Major Post 16 – Animated Music Video

Posted on by Thang Tsz Ching, Janelle

Same as my post 15, we learned about how animation was discovered and evolved. We really have to appreciate how animation has evolved and improved into from 18th century until now.

In the market nowadays, 2D animations are uncommon because as the technology is more developed, creating 3D CGI is more profitable and time-saving than 2D CGI animations, which it is required a large group of people to draw frame after frame. I talked about a special shader pack for 3D software is developed before, toon shader, which is inspired by cel-shading from 2D cartoon. One click with some setting adjustments, a shot can be done quicker than 2D animation. However, that doesn’t mean 2D CGI has been completely abandoned, it usually used as filled the shot with a background or post production ( special effects, lighting adjustment etc. ). Therefore, 2D animations are uncommon to see in the industry now.

Out of nowhere, Riot Games released an animated music video for promotion of in-game skin, GIANTS sung by True Damage ( A made up CGI characters group ), voiced by Becky G, Keke Palmer, SOYEON, DUCKWRTH and Thutmose. It is a media mixed with 3D environment and 2D character animations. It is an animation completely opposite of what the industry usually are, 2D main animations with classic cel-shading with 3D mesh and environment.

Major Post 15 – Kimetsu No Yaiba / Demon Slayer

Posted on by Thang Tsz Ching, Janelle

Our class mainly focused animation from before but can we also appreciate how animation/anime from Japan has become now?

I think the best anime made recently is Kimetsu No Yaiba/Demon Slayer. In a world full of Oni or demons, bloodthirsty monsters that looked somewhat like a human with supernatural power, a family is attacked by demons and only two members survive, Tanjiro and his sister Nezuko, who is turning into a demon slowly. Tanjiro sets out to become a demon slayer to avenge his family and hopefully to find a cure for his sister. Not only the story plot is extremely exciting, the animation in this anime is very smooth and the amount of effects and element animations are insanely good.

Animating water is a very complex. In 3D animation production, water or liquid is always a challenge towards the studio even to professionals.

Tanjiro is a demon slayer so he will get quests for him to complete, slaying demons. He met Zenitsu Agatsuma and Inosuke Hashibira during quests and they became a team and friends. One time they have to go into the mountains to fight one of the strongest 12 demons under Muzan’s lead. Zenitsu and Inosuke were wounded and couldn’t battle anymore, left with Tanjiro and Nezuko to finish their job and save them from danger. All the episodes of the anime are well-made but that final fight scene in the mountain was jawing, all the camera angle, the actions and elements

animation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0edHHfMLbmw
This is my favourite part.

Major Post 14 – True meaning of Spirited away?

Posted on by Thang Tsz Ching, Janelle

Spirited Away is another Ghibli Studio film directed by Hayao Miyazaki once again that I like.
The story is about the girl Chihiro followed her parents to move to a new home but strayed into another world by accident. Both parents became pigs because of greed, eating the food from restaurants that are not opened yet. Chihiro has to experience various tests and dangers, with the help of Bailong to survive in this dimension of Yaokai and rescue her parents.

I thought I understood the film but I might be not. I read an article about the hidden meanings and symbols about Spirited Away, I was blew away from what I have read.

The movie is about a girl wandered into an unknown fantasy world, she has to find a way to escape. However the article said, it wasn’t the girl wandered into the unknown world, she was sent into this weird fantasy place by her parents. The hot spring hotel was actually depicting a hooker house. The young girl was sold away by her parents to be a young female hooker. This is why the parents became pigs, not only because of greed to “free products” but greed to money, abandoning their children, sending her to an “unknown fantasy world”.

In the film, most of the workers of the hot spring hotel are female and the customers came to the hotel are creatures wearing wealthy, royal uniforms or they could be called “gods”. This is a depiction of the old times of Japan when war happened, a lot of peasants were extremely poor, selling their children away to work, war or services was a common thing to do.

One of the most shocking part to me is when the scene, a river god was polluted by garbage so Chihiro had to clean him up, that was her first job to do in the hotel too. I thought it was talking about pollution we did to river but instead…that part was talking about a young hooker’s first service to her first customer…I won’t say in details, if you understand what that means then you understand, if you don’t, it is ok, you don’t have to, really.

I cannot unseen what I have read from that article, no matter if it is true or coincidence. I can’t watch this film Spirited Away with a pure soul anymore.

Major Post 13 – Princess Mononoke

Posted on by Thang Tsz Ching, Janelle

During the class talking about Japanese animation, Princess Mononoke was mentioned. I am very happy Professor Jake loves the movie as I do. When I was young, I love animals and monsters so watching the film as a kid, I fell deeply in love with it but my main focus was just the creatures : White wolves, boars, the boar king, especially the Great Forest God which looks like a Kirin.

