Smell Some vaLerism™

The Scariest Sock Monster Ever

Valerie Tan — Sun, 18 May 2008 16:41:07 +0000

“The monster is attacking our city again!”

“Run, run, everyone ruuuuuuun!”

“Oh my goat you’ve gotta see it to believe it!” *o*

Here comes our TV Spot project – final group assignment on Digital Visual Effects subject. We had to group up and shoot a real video footage (of persons/objects), then create an 3D background or elements to blend with it.

The important key to this project are the compositing of 3D environment + real video footage, and also the interactivity between the them. In short, everything must look believable with combination of dynamics, particles and sound effects.

Okay for this project, we bought materials and made up this plush toy using sock and etc, and shoot it in the Greenscreen Studio. We spent nearly 90% on ROTOSCOPING than doing other parts! I will NOT forget the day when we needed to clean the edges of Ah Pet (name of that freaking sock monster), gosh I can’t really recall how unbearable it was!!! *cries*

It took us very, very long to clean the edges – something which I thought could be quickly done. And without my group-mates’ help I think I am already dead now. (My right hand died that night!!!)

So while watching this video, you shall also appreciate the hard work behind it alright!

Happy watching!

Blogging Ethics Guide

Valerie Tan — Sun, 18 May 2008 15:49:10 +0000

Generally, all assignments given on our Media Law subject are group projects. For the final project, each group is required to present a video where we would express legal principles or concepts either in the form of a play, musical, song etc. The grading criteria is to make our lecturer understand and learn something about any aspect of Media Law. Besides, marks will be awarded for content validity, intellectual and artistic creativity.

From the allocated topics, our group has decided to choose the following topic as our project presentation: “Do’s and Don’ts for Bloggers (from Legal and Ethical Perspectives)”!

Let’s see if you would learn something from our presentation?

Note:

Whenever there is a pause, that part of clip is suppose to have us presenting our ideas!
If the buffering is long, you may want to download it with the latest version of RealPlayer!

“Thanks for not sleeping”

Storyboard Finale

Valerie Tan — Sun, 18 May 2008 12:17:31 +0000

IS THIS MY FINALE!

I did not put 100% effort on Storyboard, I am guilty!

I did not put 100% effort on Portfolio, I am guilty!

I did not push myself hard to be creative, I am guilty!

I did a last minute job for finale, please sentence me to death.

OH. MY. GOAT. I am still gonna upload it here, anyway!

Well “it is not my best” is not equivalent to “it sucks” huh.

For extra info, the total point for this final project is 50%, consisting criteria like below:

Creative story – 10%
Skill & techniques – 10%
Quality & originality – 10%
Professional ethic – 10%
Presentation – 10%

Check, check, check. Okay I guess I got it all, except for that freaking overlay! I screwed it! And most importantly I did not have time to do more marker renderings for my A3 portfolio folder! That is what most painful! *sobs*

I really hope I’m still in the safe zone, wuaaaaaaaaaaaaa I am not sure! Anyway, glad to know Rong and I got the highest marks for the midterm submission, so yeah! I was extremely excited to see all selected good pieces (for final submission) are from our own gang of friends, seriously man – except for a girl who got highest mark for it. And after that we got to present in front of whole class, while Mr. Rong was busy helping our lecturer with the camera! XD

Okay now we are graduated from Storyboard Class!

That’s me posing with the last minute outcome!

Neh, my job. You may take a look at to “A Skinnish Motion Graphics” too.

Audio Design Project

Valerie Tan — Sun, 18 May 2008 08:41:08 +0000

Great seeing you again deary bloggie.

I was super busy with all those final assignments lately. What I’m gonna show here is our group’s final assignment on Audio Design subject, done in this semester!

We were supplied with a short video file (approximately 1:30 – 2:00 minutes ) which audio has been deleted, and we needed to incorporate new sound effects, background music and voice-overs to this video using library and new recorded materials.

So we actually booked the recording studio with lecturers prior to connecting our recording sessions. Since the requirement sheet stated that a totally new background music track for the clip will be given extra marks, we have gotten a really kind friend to help us with that – thanks to our junior, Chang Shen the pianist! (now you may admire his composition for Adidas clip)

We were also required to to submit the new script added to the clip, like the voice-over, narration or dialogs. So all in all we must have human voice, music, sound effects, and lastly environment or location sound. Proud to say we have gotten a great help from Renukkah and Arun as our voice-over talents, for the FCUK clip right after Adidas ad! Hearing back their original tracks now it’s so freaking funny! I was actually the one suggested to use Tamil style as our concept, didn’t know it’d actually work well!

Thanks to my group mates who have contributed other crazy ideas man I love them! I would like to apologize for not attending the draft presentation (when we needed to show our log sheet) due to internship interview, and also the final compositing meeting because I was dead-in-sleep! Sobs, please forgive me! Well, below are some details you might be interested in…

The two stages of this project are:

Draft presentation (Part I) – 10%
Final presentation (Part ll) – 15%

Plus a 5% for our submission, it is 30% in total.

