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amber-xz · 7 years

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THANKS all of you.

#self-talking

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amber-xz · 7 years

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Today is the final deadline.

Time to have some fun and wait for graduate show.

And this is Mr. Big Brown Bear.

#3 minute film #3 minutes film

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amber-xz · 7 years

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Completed Film +the Daydream+

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Completed version, 3 minutes film.

Thanks for watching.

#3 minute film #3 minutes film

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amber-xz · 7 years

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Past Year, Self-talking

Tomorrow will be the last deadline. Hard to believe one year just past such quick. It was full of happiness, sorrow, nervous, surprising and more and more things. Impossible to describe easily. But generally, it was amazing.

In this year I did soo many things in the first time, although not everything was perfect, but I really feel ‘alive’, never feel freedom in mind like this before.

It feels like both something ended and something just beginning. Too many wonderful memories. I know it will be meaningful to me but the reality still beyond my imagination. Thanks for all things in my life.

There was many regrets too, but I value all of them, all the things make me feel I’m being a ‘better guy’ in many aspects.

One year was too short, can’t say how future will be but....I will try to keep everything going.

#self-talking

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amber-xz · 7 years

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Dialogue of Film - Made me Crash...

In the last few days, I can’t escape from dialogues anymore....

In a midnight (always midnight), I started to record dialogues by my self....at first my consider was it’s hard to explain it to others, and I will keep changing my film in drawing process, and I’m afraid of talking to others.....so I want to record by my self. But in fact, it’s still tension if record just in my room.

Record and listen to own voice is.........really awkward and shame....my voice is terrible...

I fall into the thoughts about just quickly finish it.....gave up....nearly feel bad about everything.....meanwhile I watched Vicky’s film...really nice...wonderful...I feel worse....

Next day I show my ‘final’ film to Pete, I really crashed, said I give up of this bad terrible film.....

Pete helped me fix and record the dialogues again. I feel really down but trying to keep calm when recording, hard to keep in a peace voice.

After back home, I try to edit the new voice. New record’s sounds are really low, I researched how to higher it and it hears fine. And strange thing is it almost can’t see any waveform of it. I find new record is better but the second half sounds too slow, I tried to speed up them. And then, I realized, when change speed of voice it will have different tones, usually when change speed it needs to keep original tone but now why not try keep it change.

I tried to keep it 110% speed, surprisingly, it hears much better. Higher tone cleans tiny noise of lisp, and it sounds more young, more ‘doesn’t like me’. I feel ‘hope’. And if 120%, it sounds like a little boy’s voice.

I listened the voices again and again. I think the 110% version will be the best? Next day I show the 110% one and original one to Pete, he agrees the 110%, I feel....peace finally....

Pete said many times ‘no one likes own works’....I agree but I always can’t stop falling down if there’s any problem with my works...easily crash......I must...need more practice....both for work and for ‘mind power’. Long road to go.

#3 minute film #3 minutes film #in process

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amber-xz · 7 years

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Complete +Showreel+

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Final version of my showreel. Thanks for watching owo.

#3 minute film #3 minutes film #showreel

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amber-xz · 7 years

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+Showreel+Thinking Process+

Made my showreel. It gathered pieces from what I made in past one year, my film, my short pieces for fun, my tv series bible and few of my sketches.

I use very quick rhythm to edit, another oppose style of my film. First, I cut all pieces I want to show in it, and consider the background music.

Music will be important for this kind of...showreel. I would like to choose a quick, passion music, without any lyric, a little ‘unusual’ and better from a video game I like.

At first I consider about ‘Nanorobot Tune’ from ‘Machinarium’.

https://soundcloud.com/minorityrecords/04-nanorobot-tune

It’s really special. But I fond it’s too slow and hard to control.

Then I turned to “始まりの異能者 [DIVA Ver.]” from “7th dragon 2020″.

It has beautiful humming, but also hard to control rhythm.

Next, I try to remain any background music that’s more ‘traditional’, “Re...Japanesque” from band “DAISHI DANCE” will be a nice choice, a perfect mixture of modern digital music and traditional musical instruments. But....it names ‘Japanesque’, although no one will mind but a little...strange?

Finally I chose “Slash and slash” from the video game “the world end with you”.

It’s one of my favorite game, the composer - Ishimoto Takeharu created music for many famous games for example Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts. He is really talented and can control many different music styles.

This music is for a ‘game in game’, a small bottom battle game in the whole game. (really hard....remember I never win....) It’s 8-bit style is nice and it’s 1:02 minutes, perfect.

Spent plenty time to edit.

