Project01: Object Animation | Documentation 2 | Production

Posted on by Sammy Liu

On the day of the shoot, it was boiling hot and extremely sunny.


Sammy: “I’m sure we got 3 shades darker after this, but the lighting was pretty and we initially wanted a natural environment.
We hit some problems with setting the tripod and getting a stable camera position at the first location of the shoot, so we had to decide to move else where.”

Wendy: “I think problem solving skills is definitely what we needed during the production process. We imagined lots of silly things that the food can do such as the using ketchup to do the explosion of the volcano.
We asked for only 3 little bags of ketchup from McDonald’s, but it was not enough at all. We wanted to pinch some holes on the package and squeeze it to make the explosion. It was just not working out as we imagined and our hands are full of ketchup. 🥫🥫🥫
What we can do better next time is to do a rehearsal before the acting shooting, so we can encounter and prepare for the problem we might have.”

Please check out our short “behind-the-scenes” clip we made for fun!

Wendy Kong

Claudia Lau

Sammy Liu

Project01: Object Animation | Documentation 1 | Planning and Storyboarding

Posted on by Sammy Liu

To start our brainstorming process, we met up in Macdonalds to look at possible props and eat lunch.

We wrote down immediate, silly ideas from looking at our possible props, noticing the capabilities of the food (e.g. the layers in the chicken wings, the chunky-ness of the burger), and potential objects and/or animals that they resembled.

Brain storming notes
Storyboarding/potential camera angles and shots

This is the video we looked at for inspiration and guidance, as it was all of our first times to attempt stop-motion.

Wendy Kong

Claudia Lau

Sammy Liu

major post 02

Posted on by hazelyin

We had watched a lot of animations during classes and I think The Adventures of Prince Achmed is one of the most entertaining film. Although it is longer than an hour and it doesn’t have any voice acting or colourful image, I still enjoyed and liked it very much. Somehow I felt the story plot is a combination of different folk tale, such as Aladdin from Middle East and Cowherd and Weaving Girl from China, and this must be an innovative creation at that time. Besides, it was glad to know that such marvellous narrative art was made by a female creator, Lotte Reiniger. As far as I know, women usually would not be such important role in their workplace and their social status was lower than men at that time. However, here we came a great female director! And her animation is a very first full-length animation which is so interesting and beautiful! I reckon that Lotte Reiniger is a strong evidence of the existence of many nameless female animators who were contributing the industry at that time. Love and respect her!

Project 1 – WIP Post 2 – Production

Posted on by Eunhae Mary Park

The film was shot in Victoria’s room. The animation (the movement of the characters and the props) was done by Victoria and the camerawork and the compositing were done by me. When animating, we had to shoot more frames at smaller intervals because our first shot did not have enough frames for the movement of the characters to translate as smoothly when played out.

We ran into difficulties in setting up the camera angle especially for the over-the-shoulder in the mirror shot as we had to hold the camera up by hand. During compositing, we used holds for certain frames to create breathing space between each major movement.

The music will be provided by Alex Wang, a sound design major SCAD student. The music, “우리동네 빨간 길” (Our neighborhood’s red street) can be found on Wang’s Instagram (alex_w_music). The clip will be complete after the music is inserted on top of the animation.

Victoria Courchesne
Eunhae Mary Park

WIP :Stop Motion

Posted on by Bobbi Ho

Cameron and I had a hard time coming up with an idea/concept. Which was the basic first step to creating our stop motion. I had gathered a lot of reference videos from YouTube to get inspiration. Cameron and I got some ideas from them but ultimately decided to use the stuffed animals that I already had, to save time and money. We did a quick brainstorming session before we just went ahead and shot the frames, going along with different things as we continued.

We ran into some trouble, in regards to the different angles to shoot the extremely short film. While also having difficulties with our figures, for one was not as easy to move.

Bobbi Ho

Cameron Gordon

Project 1 – Work in progress

Posted on by marissatso

For our first project, we are going to make stop-motion animation. Marissa, Hazel and Lily form a group and discuss about the theme. In the very beginning, we planned to make a video about food and cat fur. However, when we were eating lunch, we changed our mind and decided to make a video about Lily’s original character, Red-Hearted Sweet Potato.

The photos show our production progress and how we make this video. We used clay to create the sweet potato and paper to draw the decoration, also, we bought the dishcloth in wet market. The figure, Link is friendly sponsored by Hazel!!

