Tag Archives: animation

The Japanese Influence in my life

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So like most Millennials I have been exposed to Japanese games and animation from young age. Playing on Sega Megadrive/Genesis and Gameboy, and then moving on to Playstation and so on. All of these were made by Japan.

Naturally, I would be curious to learn the culture and it’s art history, so I spent a year as an exchange student in Hirakata, Kansai Gansai University. This was in 2009/2010, so ages ago, but I still have many fond memories and how it all made me appreciate Japanese games more than ever.

During the graduation ceremony I ended up wearing a really traditional kimono (for men) thanks to my homestay mom. This caught an eye of some reporter who took pics.

While I did not stay to live in Japan after this year (though I did spend an entire Summer there after graduation), I think I had enough experience in the Osaka culture to understand how the society operates and what other nations should and need to learn to be honest. Seeing what direction the modern industrial nations are headed thanks to the neo-liberal ideas I am glad there is still a spot in Japan where I could escape to when things really get bad.

I also learned to reject the “anime” aesthetic that is flooding the market. After learning why it is made that way I kinda became disgusted actually, to have a ‘national’ style, which must not be deviated from in most cases. There are some very rare exceptions in modern anime industry that allows the art style to have some unique elements not present in any other series/franchise made in Japan, so like One Piece which has a pretty unique artstyle in the way characters express emotions or just look. The JoJo series also has a very original look that cannot be found elsewhere too, but the rest, maybe 99% of the series in both gaming, manga and anime follow the same formula that makes me roll my eyes, and puts me away.

Sure, their faces still have the same formulaic shapes and sizes that is common in every other anime. But some of the characters stand out, like Usopp for example, and Robin too. Not to mention the manga tends to have a more wacky style than in anime show.

Jojo style also has the same generic head shapes, but some details and shading definitely stand out right away as unique to this series.

But this.,…

and this….

This is gross, there is no personality here at all.

I have a lot to say about anime history so this will be covered on one of my videos. But I still respect all the animators and teams who produce even the most generic slop, because drawing human bodies in that realistic anatomical style is very hard for even the pros, so if they can draw just for the sake of drawing it is better than CGI animation, where you have far less effort.

Some animators I hired back in 2019

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Since Estonia is such a tiny place, there are barely any animators who are trained in classic animation style/ US type mainstream. I looked for animators for years, but there was never anyone good enough to handle the projects I was running. I even tried to train the people by giving them exercises and homework, but there is just no interest in anyone here. I am surprised I still have this burning desire to animate after such bad luck when it comes to hiring local animators. Any sane person would have given up years ago.

The most success I’ve had was with students I hired as interns/trainees for Summer. These were all my students from the animation school, and while they were all inexperienced at animation, they could at least trace so the production was going faster. I think they did learn a lot over the years, though I have not heard from them in years, especially since Covid disrupted their studies.

My life as a teacher #3

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You can see yourself on my demeanor if you compare the pre-Covid teachers pics and after Covid.

The first 3 years

and now this is me in 2022

It was slowly killing me to do this after what Covid had done to the students. I have some real horror stories regarding some of the students in my class. One girl in particular who joined in 2022 I think was the perfect example of anti-social. She hid in her dark corner during class, away from every other student. Stuck her nose in her ipad tablet where she animated and barely spoke. When she did I had to really get my ear to her as she was so quiet. It was a real shame that she was having this attitude, as she could have taught how she animates to other students. But it was sadly very hard for her to interact with anyone in class, and I was lucky to be able to break through her barrier with the power of my Pokemon knowledge. You see, I was a big pokemon fan back in my teen years, so I was very good at understanding what the franchise is about. And since this girl only played Pokemon from what I remember, she was able to share some of her interest with me. She had that Switch Pokemon game, Sword or Shield at the time, which she sometimes played in class, and of course Pokemon Go was another thing she had. A lot of her animations consisted of animating the various Pokemon creatures she liked. And even if they were rough frames, they were really impressive for her age. She was around 14 I think.

