Category: Advanced and Experimental with Ting

This week, Ting’s lecture focused on acting and subtext, exploring the idea that what a character says is often different from what they actually mean. She emphasized the importance of “show, don’t tell” and how great acting comes from understanding the thoughts and intentions beneath the dialogue. We looked at examples from animation and discussed how body language and acting choices can communicate meaning without explicitly stating it. Ting also introduced us to the 11 Second Club, a long-running animation challenge where animators create their own interpretations of the same 11-second audio clip. I found it fascinating how the exact same line could result in completely different performances depending on the animator’s choices and the subtext they wanted to convey. This became the basis for our first assignment after the Easter break. Although we were not expected to begin animating immediately, Ting encouraged us to spend the break thinking about the hidden meaning behind our chosen dialogue and how we wanted to communicate it through acting rather than simply illustrating the words.

Alongside this, we were given another assignment based on the previous week’s industry talk. The task was to interview a professional artist we admired, with the aim of practicing professionalism while also gaining insight into the realities of the industry. I was fortunate enough to interview freelance 3D artist and animator Ali Tomineek, whose work I have admired for years, especially through Instagram. I was surprised by how generous he was with his time and how openly he shared his journey. He spoke about transitioning from video editing into animation, building an audience online and choosing the freelance route because of the creative freedom it offered. One thing that stood out to me was his emphasis on passion and experimentation. He described learning animation as similar to learning how to swim: you can only truly learn by jumping in and doing it. Hearing about the realities of freelancing and his ability to maintain a distinctive artistic voice made me think differently about the many paths available in the industry.

Over the break, I also revisited my “Heavy Object / Change of Mind” shot. Taking Ting’s earlier advice to start again, I approached the assignment with a completely different mindset. I switched to using the Bony rig, which made it easier to separate the body into sections and animate them in passes. Instead of trying to animate everything at once, I focused on the hips first, then the back, arms and other body parts. I also changed my workflow by making sure that different controls shared the same keyframes. Previously, I had a tendency to key things inconsistently, which often left me lost when making adjustments. Keeping controls aligned made the animation process much smoother and easier to manage. Although starting over initially felt like admitting defeat, it ultimately resulted in a much stronger shot and taught me the importance of having a workflow that is both organized and flexible.

Looking back, this week tied together many of the themes we have explored throughout the term. Whether through acting, career advice or body mechanics, the common thread seems to be intentionality. Strong performances come from understanding what a character is thinking, successful careers come from being deliberate about the kind of artist you want to become, and effective animation workflows come from making clear decisions rather than working chaotically. It felt like a fitting way to conclude the term before moving into more dialogue-focused work after the break.

This week, instead of our usual lecture, Ting gave an industry talk focused on preparing us for life after university. She spoke about the hierarchy within animation studios and the different career paths available depending on individual interests and strengths. It was interesting to hear about the variety of roles that exist beyond simply being an animator, and how different departments work together throughout a production. She also discussed the differences between working at large studios, smaller companies and as a freelancer, which gave me a broader understanding of the industry.

A large part of the talk focused on employability and professionalism. Ting shared advice on finding internships and entry-level positions, as well as the importance of networking and maintaining a strong portfolio. She stressed that studios are not only looking for technical ability but also for people who are reliable, easy to work with and able to communicate effectively. Hearing this reinforced the importance of collaboration, something that has been a recurring theme throughout the year.

I found the session particularly insightful because it made the animation industry feel much more approachable. Up until now, I have mostly been focused on completing assignments and improving my technical skills, but the talk reminded me that there is also a professional side to animation that is equally important. It encouraged me to think more seriously about how I present my work and what kind of artist I want to become. More than anything, it was reassuring to hear that careers are rarely linear and that there are many different paths into the industry, provided you continue learning and remain open to opportunities.

