Film Animation

Showreel

Hey everyone! I’m Enya, junior animator from Indonesia, currently studying in Singapore. This is my 2020 student graduate reel, a compilation of my best individual works in one-year study and explanation of what I learned from each project I’ve done. Long story short, this is my first journey in 3D world as a character animator. I’m very thankful for the call of an adventure, to finally step out from my comfort zone. This is my dedication as an artist, hoping one day I can see how much I’ve grown.

Monologue + Full Breakdown

This is my final term assignment and personally my favorite and best work I’ve done so far. It took me a month to work on it and I did it during the Covid-19 work from home era, which I found really challenging since I'm very new and there was no direct guidance from my lecturer. Guess online class saved my life.

For this project I wanted to reference anger. And I personally can get angry quite often, so yes, I am my own inspiration. Using a line from Kate Winslet from the movie Revolutionary Road starring Leonardo Di Caprio too. A reason why monologue is my favorite work is because I can learn two things; animating facial expression and learning body language in psychology.

To follow the reference, I made the girl change her personality from sassy and sarcastic to an outburst directly. In the beginning I make her body leans on a chair, torso facing away from the boy, arms crossed, to indicate that she doesn’t fond him. When she says “if black could be made into white,” I make her looking down on him by adding a cynical expression. Like how can you turn black into white? Lastly for the ending and climax, to make her look so infuriated, I decided to make her smash the table, and give tension on her left hand that points to the boy.

To make the audience focus on the main character I put a whiteboard behind to frame her. I make the furniture, background, and outfit dark-colored so it gives a color contrast. From here, I learned on how to tell a story in animation from body language, facial expression, and backgrounds.

Rig credit: Amy and Sam by Gabriel Salas on Gumroad

Parkour

Parkour is the second hardest animation I’ve made. This is my assignment in Term 2 which basically, we learn a lot of body mechanic. My reference is a compilation of Spider Gwen from Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, and people doing parkour from YouTube.’

What I learned from this assignment is how to do animation with a help of arc tracker. It helps me a lot to make a good arc in 3D and 2D space. Apart from the body mechanic lessons is camera work. My lecturer taught me that camera work for framing is important for the audience to tell what’s going to happen after this shot; is there a continuation or not. To think that a camera is a frame. You want to tell them that the character is actually going to jump off from the building, put the camera more to the screen right, and leave an empty space on screen left to show that there is a continuation.

Rig credit: Jill from Body Mechanic Rigs - Mega Pack! on Gumroad

Run Cycle

So far, my cutest animation from Term 2. To be honest, I got my idea from anime girls running memes era. And luckily I found a 2D running cycle from YouTube that looks like anime girls running. What I learned the most is about anticipation, overshoot, and follow-through of the rig’s limbs. Like when you walk, your hands swing like a pendulum; shoulder as the pedestal, followed by upper arm, then fore arm, and lastly the wrist. I also learn the difference between men and women subtle body movements when they walk, and the physique.

Rig credit: Jill from Body Mechanic Rigs - Mega Pack! on Gumroad

Weight Lift

Another Term 2 exercise but we focus on weight lift. This one I learned how to “manipulate” the audience eyes by how heavy/light the weight a character lift. My favorite part of the animation is that I added gasping and trembling legs when the character lifts the dumbbell because the rig is bony, and it can be hard for them to do heavy lifting.

Rig credit: Jack from Body Mechanic Rigs - Mega Pack! on Gumroad

Pantomime

This is my first project for Term 3 and the most difficult animation I’ve done. Took me about 6 weeks to make. Forgot to mention we also have 3D modeling class, so it’s very grueling and challenging for me to maintain a good time management between animation and modeling.

What I learned from this project is more of a personal lesson, like how to maintain a good and short animation, because I always aim for the best but never to think the obstacles I might get. I realized that my pantomime duration is too long, so I can’t focus on things that I actually must do. I got burnout from this because I didn’t think of a well-done concept at first. As a matter of fact, I changed my idea four times, for almost two weeks. I was being too perfect and I wanted to be the best, but I’m still learning and I never thought that I still have a lot of time to hone my talent. Things got frustrating, and I got insecure. But if we didn't make mistakes, we'd never learn anything. Thankfully I bounced back, with a mix of hustle, pure luck, help from friends and lecturers.

Rig credit: Dana and Sam by Gabriel Salas on Gumroad

Song credit: Come And Get Your Love by Redbone

Dance

Lastly, this is my second favorite animation. This project is a part of body mechanic lesson. I derived a big pleasure from this, because I love to do my assignments while listening to music, and I’m happy to get an opportunity to do an animation with a music. I learned about the hardest animation I’ve known; hips and chest moves to make them connect to drive the action. Aside from that I also learned the flow of each action, like does it feel cranky or smooth.

Rig credit: Jill from Body Mechanic Rigs - Mega Pack! on Gumroad

Song credit: Say So by Doja Cat Japanese Ver. by Rainych Ran

I also would like to give a special thanks to my animation lecturer, Tan Pang Ren. Thank you for your patience, for the guidance, and for helping me through all hard decision and situation. Thank you to my family, my classmates, and friends for the support that everyone has given to me. Cheers.