FFA231(Mechanics Of Motion)-Sit Down, It's Movie Time!

For our latest class, we don't have to move our limbs at all, but sharpen our minds,eyes and ears because we have to watch a movie and analyse it. Out of three movies, which was Disney's Snow White, Pixar's The Incredibles and Toy Story, we asked for Snow White. Because it's IS Disney's first animated feature way, WAY back in 1937! We, as dedicated animation students, had to choose that because of it's hard method on animating which is 2d. Not to mention there were not much technologies back then on making animating things easier.

Illustrated by; Gustaf Tenggren

It was entertaining and mesmerizing watching this movie all over again. It has that touch of human-being rather than computer generated feeling.

So after we finished, we were asked to choose a character featured on that film and analyse the character based on these questions:

1. Who is your chosen character
2.What are his/her traits
3.What is his/her role in the story
4.What is his/her goal
5.What does he/she fears most
6.What is his/her exaggerated characteristic
7.What is his/her relationship with other characters

Chosen Character
For the first one, I chose the Evil Queen because I just do for no reason, hahahaha. (or maybe because I just like evil characters)

She is also known as the Wicked Queen, Queen Grimhilde (Not sure if Disney acknowledge it as canon) or just the Queen. She is the main antagonist of the story. She is also a witch, or the Hag(after she transformed herself into an ugly old woman)

Character's Trait

The Queen is portrayed as a cruel, ruthless ruler. Even though there isn't much on seeing how she governs her kingdom, in a scene where she was in her dungeon, there are a few skeletal remains in it, indicating that she left a person to die and rot in there. She is also insanely jealous of her stepdaughter's beauty, Snow White. She is head over heels crazy on being the fairest in the land that she asked the huntsman to kill Snow White so she could remain fairest. 

Although, she is very calculating, intelligent and careful in a way. She planned on killing off Snow White herself  with black magic by giving her a poisoned apple but she did not overlook anything that may cause her plan to fail. That being said, her plan was a success, Snow White was put to sleep but The Queen herself failed because she died from falling of the cliff in the end.

Her Role In The Story
The Queen was the main antagonist in the story.
She was Snow White's stepmother and a ruler of a kingdom. She is also a witch (or The Hag, The Witch) because she does black magic. None can escape her knowings because she has a magic mirror to tell her everything.

For a stepmother, she is quite cruel because she made her stepdaughter become a scullery maid just so she can be the fairest. For a queen, she is cruel because she is solely focused on becoming the prettiest in the land..and also the fact that there was a skeletal remains in her dungeon, which she also treated badly. (She literally asked the skeleton which was seen trying to grab a jug from inside of it's cell whether if it is thirsty. She then kicked the jug, which was empty, at the skeleton)

Her Goals

...none other than being the fairest and the ONLY fairest in all the land (talk about stealing the spotlight from everyone huh)

She is so desperate on being the most beautiful female in the land she would DIE to make herself one(she did die anyway hahahaha). All the efforts on asking the mirror on who's the fairest of them all to brewing poison to kill off her stepdaughter, I'd say she's pretty dedicated for that title "Miss Universe".

Her Fears

I guess I would say she wants to be the prettiest that she fears Snow White takes the title and hence,made Snow White wear torn clothes and become a scullery maid. But she also might have a terrible past that made her do so, because hey, nobody goes bad for no reason. 

There was also a scene where she saw through a window where Prince Charming serenading at Snow White. Her look of anger gave it all and goes to show that she is in fact jealous how other people gave attention to Snow White and not her.

I feel like she is insecure or afraid of feeling left out if she doesn't grab the attention of certain audience.

Her Exaggerated Characteristic

The fact that she is deranged and insanely jealous of her stepdaughter that she sent a huntsman to eliminate her, and transform herself into being the opposite of beauty just so she can disguise herself.

She was pretty calm as a Queen but after she transformed herself into an old woman, that went from normal to just a bad time. Her personality changed a little. After successfully transforming herself, she was determined that her plan would work. She looks happier...in a way...on the fact that she is going to murder somebody.

Also, she is quite good on putting an act as an old hag. When she met Snow White in the woods again, she was completely a different person. Begging for mercy to take her into the dwarves cottage after being attacked by small birds(which was preventing her from giving Snow White the poisoned apple). She said a certain line which was; "Oh,my heart! Oh my..My poor heart. Take me into the house, let me rest. A drink of water, please..!" oh she IS the drama QUEEN.

If you ask me, instead of forcing Snow White to be a scullery maid, she could've at least distort Snow White's face in certain ways instead of killing her and THEN become the fairest in the land--okay, this is taking a dark turn, I'll stop.

Her Relationship With Others

I would guess she is not that likable by other characters. Even the Seven Dwarves are scared of her because she is all-knowing. However, her huntsman, or her servant is loyal and would carry out her wish on having Snow White's heart put in a box. Although he failed to do so later on seeing how innocent Snow White is.