This week was a little different as we took a trip to the Cinema Museum to present our Project 1 work. For my presentation, I decided to continue developing the same core idea I had explored during last term’s presentation: a 360° animated film about the effects that growing up in an abusive household can have on a young boy. Rather than focusing on the complete story, I used Project 1 as an opportunity to test some of the technical and visual elements that I hope to incorporate into the Final Major Project. Presenting in a different environment and seeing everybody’s work outside the classroom made the experience feel much more professional and encouraged me to think about how to communicate ideas clearly.

During the presentation, I explained my technical approach and the role audience attention would play in the experience. Since the film is intended to be viewed in 360°, I wanted the viewer’s experience to depend partly on where they choose to look. I discussed my experiments with gaze detection in Unreal Engine, where sounds become louder when the camera points towards certain objects, subtly guiding the viewer’s attention without forcing it.

I also showed the results of a lighting test, which allowed me to experiment with the mood and atmosphere I hope to achieve in the final film. Alongside these tests, I presented mood boards and visual references that helped communicate the tone and style I am aiming for.

Looking back on the presentation, I realised that Project 1 had achieved exactly what Ting intended it to do: test one important aspect of the Final Major Project rather than trying to solve everything at once. Although the technical experiments were still relatively simple, they helped me understand what was possible and highlighted areas that would require further development. More importantly, presenting the work forced me to articulate my ideas clearly and think about how the technical systems support the emotional experience of the film. Seeing the reactions and questions from others also gave me confidence that the concept was strong enough to continue developing in the coming months.

This week there was no formal lecture, with most of the time dedicated to feedback and individual support. However, Ting noticed that many of us were struggling with the facial transition assignment, so she paused to give a quick demonstration using one of the students’poses. Watching her work through the problem was extremely helpful because it showed how she approached the shot from broad changes down to smaller details. Rather than treating each pose as isolated keyframes, she focused on the transition itself and demonstrated how breakdowns, eye darts and subtle head movements helped create a more believable performance. Seeing the process unfold in real time made the assignment feel much less mysterious.

Using the feedback from previous weeks, I spent most of my time revisiting my own facial animation. Ting had pointed out that the transitions between expressions felt too slow and lacked enough breakdowns. She encouraged me to make some of the changes snappier and reminded me that the body and head should not remain completely still while the face moves. Adding these subtle movements made a surprising difference and helped prevent the character from feeling rigid. Although facial animation still felt challenging, I began to understand that expressions are not simply about moving facial controls but about creating a complete performance.

I also continued working on my “Heavy Object / Change of Mind” shot, but by this point I realized I had become completely lost. After so many passes and adjustments, I had lost sight of what I was trying to achieve and found myself constantly fixing one thing only to break another. When I spoke to Ting about this, she suggested something I initially found difficult to accept: starting over. Since the Easter break was approaching, she recommended putting the shot aside and beginning again later with a clearer plan. After thinking about it, I realised this was probably the best option. Starting from scratch would allow me to focus on the Project 1 deadline coming up in a few weeks and, more importantly, give me the opportunity to rethink the shot and establish a better workflow. Although it felt frustrating to abandon so much work, I began to see that sometimes starting over is not a failure but an opportunity to apply everything I have learned with a fresh perspective.

This week focused on eye animation and the role that blinks, eye darts and eyebrow movements play in creating natural facial performances. Ting explained that blinks should not be added randomly, but should serve a purpose, often accompanying changes in thought, attitude or direction. She also demonstrated how eye darts can make a character feel alive and emphasized the idea that thoughts lead the eyes and the eyes lead the body. After the lecture, she gave a short demonstration of her own workflow for animating eyes in Maya. I really enjoyed seeing this because it is easy to focus on principles in isolation, but watching an experienced animator actually apply them gave me a better understanding of the process and the order in which she tackles different parts of the face.

Our assignment this week was to connect the three facial poses we had created previously. At first I thought this would be similar to pose-to-pose body animation, but I quickly realised that facial animation has very different timing requirements. Expressions often change quickly and snappily, and the challenge was less about creating movement and more about figuring out when that movement should happen. I spent a lot of time experimenting with eye darts and blinks, trying to avoid making the transitions feel robotic. It was also interesting to think about which parts of the face should lead and which parts should follow. Although I found the process frustrating at times, it made me appreciate how much subtlety goes into facial animation and how much information can be communicated through very small changes.