#3 minute film #3 minutes film #in process #showreel

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amber-xz · 7 years

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Showreel Title - Time Wasting before Deadline but I’m HAPPY......

Started thinking about showreel many days ago. Although I always decided to make showreel after finish film but it needs ideas more earlier, my work style.

Actually I only need a ‘title page’ for it. Title page will have “Showreel” and my name. I drew some sketches, considered about “steam machine doors”, “puppets with boards”, “knights”, even “dragon dance”. Dragon dance was the most impossible idea, nice movement and feeling, but it’s still weird if there are words on dragon.

So I just ‘left’ it few days.

Than in one night, it was more after midnight. Something twinkling in my mind....not really. I think about why not make a title page like a video game? Maybe...a classical or typical or ‘old fashion’ pixel video game?

I mean, I’m extremely a video game fan, I always willing to show my love of video game in my works but didn’t get ‘suitable chance’. There’s a sentence “give a child a knife, he/she will try to cut everything”, I don’t want to be like that. I believe in everything must be used in ‘most’ fitting ways.

But this time it seem nice to have a title like that. It was really late so I just did some.....sketches.....

Looks like a fool rubbish game =L=. But fun. Of course I won’t use them.

After around two days, I clean my ideas. Decided to drew a pixel style title. And for this I have two ideas, one is a ‘flat’ simple title with a image background like Final Fantasy, the other is a more ‘RPG’ title like Dragon Quest and many main steam games. I choose the second one.

Started to draw it in Aseprite. If use full size of 1920x1080 it will be hard to notice it’s pixel so I decided to draw in a smaller size than turn it into 400%.

First night of drew it, sketch look nice.

Then I spent more than 1 hour clean the lines like unusual....simply colour it in grey levels.....

And soon I fond it looks.........shit........worse than sketch...........

It lost all the sharp edges.....clean but lost all feeling.....it looks like that kind....I usually don’t like ones.... feel really sad about it.... Led me fall into bed.......

After one or two days, I picked up it again. Back to the sketch I decided to keep all unclean lines, just follow its ‘rough’ style.

And the colour looks sucks.................

Looks better.........first time feeling tiny happy of the title.....although ‘showreel’ looks really NBA with this colours...........

And I wondered about whether to draw my names in red....because in China we usually avoid use red write names....old times only kings can sign in red, red means highest power. And mostly, in society name in red usually means he/she is death penalty, their lives will taken by highest power.

But now seems I haven’t another choice to save my colours. So just image I’m the king of infinite space.

With all these frustration, I have no patient drawing any background. Just made a simple, cloudy sky or complex flower sea texture.

I added some glowing effects in final showreel. It looks....better than my image.....lucky.....

I spent plenty time on a thing that only appear 1.5 seconds in my showreel......hmmmmm.....sound just like what I usually did.....

#3 minute film #3 minutes film #showreel #in process

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amber-xz · 7 years

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Waiting for laser cutting.....exciting, little anxious and little concern............ it feels like bakers waiting for the oven....photographers waiting for films imaging.......fathers waiting out of delivery rooms............

Never mind.

#3 minute film #3 minutes film #in process #self-talking

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amber-xz · 7 years

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DVD Case & Cover

On Wednesday I was wondered about the dvd cover and the case.

Although Mario and Pete answered they will apply the case but I....always like to find some unusual things.....hard to say a good hobby or bad.....ovo

At first I decided to use case of PS4 game, it will be interesting if keep my cover looks like a real video game. But with compare of memory.....because I haven’t got any ‘normal’ dvd case. PS4 game case is a little shorter than normal case. That will keep it too different from others, that’s what I don’t want. The same, blu-ray case have a thick line and logo on top. So I decided go for a walk around look for some inspiration although I didn’t finish my film at that time.

// Blu-ray, PS4 and normal dvd case. Interesting thing is blu-ray case are the same size with PS4 game.//

In my consider I will buy a dvd case, so I went to stationary store and office supplies store, but nothing fond. Even nowhere selling single dvd. Then I went to WHSmith, I fond there are no dvd case on sell but. But I noticed there are many film on sell, more, I noticed the film’s cases have different colours!

That’s a great ‘discovery’. I begin to think if I can buy a film with special colour case and use it. Also I can keep case colour as a part of cover design.

The cover should be mainly black and white, with few yellow stars or blue. Mostly there are black, white and translucent cases. Yellow ones like the Minions are too bright. And blue ones are not the blue I like, they looks too “low” that we usually used to describe a thing that’s not very “elegant”. I fond few gold cases but they looks more green, I prefer more yellow gold.