So this girl was becoming more and more depressed throughout the years, and eventually she was put on some heavy medication which made her numb. This was horrible to witness as she looked like a puppet, she did not want to do anything in class anymore, she just sat and waited until the class was over (she did not even play on her switch or phone anymore during this time). And these months I remember as sort of therapy period, since I kept trying to help her by talking and trying to motivate her to draw again (while taking away time from other students… I know this was not fair, but this girl was so hopeless I had to do something). Her parents did not seem to care or understand what is going on with her, as from what she told me, she is neglected. I think this was the case of too much unlimited internet access from young age, which made her withdrawn so much. Too many parents fall in this trap, and this is the reason I am so vocal about this social media/internet killing the youth topic. People have no idea what power the unlimited info stream can do to a developing mind.

I asked other kids to talk to her, and some of them did, but because this girl was so stuck in her ways, she came off as rude and mean, not saying hello or goodbye to those kids, while they greeted her usually. I am glad at least one girl in that class was sharing her own struggles , as she was also on meds and was in psyche ward multiple times. I also knew her parents were giving her way too much internet access, so she is always overstimulated and then of course depressed as theres nothing left in her system to make her stable.

So the story ended with her transferring to another animation group, as we thought she might like other kids more, but it became worse there…she started cutting herself with pens. And one time she ran away during class, and hid somewhere while others trying to find her. She was eventually found crying somewhere, but I have no idea whatever happened afterwards. I do think of her sometimes, if she ever got help and how she is doing after all these years. Of course, she is not the only one with similar background, as over the years I have read loads of stories from teenage artists and how mentally unstable they are. I have to state that sensitive people like artists are especially vulnerable to Social Media, and I will go into details in one of my other posts.

My life as a teacher #2

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I was teaching from 2017 until 2023, and there were a lot of students during this time, as it wasn’t strict in age ranges. There were students from age 11 or 12 all the way until 18 and above. Eventually, I did tell the organizer of this school that we need a minimum age for the kids to get along and also the skill to be more or less same. So we then allowed mostly kids from the age of 13 to join. Sometimes there were students that attended for years, while most were only for a year or so.

During this time I was fully immersed in the gen Z world. While I know that kids with talents and drawing skills tend to be quirky and introverted, this generation was poisoned by the social media without even noticing it. It was depressing to see how from 2017, the kids each year were becoming more and more depressed/anxious, to the point they could not maintain any friends in school, so this animation class was their haven to meet other kids and socialize. I noticed the moods of pre-Covid and post-Covid years, how it impacted their character and behaviors.

Now I don’t want it to sound all doom and gloom, as there were a lot of great times with the kids, mainly before Covid. I was genuinely looking forward to each of the classes (before around 2022) as it was rewarding to share my knowledge with the young minds, and to have the next generation learn the art of hand-drawn animation. It always depended on the group too, if the kids were passionate or would rather scroll on the phone without care. The covid year made it so much harder for anyone to focus in class, which made me lose interest as well. I am just not the type to force someone to learn, as it is energy costing and may be a waste of time anyway. If the kids can’t pay attention, then I can’t give them meds to help. I did try to ask them to put away phones, but we don’t have that rule in school sadly. So barely anyone could disconnect from their devices. Not to mention when some of them were drawing on tablets/ipads, it was even harder to keep them away from the internet abyss.

I had to also learn to not have favorites in class, as it was clear who had more skills than others from the start. Also, there is a factor of mental disorders, like ADHD, autism, GAD etc. Some of the kids were in that tough learning spectrum, so it made extra hard for them to learn animation. I was glad that they were not upset if I was asking to fix something, well most of them were not anyway… There is always someone who has no patience to correct something, and those were usually with little interest in animation, so I am not surprised if their parents used this class to get some peace from their offspring.

One student in particular really impressed me, she was really good at animation and also research of its history. She was so passionate to become the next showrunner, I really could not believe there are such people in Estonia, the land of little to no passion in this art. I will never forget her, she made me this Mr. Sneaks figurine that still stands on my shelf.

P.S. yes, I look like a hobo there. I was juggling both Youtube and this school at the time, so I had little time on keeping myself in order.

My life as a teacher

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I finally decided to share my history with teaching animation in Estonia. It has been a while now since I left that career (2023), so looking back I think I can see things more clearly on certain aspects.

The following posts will have some insights on what it was like.

Here is a pic from the 2022 Summer camp where we had the city kids/teens all in one group. It was meant to be aimed at Ukrainian refugee kids as the funding was based around this premise, to help these kids learn some new things, but there only ended up being 2 of such kids while the rest were all local.