I also revisited my “Heavy Object / Change of Mind” shot for another pass. Based on Ting’s feedback, I focused on improving the weight and paying more attention to the shape of the back when the character bent down to pick up the ball. However, I began to feel the effects of doing too many passes on the same shot. After making so many adjustments, I found myself becoming lost in the keys and struggling to remember the intention behind certain poses. Instead of making clear improvements, I was sometimes creating new problems while trying to fix old ones. This experience made me realise that there is a point where repeatedly tweaking an animation can become counterproductive.

Looking back, this week taught me an important lesson about iteration. While it is important to keep refining a shot, there is also value in knowing when to step back and simplify. Seeing Ting’s workflow reminded me that animation is often about making deliberate choices rather than endlessly adjusting every controller. I am beginning to understand that reference, planning and clarity are just as important as technical skill, and that sometimes taking a break from a shot can help reveal problems more clearly than another pass ever could.

This week Ting introduced Project 1, which she described as a test run for the Final Major Project rather than a complete proposal. The idea was to focus on one element that we wanted to explore and develop it into a polished outcome. She showed several examples of how previous students had approached the project, whether through developing a visual style, testing a workflow or planning their portfolio. I found this reassuring because it removed the pressure of having to know exactly what my FMP would look like and instead encouraged experimentation and focused research. Since I had already been thinking about my FMP, I immediately began considering how I could present my ideas and what aspect would be most interesting to explore further.

We also continued working on facial poses, but this time using live reference instead of model sheets. I found this considerably more challenging than the previous assignment. The model sheet expressions were already stylized and exaggerated, making them easier to interpret, whereas real facial expressions are much more subtle and complex. Often I found myself struggling to identify what exactly made an expression work. Small changes around the mouth, eyelids or eyebrows could dramatically alter the feeling of a pose. Although I struggled initially, the process forced me to become more observant and taught me that facial animation is less about copying individual features and more about understanding the relationships between them. By the end of the exercise, I felt more comfortable analyzing expressions and translating them into appealing poses.

I also continued refining my “Heavy Object / Change of Mind” shot. Taking Ting’s feedback into account, I focused on improving the movement of the centre of gravity. One issue she repeatedly pointed out was that my COG would occasionally stop moving entirely, making the character feel stiff and disconnected from the action. At first, the idea that the COG should almost always be in motion was difficult for me to understand. I had a tendency to treat poses as isolated moments rather than parts of a continuous action. To improve this, I spent time studying reference footage and adjusting my blocking to ensure that the weight flowed naturally from one pose to the next. Although it was frustrating at times, I gradually started to understand how even subtle shifts in the hips can make a character feel more alive and believable.

Looking back, I noticed that many of the topics we have covered over the past few weeks are beginning to connect. Whether it is camera movement, facial posing or body mechanics, the common theme seems to be that animation is less about moving controls and more about observing life. The more I rely on reference and think about why people move the way they do, the easier it becomes to make creative decisions rather than guessing. I feel like I am slowly becoming more patient with the process and spending more time planning and analysing before jumping into animation.

This week’s lecture focused on facial posing and what makes expressions feel appealing and organic. Ting emphasized concepts such as asymmetry, shape, connectivity and maintaining volume, explaining that perfect symmetry often makes faces feel robotic and lifeless. One idea that stood out to me was that expressions should not be created by simply maxing out controls, but by thinking about how muscles influence one another and how the whole face works as a connected system. We also looked at how subtle changes in eyelids, eyebrows and mouth shapes can dramatically change the emotion being communicated.

After the lecture, Ting assigned us the task of recreating facial poses from a model sheet. Although this reminded me of the golden poses exercise from first term, I found facial posing considerably more difficult. With body poses, large silhouettes and lines of action often make the difference, whereas with facial animation the smallest adjustment to a single controller can completely change the appeal of a pose. Initially, many of my expressions looked awkward or too symmetrical, but after spending more time experimenting and referring back to the lecture notes, I gradually started to understand how to create more organic poses. The experience taught me that facial animation requires a much higher level of observation and subtlety than I had expected.

