Monthly Archives: October 2023

practice two responsibilities in Sand Stopmotion Animation

Daily homework

In the last semester we had to work in groups to complete the trailer for the LIAF Animation Festival, choosing words for eight different themes, we made pitch for our animations and presented them to the class, and finally the teacher and the judges chose 12 students to be the directors, and the rest of the class chose again to work with the 12 chosen directors on their animations, and finally The trailer for the LIAF Animation Festival will be produced through group work.

To be honest, this is the first time I’ve worked on an animation as a director, and different from individual creation, I have to think not only about making the animation, but also about how to lead the whole team. This was a great challenge for me and at the same time gave me more practice in the animation production process. I encountered a lot of problems during the whole animation process and overcame them step by step. It was a valuable and wonderful time for me. Below are my production process, experience and insights:

As an animator

This animation project is a series of processes from the discussion of the narration script to the drawing of the storyboard, the sound effects and editing of the animation, I think I went through a very complete animation production process.

At the inception of the project, I wrote the rough narration and script based on the story, and after many discussions with my team members and feedback from my teachers, we settled on the final version.

We recorded the audio sound effects together, and this was the first time I made all the animation sound effects by myself, which I found very interesting and new, and helped me to further understand the characters and the story.

 I was in charge of the fourth part. As an animator, I looked for a lot of references for the parts I was working on and tried to use various software to assist me with some of the camera language. 3d software helped me a lot in rotating the angles of the shots I was drawing.

Because perspective is very difficult for me, I need to imagine the effect of turning different chairs.

Regarding the sandpainting production part, xinyu and I produced the first part, and I co-produced the third and fourth part with Vivi. Animation production, especially stop-motion animation, is a time-consuming process and sometimes there are all kinds of frustrations and problems. In shooting, the timing is not right, too fast or too slow will affect the direction of the whole animation. We often worked on it for a long time but ended up starting over because it didn’t work well. In the last part of the title we missed a letter, we checked it many times and didn’t find it, the next day we found out the problem, we all felt very devastated at that time, and we ended up redoing that part again, the difficulty of stop motion animation is that it’s very hard to go back to that burst of frames, and the production of a single frame sometimes takes more than an hour. So it really took us a lot of effort, and I’m proud of all my teammates, they persevered and the result was very good.

Secondly, another difficulty in stop-motion animation production is to control the consistency of the storyline and visual effects, we try to use sand to restore the style drawn by animatic, to make sure that the storyline development is always synchronised with the visual effects.

As a director

It required me to play different aspects of my role and responsibilities, starting with communication skills: it was crucial to communicate effectively with the team member. I analysed and explained my script idea and narration to the team members and we did some brainstorming and revising based on the very first script and narration. All of this process required me to be able to express my ideas and vision clearly so that the others could understand and assist me in achieving the goals of the project.

The second is organisational skills: animation projects usually require strict schedules and resource management. As a director, I need to plan, assign tasks and make sure the project is completed on time. So at different stages of the animation, I would post cycle tasks in the group and organise meetings to discuss them and make sure that we are on track with the production schedule. Building good co-operation with group members is the key to success. I am really grateful to my group members, this is my first time to work as a director in a team. To be honest, I felt very anxious and worried at the beginning, I wasn’t sure if I could guide the whole team well. I am very thankful to my team members for encouraging me and telling me not to put too much pressure on myself. Their encouragement made me feel more confident that I could make the team better and make sure that everyone could utilise their better abilities.

As a director, I had to make quick decisions about the direction of some of the storylines and the presentation of the images. At first I was hesitant to make decisions because I was worried that my decisions would hurt my group and make them feel uncomfortable, but when I talked to my teacher, she told me that a good director has to be able to make the best use of their abilities. She told me that a good director has to take advantage of the animation development or else my group members and I will feel lost. So after I told my group what I thought, we avoided continuing constant revisions and confusion, and everything went in a good direction.

Finally, I would like to say that sand animation requires a lot of patience. My team members put in a great deal of effort and I am really grateful that they chose to work with me on the animation “I am a chair”. It will be a great memory, and the experience and skills are likely to be very beneficial to me both personally and professionally in the future, as taking on a directing role has helped me to develop a wide range of abilities, increase my self-confidence and prepare me for the challenges ahead!

NEXUS animation studio visit harvest

Industry exploration

At the beginning of the semester, we visited the animation studio NEXUS, a creative studio based in London, UK, focusing on the production of animation and visual effects. As an independent production and animation studio, their work is highly acclaimed and makes a positive contribution to cultural exchange. In addition to London, the studio has opened studios in Los Angeles and Sydney to achieve a global, international reach. The studios in each country are able to produce interesting content for an international audience, where different cultures and aesthetic elements are exchanged and blended to provide a wider range of choices for the audience.

