February 2010
13 posts
From Models to Matte Painting
Models and Matte painting are normally used in movie as they are the inexpensive and practical to produce effects that are impossible to recreate in real world. For instance, in “The Pianoist,” where Adrian Brody was walking out to the street showing all the houses along the end of the street wrecked by bombing. Filmmakers also used forced perspective to give us a false appearance of...
Optical Effects
I had to admit that this class was the driest and hardest to catch up with. As a pampered audience, who cares to learn how the filmmakers create all the effects in the movie. However, learning how optical effects are essential and important in making a movie, it is actually quite interesting to know.
From the invention of William process to Sodium Vapor process, it is quite stunning to see how...
From hand drawn to digitally made animation
As the world moves, the technology spurred at a fast speed that we can even owned a 3D TV now. This is the same in the animation world. In the past, it was used to be “Disney produced” era, however, with the introduction of computer animation in the 1960, things started to change. William Fetter was credited with the intro to computer animation, his first display work...
Pixar
Pixar, a name that everyone knew. His wild, funny stories telling the tale of friendship and family love which has been seen in every movie that he made. At least a Pixar-made movie was screen every year. Not forgetting to mention the first animated full-length feature film, Toy story in 1995 to the recent film “Up” that has been well-received by many fans around the world.
Pixar has...
Stop In Motion
In this class, I learnt the magic of stop motion technique. It is amazing how stop motion technique has improved since the use of it in The Humpty Dumpty Circus directed by Albert E. Smith and J. Stuart Blackton, which a toy circus of acrobats and animals comes to life, in 1898.
Moving on to 70s and 80s, before the invention of Computer Graphic, Industrial Light Magic has utilized the use of it...
January 2010
2 posts
Animation around the world
I shall said it has been a long time since i have updated new posts on this lovely blog. So today I shall sum up a bit of what I have learnt from the past few weeks, or i should say months.
Not to be too long-winded, I shall said a bit of what I have learnt about animation. Being an animator, one has to be open-minded and creative. Not only that, to make a good animation, first we have to learn...
November 2009
6 posts
UPA and TV
It was the involvement of United Productions of America (UPA) that helped to the birth of unique minimalist style of animation. This can seen from the cartoons that they had produced. The kind of animation that they made was different from what Disney had done. Some examples are “Gerald Mcboing-boing” (1950) and “Rooty Toot Toot” (1951)
Furthermore, propaganda animation...
It's all about Disney...
It’s really all about Disney.
In week two, I was introduced to Walt Disney. Not saying that I have not watch a single one of them, but rather I was introduced to the history of Walt Disney. Way in the 1923, Walt Disney and with the help of Ub Iwerk, made their first two cartoons, “Alice comedies” and “Osward the Lucky Rabbit.”
Alice comedies was a mixture of...
October 2009
3 posts
A lesson to lookback...
For the first class of History of Film & Motion Arts, we were taught of how people get started with moving animated characters, first with cartoons. I was impressed by how people from the 60s were passionate about making an animation and how they improvised to allow many to see.
“Felix the cat” was screened on the first class. I was impressed by the way they portrayed the...