BDM 125- Hmwk no. 3

Act 1

Legend of Korra

Immediately as we shoot into act 1 of this grand series, we're taken into a small arena-like surrounding where Korra is now grown up as a 20 or so young adult. She's engaged in an exam of fire bending and she's pitted against three fire benders. After a breath taking combat sequence we are introduced to the white lotus; an organisation founded in the last avatars life cycle to find and protect the new avatar.

Korra's excitement is at an all time high as she awaits her new tutor; Tenzin (son of the last avatar) who is supposed to teach her air bending. But her hopes are dashed when he returns to the cities because he says they have urgent business. Angrily Korra mopes around for a bit but with some encouragement from Katara (wife of the last avatar), Korra rides to the city on her friend; a hybrid mix between a polar bear and a dog.

The era of this series is quite steam punk-ish with the vehicle designs and building structures and the art style is a sort of westernised but definite asian influenced art style. But not even a full hour into her arrival, she accidentally breaks the law by fishing in a public lake, comes across an anti-bending faction in a public demonstration led by a sinister leader called Aman and destroys public property trying to help subdue some street thugs that gets her captured by the police who's chief is Lin Beifong.

The mood of these scenes takes one from fascination quickly down to a humorous depression as one negative after another befalls our unwary new protagonist. But Korra's continued hilarious reactions and her skills to evade every problem (sometimes with a little help) keeps you quite entertained.

entered- Tues, 23/02/2015

BDM 125 Hmwk no. 2

- The opening scene -

The Legend Of Korra~

The starting scene is in the south pole where you can see four figures hastily making their way towards a distant group of the southern water tribe huts. When they reach the hut of Tonraq and Senna (Korra's parents) they are welcomed openly and inside they find themselves in a small but warmly lit area where Senna brushes the floor with a broom. Their purpose for being there? To find the avatar.

After questioning whether if Korra was the real avatar, their questions are swept aside almost instantly when a little girl no more than five blows a hole from the next room and lunges into the presence of her new guests and shows off her abilities to already control three of the four elements; a sign of the true avatar.

The opening scene builds up an incredible anticipation for this young protagonist and generally catches most people off guard at her amazing gift at being able to adapt to her powers so quickly. The techniques used by the director and creators; Bryan Konietzko and Michael Dante Dimartino is by keeping the action scenes (especially the action scenes) superbly planned at an excitingly face pace.

entered- Monday 23/02/2015

BDM 126 - entry 3

Movie review

As my weekly movie review I chose Spirited away written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki. Its producer was studio Ghibli a well known animation studio based in Japan.

People say that all anime looks the same when in reality, it all just depends on the artist or the studio that are directing their artists. Studio Ghibli creates amazing universes with well scripted plots that are very visually pleasing. The particular art style in 'Spirited away' is quite exotic with a strong, native Japanese feel to it.

As for the characters, they all represent a strong factor but character development does happen within everyone eventually, even the main antagonist.

entered sun, 22/02/2015

BDM 125 entry 2

As I haven't actually made an entry for this class I thought it was a good idea to just start. I met the tutor, Rachel at Armageddon last year which is ironic enough because coming to Invercargil and learning all this stuff was all me and Reuben ever talked about at college anymore.. needless to say I was pretty stoked XD

We got all our assignment briefs and I have like literally four days to think about it and plan out stuff. I spent a large proportion of the time tying up loose ends involving my student allowance and family matters. On the last day I actually managed to sit down and spend a decent several hours fleshing out the character I plan to use for my animation project and Vaughn's character designing assessment..

The names still definitely up for debate but for the current time, I've named her Madeline the Pyromancer or also known as agent Crimson and she's a part of a grand scheme I have been pondering on since the start of last year~~~ ^^

entered - Fri, 20/Feb/2015

BDM 126 (hmwk no. 1)

Disney’s ‘Feast’

Feast was a short animation film produced in 2014 by Kristina reed and directed by Patrick Osborne. Presented by walt disney animation studios, Feast was animated using the Meander system and rendered in Hyperion; the system used for the movie: The big hero 6.

The art work style for the background in Feast is free handed with solid blocks of colours and the camera is generally always focussed on either; Winston the Boston terrier or the food in front of him so that the viewers would constantly know where the main focus was.

Feast was nominated for two awards; the Annie awards for the best animated shorts and also the academy award for the best animated short film. The film did actually end up winning one f them being the Annie awards.  

This movie appealed to me because of how even in this short film they showed such a genuine character development of the dog; how he was quite spoiled and selfish in the beginning but more caring of others towards the end. But I also just enjoyed the animation for the various emotions they able to portray with such a high quality on an un human character and that by itself was pretty awesome.

Ken Kim

BDM 126 - entry 1

Entry 1

Vaughn quickly took us through the twelve principals of animation and explained in detail of each of the roles they had. He also gave us a brief history lesson on the ‘nine old men’ from walt disney from eighty years ago who had set these principals. 

After watching a few animation trailers, we were set a simple task to draw five 3- dimensional shapes and render them. we also looked at a few other rendering techniques t toward the end and i personally only ended up trying two more before packing up.

This whole course is still something really new to me; being all grown up… living in a completely different place… Its definitely exciting (?) and I feel like I’m actually interested in my studies for he first time in years but there are still a few uncertainties that come with this new life. I’m still getting used to it. That includes this journal keeping… but i cant help but feel optimistic for what lies ahead and the promise of my near future. 

entered - wed, 18/feb/2015 -