Finally I decided to choose a red case. There are two red ones I compared them many times.....staff staring at me........oooooh

//Gold case, I prefer gold but these I fond are too green and dark.//

// One is darker, more elegant while another is brighter.//

I choose the brighter red. Because unless I can watch Deadpool......

And there is a sentence called “buy the casket without the jewels” appeared in my mind..............it’s a old Chinese proverb....perfect describe what I’m doing.........ovo;

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Then will be design the cover. It’s always a happy thing for me to use Illustrator! Firstly fond size, easy.

For easy image, I put red background around the design area and use black line distinguish edges of each page.

Mainly I use my poster for the cover, but I find it’s not perfect if put title on the left. So I flip over whole image. Title on the right looks better.

To keep it looks like a ‘real film’, I fond the dvd logo and graded sign.

// Different graded system for films and video games.//

I choose to use CERO-A with is what Japanese used to describe a video game ‘for all ages’. Because it’s with a ‘A’ and looks cute and I’m very familiar with it................yes such easy choosing....and it can balance the feeling of the front.

For the back, I looked many films and video games design.

I like their feelings of images and lots of words. And I noticed they will show many details on the back. More, for films they usually use thin fronts for long name list. I try to make something similar but ‘my style’.

Bar code. I fond online bar code creator, so this bar code is ‘real’, it can scan out my email address. (Although it can be more ‘like a real bar code’ with each letter under it’s lines, but it will be too long, looks bad.

Then I put images from my film. The complete cover looks like.

I made the ‘blood edge’ as usual but in fact I cut all of them after print. BUT, it’s white background, without the red line I won’t find where to cut. Such smart I am.

Finally the case:

Nice, I’m satisfied.

And I print the third version, the half-black-half-white poster (because it didn’t appear anywhere), and the title of my showreel, put them in the case. And few postcards of my last term’s work.

“Rich DVD case.”

#3 minute film #3 minutes film #research #reflection #in process

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amber-xz · 7 years

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+Masanobu Hiraoka+Brilliant Animator+

Fond a brilliant Japanese animator Masanobu Hiraoka（平岡政展）.

This is one of his works, “shiroiniji”.

vimeo

His twitter:

https://twitter.com/budou_mochi

His usually make music videos that have large, softly slowly changing shapes across all frames, mild colours and using many mirror effects and kaleidoscope effects. Different things and elements rolling and moving in those shapes. I feel they’re more like experimental animations. Closer to ‘mind’ and ‘emotion’, and it’s what I would like to pursue.

I love his style, his colours. Every single frame has perfect graphic design.

Here’s another animation of him. “ L’Œil du Cyclone “

vimeo

Every film is really worth to watch many many many times. Feels peace, flowing, and rich. I learnt a lot from his using of changing like smoke or liquid.

#reflection #research #3 minute film #3 minutes film

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amber-xz · 7 years

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.......Just Fond

JUST FOND the first drawing tiny firework disappear in the final film!!!!! I must forgot it!.........even can’t remember when I started forgot it..........can’t say anything to myself 被自己气到说不出话.......

#3 minute film #3 minutes film

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amber-xz · 7 years

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Complete Poster

Last week I made another bigger poster. It looks nice.

It looks a little boring in darkness......but whatever =L=....

#3 minute film #3 minutes film #in process

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amber-xz · 7 years

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Yellow Rose - Research into Borges

Jorge Luis Borges, he is a wide known Argentine poet, writer and translator, someone called him ‘archaeologist in writers’.

His most known work will be ‘Poem of the Gifts’, I also knew him with this short poem, the sentence

‘I, who had always thought of Paradise In form and image as a library.’

I can’t agree more.

I love his passion of words, books, libraries, I feel it’s a wonderful thing know someone with totally different nationality, age, environment or time has the same feelings. And other people’s words ‘writers are who can write out what you feeling’ is perfect to describe.

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Babel Library

My favorite work of him is the short novel - ‘ Babel Library ‘. This novel describe what if a library, it’s endless, that means it including everything in space, or in past or future. The novel has mixed different religious and philosophy views, trying to reaching the ‘immortal truth’ which can’t be achieved. I love his narrative way, using small things, complex things, mix to show a huge imagination or symbol. And the theme, discovery about the nature of the world, it’s enchanting.

It gave me many thoughts and inspirations. And by coincidence I fond this website:

https://libraryofbabel.info/

It looks more like a website artwork, show concept ‘endless’ of the library of Babel in a digital way.

I will call it a kind of ‘clam romantic’. Wonderful, moving.

(And about this website, I like it’s design of when put clicker on the words, words changing quickly, also showing ‘endless’. I bring this surprise feeling into my film’s final black scene - name of myself.)

