As this year's N.E.mation! 11 draws to a close, I am once again filled with pride and admiration on how far the teams have grown since joining this competition. From making new friends to overcoming tough challenges during their production phase, I am always amazed at what these students can achieve when they put their hearts and minds to it. And at the end of the day, nothing beats being recognised for your hard work and effort.
And what better way to acknowledge these students than by giving their animations a vote of support? All it takes is just 1 minute of your time, but it means so much more to them. That's because the winning team will win a trip to a renowned animation studio in the USA!
Cast your vote through all 4 different channels to show your support and increase your chances of winning some fabulous prizes! Not sure how to vote? Not to worry, check out the poster above, start voting now and stand a chance to win these attractive prizes:
On a lighter note, we recently had our annual downtown picnic at a new location this year, The Cathay Cineplex! It was a bustling day full of activities. We had guest appearances by local youtube celebrities Night Owl Cinematics, exciting balloon sculpting and instaprint booths, and of course the big reveal of the final animation clips of the top 10 teams!
Ending this post with group photo with my 5 fabulous teams.
Every year as an N.E.mation ambassador, I am always impressed and awed by the ability of the students to produce amazing animations with little or no prior animation experience. And year by year, they always come up with new and interesting animation techniques.
This year, N.E.mation 11 focuses on 2 animation techniques: Stop motion animation and 2D animation, both of which requires tremendous patience and effort. in this post, I will (try) to explain a little more about stop motion animation techniques.
Image Source from Google Search
Storyboarding
Every animation or video starts out as a storyboard. This usually comes in the form of sketches or line drawings detailing how each scene plays out and how they link to the next scene. If u look back at some of the photos from my previous N.E.mation posts, you might catch a glimpse of the storyboards hanging on the walls of each team's work spaces!
Image Source from Google Search
Props! Props! Props!
Stop motion is all about making things that normally would not move on their own seem like they are moving on their own! And to do this, lots of props are required! For example, a simple stop motion video of bites being taken out of an apple seems like it only requires 1 apple, but in actual fact, you may need to swap between 10 different apples with different bite marks to make this "simple" video come to life! So imagine how many props you need if your stop motion video has many different items that need to interact with each other!
Image Source from Google Search
Snap! Snap! Snap! Giving Life to Inanimate Objects
Now that we have our props and our storyboard, the next step is to get snapping! Filming a motion animation is simple but long and tedious process of "Snap a photo" - "move this thing a little" - "Repeat".
Remember to have lots of space on your memory cards before attempting to do this! A short 30 second stop motion video may be made up of 500 or more photos placed one after another!
And the scary thing is that most of the time, a lot of effort is required to move ONLY the objects that need to move. If you accidentally move any of the other objects, you might just have to reshoot the entire scene! Oh no!
Image Source from Google Search
Stitching it all up together
The final part of stop motion animation is to put all the photos in sequence to tell your story! This requires some knowledge of video editing software to know how to adjust the colours, align the sounds and music with the video and put in any subtitles or text if required!
So there you have it, my attempt at explaining what stop motion animation is. In fact, a couple of years back, me and my friends had a chance to try out some stop motion animation as project work for a music course we were attending. Although the video is only 1 minute long, we took an entire day to film this! But that was not going to stop us. And it shouldn't stop anyone looking to explore into stop motion animation or to chase their dreams. Don't doubt yourself and make sure to ask yourself "Will You Live Your Dream"?
Since my last post on the 1 - week selection from the Top 100 entries, our Top 10 teams for N.E.mation! 11 have been chosen and the production phase has begun!
If you haven't read up about the team selection phase, click HERE.
I thought that the teams have gotten quite used to their work corners by the 3rd day I visited.
Let me bring you on a quick tour!
The first thing I spotted when I entered the NYP lounge, the home of the Top 10 teams for the next 3 weeks, was the massive spam of colourful post-its filled with encouraging messages from the Top 10 teams to the others. Minutemansg brought up that I was the one who had encouraged the idea of passing on words of affirmation to one another in colourful post-its during the last run. Even though I could only vaguely remember I did that, I felt pleased with myself that this little act of kindness has been passed on to the current run.
Upon closer look, I realised that all the faces of the contestants were covered with a rough sketch of their looks. Something new I'd say, and I wonder which team came up with this brilliant idea to give their visitors a little more suspense until they meet the real person.
As always, their studio rules are as such.
I particularly abide by Rule Number ONE in CAPS and red - NO REGRETS.
Live a colourful life, spend your everyday time wisely with no regrets.
The intense is real.
Once you entered the work zone of the top 10 teams, you would notice both assigned instructors and the finalists working hand in hand on their projects - all out to bag the winning prize, a trip to the U.S.A! Some are marking out the images of the actors on their digital drawing pads while others are sewing, cutting, painting, prop-making and more.
Nevertheless I believe the teams have prepared enough 'ammos' for the upcoming days of strain and stress - loads of 'happy food', inspiring quotes, all sorts of quirky ways to mark their work desks and even brought along pieces of sentiments to keep them motivated throughout this competition.
The activity going on from this tent below got me all excited trying to guess who this team member is. I want to know who 'mushroom hair' is!
Wait a minute.
Hmm... Is this the team who have done the face sketches on the Top 10 Billboard?
To do whatever it takes to win, some of the students have also resorted to offering part of their happy food & toys to the legendary Teddy of N.E.mation! Teddy is parked under the Christmas Tree this year instead of climbing the backdrop last year. I see that he's received some of the best items from his devotees.
