An Insight to Stop Motion Animation

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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.

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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!

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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!

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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!

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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"?

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Head over to http://nemation.sg for more details today!


This post is also posted on www.weareonfirst.com.

N.E.mation! 10: Team ZLS and Their Interactive Soccer Skills

Having gotten to know our 2 teams last week, we were eager to visit them again this week to check on their progress! And we brought a couple of surprises this week for our teams too!

[MinuteManSG: "Supplies!!"]

 

If you don't know what we are talking about, [MinuteManSG: "Or why I'm always interrupting with my square brackets."] you should catch up on our first N.E.mation! 10 visits first:

Our First Visit as N.E.mation! 10 Ambassadors: Team Cedar3

and

Our First Visit as N.E.mation! 10 Ambassadors: Team ZLS and the Legendary Milo Thief

Before we kicked off with our official visit, we gathered both Teams together to play a little ice-breaking game called 'Give Me Tempo, Ready Go!'.

We had lots of fun and laughs while getting to know remember each others names a little better through the game! And in the end, we even had a mini-competition where Tanya from Cedar3 emerged as the winner! Congratulations again Tanya! We hope you like your prize!

[MinuteManSG: "But oops! We forgot to take photos of the winner and her prize presentation!"]

At least managed to get a group photo of all of us together! Yay!

Because we headed to Cedar3's working area first, Team ZLS went back to their working area to catch up on some of their work while we chatted with Team Cedar3. And when we got back to Team ZLS's working area, everyone was hard at work doing their part for the team!

Each of them had a specific role...

Shofia: Bringing the main characters to life

Shao Jun (on the right):
The background designer (with the help of Lutfi in the middle)

And Zhi Xiang (in the blue windbreaker): The team leader and drawer of the bad guys (opponent's team)!

[MinuteManSG: "Apparently Team ZLS really loves their Milo, as we can see from their waste bin.Maybe they are in cahoots with the legendary Milo Thief!"]

Colin really seem to like peeking into waste bins. >-.- "<

They even have more milo treats and M&M brain food stocked up on their tables!

But we didn't dare to touch any of them because this was what happened to the last 'person' who tried to take their snacks...

[MinuteManSG: "Mr Quack quack was hung from his little neck neck."]

Shao Jun gave us a little demo of how he drew in the background designs after the main images have been done up. See those blue lines on screen? Those are the outlines of the stadium where the match is taking place. We always thought that the backgrounds were drawn first before the actual scenes, but I guess we learn something new every day right?

It also seems that the teams are starting to get to know the rest of the other teams and making new friends in the process! That is what friendly competition is all about! Here's a little encouragement from Team Cedar3!

We managed to pull them away from their work to play a little soccer with them! Here we are looking calm and collected while posing with the soccer ball...

[MinuteManSG: "The key word is LOOKING"]

But it was quite a different scene when we were actually playing.

We also brought along a little juggling ball that we used to choose who was the lucky ones to answer our questions. Me and Colin took turns standing with our backs facing the team, and they would stand at random positions before we threw the ball backwards. And the person closest to the ball would be the one to answer our question!

Q1: (To Zhi Xiang) How does it feel being the team leader of Team ZLS?
Zhi Xiang: Actually... *blush*

Zhi Xiang is really so shy!

[MinuteManSG: "Mint's turn!"]

Q2: (To Lutfi) Was it difficult to integrate back into the team since you only came back during the end of the first week of production?
Lutfi: At first I was a little lost, but with the guidance of our instructors and help of my group members, we now have a better idea of what each of our roles are.

Q3: (To Shofia) How does it feel being the only girl in the team?

Shofia: Sometimes when I'm doing work, the boys are playing soccer to de-stress themselves. But I guess they are boys so I don't really mind it.

[MinuteManSG: "Come on guys! How can you leave Shofia out of the fun! Next time you must get Shofia to join in when you are playing soccer ok? Then after that, go back to your work area all ready to get more work done together as a team!"]

We challenged the boys to teach Shofia and me a new soccer trick every week, so by the end of the 3 weeks, we would have learnt 3 new soccer skills!

We didn't manage to get a full group photo last week because Lutfi was overseas, so we had to take another group wefie this week with the whole team! Everyone say LUTFI!

Lutfi also shared with us an interesting story about his name. He told us that his name was supposed to be Lutfi, but his dad accidentally made a mistake and wrote his name as Lufti in his passport!

And just as we ended our session with Team ZLS, all the teams were gathered for a debrief of the day's activities by the one and only Mr K!

I think we should really take a moment to thank all the instructors for their diligence and hard work guiding all the finalists along. Some of them might seem strict and not so friendly, but it's only because they don't want any of the teams to end up struggling to finish their projects.

[MinuteManSG: "Three cheers for all the instructors!"]

Hip hip Hooray!! Hip hip Hooray!! Hip hip Hooray!!

Visit N.E.mation! 10 to find out more about this contest.

Our first visit as N.E.mation! 10 Ambassadors : Team ZLS and the Legendary Milo Thief

Since the very first time experiencing N.E.mation! 5 five years ago, I have always been amazed by the creativity and determination of all the teams in every N.E.mation! challenge. And they only seem to get better and more creative every year! The sky's the limit for these impressive kids!