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What can I hold you with?

In my film, I use elements from his another work - ‘ What can I hold you with?’. It’s a short poem, a more simple, love poem, but not normal.

Someone said it’s for his homeland, for those who fight for peace and freedom, while others said it’s just for a girl. However this poem seems have no ‘result’.

This poem is really nice, soft but powerful. My favorite sentence will be

I offer you that kernel of myself that I have saved somehow -the central heart that deals not in words, traffics not with dreams and is untouched by time, by joy, by adversities.

And I used these two sentences’ elements, man at the lonely moon and the yellow rose.

I offer you the bitterness of a man who has looked long and long at the lonely moon. .............. I offer you the memory of a yellow rose seen at sunset, years before you were born.

#3 minute film #3 minutes film #research #reflection #in process

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amber-xz · 7 years

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Chinese Fresco Animation - ‘The Country Of Summer Insects’

Watched a Chinese animation ‘The Country Of Summer Insects’. It's director is Tang Baihua, after graduated from printmaking at the Academy of Art in Hangzhou, he led around 20 people, used more than 10,000 handcrafted boards making this 17 min film.

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Trailer of the film:

youtube

Whole film (Chinese website):

http://www.bilibili.com/video/av9808179/

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Synopsis :

Far far away in the south, almost in the end of sky, there was a country near the sea, named the Country of Summer insects. People who lived there only had three quarters of life , being born in Spring and dead in Autumn. A record in their historical books: "Ice was the most precious thing in the world." But after asking all people in the country, nobody knew what the Ice was. A young brave general decided to build a large ship to look for that called Ice....

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I think this is an amazing animation, more like a traditional art work. It’s music is also very ‘classical’.

It’s story based on ‘Do not speak of ice to summer insects that never live in winter because it can’t see the scene of frozen. Do not speak of ocean to frog that live in well because the narrow living environment has limited it.’. It’s a sentence from ‘Zhuang Zi, Autumn Water’ which is one of famous classical philosophical works written around 300 B.C.

‘Zhuang Zi’ is very different from other classical works, it use plenty of small stories, folks and elements of animals to describe its questions and opinions. It’s more like a collection of fables. It’s a nice choice to use elements from it.

Fond a English website:

http://www.coolhunting.com/culture/the-country-of-summer-insects

It called the film ‘nostalgic’ animated film, introduced more director’s experience.

And I read about their making process through many social medias. Seems I saw their process many times in last few years, the waves are very impressive.

Most impressive part will be how they choose and treat plaster handcrafted boards. At first they tried wood board, stone, paper and many other materials, then fond plaster boards can have closest effect of fresco. As different scenes need different sizes, they made all boards by themselves. They use traditional fresco painting skills drew every image and scan them.

There’re too many boards, and plaster is very weak. They fond the boards are easily broken when move but if broken it’s hard to draw the same one, the only thing they can do will be fix broken boards with glue. But they soon fond the fixed parts add more texture feelings to the film so they keep all the broken parts.

I believe it’s a kind of surprises and attractiveness of handmade things.

Tang Baihua’s another work ‘Sunglow of Mogao’ is more tend to Dunhuang frescoes which influenced by minority, while ‘The Country Of Summer Insects’s style is more ‘mainland’. They use traditional way, use sand, clay, grass and materials like those thousands years ago to make the clay boards. It’s nearly a pilgrimage.

‘Sunglow of Mogao’ (Chinese website):

http://www.bilibili.com/video/av9810001/

And it has more process in the last of video.

#3 minute film #3 minutes film #reflection #research

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amber-xz · 7 years

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Hummingbird, Thoughts and Experiment about ‘Sound’ and ‘Emotion’

I keep this ‘hummingbird’ element into final film. With a noisy shaking sound and ‘Is there the noise of metal or a hummingbird’.

Simply saying I want to use this part show and find ‘how can a sound effect influence emotion with its different Interpretations’.

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Natsuhiko Kyogoku (京極夏彦), with the only fact, there can be many ‘truths’

At first, this inspiration came from a novel - 陰摩羅鬼の瑕 (can’t find out how to say in English....) which written by one of my favorite writer Natsuhiko Kyogoku.

Natsuhiko Kyogoku is a member of the Mystery Writers of Japan and the Honkaku Mystery Writers Club of Japan. I fond his early novels for example ‘The Summer of the Ubume’ and ‘The Wicked and the Damned: A Hundred Tales of Karma’ have English version, but others are still...... He is one of the most famous ‘yōkai’ researcher. Yōkai is used to describe creatures from Japanese folklore. As Chinese and Japanese traditional, classical culture are closely linked, Chinese also has familiar creatures and names of them. Generally, yōkai is a little like ‘ghost’ or ‘monster’ but also very different.

