Category Archives: Animation principle exercise

Portfolio & current plan for future career

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The direction of my career goals are 2D animation and storyboarding.

Over the past two years, I have been focusing on 2D animation during my studies at MACA courses. The process of creating movements and storytelling through hand-drawn frames fascinated me, and I dedicated myself to mastering this art form. In addition to searching for a job as an animator, I am also passionate about contributing to the pre-production stage of film and animation projects. I aspire to be involved in the early stages of project development, where I can help shape the narrative and visual style through storyboarding and concept design.

My primary objective is to secure an internship or a full-time position as a 2D animator. I aim to apply my skills and passion for 2D animation in a professional setting, contributing to creative projects while gaining valuable industry experience and expanding my network.

  • Target studios to send the showreel and portfolio:
  • Art&Graft
  • Golden Wolf
  • The Line

Self-Analysis & highlights in preparing my personal showreel

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Self-analysis

I’ve been studying animation for six years, four years as an undergraduate, and two years in MACA, which seems like a really long time, but I still feel it’s too short. During these years my animation skills have grown a lot, and I have gained a lot in what I did. In the beginning, I was full of enthusiasm in creating new things and exploring different methods in animation, but now I feel that I get stuck. As I’m approaching the end of my MA now, I feel that I can’t be stuck in this situation anymore, so I decided to do a self-analysis to understand my strengths, weaknesses, and needs, and to make a clear plan for my professional future.

  • The skills I have:
  • animating characters realistically and softly (this one is also my problems, recently I’ve been stuck in this style which limits my animation skills.)
  • detailed character performance, exaggerated morphing
  • character and background design skills
  • good understanding in storyboarding with proficiency in multiple compositions and different perspectives of the camera.
  • variety of software: TVpaint, clip studio painting, toonboom harmony, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe After Effects
  • My weakness:
  • A relatively single production style (In the early days, I used to work in different styles…Sadly, now I get stuck)
  • time management, very slow production process
  • understanding of performance. I need to make the action into a performance, I should put more emotion into the character acting rather than just a variety of movements.
  • low skills in timing, the principle of animation, clean-up, and color matching

Highlights in preparing showreel for industry

  • put the best and the most memorable shot first!
  • explore different styles!!!
  • show different capabilities/skills in different shots
  • 20-25sec / 45sec, don’t try to include every exercise
  • not rely on sound, check it without music

what should I do next

  • update CV/ portfolio/ showreel
  • keep applying for the internship
  • update homepage and add project to the linke

year2 collaborative project

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year2: chongwen men. project: no one but you.

-What where the roles you were given?
 rough animation, make sweet and juicy pose for two character.

-Did you complete the roles and what feedback did you receive?
 I was unfortunately infected with the Covid during the week of cooperation, and I only helped the second year with a small part of the shot.
 feedback: Acting performance needs to be smoother and more natural

-How did you perform during this project?
 I'm so sorry I got sick the whole time, but I tried my best to do a small shot.

-What could you have improved on?
 I need to improve my acting performance, I always only pay attention to the action, but ignore the meaning of it, the performance I create always are difficult for people to understand, I am also have this problem in normal exercise, I will improve this in the future and try to make more natural acting performance in animation .


my work part:
rough pose1
rough pose2
rough pose3
rough animation

Conclusion

My feelings and something I have learnt from this experience:
I'm so sorry I was unfortunately infected with the Covid during the week of cooperation, and I only helped the second grade with a small part of the shot.
In the process of cooperation, I found that this is actually very different from our usual practice. We need to communicate more with our year2 to complete the work. After I tried to understand the synsis and drew a short rough animtion that I thought was fine, but it didn't satisfied the second grade. Our ideas diverged, so I realized that communication is very important in teamwork, which can avoid a lot of unnecessary duplication of work. Even so, there may still be situations where we disagree with the visual representation of a shot.

lipsync recorded

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original video
The reference video I chose came from a variety show, two artists were imitating the conversation between mother and daughter. It is a mother-daughter battle(fight) in daily life.
(Translation: m:It's because you don't even know how to say good things to the elders...
d:I'm not going to eat! m:Why aren't you eating!?(angry))
This is an interesting mother-daughter quarrel dialogue. I chose the character of the Lady Tremaine in Cinderella to play the mother. I think it will be very interesting to use a Disney character to interpret a story in another cultural background, meanwhile the two mothers have completely different personalities, which also brings a contrasting effect to this performance.
I created a scene where a mother is having a conversation with her daughter while making kimchi.
 I try to draw the movement of the face first.Because the speech speed of this audio is very fast, I try to keep up with the speed to draw the mouth shape, and the body movement only has a rough sketch, which also makes me not as organized as the last lip sync work when I continue this work. 
And Christina gave me the feedback said the movement feels very static in terms of position.

animal lipsync

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thumbnail
rough key(Determine the approximate action with mouth)
After determining the thumbnail, I import the thumbnail into tvp and adjusted the timing to determine the approximate movement.In this step, I add the general movement of the mouth according to the timing.
key and breakdown(without mouth)
The next step is further work on keyframe.I find it difficult here, because I choose animal to do the lipsync exercise,and I don't know what to do when I start to progressing the keyframes.
After asking Christina for advice, I roughly understand the steps of painting, first draw the movement of the animal's head, and use the nose as a reference point to ensure that there is no excessive deformation. Then add the movement of the mouth.
About the movement of animal mouths, I have watched a lot of video materials including real images and animations.

First is to understand the structure of the canine mouth.
Second is to observe the opening and closing movement of the mouth.
Through the information I collected, I learned that the hunting method determines that it takes a long time for the dog's nose to bite the prey continuously, and the bite force is related to the size of the skull and the degree of opening and closing of the mouth, so the dog's nose is very prominent, but the size of the occlusal angle is not as large as that of cats.
Although I did not draw the structure of the teeth and mouth in detail and accurately in the animation, I have a rough idea of ​​where they are and how they are laid out.
reference: dog’s skull structure, different perspectives of real Dobermans, animation (101 dalmatians, Beastars, lady and tramp)
improve with the mouth shape
I further added the movement of the mouth and uploaded it on padlet for feedback from Christina. The advice Christina gave me was the mouth shape feels off is at the end of the first word "hi", I need held for a while the "e" mouth shape needs inbetweens.
I added two inbetweens to make the "e" mouth longer.

reading notes__Film Directing Shot by Shot

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I read this book for the first time in 2019, I think it is a very good material for film production and analysis, I will update this post in my free time to record some of my feelings and make some notes.
from shot by shot
Size of shot
1.The common units of the shot configuration are the long shot, medium shot, and cross-up, and the shots overlap in space.
2.Only when they have meaning in the relationship of each other, the continuity system will establish.
3.The ratio is determined according to the subject, and a balanced relationship is established.
4.Variations in the size of the shots vary but are determined by the extent to which they are equal.
close-up example from my previous work
Shot Type
Close-up:
1. Expression of intimacy shared by emotional unity, privacy based on
 distance allowed between people in various situations, physical contact, etc.
2.Close-ups are also referred to as single shots in other terms if the camera is
 holding someone's close-up.
3.: Expression of intimacy shared by emotional unity, privacy based on
 distance allowed between people in various situations, physical contact, etc.
The Line of action