3D II : Background modeling

Week 10
I start to model the props for my background such as cages. I model different type of cages. The unique one is the bird cage as the protagonist will be in there in the beginning of animation.

Box shape cages

Bird cage

Then, I model the corner of factory.

Slowly add on props and details.

Then, set up the lighting.

There are only one light source in my animation.

Done.

3D II : Handphone modeling

Week 9
We are required to create a handphone model and composite it into our final animation. It's a compulsory props.

I start to model Nokia 3310 with a box.

Then, I add separate the body with loops to indicate the position of buttons.

Slowly add in details.

Change the colour.

Done!

I have composite the Nokia 3310 into my scene.

3D II : Final assignment - Idea Generation

Week 8
We are required to create a minimum of 30 seconds animation of the biped and rigged character that I done in previous assignment.

Below show the character I done.

I was inspired by the horror adventure game, Little nightmares. So I decide to make my story in more creepy and suspend kind of feelings. My character's size also will be smaller than the other props in the setting, just like Six in Little Nightmares.

I sketch out my ideas in thumbnail form first. Then I proceed to storyboard.

Thumbnail

Storyboard (unfinish) ver.01

But then I found that this story is too long. So I change some scenes to make it shorter so that it can fits into 30 second time limit. 

At last, I decide to set the location at a closed down factory with many cages. Nobody knows why so many cages here. The protagonist wakes up in the bird cage that placed on table, and he found that he is the only one left here. So he decides to escape from here. Unfortunately......

I plan to do the whole scenes in a low key lighting to enhance the sense of mysterious and suspend.

3D II : Self-portrait

Week 7
This is an extra exercise that lecturer assigned us in class, facial expressions.
I have never draw a self-portrait before. This is my first time, and I found it was really hard.

Top: photo I changed to sketch mode in photoshop
Below: Self-portrait that I draw

I can draw cartoon or Japanese manga style, but I'm really poor in realistic drawings and still life. I think I should practice more because these are the basic an artist should know and learn so that I can draw correct composition in digital drawings.

Self-portrait that I draw in Japanese manga style.

3D II : EYE

Week 6
Those are some questions my lecturer asked in class and he wants us to find the answer.

1. Human eye can see RGB or CMYK?

Human eye reproducible with RGB additive colour, and reproducible with CMYK subtractuve colour. So that is no exactly number of colour that human eye can see. Human eye can see billions of colours, RGB can reproduce 16 million, and CMYK printing 5 - 6 thousand colours.
I think the image show below will make people more understand.

References:
https://www.printelf.com/cmyk/
https://colormatters.com/color-and-design/color-systems-rgb-and-cmyk/64-color-and-vision
https://www.color-management-guide.com/eye-and-colors.html

Source: https://www.printelf.com/cmyk/

2. How to get Gold colour in colour plate?

I found many ways to get gold colour on internet. For me, I'll mix white and little black to get grey fisrt, then add yellow to get gold.

References:
http://gizmodo.com/what-is-the-resolution-of-the-human-eye-1541242269
https://www.google.com/search?source=hp&q=+megapixel&oq=+megapixel&gs_l=psy-ab.3..0j0i67k1j0j0i20k1.531.531.0.1200.2.1.0.0.0.0.96.96.1.1.0....0...1.1.64.psy-ab..1.1.94.0.YvVMfo7tJxw

3. How many megapixel our eye can see?

First, what is pixel? Pixel is a physical point in a raster image, or the smallest addressable element in an all points addressable display device. So it's the smallest controllable element of a picture represented on the screen. So megapixel is a unit of graphic resolution equivalent to one million or 1.048,576 (2²⁰) pixels.
And human eye is around 324,000,000 pixels, which is 576 megapixels.
This really show a huge different compare to Iphone 7's camera with only 12 megapixels.

Source: https://curiosity.com/topics/your-eye-is-576-megapixels-but-youre-asking-the-wrong-question-curiosity/

References:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmVR6CKWoYw
https://www.hunker.com/13412993/how-to-mix-gold-paint

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixel

3D II : Artist that I like

Week 5

My lecturer introduced an artist to us in class, Yusof Gajah. He is a local painter. But he also write and illustrate books for children. He even won the National Book Council Award for best picture book and the Noma Concours (ACCU) award for best illustrations.