They move seamlessly between entertainment, branded content and technology. The studio covers a wide range of areas, whether it’s 2D, 3D or stop-motion animation, and even experiments with AR\XR. Working with real-time technology is both technically and creatively groundbreaking. Nowadays, with the advancement and innovation of technology, computers and artificial intelligence have been widely accepted by the public, animation is not only limited to traditional animated film and TV programme production, it has penetrated into many fields such as advertising, game development, Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) applications, medical and scientific visualisation, education and so on. This diversification has made the animation industry very dynamic, so when I watch film animation projects from studios and some commercial collaborations, I find that the number of 3D animations is much higher. I think this is an inevitable choice of technological advancement in our society nowadays, as 2D animation has a longer and more costly production cycle, and 3D animation is able to produce more exciting, realistic and exaggerated effects in less time.

When I visited the staff production area, basically all the staff were working with 3D software. After I listened to the studio head’s introduction of the animation production process, I was deeply aware of the complexity of the running process of a truly mature animation company. From the initial concept to the production of the final product, many different aspects and expertise are required. 3D animation production usually requires large-scale teamwork, including animators, modellers, programmers, artists and sound designers. After the tour I gained a deeper understanding of how these professionals work together to create high quality animation. At the same time, there is another layer where the project matching staff work, they need to match the project with the A company, understand each other’s needs and convey the needs to the animation team; then screen the animation team’s proposal and communicate with the A party to finalise it, and control the overall progress of the project tempo and operation, which is a very important part of the project.

There is a delicate balance between creativity and technique in animation. Many of the animated films I watched were mv animated for music, which is imagined based on the music, not unfounded images, they need to echo the animated images based on the composer’s story, the mood and tone of the music rendering. The studio handled this aspect of the balance very well, not only echoing the music but also immersing people in the animated performance. It inspired me a lot on how to combine creativity and technology in animation.

At the same time, after visiting a real commercial studio, I also felt the challenges and competition in the industry. The competition in the 3D animation industry is fierce, and there are often many companies competing for a single project, which means that studios also need to keep improving and upgrading, to gain popularity and show strong strength, and studios also need to submit animations to animation festival competitions, and winning awards is a reflection of the entity of the animation studio. If you want to stand out in the industry, winning awards at festivals is a good way to do it. There are many collaborators and industry players at the festivals, which increases exposure and attracts collaborations, and NEXUS Studios have gone from winning BAFTAs and Cannes Grand Prix spots to Oscar-nominated shorts, thanks to their technical expertise. Oscar-nominated short films, to Grammy-winning music promos, animated series and groundbreaking title sequences. Their achievements have also inspired me to become more involved in animation research, as I have seen first-hand examples of success and learnt that hard work and continuous learning are the keys to realising your animation dreams.

I am very grateful to the school to provide us with such an opportunity to let us really contact, understand the real animation industry how they run, how to develop and progress. It gives me a better understanding of the future employment and development direction, and a clearer understanding of my future career development plan. At the same time, I still have a lot to learn and understand, and have a developmental and diversified attitude towards the learning of animation skills.

Responsibility in the practice of sand stop-motion animation

Industry exploration, Stop motion

In the last semester we had to work in groups to complete the trailer for the LIAF Animation Festival, choosing words for eight different themes, we made pitch for our animations and presented them to the class, and finally the teacher and the judges chose 12 students to be the directors, and the rest of the class chose again to work with the 12 chosen directors on their animations, and finally The trailer for the LIAF Animation Festival will be produced through group work.

Responsibility in sand stop-motion animation

Daily homework

In the last semester we had to work in groups to complete the trailer for the LIAF Animation Festival, choosing words for eight different themes, we made pitch for our animations and presented them to the class, and finally the teacher and the judges chose 12 students to be the directors, and the rest of the class chose again to work with the 12 chosen directors on their animations, and finally The trailer for the LIAF Animation Festival will be produced through group work.

production process

Luckily my topic was chosen as one of the collaborative animations, my theme is “Being Human”, the story is told through the point of view of a chair, describing its thoughts on its own value, it is dissatisfied with itself, envy other chairs wanting to be other chairs, wanting to have more value, but ultimately realised that everyone has their own troubles and their own value.

To be honest, this is the first time I’ve worked on an animation as a director, and different from individual creation, I have to think not only about making the animation, but also about how to lead the whole team. This was a great challenge for me and at the same time gave me more practice in the animation production process. I encountered a lot of problems during the whole animation process and overcame them step by step. It was a valuable and wonderful time for me. Below are my production process, experience and insights:

As an animator

This animation project is a series of processes from the discussion of the narration script to the drawing of the storyboard, the sound effects and editing of the animation, I think I went through a very complete animation production process.