Instead of following up with just two teams like I did every year, I'll be revealing behind the scenes of FIVE teams this year! They are:
#NE11C01: [Blank Space]
#NE11C02: cedar3
#NE11C03: DinoSoar
#NE11C07: impossibro
#NE11C10: Passionfruit
You can search their respective hashtags on instagram and follow them for the latest updates of their projects. You can also visit http://nemation.sg under 'BLOG' to catch up on their blog entries.
Meanwhile, you might wanna make a quick guess which props or story inspirations do the following belong to. I'll be revealing the answers gradually over the next 2 weeks so stay tuned!
Item 1 - Blood bags
Item 2 - Paper
Item 3 - The Olympics Logo
Item 4 - An Umbrella
Item 5 - Characters from the Sylvanian Families
Join in the fun of guessing!
Mix and match, which items belongs to which team?
My Teams
#NE11C01: [Blank Space]
#NE11C02: cedar3
#NE11C03: DinoSoar
#NE11C07: impossibro
#NE11C10: Passionfruit
Items
Item 1 - Blood bags
Item 2 - Paper
Item 3 - The Olympics Logo
Item 4 - An Umbrella
Item 5 - Characters from the Sylvanian Families
Have fun and keep supporting the Top 10 teams for N.E.mation! 11.
Beliefs aside, everyone should keep doing good and accumulate good karma points for yourself the whole year round!
I came to discover a 'new' type of human beings.
I term this kind of people 'Living non-living things'.
Even though they do not do harm to others, they do not help others either.
They are neither rude nor polite, heartless nor soft-hearted.
They know what's going on around them but yet oblivious enough to ignore a situation that is happening.
These people doesn't flare up easily but on the contrary, they are the most patient people ever who can stand at one side and watch calmly as the episodes unfold themselves.
They are living things, yet they possess a kind of non-living thing behaviour.
They are breathing yet not budge a single bit when things happen.
Here's an real-life example of a 'living non-living person'(X):
X and an eldely woman crossing the road at the pedestrian crossing.
The green man started flashing.
In front of X, Elderly woman struggling with bulky packets and a trolley from her market trip.
X was carrying his small packet of breakfast.
Elderly woman was just halfway across.
Lights turned red.
Cars started honking.
Elderly woman finally managed to reach the other side but one of her trolley wheel was stuck.
X walked on with his packet of breakfast, casually after he'd crossed the road.
I was on my way to the market, saw the incident and quickly ran up to the aid of the elderly auntie.
X noticed the auntie, saw that she was having trouble with her bulky bags.
X could've helped the auntie with her bags since they were going in the same direction.
He simply...
move on with his life; I guess?
They do not give thanks nor help to hold the elevator door for others, yet they do not try to close the elevator door quickly so that no one could take the lift with them.
They just stand there and NOT MOVE A SINGLE BIT, not even to make way for others to come in, until they've reached their floor.
Have you noticed someone like this or are you someone like that yourself?
I'm not saying this is anything good or bad.
I'm just surprised at the behaviour.
Don't be lah~
Start doing good, any form of good!
Little kind gestures make mass differences.
Say 'thank you' when someone holds the elevator for you, share your umbrella with a stranger on a rainy day, smile and greet your neighbour, offer to wash the dishes for your family after dinner together...
You can also vote for your favourite Top 10 N.E.mation! 8 finalists to support homegrown talents!
Because You Played A Part.
You'd had seen the N.E.mation! 8 Call For Votes posters everywhere by now at MRT stations, bus stops, magazines and more.
I spotted one at the bus stop myself on my way home:
The Clips of the Top 10 N.E.mation! 8 finalists are out!
What Do We Have To Do?
3 Easy Steps.
NUMBER ONE. Watch The Clips
NUMBER TWO. Vote For 2 Of Your Favourite Clips.
NUMBER THREE. Stand To Win Attractive Prizes!
Simply visit www.nemation.sg on your PC or mobile devices and watch all 10 clips.
Vote for your three favourite clips, and stand to win attractive prizes like the iPad Air 16GB (WiFi + Cellular), Canon IXUS 132, iPad mini (Retina, WiFi), Canon Selphy Printers, Nintendo 3DS XL, Universal Studios Singapore passes and more!
Voting ends 15 February 2014.
Pay SPECIAL attention to these 2 groups of students,
They are my beautiful angels who've worked so hard so hard during their Dec school holidays.
My journey with them have been extremely heart-warming. Capable yet so humble.
VOTE for them and their hard work to produce such meaningful animation clip!
NE8C07: TEAM SYNCH
From Kent Ridge Secondary School
with their one and first typography animation clip in the contest.
NE8C09: TEAM UNICORNSANDRAINBOWS;)
From Orchid Park Secondary School
Spread the love, spread the colours.
THESE ARE THE 4 METHODS TO VOTE.
You can do all four!
Voting phrase is from 18 January to 15 February 2014
1.Visit www.nemation.sg from your PC. View all 10 clips and vote for 3 of your favorite clips!
2.Visit www.nemation.sg to vote on your smartphone on your smartphone! Alternatively, you can scan the QR code above to reach the same destination.
3.Visit N.E.mation! Facebook page on www.facebook.com/nemation
4.Vote via SMS in the following format:
NE8WEB [1st choice],[2nd choice],[3rd choice] NRICFull Name to 76677 Example: NE8WEB C01,C02,C03 S1234567A Ben Tan Wei Chen
Those below 21 years of age must seek parental consent to participate in the SMS Voting. Standard SMS rate applies.
Please note that each vote must be for three different N.E.mation! 8 clips.
Each person is only allowed to vote once on each of the voting platform.
