Joanne Yap - 2D animation submission for the Rookies 2020

Hi there!

First of all, thank you for checking out my page! For the past four years, I have been a hard-working animation student at the Netherlands Filmacademy. I have worked on various projects such as the ones you'll see in this showreel below. After that, you can read a little bit about the stories behind each project. 

I hope you enjoy my work as much as I enjoyed creating it!  

Hookah

"The world through a psychedelic lens."

This project was a collaboration between our school's visual-effects team and production designers.
Being split into groups of three, each group had to come up with a cool concept that would combine different skillsets, to create an interesting looping animation.  

Scale model by Al Luijendijk, FX and compositing by Ömür Sönmez, character design and animation by me.

Loki: Agent of Asgard

"Can you escape your past?"

A fan-project of mine, based on the comic series of the same name. 
I was inspired by the 2.5D animation style that is used in the animated movies from 'Marvel Knights'.
I was planning on turning this little passion project into a fully animated music video, but due to file corruption and a dying laptop, I lost all of my work except this small test shot. Who knows, maybe Loki was behind it after all.

Lunchbreak!

"One hungry builder, a seagull, one sandwich, and a race against the clock."

Well, the real race against the clock was finishing this team project within the span of 6 hours, including; coming up with a storyline, characters, and obstacles. 
Being the only concept-/storyboard artist in the team, I was challenged to draw this entire story into an animatic with a limit of 60 seconds. Luckily my classmate,
Nina Blaauwbroek, did an amazing job providing me with much-needed
CG-environments and camera angels.  
In the end, our group won first place.
(The prize was applause and compliments from the teachers). 

The Peanutbutter store

"A faux commercial in which children tell us a tale about the creation of peanut butter.*"

This was the most animation heavy project, I had ever worked on up to this point.
So far as I am aware, no one in the history of the Netherlands Filmacademy was crazy enough to actually make an animated commercial before (and between you and me, I can get why: It's an insane load of work!).

The animation had to look like it came straight out of the mind of a child. So Charleton Mercelina, Golan Bend and I started working on creating a look for this project. I designed the peanuts and animation style while Charleton and Golan worked on integrating live-action footage into a 2D space.  
After weeks and weeks of non-stop animating, my assisting classmates: Ruben Koppenol, Charlotte Veldhuizen, Nina Blaauwbroek, Charleton and I finished this amazing Roald Dahl-esque peanut mania factory! Hard labour pays off and this has to be one of the best-looking 2D animated projects I've been working on. 

*No actual peanuts were harmed during the making of this project.

Hammock

"Based on a true story and only slightly dramatized for comical effect."

I've been making comics about me and my boyfriend's everyday life in my spare time. With that, I had the idea of making small animations. That way, I can keep on learning more about different kinds of software and ways to create content. It's a fun hobby that I hope will expand in the future, but for now: a nice way to share stories with our family and friends. 

Raised by Bats!

"Just throw your old life away and get raised by bats!" 

And last but not least, the ongoing fan-project that I've been working on for quite a while now. 
'Raised by Bats' is an animated music video that tells the "story" of the Gothy singer-songwriter, Aurelio Voltaire. I got introduced to his songs through one of my favourite cartoons: 'The Grim adventures of Billy and Mandy' by Maxwell Atoms. After contacting him and getting permission to use this song, I started to storyboard. However, after a while, I had to put this project on hiatus and couldn't work on it until this year. I chose this project to be my graduation project and I strive to complete this by October 2020.