At the Edinburgh College of Art
My first trip out of Dundee
was exciting. It was to Edinburgh! The capital city of Scotland!!
We were supposed to
assemble at DJCAD at 8:20 AM so that we could board the bus to 'Scotland Love
Animation'-Education Day at the ECA. I met Sheng at the Roseangle Crossing and
then we proceeded towards DJCAD. We boarded the bus and signed against our names.
As we headed towards
our destination, I could not help but look out of the window at the vast and
beautiful expanse of greenery around. My God, it was so beautiful.
Sheng soon fell asleep and
I tried not to even blink my eyes! It was like I was trying to soak in and
memorise each detail of the mesmerising landscape.
As we entered Edinburgh,
the little cottages looked so simple but just so homely. We soon reached ECA
and were asked to assemble again at 4:30 PM at the entrance for our journey
back to Dundee.
Makoto Shinkai,an award
winning Anime director was the guest lecturer. I thought we might just watch
some of his movies but it was much more than that. He gave us a detailed
insight into what it takes to make an Anime film of his class.
Traditional Anime Story boarding
He showed us the traditional method of Anime Story boarding. The image above shows the girl listening at the railways tracks. He showed us how detailed and precise the storyboard should be so that at the production level there are no hiccups. Even as little as a detail of how many strands of hair falling over the girls eyes are sketched so that the entire shot is clear from the start.The next column has all the camera details. The last column shows the time duration for each shot.
Through the pipeline
Then he showed us how artists at different levels have different colours as their symbol that shows who has worked on the shot and what changes they have made on it. For example,the director of the film uses red colour and another artist uses yellow. So,as they work on the shot they change the colour of the paper in Photoshop.
Highlighting a certain area
He showed us how by using lighter or darker tones of different shades, the lighting in a scene could be changed or a certain area could be highlighted. It was awe-inspiring when we saw him highlight the area in the above image with such clarity and ease. It looked like child's play when he did it. I know it was not.
Different hues used to create the effect of lighting
He also showed us how, now, Anime is using video story boarding with as much detail and as much precision as the traditional story boarding. We had a look at one of his video story boards and it looked as complete as a movie. However,the final output was brilliant. He told us how the clothing of the characters in his film were now being clothed by stylist who would dress them according to their profession or need of the scene. The colour of the clothing was determined after the background was inserted in the frame so that the shadow and highlight created on the silhouette of the clothing could have their tone.
It was such an amazing experience to see a man of such stature work on such aspects of Animation with such ease and still be so humble.
breadthtaking........
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