CREATIVE PROCESS JOURNAL 2 BY LIM JUN YANG JORDAN

INSIDE THE MIND OF JORDAN LIM

A SHORT GUIDE ON HOW TO BE A MOTION GRAPHIC DESIGNER IN 7 WEEKS

After Effects After Effects is a program I tried before but failed miserably. I struggled with setting the keyframes and how to use the program. To hear that this term we are going to use AE, I died a little on the inside.

“What sets someone apart is their ability to do what others don’t want to do.“

TODAY I DO WHAT OTHERS WOULDN’T, SO THAT TOMORROW I CAN DO WHAT OTHERS COULDN’T. This is what I found out when I went to researched about what sets great artist from normal artist. It is their attitude of doing the hard things that normal people don’t want to do, to hundreds of hours refining a technique or a skill. Doing what is mundane and pushing on when it gets tough. That is what set great artists apart from the rest. I felt that if I really wanted to grow as an designer I needed to confront my fear in after effects. And to do what I find it hard to do. PERHAPS, WHAT LIES ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THIS STRUGGLE IS A WHOLE NEW WORLD.

DDM2160 DESIGN IN SOCIETY: What is Art for Submitted by: LIM JUN YANG JORDAN Return Brief: The Art of Loving Purpose: Art is connecting, Art is love. Art is stepping into a person’s life. Art is an excuse for me to find out more about my father, to step into his world. The purpose of this animation is to encourage people to want to spend time with their family. To find a hobby that can bring the family together. Archetype: Lover, People should feel deeply. Mentor: Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell They are an animation channel that teaches people on topic through animation. They are good in animating and transition. They use colour to engage people. PENStory The Stop motion, the way they lay out the photos and the intention behind is something that I want to put into my stop motion. Subject: Fish, My father, Fishing rod, boat. Emotion: Warmth, Loving and Hopeful. I want people to want to spend time with their family. Audience: This project is for young people and my family. Young students from 15 to 24 year old, Young students are often so busy with young people stuff like studies that they don’t spend time with their family. 40-50 year old, parents Some parents are so caught up in earning money or building their career that they neglect spending time with family. I want to encourage, parents to find hobbies that they can use to spend time with the family or to love the family.

Mood Board Stop Motion I want to create a short motion video because I feel that is my strength, a combination of photography and graphic design. To see that it takes so much photos and to print so much photos will cost a bomb to me. So I decide to do it digitally. I want to study the motion of this animation channel on youtube, I feel that the animation and motion is smooth and lifelike. It isn’t too static. The PEN Story, PENStory I love this stop motion because it is captured in photos and printed to create a stop motion. They made used of the 2D plane, subject is traveling to the right and they placed the photos in the direction that the subject is going. To do this project. PENStory shot 60,000 and printed 9600 photos to do up this stop motion video. Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell

A Study on Title Sequence Enter the Void - Gaspar Noé Micca showed us this video in class and sitting there, I was blown away. The use of typography and motion changed I view title sequence. It was engaging and it draws you into the movie. The colours, fonts and the blinking effect adds a new dynamic to the video. I left the class wanting to create something like this for my motion graphic project. It pulls you into the movie with fast changing of typefaces and the blinking film effect and the fast pace of the music flows well with the rapid change of the texts.

Storyboard

Idea I want to link assignment 2 to assignment 1. With the overall theme of “Art is Connecting, Art is Love, Art is stepping into a person’s life.” The last time I focused on my grandmother, this time I want to focus on my dad. My grandmother loves the family by cooking, my dad is the one that prepare the ingredients for love. With this thought, I came up with the idea of following my dad to his favorite and life long hobby of fishing. My goal of “Art is stepping into a person’s life”, I realised being my dad’s son, I have never really step into his world and see what he likes to do. So with this assignment, I stepped into his boat. I plan to follow him on his fishing adventure and watching him catch a fish and passing that fish to my grandma that cooks the fish and the rest of the family will come together and eat that fish.

出海 一天

IN MY DA

AD’S BOAT

Shoot day The hardest part of shooting is having a day that has no rain. During week 2 & 3, the weather was trash. My dad was only free during the weekends and it was raining for both weeks. We woke up at 6am to film but it was pouring rain. That means that I can only do the indoor scenes. So my progress was pushed back by 2 weeks for the photo stuff. However during week 4, the weather was so good, in the morning the sun was shinning bright! Skies were blue and clouds were nice. So my dad I and head out that weekend to film the video. Lesson learnt Always check the weather forecast and pray for the best! Nothing hurts more than waking up early (when the norm is waking up late) and then seeing the skies are dark... well it will be good if I weren’t film a shoot.