I also received feedback on my planning for the “Heavy Object / Change of Mind” assignment. Ting suggested that instead of relying on online reference, I should record myself performing the action. She explained that having my own footage would make it easier to analyse camera angles and understand the mechanics of the movement. Keeping this advice in mind, I spent the week blocking the shot and focused mainly on establishing strong key poses and believable weight shifts. Rather than worrying about polish, I concentrated on communicating effort and making sure the object actually felt heavy. This stage made me appreciate how much of animation is solved through posing rather than through adding lots of movement.

On Friday, we had a practical exercise based on the self-study videos from the previous week. Using Stitch, we had to animate the process of making a cup of tea. Although the animation itself was fairly simple, the real purpose of the exercise was to test our understanding of parenting and hierarchy. Stitch had to pick up a tea bag, place it into the kettle, carry the kettle and pour water into a cup, meaning that control relationships were constantly changing throughout the sequence. I initially found this task frustrating because, as I have mentioned before, Maya’s workflow still feels much less intuitive to me than Blender. However, once I stopped trying to solve problems as they appeared and instead planned the hierarchy and parent switches beforehand, everything became much easier. This exercise reinforced something I am beginning to notice repeatedly in animation: good planning often saves far more time than trying to fix problems later.

This week’s lecture expanded on story structure and introduced several different narrative frameworks, including the Three-Act Structure, the Hero’s Journey, Dan Harmon’s Story Circle, the Five-Act Structure and Kishōtenketsu. Ting also discussed the hierarchy of narrative, explaining how individual shots and scenes contribute to larger sequences and ultimately the story as a whole. What I found most interesting was seeing how these different structures all attempt to describe the same thing: how characters change over time. Although each framework approaches storytelling differently, they all emphasize that stories are built around transformation rather than simply events happening one after another.

After the lecture, we received feedback on our “Hunter to Prey” assignment. Ting understood the story we were trying to tell and generally liked the piece, but she gave us several suggestions to improve it. She felt some shots were cutting too quickly, preventing the audience from fully digesting the information. She also pointed out that many of our camera moves felt too linear and mechanical. Rather than moving at a constant speed, she encouraged us to introduce slow-ins and slow-outs and, more importantly, to think of the camera as a character. Instead of being a passive observer, the camera should react to the events happening within the scene and communicate emotion through its movement. This feedback changed the way I thought about cinematography. Previously, I had viewed camera movement as something functional, but Ting made me realize that it can be expressive and have its own personality. Throughout the week, we revisited the animation with these notes in mind and made adjustments to improve the pacing and staging.

Alongside the project, we also had a self-study component focused on constraints in Maya. I really enjoyed working through these videos because, as someone who primarily uses Blender, I still find Maya’s interface and workflow confusing at times. Learning about constraints and parenting helped demystify some of the software and made me feel more comfortable navigating it. Although these are relatively basic concepts, they felt like important building blocks that would save time in future assignments. It was reassuring to discover that many of the concepts I already understood in Blender existed in Maya as well, even if they were implemented differently.

Towards the end of the week, Ting introduced the next assignment, “Heavy Object / Change of Mind”. The goal was to use acting and body mechanics to portray a character unsuccessfully interacting with a heavy object before ultimately deciding on a different course of action. This week was mainly dedicated to planning, so I spent some time thinking about possible scenarios and gathering reference material. Rather than immediately animating, I focused on understanding the weight shifts and physical effort involved in lifting heavy objects. I also began collecting video references that could help with posing and timing. Having learned from the previous assignments, I wanted to spend more time preparing and observing before committing to animation, since good acting and believable movement often come from careful planning rather than trying to solve everything inside Maya.

