"Wonder Garden"

Please Watch Before Reading!


Overview
'Wonder Garden' is about a young girl who is transported to a magical world by a teddy bear.

Design Principles
We haven't done actual frame-by-frame drawings in animation, so I wouldn't really be able to critique on that part. However, it looks very well drawn, nicely planned out, and not to mention reminds me of Ghibli.
In-Depth Look
Told from a 3rd person perspective, it tells the story of a girl who sees a teddy bear in a storefront who gives her a beautiful outfit. She and the bear start flying around with other teddy bears to a dark part of the city where a window is, and a huge mechanical teddy bear takes off its head and starts smashing it, freeing everyone. It goes back to the girl, now in her regular clothes, looking at the storefront.
Applications to e-Comm
I love the color palettes they use in this short film, like with the storefront outfit and the magic thing that the bear does in this screenshot. →
Someday I might use some of those color palettes in a graphic design project or something.

Learned Elements
In this same scene (that the screenshot is from), all of the spheres (whatever they are) are moving upward at different speeds, which we learned how to do in Maya a few months ago with our snowflake project. We also learned how to control how far away the surroundings are with a project we did last semester, where we had to create a scenery and make them seem farther and closer away (this happens in the short film).
Well Done!
I don't think there's really anything I dislike about this; the animation looks clean, it's cute, everything is timed nicely, and, again, it reminds me of Ghibli movies (especially when there's a gust of wind).
Improvements
I'd like to see an extended version of this, with an actual story behind the bears and everything that's happening (and why it's happening). Other than that, I don't think any improvements could be made.
Conclusion
All in all, there was almost nothing bad about this film, other than the fact that it left me wanting more.


- Brenna (っ• ◡•)っ


Wonder Garden. Dir. Yojiro Arai. Prod. Yoichi Kawakumi. YouTube. Spiral Cute Inc., 18 Oct. 2013. Web. 10 Mar. 2017.

Making 'Kubo and the Two Strings'

Main Idea

Generally, this article briefly describes several aspects of the creation of the movie 'Kubo and the Two Strings', such as making the puppets their clothing.

Author's Feelings

You can already tell how Giardina, the author, feels about the process just by reading the first paragraph. It's very obvious that she believes the process to be—and it is—extremely difficult, especially when she compares moving a single finger to preparations for a lunar launch. She doesn't seem to have any negative feelings towards it—she seems absolutely fascinated.

But Does She Actually Support This...?

YES. She does support this. Heavily. Giardina doesn't necessarily cite any particular documents/videos/etc., but she does describe many of the efforts it took to create the movie, such as carefully designing clothes for 9-inch tall figurines, printing thousands of different faces for multiple characters, and doing a seemingly endless amount of research to get the feel of the movie just right.

Strengths/Weaknesses

According to the Visual Effects Society, Carolyn Giardina has been writing articles for topics like this for over 15 years, which explains why I think she does such a good job of thoroughly explaining what all went in to this film. However, the ending of the article didn't really seem like much of a conclusion; it just kind of stopped. I wish she would have ended it in a better fashion.

Giardina's Conclusion (If It Was One)

As said in the last paragraph, she didn't really give a conclusion. The article just ended with her talking about the individual pieces of material that made the clothing for the Sisters. So...it wasn't that great (imo).

Significance of the Main Points
Most of what the writer talked about seemed like they're pretty significant, excluding little side stories, even though they were informative. Her main claim was that the set of this movie was much more "advanced" than previous stop-motion films, and easily supported that with multiple references to the small portions that made up the whole of the movie.

But Does Her Argument Support the Main Points...?
Please read the surrounding paragraphs.

Convincing Evidence

Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yesssssss! She uses more than enough evidence! She convinced me in the second paragraph!! I don't think I have to say any more!!!!! ❤

Connecting It to E-Comm

Being in (and doing this for) animation, this makes me realize that even if it takes a really, really long time to work on something, and it's super frustrating, I need to keep working on it for the final product. The people at Laika worked on 'Kubo' for about two years, and it ended up being one of my favorite movies. It can basically be summed up by the VFX (visual effects) supervisor of the movie, Steve Emerson, when he said, "Making this movie wore me out. I can't wait to do another."

Here's What I Didn't Understand...

There were a few words I didn't know the meaning of in the article (i.e. "verbose"), but I was able sort of figure out what was being said using context clues and knowledge of what happens within the movie.
That wasn't such a big deal for me, but I wish she would say a little more about this "Shannon Tindle" that she mentioned, who apparently came up with the concept of 'Kubo'.

To Finish Things Off,

I could not agree more with this lady!! Not only do the creators of this film say it was extremely difficult to make, but 'Kubo' just looks so well made that it's almost impossible to disagree.

- Brenna (っ• ◡•)っ

"Carolyn Giardina." Visual Effects Society. N.p., n.d. Web. 09 Mar. 2017.

Giardina, Carolyn. "How 'Kubo and the Two Strings' Merged Stop-Motion Animation and 3D Printing (Plus a 400-Pound Puppet)." The Hollywood Reporter. N.p., 15 Dec. 2016. Web. 09 Jan. 2017.

"Red"

Please Watch Before Reading!

Story Elements

Basically, this was a retelling of the classic story "Little Red Riding Hood", but in this case, a twist was added so that the wolf is actually a boy with a crush on Red Riding Hood. The whole story has a sweet tone to it, even when Red Riding Hood is being attacked, because even when she's in danger, the wolf boy is still there to protect her.

For My Own Work...
For my future projects, I would try to use character appeal similar to this one; I love drawing in styles like this. Also, it seemed pretty concise, which for me is difficult to do; I just get to detail oriented. I could definitely learn from this video in that sense.

I Know
It's kind of a given that if I wanted to make an animation I would have to give my characters...well, some character! Pretty much everybody knows how to do that. Other than that, as freshmen we learned about some of the basics of animation, like squash and stretch, and I could see some of these principles being used throughout this animation (squash and stretch, anticipation, appeal, etc.). We haven't gone into animating by hand in class, so I can't really say anything about that.

Nice!
The art style used in this is so cute! If I was the one who made this, I would be so proud of myself. Also, I really like that the creator left sketch marks on some of his frames, even though I don't usually like that. It just makes it seem cuter.

Improvements

Something that really bothered me while watching this was that there were sound effects for movements you would barely hear in real life. However, in moments like when the monster's horn was stuck in the tree, there was no noise at all; it just felt very unbalanced. Also, just for the record, I don't think that anything would still be alive (or at least uninjured) if they were thrown into a tree that brutally.

As a Conclusion

I'm a little nervous that this wouldn't be considered as a "professional animation" considering all of the film shorts I've seen, but considering this was made by just one person, I think it's pretty good.

- Brenna (っ• ◡•)っ

Red. Dir. Hyunjoo Song. YouTube. N.p., 29 June 2010. Web. 12 Dec. 2016.