention of computers.

Here in my hand is a Zoetrope, a device that produces an illusion of "moving images" from a rapid view of static pictures by spinning the wheel.  

You're supposed to look through one of the slits while spinning the wheel, and you can see the image "come to life". 

The second toy is the successor to Zoetrope, the Praxinoscope, which replaces the Zoetrope's narrow viewing slits with an inner circle of mirrors, placed so that the reflections of the pictures appeared more stationary in position as the wheel turned.

I actually bought one of these in a thrift store when I was in Berkeley, but because it took up too much space in the luggage, I couldn't bring it back.   Mine doesn't quite look like this though.

Flashed on the screen was a short clip played on loop as our reference to what we were going to make that evening, of how air pollution causes acid rain and in turn killing us humans. 

We were also given model sheets to help us with the paper cutting process.  It was a project from scratch.  We draw the clouds, buildings, characters... outline them and start piecing them together on our work desk. 

I did my best at the clouds, skull head and skyscrapers, but my favourite is the car. :D

Many bloggers were present too, and I paired up with Tiphanie for this project.  We spent a lot of time deciding our color scheme.  Haha, girls! 

While we were still doodling, the other groups have already begun!  And this was already 9+ at night! 

This was the work desk I talked about earlier and the kind folks at Nexus had already set up the camera for us.  :) 

 And so the story goes... 

My skyscraper is a combination of different signature buildings, like err Taipei 101 and the Flyer? 

The animation program we used was AniMaker, one that we learnt how to use it in merely ten minutes.  It really is the simplest animation program I've ever came across. Hehe. 

The character has no head because we were in the midst of changing to the X_X face after being poisoned by the acid rain. 

That's us hard at work; but I was feeling very tired. Heh.

Tiphanie was in charge of the super annoying rain drops so I slacked while she worked on them. :X

That was the final scene and it's a wrap!  For every tiny move we make, we have to take at least 2 shots using the webcam so that AniMaker could capture the impression. 

The quick (and tragic) death.   On a unrelated note, I adore the bow so much (made by Tiphanie)! 

After I was done I walked over to Carrie's table, where The Cambelles were, and look at their creative entry for the animation! 

 

Anyway, here's our final animation clip:

Who knew a 10 second clip would take us three hours?!  I was lethargic by the end of the workshop so I just hastily named it 'She Dies'. Heh.  

The night ended with a group photo:

 The theme for N.E.mation 6 was "NS: From Father to Sons", and you can check out the students' work on their Youtube channel.

100 groups of touths who took part in this competition will be handpicked by the judges and the winner will get to go to Dreamworks Animation in USA.  That's really uber cool.  Looking forward to outstanding work by the students!