He paints a lot elephants.
His complex elephant art actually show his philosophy. He relates those values to human life.

***************************************************************************
I also have an artist that I like, Jun Chiu, a Taiwanese artist.
JUN CHIU Illustration - FB
JUN CHIU Illustration - Tumblr

Actually I'm not sure is a he/she...But the main point is his/her works is awesome!

Source: https://www.facebook.com/junchiuarts/photos/a.1375065972800547.1073741828.1375065336133944/1488158661491277/?type=3&theater

Source: https://www.facebook.com/junchiuarts/photos/a.1375065972800547.1073741828.1375065336133944/1410546125919198/?type=3&theater

Source : https://www.facebook.com/junchiuarts/photos/a.1375065972800547.1073741828.1375065336133944/1413880572252420/?type=3&theater

I really like the way she uses colour and lighting to tell story in a drawing. She also draw character concept art and comics. Without script, we can still understand what she wants show us in the story. The power of picture.

The comics that I like the most is Crop Circles and MEDUSA.
麥田圈 Crop Circles
MEDUSA

3D II : Memorable character

Week 4

My childhood is full of cartoons, and I am also impressed with some works from Disney channel and Cartoon Network. The character that I remember the most is Powerpuff Girls.

Powerpuff Girls is an American superhero animated television series created by animator, Craig McCacken, for Cartoon Network. The story is about the scientist, Professor Utonium, who accidently add in chemical X into the mixture while he is creating the little girls in his laboratory. Then, Powerpuff Girls are born with superpowers. So they use their power to protect and save the city from criminals and monsters.

There are three little girls in this team, they are Blossom, Bubbles and Buttercup. They represent different colour and different personalities. Blossom represents pink. She is smart and have leader skill. She always lead the team when fighting with villains. Bubble represents blue. She is cute, sensitive, kind and sweet. She also can communicate with animals. The one I like the most is Buttercup. She represents green. She is the toughest in the team. Although she is the only one without unique super power (Blossom can freeze objects, Bubble can emit supersonic waves with her voice), but her attitude towards life really attracts me. She is brave and confident.

The character design is quite simple. Their appearance show the combination of circle, rectangle and oval. I used to like to draw Powerpuff Girls when I was young. But sometimes I feel that the more simple the character, the harder to draw. I always draw them like a alien unintentionally because I cannot control the eye volume well. And they have big eyes.

This is the part I love the most in this show!
Powerpuff Girls: Mime For A Change

Film Studies II: 3 Idiots (2009)

Asian cinema is a space which encounters many ideas, philosophies, cultures and religions. From here, Asian cinema can evolves a world from its own ideas. There are many subjects that we can discuss in aesthetics in Asian Cinema such as visual aesthetics, mise-en-scene materials, music and sound, performance style, pace and etc. Today, I would like to talk about the aesthetics in the film, “3 Idiots”.

3 Idiots is an Indian coming of age comedy drama film co-written, edited and directed by Rajkumar Hirani and produced by Vidhu Vinod Chopra in 2009. The screenplay was written by Abhijat Joshi. It was inspired by the novel Five Point Someone by Chetan Bhagat. The film stars Aamir Khan, Kareena Kapoor, R.Madhavan, Sharman Joshi, Omi Vaidya, Parikshit Sahni and Boman Irani. It was a 171 minutes film, it’s quite long compared to the normal length of films.

The film is about the friendship of three best friens, Farhan Qureshi, Raju Rastogi and Ranchoddas Chanchad. They study at the prestigious Imperial College of Engineering (ICE). They also are roomates. Farhan wants to be a photographer secretly, but studies engineering in fear of his father. Raju chooses engineering so that he can support his family but he got a poor grades. Rancho is a talented and eccentric inventor. They help and try to be understanding to each other, have some quarrel sometimes, but all of these will strengthen their relationship.