At the inception of the project, I wrote the rough narration and script based on the story, and after many discussions with my team members and feedback from my teachers, we settled on the final version.

We recorded the audio sound effects together, and this was the first time I made all the animation sound effects by myself, which I found very interesting and new, and helped me to further understand the characters and the story.

After I drew the storyboards, I divided the animation into four parts and each of us worked on one of the parts separately, I was in charge of the fourth part. As an animator, I looked for a lot of references for the parts I was working on and tried to use various software to assist me with some of the camera language. 3d software helped me a lot in rotating the angles of the shots I was drawing.

Because perspective is very difficult for me, I need to imagine the effect of turning different chairs.

Regarding the sandpainting production part, xinyu and I produced the first part, and I co-produced the third and fourth part with Vivi. Animation production, especially stop-motion animation, is a time-consuming process and sometimes there are all kinds of frustrations and problems. In shooting, the timing is not right, too fast or too slow will affect the direction of the whole animation. We often worked on it for a long time but ended up starting over because it didn’t work well. In the last part of the title we missed a letter, we checked it many times and didn’t find it, the next day we found out the problem, we all felt very devastated at that time, and we ended up redoing that part again, the difficulty of stop motion animation is that it’s very hard to go back to that burst of frames, and the production of a single frame sometimes takes more than an hour. So it really took us a lot of effort, and I’m proud of all my teammates, they persevered and the result was very good.

Secondly, another difficulty in stop-motion animation production is to control the consistency of the storyline and visual effects, we try to use sand to restore the style drawn by animatic, to make sure that the storyline development is always synchronised with the visual effects, to ensure that the final work has consistency, we usually produce 3-5 frames and then play the whole film once until the end of the whole animation production, I think we have watched the animation at least a few hundred times. I think we watched the animation at least a few hundred times.

The production of stop-motion animation often requires more locations to shoot, and I’m very grateful to my teacher for helping us co-ordinate the locations to make the stop-motion animation vision come to reality. The technical teachers also provided us with a lot of technical support on the stop-motion software, which had more or less different problems during the actual filming process. Because my group members basically have not used sand to make animation so I also helped them with some simple skills guidance to let them feel the fun of sand painting, after that the teacher invited a famous sand animator in the industry to give us some advice, I feel that I learnt a lot.

As a director

It required me to play different aspects of my role and responsibilities, starting with communication skills: it was crucial to communicate effectively with the team members, teachers and other jury members in the pre-production phase of the animation. I analysed and explained my script idea and narration to the team members and we did some brainstorming and revising based on the very first script and narration. All of this process required me to be able to express my ideas and vision clearly so that the others could understand and assist me in achieving the goals of the project.

The second is organisational skills: animation projects usually require strict schedules and resource management. As a director, I need to plan, assign tasks and make sure the project is completed on time. So at different stages of the animation, I would post cycle tasks in the group and organise meetings to discuss them and make sure that we are on track with the production schedule.

In terms of teamwork building good co-operation with group members is the key to success. I am really grateful to my group members, this is my first time to work as a director in a team. To be honest, I felt very anxious and worried at the beginning, I wasn’t sure if I could guide the whole team well. I am very thankful to my team members for encouraging me and telling me not to put too much pressure on myself. Their encouragement made me feel more confident that I could make the team better and make sure that everyone could utilise their better abilities.

I didn’t do a very good job of making decisions at first. As a director, I had to make quick decisions about the direction of some of the storylines and the presentation of the images. At first I was hesitant to make decisions because I was worried that my decisions would hurt my group and make them feel uncomfortable, but when I talked to my teacher, she told me that a good director has to be able to make the best use of their abilities. She told me that a good director has to take advantage of the animation development or else my group members and I will feel lost. So after I told my group what I thought, we avoided continuing constant revisions and confusion, and everything went in a good direction.

We co-created and co-managed the social networking software, which is also a way for us to understand in advance that art promotion is also a very important part of the process, not only as a record of the art creation process, but also as a “business card” for us in the future, and nowadays, artists mostly use the internet to create their own “art style settings”, which makes it easier for others to create their own artworks. Nowadays, most artists use the internet to create their own “artistic style setting”, so that others can understand you, your animation, and the art style you are good at more conveniently, and enhance the possibility of cooperation with you.

Finally, I would like to say that sand animation requires a lot of patience. My team members put in a great deal of effort and I am really grateful that they chose to work with me on the animation “I am a chair”. It will be a great memory, and the experience and skills are likely to be very beneficial to me both personally and professionally in the future, as taking on a directing role has helped me to develop a wide range of abilities, increase my self-confidence and prepare me for the challenges ahead!