When I grew older, I started to understand what the plot is about, I love it even more. I could re-watch it multiple times without getting bored. However, now, I still love the movie but finds it very depressing.

The meaning behind the movie can be known as Mankind against the Nature. What is greed and pride of mankind? The film shows it loud and clear. Human used to live with the Nature, we use whatever the Nature provides and keep the balance. In the movie, people that worship or respect the gods of Nature is the symbol of the action. And then there are those who built and developed stronger military to fight against other human which involved destruction of forests. The surface of the story may seems to be an anger of gods, seek revenge towards mankind but the deeper meaning is that yes, we are destroying the Nature, Nature will “take revenge” upon us, global warming & climate changes etc that would affect us, but what’s up with these anyways? Mankind still lives through and move on. The head of the Great Forest God has been returned, it still got killed in the end. Mankind still won the war. This is a little hopeless thoughts from Hayao Miyazaki.

Major Post 12 – One Piece

Posted on by Thang Tsz Ching, Janelle

An old classic both comic and anime series that I love and still going on for over 10 years now, One Piece, created by Eiichiro Oda. The plot is very simple and straight. It is about an new era of pirates started by the Pirate King, Gol D. Roger, claimed that his ultimate treasure, One Piece is hidden somewhere in the ocean before his execution in the public. People around the globe wanted that unlimited gold and precious treasures to become rich forever so they went towards the sea and become pirates, population of pirates sharply rises.
The story is talking about Luffy, a young man set sails to become pirate in this golden era, compete to get the treasure One Piece. During his adventure, he met a lot of friends and enemies. He met Roronoa Zoro, Nami, Usopp, Vinsmoke Sanji, Tony Tony Chopper, Nico Robin, Franky, Brook and Jimbei to become a pirate crew that shook the world and gained the most awareness in most of the time.

My dad and I once discussed on how did One Piece came so far and still not ending yet. We concluded that because Oda chose the best theme to talk with, the ocean. It seems to be nothing and a common theme but if you think more about it, even in the modern days, we have only discovered a few percent of the sea( both surface and undersea ) and over 70% of the earth is covered by the ocean. We have such limited knowledge about the ocean so Oda chose the theme ocean. Anything could happen on and in the ocean, we never know so we imagine what would the ocean be like after more discoveries, that’s what Oda did. This is why until One Piece is found, the story could go on forever if Oda wanted to, with his creative imagination and huge settings for this manga.

Major Post 11 – Monkey King, King of Heroes 2015

Posted on by Thang Tsz Ching, Janelle

Even though, Nezha has already taken the most credit of being the symbol of Chinese creative media now but let’s never forgets, the first animated movie recently that caught the world’s attention was Monkey King, King of Heroes, created in 2015.

The CGI in 2015 shocked Chinese audiences. After the release of the movie, everyone is talking about how rare and surprising that China produced such high quality 3D CGI animation in movie length. Because of the story is talking about the Monkey King, it attracted a lot of attention since Journey to the West is a very well-known mythology that every Chinese know when they were young, even some people from other nations know about it.

The story is about the all mighty Monkey King, Son Wukong, once roamed freely between Heaven and Earth but after angering the Gods and defeating the heavenly army, he is imprisoned by Buddha as a punishment.
500 years later, a monk boy ran into the cave where the Monkey King was imprisoned and released him from his curse without knowing it. However, Buddha has sealed Wukong’s full power. The boy told Wukong that he admired his legend and hoping Wukong could take him back home safely. So the adventure began, the journey to Chang An with the boy and the journey of finding back his own self.

Major Post 10 – Nezha 2019

Posted on by Thang Tsz Ching, Janelle

I know I have been talking about this movie since forever but I just can’t stop loving this animated movie, especially after my research paper about it. The amount of work did to this movie is insane and mind-blowing. My major is animation, pathing towards 3D productions. The movie is a 3D CGI animation so it caught my heart even more. My future of career is to be involved in either animation/movie or game industry, mainly wanted to work in Asia so seeing this proof of evolution of Chinese creative media is a big encouragement to move on on my path !

Jiaozi is the director of the movie, also responsible for writing, editing the plot, art director, props and environment, character lead designer, action model. In the interview of about the production, Jiaozi mentioned too much that the video has to skip through. Basically he wanted to say that he is doing 80% of the work I would say, ENLIGHT MEDIA and other fifthteen companies that he found were just doing a tiny part of help to assist Jiaozi through the production.

The movie took them three years to complete yet the script of the story has already taken 2 years to edit and polish. This project was the first animated movie that ENLIGHT MEDIA and Jiaozi himself ever did. With very limited experience, it was a really struggling process for them but also a very valuable experience.

