long time no see!

Hello everyone!

Long time no see! But a lot has happened since then that I wanted to share it with ya!

First some great news, as you may have already seen I managed to "finish" my demo Reel(it's hard to say the word finished for demo Reels) before recess week in order to send a specific application for an Internship. And guess what? Today I got a call from them; they are interviewing me on Friday so keep your fingers crossed! I'm really excited about this opportunity!!! May the force guide me well on this journey! n_n

Recess week was awesome! I learned how to dive and did my Open Water License on Pulau Dayang in Malaysia. It's quite an amazing experience, especially when we descended more than 12 meters and the sky was suddenly gone. It really felt like being in another world... Different pressure, different vegetation, different "sky", no gravity feel and connected to a machine that while breathing sounds like Darth Vader and while exhaling you hear and see all the air bubbles, that keep you alive, striving for the surface. It's definitely an enriching experience!

Nevertheless, while we were enjoying the sea and the hidden world underneath a terrible catastrophe occurred in Japan. I know you have already read this many times before but I think it is necessary to continue it. It's not only at the beginning when people need help. This battle is uncalled, really tough and a very long one. I had the luck of visiting this wonderful country and my memories of it and its people are delightful. So I would like to encourage you all to help, help this nation that has always inspired and motivated us one way or another.

This program of artist donations was founded by Dice Tsutsumi, Japanese art director at Pixar. You can contribute directly to this program through Give2Asia. Or do it through your local Red Cross or another organization of your trust. The important thing is your help! I personally did it through this one.

Back to more pleasant topics although I don't know if it should be called that, I just realized that in two more months my exchange programme will be over... It has been such a great time and it just flies away so fast. But it is not time to think a lot about that yet. I just really need to enjoy this last months to the fullest =D So here the news from the University side.

Some very good news is that our coproduction FYP/Studio production between Daniel Lee(NTU) and myself(HdM) has been approved from both universities! So we may be the first ones (I've never heard of something similar) to do a student coproduction in animation. We will work one semester here in Singapore and one semester back in Stuttgart. It was not easy to get the approval and we will both have to make some sacrifices, but we hope, with our example, to foment the exchange of students in animation programs as well. This industry is so global… why not start to make it global at University level already?

Our story got already approved by our preproduction professor Hans Bacher and now we are dealing with the storytelling. The best way to bring it on the big screen! We are also researching different styles and making a lot of very rough concept art. Which I will be sharing here, at least my part. This is the first concept I did as a Digital Painting assignment.

Early concept

Let me emphasize, it is a very early concept so huge amounts of it will change, radically. Nevertheless you can already see we want to go to the more abstract and less CG look. Our story is about a little bug n_n and that will be it for the moment.

For character animation we (this time is group work! Ryan Tan and Junyi Lee are working with me) are preparing our last animation, in which we picked this 90 second audio file from a life action movie. 

Did you recognize the movie? The clip is from Reservoir Dogs! And we will have to animate it as originally as possible and give it certain twist. We have done more than just picking the clip but if I continue this post will be endless. So more to it next week.

That’s all folks,

may the force be with us!

cheers,

santy.