I SHOT 700 PHOTOS BUT ONLY 50 WERE USABLE “I guess just like fishing, one can spent the whole day waiting just to catch a fish.”

Not every shoot was turn out the way we want it to be. Before the shoot I went through the plans with my dad. Showed him the storyboard and gone through what he needed to do. However, in the sea, a some scenes. every thing went wrong, my dad didn’t know what to do and because I was at the shore and my dad was on the sea, it was very hard to communicate with him and having to shout across adds to the angry and frustration. Lesson learnt Always go through final run through when everything seems right. Always prepare for the worst. Bring communicate device for long distance shoots. And stay calm at all times. Wasted a bunch of time but everything went well after we communicated.

I spent a long time shooting at a wrong angle, I held the camera at my eye and weren’t able to get it at a right perspective. I shot a long time before realising that I was wrong. What I needed to do was to get low to the ground and shoot it from a lower angle, so this provides view that the viewers are on eye level with my subject.

IT’S A WRAP

Why the use of fish and why fishing? I had to think of an idea that my grandma can cook and my dad can do. Fish are a symbol of wealth in Chinese culture. It has a chinese wordplay of pronouncinh with a different tone that means “abundance”. My dad likes to fish and every time he brings back fish, it’s like bring home abundance. So by making fish my main dish of the project is to tell the story of why my dad likes to fish and what fish means to my family. I have been eating fish all my life and to be frank, I am sick of fish and every time my dad brings back fish, I get scared. That’s a little fun fact about me. 鱼 means fish 裕 means abundance

My dad have been fishing since he was a youth at the age of 20. He enjoys the art of fishing, the pulling and releasing of the lines to “fight” with the fish without the line breaking apart. THE ART OF FISHING When you catch a heavy fish, you have to know how to fight it, and this requires strength and determination.

A REFLECTION OF THE DAY BECAUSE “ART IS CONNECTING”

This is what my dad do every weekend by himself, waking up at 4.30am and leaving the house at 5am and setting the boat my 6am and take off at 6.30am. To set up the heavy boat all by himself in the dark, pulling the boat all the way out to the sea and ride around Singapore and fishing till 5pm and pulling the boat back to the boat area and washing the boat and gear. As I did this project, these were the thoughts that ran through my mind. I never knew it was this tough. My dad is 100% committed to his craft, his art. He is so good at what he does because he is willing to do what others wouldn’t that is why he can do what others couldn’t.

NOW THE REAL WORK STARTS.

Week 1 Production Understanding AE and creating an animation Today I learnt about how to use AE the right way by Andrew. As crazy as it sounds, I actually did okay during the lesson. We used shapes, position, scale and rotation to create this animation. There was so much work just to make a cube fly from the left to middle. My biggest take away was how to make it look natural. The thing about normal keyframes is that it means the animation looks static and fake but by using the speed curve and adjusting the settings, I am able to make the animation look more living and more “real”. Creating animations needs to work in accordance to real life. In real life, we see things move fast to slow. It accelerates and decelerates. Objects doesn’t move at the same speed. With this principle, I knew how to animate stuff.

The Bouncy Ball Test The bouncy ball test is a test given to animators and it is the easilest way of finding out if the animator know what he/she is doing. Ball starts off normal Ball hit the ground and because of speed, it get squeeze on the top and bottom. It expands on the side. Ball flies up and stays at a point not higher than it started because energy is lost when it hit the ground. Repeat till ball reach the end of frame. Through this exercise, I got to tune my mind to think logically and use science to create the animation. There was so much work. I had to change the scale on the sides and the top and bottom and change the speed curve for it to work naturally. It is a good exercise as I understand more about animation. Ball moves down, gaining speed. Ball squeeze at the side.

