When we visited wasd in their final week of production, we discovered that they were very much ahead of schedule – and it looked like they’re going to finish with much time to spare! Erin reports.
Team wasd (Niger is just outside this snapshot) busy finishing up their animation clip.
On the second last day of the 3-week production, we visited Commonwealth Secondary School’s wasd at Nanyang Polytechnic.
There was a rather relaxed ambience in their cubicle, as they were close to completion and were simply doing rendering and touching up on the finer details.
All set for rendering.
They chose to do rendering in layers, instead of everything at one go.
Rendering in layers is to render different objects in the scene separately, in different layers, so that for each layer of objects, a different image is rendered.
The ticking clock that commences the day for the non-sleeping SAF.
This enables more flexibility in making changes and finetuning, because you can make changes to a particular layer and confine the re-rendering to that layer – instead of having to render the entire animation again.
wasd were already about 80% done with the animation when we visited.
The Air Force in action.
Zhi Qing, desperate for female company in a group where she is the rose among the thorns, had asked one of her female friends over to accompany her in Nanyang Polytechnic.
At first we thought that she was a new addition to the team!
After clearing the air with Zhi Qing and her friend, we then met wasd’s instructor, Mr Lander, who was vigorously moving about the cubicle, helping the team members with their various tasks and making jokes, injecting energy into an otherwise laidback atmosphere.
The Army in action.
We also managed to view the working copy of their animation, which began with a scene of a ticking clock.
Then, there were various scenes of members of the SAF at work – pilots practising their parachuting, army commanders planning hypothetical attack strategies, submarines surfacing from the sea.
Last but not least, the Navy in action.
To conclude the video, the ticking clock made a reappearance, with the bolded red words – SAF Never Sleeps.
With clean-cut, beautifully-coloured graphics, and a focused outlook, it looks as if wasd stands quite a good chance of winning NEmation! 9!
Tags: animation, Commonwealth, competition, education, N.E.mation!, N.E.mation! 9, production, wasd