The Best in School N.E.mation (Part 1)
Friday, March 27, 2009
The excited finalists in the N.E.mation! III digital animation competition.
For the third year running, the N.E.mation! III competition saw teams from secondary schools, junior colleges and the centralised institutes competing to see who could best communicate their ideas about Total Defence through an animation clip. The results were finally announced at the Total Defence Day event at Suntec City Tropics Atrium on 15 February.
This year's top honours for the animation competition went to the team from Yishun Junior College for its entry Our Home. They won a fully-paid trip to DreamWorks Animation studio in the US. The first and second runners-up awards were respectively clinched by teams from Hwa Chong Institution for Seeds of Love and National Junior College (NJC) for the cleverly-titled Feel in the Blank.
For the winners, the event was a culmination of the hard work that had kicked in June last year, when they registered for the competition.
VIP guests who toured the exhibition at Suntec City on 15 February included Minister for Defence Mr Teo Chee Hean (in white) and MP Ms Indranee Rajah (in pink).
The theme of this year's N.E.mation! competition was "What make us Singaporean?" - a question that certainly gave them lots of scope to explore. As part of the competition process, students with no prior experience in animation were given training so that they would have the skills to turn their stories into one-minute animation clips.
The shortlisted entries were opened for public viewing and voting from 16 January to 5 February. The winners were determined by a combination of public voting and judging by a panel which included industry professionals such as animator Dan Nguyen from Pixar Animation.
From a blank slate to a winning clip
How does it feel to be one of the teams that has earned industry as well as popular acclaim? "Very satisfied!" says NJC team leader Sec 4 student Jeremy Ng. He worked with three classmates from the college's Art Elective Programme - Poon Chun Wai, Chan Jun Hao and Viona Ho - to complete their animation clip.
Their main idea was: If you could draw a picture about Singapore, what would you show? The team started tossing around ideas from June, when their Art Elective teacher introduced them to the N.E.mation! III competition. "We had many different ideas and went through several drafts. But I think the actual work was completed within the last two weeks," says Viona.
Chun Wai elaborates, "We drew our inspiration from the Nokia 6120 Navigator TV commercial, and adapted the concept to give our clip a Singapore feel." Their concept played on the strengths of their individual knowledge of art techniques and their own drawing skills. As seen in the clip, each student used an ink marker and expressed in visuals what Singapore meant to him or her. Unlike other entries that relied heavily on animation techniques, the team used a camera to capture the action and linked up the frames for their completed animation sequence.
Despite the tight timeline, they worked well together without major difficulties. "Our entry was a combination of all our ideas, in equal parts," says Jeremy. "Of course we'd get emotional at times, but we didn't play the blame game. Mostly we just discussed, compromised and came to a consensus."
2nd runner-up NJC strike a pose: (from front)Jun Hao, Jeremy, Viona, Chun Wai.
"The top two winners this year were very good, and really deserved to win, but we hope to clinch the first prize some day," adds Jun Hao. They haven't decided if they will take part in next year's N.E.mation! competition, but that doesn't stop them from firing their parting salvo - "NJC might make a comeback!" declares Jeremy.
Look out for Part 2 of Schoolbag's interviews with N.E.mation! III winners in the next few days, when we find out what propelled the first runner-up and champion teams to the top.