Week 2 Production Cuts and Colour Balance Today in class we learnt about frame rates, colour balance, cuts and masking. In colour balance, we learnt the importace of matching videos with the same temperature. A video cannot be warm and then cuts to a cool video unless intended to. It is because colours play in huge role in helping the viewers feel. We cannot use a warm yellow colour for a video that want to show sadness. We need to edit in such a way that reflects what we want the viewers to feel. Before After Masking Masking is putting a layer of something to hide unnecessary stuff and how what you want to show. It important to do it in the easiest way. I heard about masking before and I did it before but the way I did it, I did it frame by frame and that took me forever. However today I learnt how to do it just by a few keyframes. All I needed to do is to find the start and the end movement of the plane and put the keyframe at the ends and then find the middle and adjust the mask and do it over and over until I reach the middle and there is not space left. I was surprise to see it being done so easily. I learn so much very lesson and it improved my AE skills.

The Private Dining Room Of The Police Commissioner - Alexandre Desplat This was on of my options this song because it has a steady upbeat music that keeps the viewers attention and it doesn’t steal the spotlight away from the video. There is progression from the song and different parts to the song. I had mix feelings for this song as most parts of the song, it is the same beat over and over again. Mr. Fox in the fields - Alexandre Desplat This song is a upbeat and happy song. I used this song to pace it in my storyboard. The front was good but when it came to cooking the fish. It wasn’t what I wanted. It was too slow and it does not fit into the feeling I want to tell at that part of the video. I moved on and tried other song. Sound choices

This was the song I eventually choose. It has a happy start, which flows well with my dad setting up and preparing for the fishing trip. It progress to an exciting part of the song and it flows well with the scene of the fish pulling my dad’s boat and it ends with another part of the song that has “the ending” feeling and I felt it was a good closure to my video. As I listen to this over and over again, I knew the pacing of my scenes and the flow of the video. This is one of the song of one of my faviourite film, The French Dispatch by Wes Anderson. Obituary - Alexandre Desplat

Draft 1

PersonaI Thoughts in my first draft, I wanted to see and felt how is the pacing like and how the colours would work and Iv tested out if the paper texture idea will work or not. I used pink for the main colour of the photos and pink as the background, so that it flows together with my first assignment in my photo book. However after seeing it in the exported video, I didn’t like it. I felt that it take away that mood rather than adding to the love and happy feeling. Lecturers Comments It is good to finally see the first draft, the pacing of the music seems good. The music itself feels repetitive but when played together with the video, it doesn’t feel so. The music works well. The serif chinese font looks too serious and the name of the title needs to change. The last two chinese characters is used on a formal term. The start of the video till the title seqence, it very lovely and stuff then when I comes to the title seqence and this is shown. It takes away the feeling. Things to change Find an alternative colour to pink that doesn’t work. Work on a new title that still have the love, family and warmth vibes. Find a nicer typeface for the chinese title.

Case Study on “Enter The Void” The blinking effect is an effect related to the old days of using a film and running through a projector, flicker is produce during a filmbased movie projector because it block the light as the film is moved from one frame to the next. That is what caused the flickering/ blinking effect. As the sequence play and the music gets faster, the speed in which the text appears get faster and faster and it matches the same pace and beat that the music is. As the sequence progresses, the “crazy” effects get more and more intense. And it flickers faster and faster. This could be a refernce to how taking drugs are like as this movie is about drugs. This shows visually what does the “high” feels like when one is taking drugs. This made it feel like the viewers are on a roller coaster. It get’s faster and faster and the viewer keeps getting pull in deeper into the movie. This creates an effect and draws you into the movie because something is constantly happen on the screen and that captures the viewer attention. That how I felt when I watch the opening sequence.

Take aways from the case study I categorise the flicker as a texture effect. It help the sequence look better and also adds an effect on the movie. The music and how the sequence is edited to fit the music is a masterclass. This is a great example on how we can combine type and motion to create a good video. Sadly this exact effects and style will not fit the style of my video as I am not doing a video that stimulate the effects of drugs and it doesn’t fit my idea of a loving family. However, the same way as how textures and music design was done, I want to add the same thought process into my video as well.

Added “Noise” for texture. Added Paper to create a newspaper texture.

Added a blue filter to fit my colour style and to brighten up the photo. Cut out of main subject

ORANGE Orange was chosen because I wanted a colour that will match my blue tones and colours for the video. Orange in chinese means good luck and it also flows well with fish being abundance. A match make. LIGHT BLUE Light blue is not used in any of my typeface. The light blue is shown in my photos and also used as a brighten effect on my photos.

