So for the past 4 months, I’ve been attending a job camp at CG Skill, learning 3D animation. Being from an architecture background, many people ask me why I decided to join up. For people who know me, I think it would only seem natural for me to want to learn animation. As for those who don’t really know me, I’m fueled by my interest in story telling, in art, and in learning new things I’ve never known before. Prior to this I’ve never done animation, unless you can count the stickman flip-book style doodle animations I used to make on the corners of my textbooks (much to the annoyance of teachers and my brother who got my hand-me-down books) and the silly After Effects animation I did in Titik 7 months ago. That video shows how much of a n00b I am. I am grateful that Xamri agreed to collaborate and teach me some After Effects basics. He also was the one who told me about this 3D animation class, though he himself couldn’t join yet.

The software used is Autodesk Maya, which I’ve never used before. I am only familiar with 3D softwares such as SketchUp and Artlantis for rendering, I messed around in 3Ds Max after high school, but that was only messing around and making silly animations with it. Like any other person would mess around with a software they are unfamiliar with. Oh, now that I remember, I did attempt 3D character animation before! Only I don’t think I got much right. The only thing I remember from then was that I made a head explode and I attempted to make a ‘robot’ walk (the rectangular body parts weren’t attached to each other, so that’s that… fail) and a TV attack the person watching it. Fun times, trying to figure it out. That was the only time I messed with 3Ds Max, because I was ‘working’ but I didn’t have much work to do and I shared a cramped office with the graphics/animator/rendering guy who told me to mess around with these softwares. My uncle who was my, uh, boss, told me to learn AutoCAD by bringing me a thick book. I think I made a face to myself and only attempted a square and moved on because it looked difficult and boring. Haha!

Ok, back to my 3D animation. I’m starting to bore you. So as you may or may not know, my characters are Makcik Karipap and an actual Karipap. Here’s a look at the initial character design sketches:

Initial sketches

front and side view of Makcik Karipap

front and side view of the karipap, haha!

The concept came about because that day, our instructor told us he wanted to see our ideas for the story and character by 5pm that day. I didn’t know what to do, and the first thought that came to my mind was this. Maybe because I was hungry, and I had currypuffs for breakfast that morning. Also maybe because I used to doodle currypuffs like the one above while bored in lectures (oops). Currypuffs, they’re cute, come on!

So some time later (modeling didn’t take so long, but rigging, oh my goodness, it took so much longer! You know, being noobs et al), I had this! (Rigging, for those unfamiliar, is setting up the joints, controls, weights and stuff so that we can animate the character)

Pau Kapow, which I didn't end up using

My desktop wallpaper at the CG Skill lab (as you can see, her personality is a bit 'perasan bagus')

I have the textured version of the Makcik, complete with a kain batik, but didn’t animate this one because I did the texture mapping after I did the rigging, and this required me to delete the rigging, and I had no time to rig again. Our tutor taught us texture mapping after we’d done the rigging, so, heh.

When we did lip-synching, I had the oppurtunity to test out my blendshapes and rigs on the karipap. It was fun. Hearing these voices come out of my cute silly little karipap was hilarious, I couldn’t help laughing to myself while animating. Here is the lipsynch assignment:

Stephen Chow and Dr Fadzilah Khamsah’s voice out of a talking karipap. I know, right? Ridiculous.

the CG Skill family! (during live acting class)

And last but not least, the last month of our training was to complete a group project animation. This is what we were all waiting for (yeke?). We faced quite a number of difficulties, as these things usually are. Technical difficulties and difficulties you might find when working in a group. We managed to pull through, and I am quite proud of our final project. It features my characters as well as Musz my group member’s alien character. I would like to thank Dexter and Musz for being awesome group members & friends, and sir Yavi for being an awesome tutor. We definitely learnt more than animation in those 4 months. Alhamdulillah, mission accomplished. (chewah)

Here it is, MISSION KARIPOP! An Alien longs for delicious currypuffs made by none other than Makcik Karipap, but things don’t go quite as planned….enjoy!

As for my individual project, I want to re-render it, so stay tuned… It features even more of Makcik Karipap and KariPuff, with the actual storyboard I initially wrote for them! (it’s much shorter though…)

So, is anyone interested in joining the next batch (March)? If you are, contact me! It’s free!