I hope for the best to Chinese creative media. A sequel of Nezha is confirmed by the director since the story is not ended, the movie just showed the beginning of legend of Nezha. There are much more to be told about the story of Investiture of the Gods, one of my favourite mythology of China.

Major Post 09 – Beastars

Posted on by Thang Tsz Ching, Janelle

Last month in October, an new anime series released in Japan called Beastars. I haven’t watched the newest episodes yet and I don’t want to spoil myself too much but basically the story is about a wolf in school life.

The settings of the story : Animals replaced humans. Animals walked on two legs and behave like humans. The beginning of the series is happened at school so the students are all kinds of animals from giraffes to mice, lions to foxes, wearing in uniforms. The world has a strict rule of no hunting. The world has developed new food for carnivores so they won’t starve. Even though there is a rule, in between predators and preys, bias still stands.

At the beginning of series, an accident happened, a herbivore got killed by a carnivore. Preys are all afraid and have arguments with the other predator students. The student who got killed was a member of drama club. They are going to perform live at school very soon. They continued to practice under this pressured atmosphere.

I do not want to spoil myself so this is where I stopped and what I knew so far. The series is still going on, it is a pretty interesting story plot.
Its opening is made with a very unique style that is not seen very much in other anime openings : stop-motion.
I am pretty sure this is stop-motion but there were parts of liquid flowing down, it looked very smooth. I wonder if it is made with resin or some sorts of transparent glue? Or was this not a stop-motion at all, or traditional stop-motion mixed with CGI.
( The video ended with a sharp twist, I think Professor Jake, you will like it xD. )

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vw9WJ2EoK_s

WIP Project 3 – Pixilation

Posted on by Thang Tsz Ching, Janelle

Our pixilation is about little magic tricks. We saw a video on YouTube which is about a person playing magic tricks with video editing. We saw one of the trick is a photo of kitty, when the photo got slammed onto the table, an actual kitty popped out. We took that as an inspiration to our project.

Our early story scenes

Originally, we wanted to set this story in the classroom but it is pretty impossible because we want a turtle to involve, which is my(Janelle) pet turtle. Bringing it outside and to the school are risking so we moved our story in Janelle’s bedroom.

Our final story :
Janelle is bored so she went ahead to her desk and doodle on a piece of paper. In the same time, Tan came in to see what is Janelle doing. After seeing her drawings, Tan brought out an ipad and an apple pen. She opened Procreate software to draw a black cat. She shook the cat out of the ipad, a little cat doll. Tan was proud of her magic trick. Janelle was amazed but she calmly pushed the doll away, starting to draw on her paper too. A turtle was drawn. Tan still thought her cat doll was better. In the end, Janelle showed Tan the same magic trick but it turned out to be a real turtle. Tan was completely beaten down by Janelle’s greatness of her magic.

Our setup this time is very simple. We only need a paper, an ipad, a pen, a black cat doll and an actual turtle. The only difficulty we have is that this is an one way ticket. As you can see our paper has to be destroyed in the end for the story, this is an one take only shooting.

I forgot to take a photo of the paper before it got destroyed lol
Our STAR of the video!

Thanks for reading 😉 !
By Janelle Thang and Jiawen Tan

Major Post 08 – Cel Shading

Posted on by Thang Tsz Ching, Janelle

In my own research of the movies before and now, I noticed that the old animated movies don’t have much shadings on the character. Background and props are usually painted in details. Disney movies for example, the characters don’t really have much shadings in them, the shadings are used when there’s an intense lighting or a way to show atmosphere of the scene. From Snow White to Princess and the Frog, the shades are either not used or very light in most of the time.

Disney studio are releasing 3D animation more often than 2D animation. I heard that is because 3D animation is more profitable than 2D animation. There’s a kind of shader in 3D programs has been developed in this 10 years – Cel-shading or Toon Shader. It is a very simple shader. It applies flat shadows onto the models, with the settings it provides, texture packs and lighting effects, a 3D animation is created quicker than before. This is why the number of production of 3D animation has significantly grown recently. Toon shader is inspired by the shades from old cartoons. This is a way to create consistent frames. Simple shading can tell stories and environment clearly, it can be drawn very easily too thus a convenient way to create consistented animations. Most of the cartoony animated films are made with toon shader but it is not visible due to the large amount of lighting, VFX and filters covered onto the scene.

Here is some examples of toon shader as you can see they are very simple and easy to render. Take Pokemon (pokemon go as well) as an example, they are the perfect example of toon shader. All of the pokemons are covered with simple shades am a little lighting.