ITC SOUVENIR BOLD ITC SOUVENIR MEDIUM ITC Souvenir is one of my favourite font and I used it in my previous Pboard and CPJ, I will continue to use it so to match the look and style of my previous work. However this typeface is not used for video. It is used only for my PBoard and CPJ. 爱心晚餐 CloudPangToYuGBK is the name of this font, I wanted a font that is fun and lovely to look at. I used a serif font but it was too formal and make the look of the title looks too serious when my video is suppose to be a fun and loving video. The only part of my assignment that I used text is the title sequence and Pboard.

ABSTRACT A case study on Abstract: The Art of Design, Christoph Niemann: Illustration I wanted to do a case study on animation but I came across this documentary on netfilx and it was about illustration, my thought was, in order to do a good animation, one have to get the basics of illustration right first. I supposed illustration is like buying a piece of meat and animating is learning how to cook that meat to it. What I aim to learn from this documentary is perhaps the way of life of an artist on how he creates art in his own unique way. What helps him get ideas and how he brings it to completion. I have never heard of him before but this is also a good chance to do a case study and also to learn about the great artist.

I’m such a control freak that I would always love to sit down and come up with the perfect formula for creating art. But it doesn’t work that way. because, ultimately, it really is, to a very large degree, It’s a little bit of a painful realization, staring at paper. This script and this got me real good, I am a routine people and I like to find the best way to do something and often in art I find it the hardest to stay on the right routine. What work for me in the past may not work for me now and for me the hardest thing to do is to sit down and trust my creative mind that I can produce something.

This part, broke my idea of “that one perfect idea”, I always think that it is create that one perfect idea and you work all the way with that. I realised that when doing consultation with my lecturer, it is good to first time up with a few ideas of the video first then approach them, what if the my perfect idea may not be the best idea after all? Then I will be stress and I will rush to have a idea out and it wouldn’t be as good. I learnt the importance of having a few great ideas rather than just one perfect idea.

I relate! Doing art, I found myself always waiting for that one moment of creative spike in my brain. And often times I don’t always have that creative spark in me that causes me to stand up and doing something. I felt how I operated so far was in the creative spike and spark. However the “Creating something with what the viewer already knows, their experience and my experience coming together and the images are the trigger.” That’s my project right there! In my video, I wanted people to relate through the family that they already have. I am pretty sure that they the viewers already moments that I really shine was when I am nearing the submissions period. At that time I cannot wait for the spark, I just had to do it. And that was when the magic happens to me. I was there for “a chance for something to happen”, and I agree with this statement that was made. Sometimes we just need to show up. have thought about spending more time with their family but never really had a visual image and I want to provide the visual image to the viewers with the help of my family.

I need to learn how to do this

This was the hardest hitting scene for me, sometimes I feel like I am being forced to create great works on demand because of my past works. Sometimes I find it hard to create great works over and over again and it becomes stressful to work under pressure with some much expectations. Mostly, all the time the expectations comes from myself. I feel the need to create works from an insane level compared to my previous work. That is fear. I knew I needed to overcome this as an artist to move on to the next level. How? PRACTICE AND BECOME BETTER. I need to keep doing, and it is okay for me to create bad works but the key is knowing what worked and didn’t work. With this I am ending the case study. This case study have been a fruitful one. I learn more about the process rather than the art itself. I mean it is the process the helps create the art right? With this I feel I am ready to tackler the rest of my assignments.

“I WANT TO SEE THE FLAWS RATHER THAN QUICKLY GOING “YEAH, THAT’LL DO” BUT MOST IMPORTANTLY, I NEED TO REMEMBER THAT ALL OF THIS DISCONTENTMENT, ALL OF THIS SELF DOUBT DOESN’T MEAN THAT WE SHOULD QUIT. IT MEANS WE’RE ACTUALLY ONTO SOMETHING.” - SIMON CADE

Draft 2 I animated my Dad fishing scene and showed it to Andrew and he shared that the waves that I create were too much and if I wanted do such a huge wave, everything at the back must be moving in according to the big waves. Andrew also said that the background is too distracting and it make the whole scene look too messy and asked me to take it out of the sea and replace it with a sky. Other than that the rest look okay. I added illustrations of the dishes that my grandma have done in the ending title sequence. Andrew said that it too abrupt, there is no illustrations before and it just pop out like that. It feels totally like a whole new video and idea.