Wednesday, June 11, 2008

The Puppets - Si Ying

Hi Si Ying,

Nice to hear from you again and thanks for sending me the link. I just received the link today through an email sent by blogspot, the reply seem to state that you had replied on 25th May… erm.. Some delay from blogspot maybe….. nevermind, most important thing is I had received your animation and I’m appreciate it.
http://s116.photobucket.com/albums/o4/harunosakura2006/?action=view&current=final.flv

Well… I played your MG a few times… looking at those detail you had made in the animation … I hardly spot a mistake in it. Honestly, you really had done a good job on it. From the main character to the background, you had spent a lot of effort to create them.

The trees, the puppet stages, the puppet themselves, I know that you duplicated them… is ok to duplicate as long as those assets don’t look repetitive and I think you manage to do that quite successfully.

You have a very great sense of art; you manage to grab what you planning for and executed it with great accuracy (I believe that you come form 2D background). Color scheme, characters designs, theme, concept, staging and most important the pace of the MG, you manage to associate your animation movement, pace and transition with the music beat and this had add a lot of depth in your MG. (the music recording is so professional, you create it yourself? Or you cut from movies?)

Well, the only weak point in you is the storytelling. You have an interesting story, but you did not manage to convey it to the audience. I have looked at the MG a couple of times; I still can’t really understand the real story. Well maybe I’m too stupid for that, haha... anyway I try to interpret the story again in my mind and hit me if I’m wrong. :D

“The story is about a girl, ran into the village of puppets lead by the pigeon….temptation to steal all the beautiful puppets. All the puppet villagers are actually from real person, all of them are just like the little girl, so greedy stealing all the puppets and end up turning into puppet themselves because of touching the mighty 'lion king' ”

That is the story interprets in my mind from your MG.

“Acting” is lacking from your MG, that's why it is so hard to understand what the main character is doing. Because it is a puppet, you tend to ignore the facial expression. Imagine that you have a bunch of friend that showing you the same facial expression all the time, for sure you won’t understand what they are thinking of. Or you can try talking to a tree, scold a lot of bad words to the tree, and you won’t know whether it is angry because it doesn’t have a facial expression. Of course you will know it is angry if the tree hit you with it branches, and this is the time when body gesture comes.

Facial expression is strongly associates with body gestures. Body gestures can be used to drive the message if the facial expression is missing. They usually will come together to support each other. But in your case, understandable that puppet has limited movement, so it is very hard to tell a story with body gestures. Missing of this 2 important elements in your MG causes you the failure to deliver your message to the audience.

In my opinion... You can actually add facial expressions on the puppets. Don’t just treat them as a 2D character billboard with no ‘life’ in within. Some basic smile, sad, cry, angry will certainly help a lot. Inject some life into your puppets.

Or… if you still want to stick with your cool-faced puppets (might be your style or concept), you can add subtitle or voice over for your MG. Just like what you did at the beginning of your MG, is a pretty cool sound and it has created a lot of mood. It's ok to add voice over in your case, so that the story was told and it links your MG from the beginning till the end.

Try think about it... :) Or if you have your own opinion and we can share it. With other juniors of course. I think you will welcome some suggestion from your junior as well, right?

Overall, you really had done a good job, you can get any job you want by showing them your final work, no problem with that. You have a great future ahead. ;)

So how is your graduated life? Still on holiday?

All the best to you and hope to hear from you again. ;)



Cheers.

2 comments:

SEE-ing said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown said...

Nice details...




regards
aegan stills, songs