Making stop-motion animation is more time-consuming than we thought. We used a lot of time to make the sweet potato and the decorations. We used foam to support the paper for standing. It is difficult to change the motion of sweet potato as the decorations behind keep falling down, very hard to maintain the consistency throughout the video. Thats why we have a strong sense of achievement after we finish the whole animation.

Marissa Tso
Hazel Wong
Lily Lai

Major Post 1: Origin of Animation

Posted on by Wendy Kong

I bought a few art books of the Walt Disney Animation Studio such as The Illusion of Life. I never read it because there’s lots of content about the history of animation which I think it might be boring. I always love animation but I never wonder how does it exist. And how it develops to the animation we see today. However, studying in this class widen my horizons. I learnt that animation is the concept of persistence of vision which means our eyes seeing moving sequences of image. The Optical theatre that Emile Reynaud created in 1888 amazed me. It required a long band containing 500 hand painted slides drawn on a transparent gelatin in a large wheel, and rotating at the same speed as the 36 mirrors. It took a hard work to make it. I am really thankful for animator in the past because their hard works and patience built the future of animation.

My favourite animation that we watched in class is the Bigger Picture created by Daisy Jacobs in 2014. Big Bang Big Boom is a successful work as the animation is so smooth, however, I am a bit confused and shock by the story. 

Wendy Kong

Major Post 2: The Early Years and Cutouts

Posted on by Bobbi Ho

The Early Years of Animation around the 1920’s, changed the face of characters to more round-about cartoons, focusing on character development and facial expressions. Such as characters like “Felix the Cat”, “Betty Boop”, “Bimbo the Dog”, and “Koko the Clown”. Compared to the use of realistic human-like animated characters, first experimented by Emile Reynaud, taught in the class previously. The characters are amusing to watch as they defy the laws of reality. There is always an unexpected turn of events that keeps the audience entranced.

While learning about the process, and the different artists invested into cutout animations, it gave me a sense of respect for them. The amount of time and precision it takes to cut out each frame, can be assumed as time consuming and requires a lot of patience. Watching Lotte Reiniger’s Prince Achmed (1926), was inspiring. Her film was detailed and were all black cutouts, which can become tricky when trying to best express the intended action, without them resembling like a blob. She changed the game for women in the industry, becoming a stepping stone for women today.

Major Post 1 – David O’Reilly

Posted on by Julia Reymundo

On the first day of class, one of the animations that caught my interest were the works of David O’Reilly. He creates really interesting concepts for his animations. Particularly, “Please Say Something” was visually compelling and had little easter eggs or hints that add to the storytelling. The art style had reminded me of something that I’ve seen before. He uses a low poly style that I can really appreciate and could vibe with. The low poly style is one of my favorites in 3D.

However, the works presented in class weren’t my first exposure to his works. My first experience with his work was when he worked on an episode for the Cartoon Network show, “Adventure Time.” He wrote, directed and animated the episode “A Glitch is a Glitch.” It has the same animation style and his iconic glitch effects. The concept, while still being very ‘David O’Reilly’, for this episode really fits the world of Adventure Time.

Here is a scene in the episode:

Julia Reymundo

Major post 1: Genesis of anim.

Posted on by Sammy Liu

Before these history of animation lessons, I barely knew anything about its origin as it never caught my immediate interest. The most I knew would be from watching Tarzan; who had a scene of the Praxinoscope by Reynaud, and seeing glimpses of Disney’s old Mickey Mouse. Therefore, I’m entirely grateful and consciously appreciative of being able to watch animation from the very beginning, even if the early animations are very slow and unappealing – I feel very privileged to learn about its roots and grateful to the people who took the time to innovate techniques and systems, such as the optical theatre, peg system, slash system and the cel-animation technique that enabled us to be where we are today.

In terms of genre, seeing how most of the early animations were generally very quirky yet dark, showed a glimpse of the mindset of that time. I thought it is very amazing how a short clip can carry so many other aspects, such as culture, mannerisms and lifestyle.

It is also very interesting how a lot of the ‘business men’ created shorts with the theme of ‘work’, for example in the “Felix the cat” shorts. They lead the idea of how art and entertainment can come together to make money – which opened even more opportunities for creatives to make a living in the future.

Sammy Liu