Here is the grading criteria of this final project:

Voice-overs – clarity & voice acting
Sound effects (SFX) – appropriateness & roles
Background music – appropriateness & roles
Momentum – audio flow & intensity
Balance – audio levels
Depth & planning – appropriateness use of reverb /delays /pan
Consistency on mono/ stereo
Audio synchronization & timing
Sound design & overall impression
Relationship between sound & image
Creativity & originality
Presentation skill
*Group love* (LMAO)

Okay after knowing all details, it’s time for you to watch it!

P/S: It’s a must to enjoy!!!

Oh well, you may ignore the latter part of it. (Shhh. We did that by stealth!)

A Happy Demoreel for You

Valerie Tan — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 16:43:51 +0000

Eventually! The happy Val has compiled all her individual as well as group works into a happy little showreel!

Well to be honest she actually did it for the sake of internship but sadly, she did not get to show any of the companies that she went (due to the failure of exporting it from her Adobe Premiere) until all interview sessions were over! What the fish huh?

Well this showreel consists of all the motion-graphics-related assignments that is done so far (Beta till Gamma Year)! Remember remember, whoever is watching it now will become a happy happy person later!

VAL’S SHOWREEL 2008 DETAILS:

Rest Not In Peace: Group Work (Val was one of the modelers)
Cherry & Peach Socks Commercial: Group Work (Val created all the socks and the final scene)
SPCA Promotion Clip: Group Work (Val did the storyboard and background visual elements)

The Accident: Individual Work
Bug Bug Loves Valery: Individual Work
Seashell Lullaby: Individual Work
Graffito Experiment: Individual Work
Cliche Keymaker’s Company Logo: Individual Work

Uh oh almost forgot to express my utmost gratitude here, especially to all my group mates and lecturers, for treating me good! So let me dedicate Mariah Carey’s “Without You” to all of you! Yum Seng!!!

A Skinish Motion Graphics

Valerie Tan — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 00:44:55 +0000

This would be the motion graphics that I am going to make for this semester. As it is an individual assignment, we are given about 14 weeks to complete the tasks. So far we have only had about 4 to 5 critic sessions with our lecturers to show the progress of our work, there will be a few more to go before our final presentation. Below are the Design Board and Concept Board of my current project titled “Skins”, which is to tell the idea of prohibiting human from killing animals for skins.

Here, you can see my initial flow and pace planning of the entire story. It is something like animatics… but I think in real design world people don’t call something like this “animatics”? Okay anyways, please take a look at my 2D story flow below. I am currently working on the final look in Maya, well kinda worry that I cannot satisfy myself for the final outcome … anyway I will upload it to this entry when it is done!

Finally I kinda completed the animation of SKINS！However, I failed to spice it up with Maya Toon Effects which I have planned earlier! Besides, I just found out that my source file is infected by some worms or viruses… and I have no clue how did it happen! Guess what, I had no choice but to present this for the Finals – man I almost cried when I told Ms. Gillian about it.

So can you still accept it? Well maybe you could cheer me up a bit!

Storyboard Class

Valerie Tan — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 00:43:21 +0000

It was after our Storyboard class. The usual gang went to Rong’s place to do our audio group assignment. While we were waiting for our guitarist friend I simply grabbed a photo of Shin and started rendering it using my new set of marker pen. At first it was black and white but ended up in weird colors – and they actually screamed because of that! Anyway I am happy with it, weird colors, but no tracing.

Here is my midterm test’s submission for Storyboard class. We were free to use any rendering methods that are being taught in the class, so I chose marker rendering as I am still very fresh to it… just wanted to try something new and challenge myself. I have picked one of the given topics, “a journey of my dream” as my choice for this test, and I actually referred to my favorite movie “MirrorMask” as it is all about a dream. It took me longer than how I expected it to be completed – even exceed the given duration!

Photorealistic Exercise

Valerie Tan — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 00:41:31 +0000

It has a cute name: EGGER! Just a small individual assignment of our Digital Visual Effects class. The lecturers wanted us to get an interesting object and model it with appropriate texturing and lighting – the challenge was that it has to look believable! The reason why I chose this little egg pan was because it is a birthday present given by Khai, Rong and Shin! One of the cutest gadgets on earth~

A Graffito Motion Graphics

Valerie Tan — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 00:40:51 +0000

During the 2nd semester of Gamma Year, we were required to produce another individual work on an experimental motion graphics. The topic of that semester was “animated painting”, so we were given several themes of achieving our own visual styles – cave painting, canvas painting, graffito or oriental painting.

I have chosen “graffito” as my visual theme to be experimented and was really excited in searching references about graffito. I did not expect to have chosen that theme because it seems harder comparing to the others, in fact no one in the class had chosen it except for me.

My concept for this assignment is to show the different styles of graffito among some oriental continents, such as China, Japan and India. Almost everything was done in Adobe Photoshop and Autodesk Maya.

Motion Graphics of the Cliche Keymaker

Valerie Tan — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 00:39:36 +0000

Besides the graffito motion graphics, we needed to make another motion graphics for Computer Modelling subject as well. Anyway, I used the mixture of 2D and 3D stuff for this assignment as we were allowed to. The requirement was to create an introduction of a company’s logo. I came out with the idea of a key-making company named Cliche Keymaker, which the entire elements would be attached with different types of keys. It is a city of all keys, which zooms out to be a huge key in the end (showing company’s logo).