3 Idiots can be counted as a Bollywood film which is the most representative form of “popular Indian cinema”. It is highly influenced by Hinduism. One of the factors that classified this film as Bollywood film is because this film use Hindi as its language. Mise-en-scene also helps to enhance the visual aesthetics of the film. The colourful and unique Indian traditional clothing shows the audience the culture of this race. For example, Pia wears a traditional red saree and lehenga with many accessories such as big bracelets, necklace, earrings, head accessory and nose ring in her own wedding. In terms of colour, red at here counted as passion and good things happened. Another example is in the scene of real Rancho’s father’s funeral. Most of the people wear in white clothing. At this point, white counted as sad, past and bad things happened.

Next, I would like to discuss the dance and music elements found in this film. Indian film usually uses music and dance sequences within the narrative structure. The director use musical to bring out the feeling of the main cast in particular moment with a bunch of backup dancers at behind. For example, Pia opens a photo album and starts to imagine she singing “Zoobi Doobi” and dancing with Rancho together with a crowd of people. Another example is when Raju, Farhan and Rancho dance in the toilet with others engineering students.

This film shows Indian culture and social aspects. The film points out the issue of Indian education system, the students are asked to memorize the knowledge from books without learning any practical experiences. For example, Chantur who can memorize the definition of the terms can makes the lecturer happy whereas Rancho who cannot memorize the definition but think creatively are thought to disrespect the lecturer. The film also shows the issue of disparity between the rich and the poor. For example, the real Rancho’s rich family and Raju’s poor family.

In conclusion, 3 Idiots not just entertain the audience but also brings out some moral values to the people. I think that this is really a recommended film to everyone especially the youngster.

Film Studies II: Run Lola Run (1998)

Run Lola Run, when I came across this film’s name, I didn’t expect that this is a film that full of running scenes. Run Lola Run is a German thriller film written and directed by Tom Tykwer in 1998. This film was starring Franka Potente as Lola and Moritz Bleibtreu as Manni.

This story is about a girl, Lola receives a strange phone call from her boyfriend, Manni, to ask Lola to drive him to deliver the 100,000 Deutsche Mark he just collected from his recent crime to his boss, Ronnie. However, Lola failed to arrive on time as her moped was stolen. Manni has no choice but to took a subway train. He starts to panic when he saw ticket inspectors as he did not have a subway ticket. He leaves the bag with cash in the train. When he realize and wants to get back the bag, he saw a homeless man see the money and it was too late for him to get into the train again. Lola has twenty minutes to meet with Manni otherwise he will rob the supermarket as he lost the money. Lola run as fast as she can to meet Manni but she failed. She accidently shoot by a nervous police after they rob the supermarket. Then Lola recall her conversation with Manni about their love. Then the film starts to keep looping from the first scene. The film returns to their phone call.

In this film, editing plays an important role as it pushes and enhances the narrative of the film. The expressive and narrative capabilities of the moving image would not be anything like as rich as they are without editing. There are many ways to edit the film such as cut, dissolve, wipe and etc. Editing also offers filmmakers four basic area of choice and control which are graphic relations, rhythmic relations, spatial relations and temporal relations. In this film, there are a scene where Lola runs out from her room and run down from the stairs is in animation. This shows the graphic relations that indicates Lola has started another run. The rhythmic relations showed when there are a lot of fast cuts and shorts shots in the film showing Lola keeps running. This will enhance the suspense of the film and makes the audiences feel that Lola is really in rush.

Besides that, continuity editing also been used in this film. Eyeline match editing is used. Eyeline match is a cut in which one shot a person looking at something off-screen and the other shot is thereby posited as the object of that person’s gaze. When Lola is running, she passed by a lot of people, I feel like it is kind of showing POV of Lola while looking at them. Then the people also will stares at Lola. For example, the old lady that Lola first bumped into or the lady who works in her father’s bank.

Split screen also being used in the film. This shows in the scene where Lola runs as fast as she can to meet Manni so that he won’t rob the supermarket. In the other hand, Mannie is waiting for her appearance.

In conclusion, Run Lola Run makes me surprised because this film is much more interesting that I think. Different kind of editing techniques can attract audience’s attention and make us more understand the story or meaning of the film.