Very few of these kids knew about animation, so I think their parents just saw this easy way to get some peace and quiet no matter what camp their kids go to.

Some girls , the older ones, were pretty sneaky in drawing on the light tables’ (the boards with that giant plastic circle, that has light from underneath to make the paper more see-through) surface, so vandalizing the property with their furry art. This made the organizer of the camp really mad, so she forced the girls to stay after the class to wipe the lightboxes clean. The girls were good kids otherwise, and because we had a few arguments on the furry art subject, they gave me a cute gift after the camp was over. I need to find that art they made and the marzipan bag. I took a pic of it but it was a while ago.

The camp was also part outside, so when kids were learning pixilation, or body stop motion, where you take a pic of each movement, and then it becomes like puppet animation, that feeling of awkward movement that skips the rest of live-action frames, so it becomes almost a slow motion type effect.

My focus was of course on hand-drawn animation, so we used the classic pencil and paper approach to learn the very basics. I could tell right away which kids had patience to complete even the simplest of tasks, and not surprising that younger ones cared very little on what they created, as animation is over saturated today. The magic is hard to appreciate when the kids all had smartphones from like age 5 (terrible parenting). Though I was glad the 2 teen siblings, who were older ones in that group, did show a lot of interest and care in what they did. My Estonian was pretty rusty (after not being around Estonians for years, as I was usually with expats or the Russian speaking kids in school where I taught), but their English was decent enough for our communication to go smoothly. It was a fun experience overall, despite the younger kids not really caring or understanding why they are in that camp in the first place.

Transfer Student – Production Log

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Lately I have been changing this site, but I didn’t want to leave out my very first post I made in 2011, so I think it can stay here.

03.02.11.The start of my 2nd year film in Flash. It took quite a while to make sure the plot fits in the short 1.30 min, but after all the cuts and edits the production has started. I’m not sure how it will turn out, but it will be fun working on it.

 Since the first part of the film has been chopped off, I changed the opening scene a bit by letting Roy chew a bubble gum (which will play a role later in the story)

11.02.11.The small intro of the main character Roy, who is sent ot a new school (every day), he is watching over the playground during recess and goes down the steps. Notice the coulours of the kids in the background. These colours are representing individual social groups who play a role in most schools.

Seriously, I cant stand using a normal tablet and staring at the monitor. This is not only frustrating, but also isnt accurate to draw. I know people who got used to it, but nothing can replace paper for me, thats why I got Cintiq, which is the closest to traditional drawing style.

Here I

24.02.11.The better view of the group is seen from Roy’s profile view. the nerds, goths and jocks are seen minding their own buisness. It’s supposed to be a pan, so the camera follows Roy all the way through.

Flash isnt completely useless, in fact its really good at making inbetweens and thats what I love the most about it. The tween options are also helpful for many things, especially for my individual project, where theres lots of drawings needed, but theres noone to draw them.

04.03.11.As Roy passes by the bully group, Rex, the group leader spots the new kid. Rex takes off his bag to pull an emo kid from it and throws the child at Roy.

I started colouring the scenes and characters while animating at the same time, which I shouldnt be doing. I think it gives me more developing ideas as I experiment with different things along the way.  Thats the freedom you get when working alone on a project!

Right after I got Cintiq I finished all the keyframes in a week. Still, now that I have the tools, I need the brains to use them. Animating loads of kids at once isnt easy, they all have different clothes and faces…who wouldhve thought!The good thing though is that I dont need to redraw same bullies in every scene, since theres a whole pack of them, so creating a new one for each scene is fun.

11.03.11.The whole concept for the film came from Jet Set Radio music, I was inspired by the rule-breaking world and I thought it would be perfect to animate. Yes, the main character is an anarchist!

The basketball court scene is animated with music and everthing is fast-paced and energetic. Remember not to wink when watching this!

20.03.11.I got all the keyframes done, but now theres gonna be hours and hours of inbetweening and colouring.

Now that the holidays are coming, Im planning to spend all the time on this film. But some trouble might come when I start using sound effects, and I also need to record voices of 3 people.

I notice that the whole project is more like a comic book, so if it succeeds Im going to make Transfer Student into series.

There, now this post is safe and sound.