Joining part in QCinema International Film festival, we had attended yesterday, Oct. 27, 2015, a short lecture presentation of Animation and Visual effects held at Trinoma mall, Cinema 2. It was presented by First Academy of Computer Arts, one of the leading digital arts school in the country.
The First Academy’s objective in joining QCinema is to encourage not only filmmakers and but every Filipino, either professionals or students in every field to create and tell stories that can inspire and promote Filipino Culture. And whether it could be in film or animation, our nation have a lot of stories that need to be shared not only regionally but globally as well.
Two Filipino artist was invited to be the guest speakers.
The first one is Mr. Nico dela Cruz who is a professional 3D artist in a gaming industry and an instructor in First Academy. He discussed the 3D animation pipeline and how the characters in 3D animation films and games were done. He also discusses some tools and techniques that 3D game industry uses to make the work easier and more productive.
The second speaker is Mr. Noriel Molenilla, a veteran visual effects and multimedia artist and also an instructor in FACA. He taught some techniques and useful ideas in digital compositing and visual effects in video production. He also added that before, learning is a bit hard and he learned from “F1 key” or the help key in keyboard, that the learning by then is mostly by reading textual instructions and tutorials, unlike now that it was easier for the generations of today to learn things with the existence of free online video tutorials, forums and tons of tools and techniques could now be found on the internet.
Doing 3D animated films or video games is really a tough work, that’s why it needed passionate creative people who will do the task in Modelling, Texturing, Rigging, Animation and Visual Effects. It also needed a lot of budget and resources in its production. But every hardwork payoff. We had seen animated films created by Disney, Pixar, Dreamworks. Had played games created by Blizzard, Ubisoft, Konami. Most of us might not be familiar with some of these companies but they are the creators of our favorite animation films like Inside Out, Frozen, How to Train Your Dragon and favorite game like World of Warcraft, Assassin’s Creed, Metal Gear Solid, etc.
The Philippines’ first 3D animation is RPG Metanoia that was shown in cinemas last December 2010. The film promotes Filipino values and traditions of teenagers of today. We are hoping that it wouldn’t just be the first and the last 3D animation that Filipinos would produce. In reality, we have a lot of Filipino animators in foreign 3D animation film and gaming industry and some of them are even project head in this companies. We also have a lot of animation studios in the country but most of them are working for client abroad.
Filipinos are born talented and creative. There is an artist in everyone of us, just in different form. If the young Filipino generation of today will pursue the art and their passion, together we could produce, and promote the Filipino values in a modern way. Film is a very powerful tool to express ideas and things we want the world to know. And by making film, we could express and show the world how noble Filipinos culture and values are.
-Aimee V. Mendoza