Film Studies II: Spirited Away (2001)

Spirited Away is a Japanese anime fantasy film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki and produced by Studio Ghibli in 2001. I know this movie when I was in primary school, but I have not watch the whole movie before, I just read through the story book that followed what exactly the movie shown, something like picture book. After I read the books, I feel like the story is really attract me so I start to search for the movie. I think I have watch this movie more than 10 times but it still remains the classic for many people. Normally, I will prefer America cartoon compare to Japanese anime, because I like the character design and the stories especially the musical part. But Hayao Miyazaki’s film is an exception. He always puts in some ideas of nature, spirit and God to alert people to take good care of nature. His films also bring out the idea of love, courage and growth of somebody. All of this we can see in Spirited Away.

The settings shows Japanese tradition as the main location where everything happen is Yubaba's bathhouse. Bathhouse is a common bath area that Japanese bath and pay for entrance. Besides, the characters in film also use their local dialect to communicate which is Japanese language.

One of the idea that I like the most in this film is about natural environment issue. Haku and the ancient river spirit are the example. Haku is a river spirit at first but his home is paved over to build an apartment complex, so he is homeless now. He has no choice but to go to Yubaba’s bathhouse. Besides, people thought that the ancient river spirit is a stink spirit at first because it is polluted by human waste, rubbish, old furniture, bicycle and etc. Whether industrial civilization should be based on the damage of environment, this is still an issue that cannot be ignore by society. Hayao Miyazaki puts in these scenes not just to alert the people, but also teach the young generation to take care about environment. They can learn something while they are watching animation.

There are many characters in this film such as Chihiro, Haku, Yubaba, Kamaji, Lin and Zaniba. All of them have very solid and clear characteristic and personality. Some of the characters are inspired by the spiritual God in Japan such as those Gods that visit to Yubaba’s bath house. The character I like the most in this movie is No Face. At first, I think that he is a mystery character because of his whole black body with mask. And he is quiet all the time. Some people said that he is a bad guy and some said he is good. I think he has both side. He is alone when the movie just starting, he just stands on the bridge, looks aimless and helpless, do not know where can he goes to. After he enter Yubaba’s bathhouse, he influenced by others, he thinks that gold is everything. Then, Chihiro brings him out of that place that made him become greedy, he returns to the quiet guy again, but this time he is not lonely anymore, he has his friend, Chihiro. I think this situation just like our life, as we enter the society, we are influence by others no matter good or bad, so we must have a clear mind to differentiate that what is true and what is wrong, do not lost ourselves like No Face, he is lucky because Chihiro is going to help him, but we are not as lucky as him all the times.

The music that used in film also an important factor. I love the background music (BGM) that used in this film especially “On Summer Day” and “Always with Me”. It makes me feel warm and comfortable. All the scenes are recall in my mind every time I listen to the music.  This music can really pull the audience into the story, follow the rhythm to lost, to cry and to laugh.

“Here I can only send you, the rest of the way you have to go yourself, do not look back.”

This is what Haku said to Chihiro before she returns to her ordinary world. I think that this is so true. We need to leave our comfort zone as we grow up, our parents cannot protect us all the times, so we need to be strong enough to face all the problems and difficulty ourselves in future. We should keep moving in our life and do not live in the past although it is wonderful. The way we can make ourselves better is just looking forward, upgrade ourselves all the times, then we can create more beautiful memories.

This film won a lot of awards such as Academy Award for Best Animated Feature at the 75th Academy Awards. It is the only hand drawn animated film and Japanese animated film to win best animated film. It also won the Golden Bear at the 2002 Berlin International Film Festival. It is a success animated film that can accept and love by the audience that come from all over the world. It is really a movie that worth to see it. It brings out a lot of meaning to define life.

Film Studies II: 15 Malaysia (2009)

15Malaysia is a short film project released in 2009. It consists of 15 short films made by 15 Malaysian filmmakers. These films are focus on the socio-political issues that happened in Malaysia. For example, Potong Saga directed by Yuhang Ho, Chocolate directed by Yasmin Ahmad, The Tree directed by Amir Muhammad, House directed by Linus Chung and etc. These films also feature some local actors, musicians and top political leaders such as Namewee, Adibah Noor and Y.A.B. Nik Abdul Aziz Nik Mat.

As Malaysia film industry is still growing, local filmmakers have their own focus to present their ideas in the form of film. Some of them concerned with the younger educated generation and their misconception of religion. Some of them concerned with corruption and politics. Some of them expounding family values and morals. Some of them concerned with how individuals adapted to their environments whereas some of them intrigued with ethnic relationships and interracial love.