Her relationship with Snow White is kind of rough I'll say. However Snow White was kind of chill the way she is, being scullery maid and all and obeying her stepmother. She probably don't understand why the Queen does all that to her, being kindhearted girl she is. It was the Queen who's being envious to a point where death is involved.

The Queen's relationship with her people is a bit hazy because not much was shown, but the way on how the Dwarves reacted when the Queen was mentioned, they all didn't fancy her that much. The Dwarves said a line along the film that the Queen was bad, evil and an old witch. Bad impression for a ruler to govern a kingdom, huh?

References

• Wikipedia 
• Disney Wikia(The Huntsman)
• Disney Wikia(The Evil Queen)
• The History Blog

FFA233(Digital Ink And Paint)-Pose For The Camera!

So for our latest class, we learned photo imposing, or rather, you overlay images on top of other images--causing it to look wonderful or catastrophic.

We all started practicing with this rad boi  adorable little boy;

By using Photoshop, we were asked to erase the background using either Lasso Tool, Quick Selection Tool, or Magic Wand. I am quite familiar with all these selections tools but knowing that my hands are quite shaky when using a mouse, I used my tablet with the combination of Brush and Quick Mask Tool where you can see where it is selected in a light-red hue. It's easier for me because you can erase or add quite a lot of details on where or what you want to leave in the image.

After erasing the background from the out-of-this-world little man precious boy, we are given two images and are asked to overlay it on top of the boy. The results would be;

I know, not really good for my first attempt, but hey, I'm tryna' learn.

After that, Miss Sheila gave us all a task; to take a full-body picture of yourself, and do the same thing like we did on that classy young man boy.

I have to admit I really hate taking pictures of myself, ESPECIALLY when I'm the only one in the frame. Makes me feel insecure tbh, I'm not photogenic😅 BUT for the sake of this assignment and (InsyaAllah) making it to the dean list again, I will do it

Here's my pic, 

Out of all the pictures I've(well not really, it was Aileen) taken, this looks decent. The others are just potatoes trying to pose photogenically but fail to do so. 

Apparently, Miss Sheila prohibit us from taking images to overlay from the internet and ask us to use our own image, which means taking pictures of other things ourselves. I understand, because being a designer, it is important to take pictures yourselves rather than relying on the internet to find textures and images to design or create an artwork.

So I took some pictures and rummage through my trash folders, finding my old pictures I've taken of sceneries, a cat, a Rilakkuma packaging, my desk flowers, and my laptop's keyboard.

Being a pastel junkie myself, of course, my work is going to be all pastel-y because it's my aesthetic.The whole time I was editing, I forgot to record my progress, so I had to screenshot everything. So it's not really a time-lapse video.

But here's the progress;

And here's the result!

3D ANIMATION(First Assesment)- Barrel

Perspective View

Front View

Side View

Top

Reference 

Raw File and JPEG: Link

FFA233 (DIGITAL INK AND PAINT)- Getting The Hang Of Vectors

In our last assignment, we had to vectorize a monkey...and I know I was quite dramatic about how hard it was to trace the monkey.

Here be our 3rd assignment where we had to pick 5 vector pictures, and the lecturer will choose one between five of them all to be vectorized in illustrator.

For me, Miss Sheila entrusted the task to me, with this picture:

Original Artist/Image

So for my progress, I made it into a timelapse:

And as a result:

Left: Mine, Right: Original

So, I finally got the hang of tracing in Illustrator, thanks to that, my mother actually asked me to design some stickers for my brother's wedding in the future. Yep, learning Illustrator was worth it.

In my work though, it's not that perfect because there are still some white lines and spaces here and there if you look closely. It is kind of hard as there are tons of glowy things here and there in the picture and the picture itself is pixelated. So I had to squint my eyes real hard to see the difference. Although, I have gotten the hang of using Illustrator so it wasn't exactly as devastating as the monkey vector.😔 

The feeling of glory when you get the lines and colors in their right places is just, unexplainable ...especially for a beginner. It's just...

so happy

Files: .AI 
.JPG

FFA231 (MECHANIC OF MOTION)- Of Dinosaurs, Misunderstanding, and Train Robbery

This week, we learned to rely on ourselves to really imagine and create our own sound effect.
Three exercises ensued which was Being There, Minimal Word, and Sounds Scape With Place Atmosphere.

Being There
For the first exercise, we were given a task to think of an animal and imagine yourself being in their shoes. Thinking that maybe everyone else has chosen and thought of an animal that I would wanna be, I had to think of something more unique, something more ancient, vicious, scary, a predator, but with short arms. That's right! I have chosen a T-Rex. 😂😂

So after we have chosen our animals, we had to explain our daily lives of being that particular animal. For me, I really had no idea what T-Rex really do in their habitat except for hunting other preys and humans and look cool in front of the camera (because they appear on the silver screen couple of times no?) So I did a quick research on my phone while waiting for my turn to tell the others about the daily life of a T-Rex. When it was my turn, I told em' that I am ancient, a predator, with short arms. Also, the fact that I never brush my teeth(why would animals do that anyway) and my mouth are full of deadly microorganisms due to preying other animals and my mouth is full of dead corpse's residue and just by giving a bite to other prey will kill em' off slowly.

