Hello! My name is Kelly Lam, and I’m studying animation at Freestyle Academy. This past year has been my first and only year at Freestyle, and over the course of it I was able to vastly expand my technological repertoire by focusing my energy on learning new programs and skills, as well as expressing myself creatively in as many mediums as I possibly could. Outside of Freestyle, I do both digital and traditional art, and I’ve even painted my own jacket. I also do origami, play video games, and sing in my school’s choir.

The two works which I’ve chosen as best for my Senior Showcase are my animation reel and my Zenith project. I chose this animation reel because it fully encompasses all the work I’ve done involving 3D animation this year, and demonstrates the skills I’ve learned in Maya, Z-brush, and Substance Painter. I chose my Zenith because as our major final project we were instructed to do whatever we desired creatively, and so I feel I was able to express my soul truthfully in animation. I believe that both these projects are able to properly represent my ability to learn quickly both in and out of the classroom, my creative thinking and problem solving skills, and who I am as a person.

In terms of feedback, I am open to comments of any kind, but I will also make my preferences clear. In terms of my 2D animation, I want to know how I can increase the fluidity and make my animations appear overall more smooth and professional. For example, I didn’t add very many smear frames, as I didn’t know when the right time to add them would be. In terms of my 3D animation, I did struggle at times with deciding how I wanted to frame my subject, especially in the second clip, but I would also like more general feedback on it for I do not have many other specific concerns.

Next year, I will be attending foothill community college to study psychology. Of course, I will be continuing art in my free time, but my current passion in life is to contribute to the wellbeing of our society by helping to improve mental health services and viewpoints on mental health in this country.

You can contact me at klam298m@gmail.com.

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1lEdBmkCkY-GfFqC-JVkBflLZuwThNal0UXlTLdWQThE/edit#slide=id.p

Animation Reel

One of our projects in our animation elective class was to create our own personal character model and create animations with it. This short compilation features my character Kinoko, who I modeled, sculpted, and painted in class through our learned applications.

The first clip featured was made for our walk, run, and jump cycle assignments. After rigging our models in Maya, we studied how to properly keyframe and render out a walk cycle using the same software. We then moved onto run and jump cycles. This is the first animation of my character that I ever rendered out, and you can see that the footage is a bit overexposed. However, I am still pleased with the animation and the fluidity of motion I was able to create in this clip.

The next clip was part of an assignment for which we used motion capture technology. This was also one of the first renders of my character I ever made, so her body appears to be strangely shiny for some reason. As a class we were given the chance to act out and record our own motions/actions using a body suit. I asked my friend wearing the body suit to act out a scene in which she was stirring a pot of soup, and I used the mocap to animate my character model. There were a couple issues I encountered while animating this clip. For example, my friend had accidentally been stepping forward while miming out the actions, and so at certain points my character would walk forward and clip into the pot of soup. To fix this, I cut the footage multiple times, moved the pot forward slightly each time I cut, and changed the camera angle so that it wouldn’t be noticeable. Additionally, the floating magic cup at the end was not originally planned, since my friend forgot to mime the action of putting the cup back down. I found a solution to this by simply making it a magic cup, since after all my character had magic and was stirring a pot of magic soup. Also, the pink lightning effects and the music was added in after effects.

For the last clip, we were tasked with learning how to make lip sync animations in Maya. First I had to change my character model by giving her an openable mouth, and then creating a set of different vowel shapes and expressions for her, such as shock, furrowing her brow, etc. I used the shape editor in Maya to keyframe the changes in her face to follow the audio I chose. To be clear, I don’t think this is what her character would actually sound like, but I thought the audio was funny which is why I picked it. Then I animated the rest of her movements (making her do a funky little dance), I moved the camera so that it would change angles and zoom in, and rendered it out (this time without any over-exposure or shiny-ness).

I ended up having a lot of fun learning how to do 3D animation by using this character model. I feel like I was able to truly depict her personality and character through every movement and clip in this reel. My learning experiences in my elective class have truly been a joy, and without the help of my instructor none of these clips would have been nearly as satisfying to create.

Zenith Project

We were given a lot of creative freedom in our Zenith Project. I created a short story animation centered around two cloud characters who fall in love. My inspirations for this project include the short film In A Heartbeat, the animated TV show Steven Universe, and the TikTok creator @theesudani.

Due to my lack of prior experience with this medium, I had to develop my technological literacy and self direction mostly on my own so that I’d create something I was satisfied with. I had little to no teacher instruction while animating, and so what you see hear is mostly self taught or transferred from what I learned in 3D animation. I wanted to animate my story to the beat and lyrics of the song See You Again by Tyler the Creator. I planned out a storyboard by listening to the song and drawing up visuals as I listened. I made several revisions along the way, which included shortening the song clip from 2 minutes to 40 seconds, and cutting out animations that were too complex for me to properly execute at my current skill level.

Originally, since I had more experience with 3D animation and knew it would likely be faster, I considered doing the project in 3D with a toon shader, a tool in Blender that makes 3D models appear 2D like. However, I still wanted to give 2D a try, and so I made a test document in photoshop and ended up being very happy with the frame animation, as well as the speed at which I was able to animate my original vision of the project. And so in a spur of creative frenzy, I continued my pursuit of learning 2D animation on my own until I had sketched, polished, and colored in every single frame.

Overall, I had to adapt and work hard on many parts of this project, but it was well worth the satisfaction of seeing it finally completed. I know I put all my effort into it, and I hope the final product shows it. I’ve always wanted to see more LGBTQ representation in the media, and so I think contributing my own art with meaningful representation is definitely a step in the right direction. I hope that Freestyle students, present and future, will be able to enjoy and perhaps relate to my Zenith in their own way, and I’m glad I got the chance to put a part of myself into animation.

Final Reflection

Through both these projects, I’ve shown how I’m able to learn both through teaching in class as well as teaching myself. Before this year I had next to no experience with animation at all, and I only knew of how to do it from watching cartoons or videos on youtube. Additionally, I was primarily a traditional artist and had nowhere near the amount of experience with digital art as I do now. As I grew and kept reaching to expand upon the works I created, both on a technical and creative level, I feel much more confident in my ability to create things that have value and meaning, both to myself and, as I’ve found out, to others as well. I’m also glad that everything I’ve created this year has been made straight from my heart and soul, and I’ve been increasingly making myself more vulnerable and expressive through my art. I used to be the type of person to fixate on flaws or potential areas of improvements within my art, causing me to never feel confident enough in my art. However, though I still strive to better myself and learn more about my areas of growth, I can now finally say that I can see past the mistakes in my art and can just appreciate it as it is. This is why I know for certain that after I graduate from Freestyle, I will continue to expand and improve more then ever before, and the satisfaction I feel in my work now will only grow from here.