Among the 15 films, the one I like the most is Chocolate by Yasmin Ahmad. I feel like this concept is quite similar to Sepet (2005), which also directed by him. The short film is around 3 minutes long, starts with a mother complains about her son who refuse to go to study oversea. Then a Malay girl visit their grocery shop to buy battery and chocolate. Unfortunately she has not enough money and the mother starts to yell at her son, so the son just ask the Malay girl don’t buy it if she couldn’t afford. From this short film, I think that Yasmin Ahmah is trying to show the ethnic relationships issue in Malaysia. For example, the mother said “People like us don’t get opportunity here. This land is only for their kind, not us”. This represent the Chinese always think that our government is not fair. They always help the Malay but not others ethnics. The mother also called the Malay girl as “那个马来婆”, this might sound normal in English, but it’s really rude in Chinese. This shows the old generation’s views are affecting the youngster. Our country is still growing, we must respect each other but not to discriminate against others.

Another short film that brings out moral value is House directed by Linus Chung. The film is about an Indian boy is asked to build a model of his house at school. This boy only managed to build the house with old cupboards as he comes from a poor family and his family cannot afford him to buy new materials. When he presents his house model in front of class, his classmates and teacher laugh at him because the model is very small and rough compared to others classmates who are rich. Then, he is being bullying by others students because he is poor and weak. This is a tale on the social economic plight faced by many Malaysians. We should not treat people by their skin colour or identity. The teacher in film also show a bad example. He shouldn’t tease the boy in front of the class. As an adult, he should teach the students to respect others’ dream but not lead them to laugh at another child.

In conclusion, every filmmaker has their own way to express their love and feeling to the country. Although the content of the film looks sensitive sometimes, but that is the way they experienced in this country. This also shows that people concerned about the issues that happened in our mother land.

Film Studies II: SEPET (2005)

The title “Sepet” is a Malay word which means “slit eyes”. Normally this word is used to call the Malaysian Chinese with small eyes. For example, the main cast in this film, Jason (Ah Loong). Sepet is a Malaysian romantic comedy drama film directed by Yasmin Ahmad in 2005. There are also many local actors that involved in this film such as Sharifah Amani as Orked, Ida Nerina as Orked’s mother, Harith Iskander as Orked’s father and Adibah Noor as Kak Yam.

This film is about the love story between a Chinese boy and a Malay girl, Jason and Orked. Jason is a 19 years old boy that selling unlicensed VCDs at market and surprisingly he likes to read and write poetry. While Orked is a schoolgirl who admires Hong Kong actors Takeshi Kaneshiro. They face some social and racial pressures from the society as they are from the totally different background.

Mise-en-scene plays a very important role in film as it helps to motivates and develops the story. There are many languages that used in this film such as English, Malay, Cantonese, Standard Chinese and Min Nan. As Malaysia is a unique country with multi ethnic, it is normal that Malaysian can speak different language. I think this really shows Malasysia identity as we are using different languages to communicate with others in our daily life. In the film, Jason’s mother said that “Tapi hairan, bangsa lain, bahasa lain, isi hati kita boleh faham.” This sentence means that we are from background with different culture, using different language, but we still can understand each other. This is strange. This shows that Malaysian all live in a harmony and peaceful country as we accept, respect and tolerance with each other.

Besides, this film can be categorized as Malaysia film not only because the language but also through the background setting of the film. This film was sets in Ipoh Malaysia. We can see the Malay house (Orked’s house), secondary school (Orked’s school), market (Jason’s CD stall), mamak stall (where Jason, Orked and Keong are chatting) and etc. The actors’ costumes also show Malaysia identity. For example, Orked and her mother wear baju kurung when they are going to market. Baju kurung is a very common outfit that Malaysian woman wear especially Malay girls. Orked also wears telekung (Muslim ladies’ prayer cloth) when she prays. Another example is when Jason and Orked have their first date in the fast food restaurant, there are two students wearing Malaysia school uniform sitting at the table around them. 