Minimal Word
The second exercise requires a pair, so I picked Sakinah as mine. We were told to mime with minimal sound effect. We had few ideas exchanged, but in the end, we decided to go with this;

For this scenario, I was the biker and Sakinah was the woman.
A woman was driving away from a parking lot when a biker suddenly motioned for her to stop and check out something. The woman, scared, tried to speed up to get away from the shady looking biker. The biker who's not content tried to catch up with the woman and the woman repeated the exact same thing; to get away from the shady looking biker. This goes on until the biker got exasperated and blocked the woman's car upfront. He reached out to her, ask her to roll her windows down. The woman was confused and scared getting pulled up like this. However, the biker only wanted to tell her that her skirt was stuck between her car's door.

Sounds Scape With Place Atmosphere
Finally, the last exercise for the week, it requires 10 people in a group.

For my team, we planned on creating a scene where a robbery happened on a steam train around the 80's. In this exercise, we need to act and create our own sound by ourselves. Some create the chugging train sound, some created chattering sounds between passengers, and one of them hummed the Thomas & Friends theme song (just because it's a train, but whatever as long as it works hahaha)
There were passengers, robbers, the steam train driver, and two cops undercover. When the robbery happens, the two police got off their disguise and arrested the robbers before they could do any more harm. I was playing the police in disguise with Fadlin Sakinah.

All in all, it was exhausting mentally and physically because we had to think quick on creating a story in a very limited time. But from what I observed, not just me, but some of the students have gained more courage in expressing themselves than before which is pretty cool.

FFA231 (MECHANICS OF MOTION) - Week 2- Giving Trusts

On our second class, we were given three activities. Namely, Introduce Your Partner, Trusting Yourself, and Trusting Your Partner.

For the first activity, we need to pair with someone and get to know them. It doesn't matter what your partner wants to tell but at the end of the introduction, we need to repeat what our partner has told in our own way, but no additional or improvisation. I get to tell Qistina's (AKA Eddie) story of her getting gastric in the middle of an examination month. Eddie gets to tell Humaira's story and Humaira got mine (we were in a group of three). My story was me when I was younger, I got so into the anime, Naruto, that I accidentally banged my nose on a couch and it started to bleed. 

For the second part, Trusting Yourself, we need to act as if we are in a situation (in a cafe or a bus) or act like we are our partner. In this case, I acted as Eddie, Eddie acted as Humaira and Humaira acted as me. Unfortunately, Humaira got into my character SO well she also banged her forehead on a chair and left a little bruise.

For the last part, Trusting Your Partner, we have to be lead by our pair and tell our own story but a different one. However, we need to be blindfolded and go through obstacles made by other students. Below is one of the challenge went through by Halimy (the struggle was real).

Overall, it was nice to try and imagine myself being someone else.

FFA233 (DIGITAL INK AND PAINT)-Week 2- Vector Tracing (OF DOOM)

I have to stress on how difficult this assignment is. Mainly because I am a beginner. One needs to have patience, and the will to stay alive in doing this task. Never have I ever thought that tracing can be this hard because it is done using Adobe Illustrator. For me, it is time-consuming because I couldn't adjust with the interface as it is kind of a new program for me (I have the software for a long time but never really used it before).

So here we have this Monkey (of eternal suffering);

Our task was to trace this monkey by using Illustrator and we are restricted from duplicating the lines directly. We have to trace one line, one part at a time. After few days, this is the result;

Left; Original   Right; My version

I am pretty sure it's not 100% similar, there are few lines with colors appearing on my work. I don't know how to erase or recolor the lines. ;(

I had to do and redo quite a few times especially the head part.

As for my progress, I did it in a time-lapse form. Apart from showing how I truly feel in doing this task, I wanted to test my skills in video editing. Needless to say, I still don't know what I am doing hahahaha. It took me days to figure out everything and I am not gonna lie, some high screeching and "tears" were shed. 

FFA231-MECHANICS OF MOTION

Who knew being in an animation course also requires you to act rather than just sit around staring at computer screens or drawing on papers to animate! And that's what the mechanics of motion class is for, it helps you understand the way people or objects move by imagining, acting, and moving.

We had our first two exercises which were Rope And Coil and impromptu acting. 

For the first exercise, we had to get into groups (mine were a group of girls) and stand in a circle. The challenge was to position yourself by name in alphabetical order with the people inside your group. However, you have to imagine you're somewhere very high and are only standing on a thin rope. You should also not break the circle or you'll fall. (My group failed this part because one of the members was ticklish and accidentally let the other member fall). From here, I found out that trust, confidence, communication, and strength plays an important part.

For the second exercise, we have to a do a spontaneous acting with random objects we can find outside of the class. Me and my pair, Hannah found our object which was a PVC pipe and a branch. I used the branch as a broom while Hannah used the PVC pipe as a walking stick. Below is our short act.

At first, we had no idea what to do with our objects, but push comes to shove and the clock was ticking, we had to improvise. I was nervous during the whole act hahaha.