But as a ‘yōkai’ researcher, he always show his attitude ‘there’s no mystery in this world. all things come from human’s mind, misunderstand and obsession’. This led him to be not only a ‘mystery’ or ‘horror’ writer, but also a detective writer and humanity researcher. I love his way of using dramatic, mysterious way to show the same fact but become different with different people’s views.

And I’m absolutely his fan, have all his works that published in China Mainland, nice book designs.

// Book cover (Japanese).//

// ‘ 陰摩羅鬼’ drawn by Toriyama Sekien (鳥山石燕), 18th-century scholar and ukiyo-e artist of Japanese folklore.//

// English book cover of ‘The Summer of the Ubume’. WHY always strange bad designs of these great Asian novels............no one will buy them......//

// Chinese book cover.//

This novel, 陰摩羅鬼の瑕 is the newest one of his Kyōgokudō (京極堂) Series (this series’ first novel is ‘The Summer of the Ubume’ which also his first published novel). Kyōgokudō Series is about the main character Akihiko Chuzenji, solve cases with ‘Tsukimono-Otoshi’, which is the most striking aspect of his novels. In my opinion it’s very close to ‘exorcist’, clean up ghosts or demons. As writer’s attitude, Akihiko Chuzenji is also not just a ‘exorcist’, he believes in everything has explain, and his work looks like clean up demon, but in fact find out the ‘fact’. It keeps people usually called this novel series ‘mystery detective stories’.

For this one, ‘陰摩羅鬼’ is a name of a kind of yōkai, it usually has appearance like a crane or huge strange bird. ‘瑕’ means ‘error’, ‘ wrong’ or ‘mistake’. This story describe a case about ‘cursed’ family and in fact all tragedy came from misunderstanding of ‘live’ and ‘death’. Natsuhiko Kyogoku used many metaphors to keep the story’s atmosphere, including the ‘陰摩羅鬼’ which links whole plots and elements of different cultures.

At the very beginning of this novel, there are long paragraphs of how the main character of this case - a rich gentleman but confused about himself, trapped in loud noise in mind. He wonders the noise is sound of mental’s shaking or large amount of insects. But finally he find it’s sound of hummingbird. Hummingbird is another important element in this novel. And it said hummingbird seems more like insect, instead of bird because it’s too different with other normal birds.

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Thoughts

It’s really a good topic. I think about how sounds influence one’s emotion, if can’t find out what the sound really from? For example sometimes when we hear loud screaming, it will be very crashing if it’s a crying baby. But if find it’s a young, hungry cat, with the same sound it seems not that bad. Or sound of winds blowing though leaves, it’s very close to sound when cooking with lot of oil in pan, but one can keep feel cool while another remains heat. The same, if one treat a noise as sound of insects, it’s horrible and creepy, but if know it’s hummingbird it seems fine.

The same sound can led to very different feelings with different understandings, sometimes it will bring strange confusion if can’t find out what it really is. That’s interesting.

Sound effects are important part of animation. I feel there are ‘realistic’ animations and ‘animation’ animations. Sometimes they will use very surprising sounds to show their humor or horror, and it’s also animation’s attraction.

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Research into Hummingbirds

Searched some pictures to draw hummingbird. Find feature of shape and movement and differences of other birds will be helpful. I usually like to compare familiar things.

Comparing with ‘normal’ birds, hummingbird has bigger head because its whole body is very tiny, short triangular wings at almost middle of the body that can move very quick (’like insects’) - keep hummingbird has ability to stay in air, long thin beak, and some kinds of male hummingbird tail has two long feathers. Hummingbird’s most special action must be hover in the air and change its position quickly, I try to draw this feeling.

Larger birds like raven, eagle and crane usually has wide wings, more use gliding when flying, not wing their wings too quick to save energy. Hummingbird needs stay in air to drink nectar.

Another kind of tiny bird - kingfisher. Kingfisher catches fish so it has stronger beak, shorter tail and sector wings - more strong and easy to control in water.

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Sounds

For the sound, the same with it in animatic, I recorded it last year and wrote about it here:

http://amber-xz.tumblr.com/post/152574974704/collecting-sounds

#3 minute film #3 minutes film #in process #reflection #research

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amber-xz · 7 years

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Finished all Scenes’ Drawing

vimeo

Just finished all drawing parts, already late a lot with plan.

Will add sounds, dialogues and final ....names? this weekend.

#3 minute film #3 minutes film #in process

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