In term of cinematography, Yasmin Ahmad and Low Soon Keong used different kind of techniques to shoot the film to enhance the narrative. In the scene where Orked and her friend walk along the market, the camera tilt down to allow the audiences look at the surrounding of the market. The market is crowded with people and noisy. They also use close-up shot to show the facial expressions of the characters to the audiences more clearly. For example, when Orked knows that Jason makes another girl pregnant and she refuses to answer his call. She looks sad and he looks worried.

In conclusion, Sepet represents a local film that includes a lot of sensitive issues that found in Malaysia. Yasmin Ahmad uses some funny but also serious way to interpret these issues in the film. This is a recommendation film for all Malaysian as it shows the conflict and stereotype of people towards multi ethnics in our country.

3D II : Movie review - HERO

Week 3

Last few weeks, when my lecturer talks about colour, he introduced a film to us, Hero.

This is a Chinese wuxia（武侠） film directed by Zhang Yimou （张艺谋） in 2002. This film has a strong casts such as Jet Li, Tony Leung, Maggie Cheung, Donnie Yen, Zhang Ziyi and Chen Daoming. The story is based on the Chinese History of Jing Ke's assassination attempt on the King of Qin in 227 BC.

The colour performance of this film made me surprised as I seldom see this kind of colour performance in other Chinese films. I think this is the reason why Hero can get so many awards such as Golden Bauhinia Awards Best Cinematography, Hong Kong Film Awards Best Cinematography, New York Film Critics Circle Awards Best Cinematographer and etc.

In this film, Zhang Yimou uses different colour to represent different plots, characters and the felling of specific scenes.

Black. The film starts with black tone to emphasis the heavy atmosphere in the Qin Palace. Black colour usually gives the feeling of power and death. This can be explain that the King of Qin is the most powerful man in this dynasty. Everyone must obey him.

Red. Red colour usually gives the feeling of blood, war, energy, danger and passion. In the scene where Nameless goes to the calligraphy school in the Zhao state where Flying Snow and Broken Sword were also there, the whole scene mostly is in red colour set up. The people also wear in red. This shows that they probably in deadly danger because the Qin army is approaching to them. Most of the the pupils in the school also die when the Qin army start to shoot the school with millions of arrows. In this version of story, Long Sky, Flying Snow, Broken Sword and Moon are all dead, leaving Nameless alone with his anger to go to the Qin Palace to assassinate the King of Qin. Red represents anger, impulse and death.

Blue. Blue colour normally gives the feeling of sky and sea, stability, loyalty,  wisdom, intelligence, truth and etc. When King of Qin found out that Nameless was actually the assassin who wants to kill him, he didn't panic, he even comes out his own version of story to seek the truth. Blue represent peaceful and calm at this point. 

In King's version of story, Nameless has to kill either Flying Snow or Broken Sword to "prove" that he has killed both of them so that he can get close enough to the king in palace. Snow and Sword are arguing who should be the one to die, they both are willing to sacrifice. At last, Snow manages to injured Sword so that she can be the one who fight with Nameless (to die). Snow shows her stability and calmness when she facing Nameless and the Qin army (face her death). Snow and Sword are both loyal to their pure and beautiful love.

Green. Green colour gives the feeling of life, nature, harmony, freshness, safety and environment. In the scene where Broken Sword fights with King of Qin three years ago but he did not kill the king, Sword wears in green and the curtains in Qin palace are all in green. Sword did not kill King of Qin bacause he wants the country to be unified and peaceful, and only the King of Qin can achieve this vision. The green colour here shows they all desires the safe, harmony and peaceful life in this Warring States period.

White. White always associated with light, innocence, purity, cleanliness and death (in Chinese's belief). White colour are used at the last part of the story, when Flying Snow found that Broken Sword had convinced Nameless not to kill the king. She attacks Sword and unintentionally kills him when he choose not to defend himself so that she would know his feelings to her. Snow was so sad and sorrow, she kills herself and die together with Sword. White colour represents their pure love and the dreary dead.

Colour can brings out the different feelings to us while we are watching the film.  The good colour performance can emphasize the  deeper meaning that the director wants to tel us. I hope that I can learn to use colour in my animation in order to enhance the narrative.

References :

http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_4e6af0be0102dyfy.html

http://www.vsread.com/article-126409.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero_(2002_film)