What is N.E.mation! you ask? Well, N.E.mation! an annual digital animation competition organised by the good people at Nexus for youths to express their thoughts on Total Defence. These students, having no prior experience in animation before the competition, have been able to produce amazing video clips that were screened on free-to-air television! This year, the theme is "Together We Keep Singapore Strong", and as always, the winning team will win a trip to visit renowned animation studios is the USA!

This year, good things come in pairs, because I will be combining forces with my Man Man, Colin Chang, a.k.a. The Minute Man SG, as the ambassadors of our 2 teams! [The Man: "Hello Everybody!!!"] So throughout the rest of the N.E.mation blog posts, whenever you see square brackets with italic words in it, it's Colin speaking!

If you haven't read about our first visit to Team Cedar3, click here to read more!



Team ZLS #NE10C10

Our second team that we were introduced to was Team ZLS from Guangyang Secondary School!
[MinuteManSG: "Guangyang Secondary rocks too!"]

Lutfi was not in the picture because he was overseas, 

but don't worry, we'll take another full group photo next week!

They too had an interesting story on how they formed their team name. The original trio who came up with the idea that got them into the finals were Zhi Xiang, Lufti and Shao Jun. So they took the first letter from each of the names to become Team ZLS!

They have a new unofficial Team name though, it's ZLSS.

[MinuteManSG: "But where did the last S come from? Why the sudden plural form?"]

Well, after getting into the finals, they enlisted the help of another of their schoolmates, Shofia, to help them with their drawings and animations! Hence the unofficial name ZLSS is formed.

[MinuteManSG: "Oh! Why don't you share how they met for the first time!"]

Oh yes! Shofia was previously from another team sent in by Guangyang Secondary, and both their teams were working in computer labs that were side-by-side, but divided by a glass panel. So the teams wanted to wish each other good luck, but because they were separated by a glass panel, they actually typed in their good luck message on someone's phone and used that to communicate through the glass panel! That's so smart and creative!

After a quick introduction, team ZLS guided us through their storyboard. I can't believe how creative our students can get these days! They portrayed their story in a very different and interesting way! This shows how much our students can achieve if we just give them enough space to explore and get creative! For someone with an attention span as short as mine, it's a miracle I stood and listened to the entire story with amusement.

Shofia also showed us how they used the Wacom tablets to bring their characters to life on screen! It was so interesting that I had to have a go at drawing something, even though I can really draw!

Can you guess which one was drawn by me?

[MinuteManSG: "Wow! That's a cute drawing of a girls head! Impressive!"]

Hahaha. Well, actually I only drew the heart shape and coloured it in with my name. The girl's head was actually drawn by Shofia! She's so talented right?

[MinuteManSG: "Oh. In that case, I'm taking back my compliant and giving it to Shofia."]

Here's a preview of some of the characters that you will be seeing in their completed video. I love the ah gong and ah ma the most!

If you realised from the pictures, team ZLS are a little shy and they don't readily jump into photos! But did you know that although Zhi Xiang seems like the smallest and quietest member of the group, he is actually the group leader of team ZLS?

[MinuteManSG: "This just proves that we shouldn't judge a book by its cover!"]

By now, you should have been able to guess that their clip has something to do with soccer. And it was made even more evident by the soccer ball that was sitting under one of the tables of their working space. All the boys in the team love playing soccer and Shofia loves watching! 

So it was only fair that we asked the boys to show of some of their soccer skills! Colin sportingly volunteered to pass the ball around with Shao Jun...

Shao Jun displaying his soccer skills with a fancy flick

[MinuteManSG: "Phew. Ok. I think that was enough exercise for 1 day."]

It was so much fun to see them pass, flick and juggle the ball with such skill and ease.

Their storyline is really very creative and we can't wait to see the end product. We are sure that this is going to be a very impressive video!

And of course, how could we just had to end the session with the mandatory wefie! Everyone say Lufti!!

[MinuteManSG: "LUFTI!!!"]

Members of Team ZLS pen down their thoughts HERE.


The Legendary Milo Thief

During our chat with the teams, we heard rumours of an illusive Milo Thief, who would steal packets of ice milo from the N.E.mation fridge. However, no one has been able to spot this sneaky fella or catch him in action... until now...

While we were preparing to leave, from the corner of our eyes we spotted a blurry image zoom past behind us. With my quick reflexes, I whipped out my camera and managed to snap a couple of photos using the slo-mo mode... and managed to catch him red-handed!

[MinuteManSG: "What the... You didn't tell me about this..."]

Although we couldn't identify him due to his disguise and lack of clarity in the photos in the photos, I'm sure we will be able to apprehend him next week!

[MinuteManSG: "Well... Er... I think... I know that I... I mean... this guy should not have stolen the ice milos from the fridge, but... Er... I think we should give me... I mean him... a chance to explain himself. He probably has a very good reason why I... I mean he... had to resort to stealing..."]

And of course, a very special Thank You message to James!

Oh, and if you are wondering how we managed to snap some of these lovely photos with all 4 of our arms in the picture, well, the ever helpful James from Animagine kindly volunteered to be our assistant cameraman for the day. Thank you so much James for taking these wonderful shots as well as gracing us with the honour of being able to come back again this year to be team ambassadors of N.E.mation! 10!

Don't forget to stay tuned for more updates as we check on how our teams are progressing every week! See you next week!

For more stories, videos, photos and updates on N.E.mation! 10, visit https://nemation.sg/.