Thursday’s lecture shifted the focus from cinematography to story structure. Ting spent a lot of time introducing the SWBST framework (Somebody, Wanted, But, So, Then) and explaining how it can be used to build stories around conflict and consequence rather than simply listing events. One idea she repeatedly emphasized was that stories should be connected by “therefore” and “but” rather than “and then”, allowing character choices and obstacles to naturally drive the narrative. Throughout the class we practiced this by taking simple scenarios and building them into short stories using the SWBST structure. I found this approach useful because it reduced storytelling to a clear framework and made me think more critically about motivation and cause-and-effect rather than isolated scenes.

Towards the end of the session, Ting assigned us a cinematic analysis exercise where we had to choose a scene from a film we liked and explain why its shots and camera angles worked. I chose the Peter Parker versus Flash Thompson scene from Spider-Man because I thought it was a good example of how cinematography can establish power dynamics between characters. Looking at the scene frame by frame made me appreciate how subtle camera choices influence the audience’s perception. Low angles, framing, and shot size all contributed to establishing Flash as the dominant character initially before gradually shifting the balance of power. This exercise also reinforced the connection between the previous week’s focus on camera language and this week’s emphasis on storytelling.

On Friday, we were introduced to a new previs exercise called “Hunter to Prey”. Working in pairs, we had to create a short story that established one character as the hunter and another as the prey before reversing their roles. My partner and I came up with the story of a young man disturbing his elderly neighbour by playing loud music, only for the tables to turn when a stray ball unexpectedly knocks him down. Rather than jumping straight into animation, we spent the session focusing on the narrative and visual beats. Over the weekend, we developed the idea further, creating rough visualisations before constructing a shot list and dividing the work between us.

Since our story involved dancing and exaggerated movement, I also spent some time watching YouTube videos of simple dance routines and using them as reference. This helped me think about posing and timing, and gave us a clearer idea of how the character’s movements could communicate his carefree and somewhat obnoxious personality before the reversal.

What I found interesting about this assignment was how naturally the SWBST structure fit into our story. Somebody: an inconsiderate young man. Wanted: to enjoy himself and annoy his neighbour. But: his actions eventually lead to consequences. So: the situation reverses. Then: the power dynamic shifts and he becomes the victim. Although simple, this exercise helped me understand that story structure and cinematography are closely linked. Camera angles and shot choices become much more meaningful when they are supporting changes in character relationships and dramatic tension rather than existing purely for style. This made me realize that effective visual storytelling starts long before animation it begins with understanding the story’s underlying structure.

Thursday’s session focused on cinematography and camera language. We discussed how composition, focus, focal length, geometry and movement can all be used to communicate meaning and guide the audience’s attention. Ting emphasized that the placement of the camera should always be motivated by what the scene is about and what the filmmaker wants to say, rather than simply choosing visually interesting angles. We reviewed an assignment she had given us over the break, which involved storyboarding scenes from The Incredibles. After analyzing the original sequences, we were asked to create new storyboards using different camera angles and shot choices based on the cinematography principles covered in class.

Towards the end of the session, Ting introduced the “5 × 5” challenge. We had to create a storyboard consisting of exactly five shots, each lasting five seconds, using only camera language to tell a story about a person in a bar. There was to be no dialogue and no facial acting, meaning that framing, composition and camera movement had to carry the narrative. The assignment was due the following day, so it required quick decision making and forced me to think more economically about storytelling. I found it surprisingly difficult to communicate emotion and progression with such limited tools, but the exercise made me appreciate how much information can be conveyed through cinematography alone.

On Friday, the exercise took an unexpected turn when Ting paired everyone up and asked us to exchange storyboards. Rather than animating our own ideas, we became directors of our own sequences and had to explain them clearly to our partners while animating somebody else’s work ourselves. After a short demonstration on camera rig animation in Maya, we spent the remainder of the session working on the shots. I found this process particularly interesting because it pushed collaboration to another level. Animating a sequence that was not originally my idea forced me to pay close attention to communication and interpretation. At the same time, directing someone else through my storyboard made me realise how important clarity is in visual storytelling. The exercise also gave me the opportunity to work with classmates I had not spoken to much before, making the studio feel much more collaborative and connected.