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!

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.

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!

In collaboration with a year 2 student Yifan Lyu, I was given the task of drawing a scene in which a character falls through the air in an animation.

Firstly, Yifan Lyu, discussed the plot of her work with me. The main story is about a girl with a social phobia, who is afraid of speaking in a crowded place, resists physical contact with others in a crowded place and is reluctant to go out and socialise with people. With the warmth and encouragement of his family, he eventually overcame his fears and tried to face life. My drawing work was mid-story when her mother called her and she was sucked in by the phone and fell through the air into her mother’s arms.

After Yifan told me what I was working on, I did a search for information on some of the poses and movements from the sky. I looked at scenes from animated and live action films for reference and comparison, mainly in relation to the position of the characters and perspective. From the references I found commonalities in the falling poses and similarities to my task.

At the same time, I added some of my own personal observations, I think it would have made the story clearer to switch the shots during the fall, where she sees her mother first and then jumps into her arms. I think it would have been better to have a progression in the sequence.

I had a lot of problems during the painting process, but I was very fortunate that I was able to complete my assignment and get the approval of Yifan. She thought she might consider adding a camera shift, which is a good point!

During the drawing process, I kept communicating with yifan, hoping to understand the character better so that I could understand her better and draw her accurately.

I think I gave my all in this project, but I still have a lot to work on in terms of the perspective of the figures. This is something I didn’t do very well and it was the hardest part of the project for me. Because I rarely see this kind of movement, I had a hard time imagining it and drawing it. And because it’s a drop, the hair swaying and the clothes swaying are both difficult. I think I could improve on the perspective and the swaying of the clothes.

In my opinion, I help the animation director to draw a sketch of the movement of one of the shots, which in animation work I consider to be the job of the animator or split-screen artist. Drawing some keyframes or storyboards.

The learning on the course helped me a lot. The life drawing of the human body allowed me to avoid many mistakes in the body structure during the drawing process, and the basic principles of animation were able to help me catch the movement, gesture and timing of the character during the drawing process.

I think I learnt and learned a lot through this experience, starting with collaboration and communication skills, as I helped the director with her split, so we had to keep communicating with each other to achieve the best results. Drawing the split drafts required me to be able to refine the storyline and character emotions through the images she drew. This has honed my visual narrative skills and will help me to better express myself in future art and design projects. Secondly, being involved in the production process allowed me to understand the various aspects of animation production, including character design, storyboarding, scene design, animation and post-production. This will be very useful for my future graduation design and for my future career in the animation industry.

After this happy collaboration, I have improved and grown a lot in terms of communication, animation flow and split-screen drawing. I had a great time working and communicating with yifan, and she also gave me comfort and advice for my confusion and distress as a first-year student in my studies, and I am very honoured to have this experience, which will be the most memorable one of my term2!

Here’s all my experience！

Weekly life drawing classes on the human body keep me in good hands and in my opinion it is very important to observe the details of the human body. The proportions of the model’s body, the lines and contours, the dynamics and so on. Only by careful observation can we truly understand and express the form and structure of the human body.

Life drawing of the human body is a great way to practice observation and skills. Through nearly six months of practice, I have gradually improved my drawing skills and techniques, as well as becoming more acute in observing and perceiving the form and structure of the body.

The 30-second sketch of the human body usually emphasises speed and agility, requiring us to be able to capture the pose and movement of the model quickly and draw it as quickly as possible. In this style of sketching, the work is usually more concise and abstract, conveying only the general outline and gesture of the body.

In contrast, the longer 2-3 minute sketch of the human body allows for more in-depth observation and expression of the details and emotions of the body. I have more time to look more closely at the pose and dynamics of the model, showing the proportions of the body, the muscular and skeletal structure, as well as the emotion and expression.

In general, life drawing has played a big role in my understanding of human structure and character drawing.

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