The Last Door

I have mentioned the game several times, as it is indeed my favourite game.  It is a game operated entirely by mouse, and animated in a pixel style, which is a suitable style of graphic effect to fit the tone of the game, mentioning monsters that remind the audience the Cthulhu, a fictional entity. At first I thought the style can create a blurred effect and could not present the character and the background clearly, but the outcome amazed me with the high quality of the graphic. The music and sound effect works perfectly with the game, especially the music, flows smoothly with the development of the game. Most importantly, the camera language of the animation of the game convey the story effectively, although its a landscape game.

Monument Valley

Monument Valley is a puzzel game, with beautiful graphic designed, especially the colour combination that the producer used, it shows harmony of the colours between even blue and pink. It is on IOS platform and when it first came out, I bought the game and I did not regret. As well the movement of the characters is very smooth, it creates a very comfortable experience when playing the game.Speaking of the animation in the game, the speed of the movements of the character and the background, such as the movement of the waves. In addition, the game comes with a lovely background music throughout the game.

Forefinger City

A graduation animation made by a student from the Chinese University of Communication, from the same year of the animation, A Stop In the Mist. They are the two most favourite animations from 2015 of different styles. The Forefinger City demonstrate a short story of a city built  higher and higher and eventually falled down within nine minutes. The granny, the main character of this animation, consisting her belief of tradition and religion. The colour combination in the graphic presents in the animation creates a harmony style. The sound effect worked smoothly with the animation eapecially where the stones falls down to the ground.

Fresh Cut Grass

Fresh Cut Grass is also an animation in competition screened on the Manchester Animation Festivel. It is in a very cartoonish style and with the main character of an animal, a dog, which is different to many other animations in the competition. It tells a story of a dog travels into the city trying to find the girl dog that he likes, discovering that she ended up being a strip teaser. It is about finding back the initial insists and dreams, when losing the direction of life. I like the colours that is used in the animation, which is very contrasting but harmony to other colours as well.

Guida

Guida is in the animation selection in competition that was screened in the Manchester Animation Festival. It has impressed me very much with its special techniques of doing the animation, that the background was done seperately with the character, and the movements of the character done afterwards on top of the backgrounds. I love how the colours had been combined with the brown tone background. The watercolour effect has been used cleverly to indicate the shadow and light.

Shaun the Sheep

The new movie of Shaun the Sheep has been screen on the second day of the Manchester Animation Festival. Before I did not put a high expectation to the film, as I thought it is not the kind of animation that I would like, but after I finished watch the film, I actually enjoyed and discovered a range of good aspects of the film. It is a stop-motion animation, made by filming the models' movement on set landscape and animate it afterwards. The animation flows very smoothly though it is a stop-motion, therefore obviously the scenes are carefully planned and filmed in a highly controlled standard.

Sea Child

Graduation film in compitition, during the first day of Manchester Animation Festival, Sea Child is my favourite, and the animation that I voted for. It is produced by animating paintings created frame by frame, in a tone of black and red. It is a narrative of a story of the journey of a girl who was born in a fishing family, which is presented by her gramma killing a fish at the start of the animation, it uses exaggerated expression of the graphic that captures audience's eyes. It used a abstract presentation in some of the parts of the film, while the style of the paintings has extremely interested me.

Song of the Sea

A extremely beautiful piece of animated film directed by Tom Moore, which I firstly see on the Manchster Animation Festival and would possibly see again. From sketch to the final outcome, it has clearly travelled a long way to achieve the final aniamtion and the splendid experience it offers to the audience. What the animation has interested me is mainly because of the graphic, the drawings created, the movements of the characters are very smooth and the backgrounds with the character combines nicely and interacts with each other. Yet the story is relatively simple, the graphic has make up for a deficiency of the animation.

AV Induction

In these two photographs I tend to take the first one in a low frame rate in order to make a blurred effect of people’s movement, and the second one in a high frame rate, to capture the frame during a fast movement.

What is presentation?

Presentation, is a communication of a journey, or a story, it offers opportunity to present ideas, thoughts, concepts and resolusions of a problem. It is constructive response, meaningful information. To do a presentation, is to choose an approprete language, and to know your audience. It should explain who you are, your role, what you are doing, how you got there or planning to get there, and in additional, the plan of mocong foward. Yet a presentation is not about the presenter, not about what the presenter sounds or look like.
A presentation should be prepared, essentially knowing the subject, to keep it simple, instead of using clip art, do the drawings and photos. It should not contains too much text, easpecially avoiding bullet points. It should be readble from 2.45 meters away. Cue card and notes on presentation software would help.

Who am I? why am I here? What do I want to learn?

Why you chose to study on this programme?

Because I was making a choice between Game design and Animation, and I choose Animation.
Because my tutor suggested me this programme.
I want to be an animator or do relevant jobs after I graduated.
I found producing animation is extremely interesting to me.

What do you want to learn during your time on the programme?

The ability of producing a complete animation.
To improve narrating skill through practice.
Broaden knowledge of contemporary and historical animations.
To produce all different kinds of animation through different procedures.
To present ideas clearly.

What skills do you think are your strengths?

Drawing skill.
Fast understanding and absorbing.
Effective communication.

What things that you want to improve?

The knowledge of animations and animators.
Animation skills of different kinds of production way.
Research skill.
Confidence of presenting work.
Critical thinking and commenting.

What ways you will evaluate your progress?

Publishing works to public.
Receive and evaluate the comments from others.
Keep looking back to the process been taken.
Producing better solutions to situations.
Repeat.

Photoshop Induction

During the session of the photoshop induction, I developed the skill of animating in photoshop, simply such as the slow interaction between the background and the foreground, in other to create the simple movements.

Photoshop Induction

Started with a bouncing ball, then added hands and feet. Apply the essential principle of animation of  squash and stretch to a bouncing ball, a digital form of the  bouncing ball flip book that have been done before. The procedure I used was using layers and convert them into frames in the animation clip timeline, which is a easy and straight forward way as all the layers is visible to ensure the volume and the movements of the object are correct while drawing.