I’m proud to present, here in my blog, a piece of animation which me and my friends have done in our school. It’s our last collaboration/project in our polytechnic school life.

The Band of Hamsters. Click here to view the entire video, which is about 3 minutes long. Flash player is required. Meanwhile, while waiting for the video to load, you can continue reading. Haha.

The story is roughly about this bunch of hamsters who decided to break out of their cage one day to pursue their greatest dream - to savour the juicy grapes in the fruit bowl in the kitchen. However, along the way, they met enemies (rats), who were going to stop/kill them so that the rats could get to the fruit bowl first. In times like this, will you fight and die with your close friends, or abandon them to achieve your dream?

This project was done not for grades, it was a totally self-initiated work of our own; Something for us to remember when we leave the school, and something done out of passion.

It all started off from a little conversation/chat a bunch of us had in the school during the September holidays last year.

A few of us felt that after doing our own Final Year Projects (we were from different project groups), we weren’t very satisfied with our works. Somehow we felt like doing another project together, to achieve something even better and another breakthrough.

And we realised we had only about 6 months left before our school life ends. Half a year, how much can be done within this period? How about gathering all our experiences and lessons learnt from the Final Year Project and apply better techniques in a new one?

We all got pretty excited, throwing some silly ideas around, and eventually settled on doing an animation about hamsters.

To make this dream/idea possible, we had to use all the school resources available, or rather, all the resources left since there were already some other students/friends doing their own Final Year Project in school at the same time. We also had to be very committed as we were going to use our free time before and after lessons to work on this, and not forgetting to try to juggle between school work, personal work, and social life very well.

After months of struggling and nearly giving up, not forgetting all those stayovers and fun times together, we have finally completed the animation in mid-May, sometime near our Graduation Ceremony.

This animation, compared to those from Pixar and Dreamworks, is really not much~. But I would say, this animation means a lot to us. Every single pixel, every single second and frame, and almost every sound/words you hear, were all created entirely by us.

Over the next few months, we will be sending this animation to several competitions and art festivals around the world. We want to let the whole world see our work! Haha.

Alright, I guess the video has finished loading. I hope you enjoy it! XD

Oh, by the way, this is our 10 men & women team! The Hamster Zai team! Where Zai means ‘good’! The one being carried is our director cum scriptwriter cum editor cum….. etc etc, Rickson!

Some trivia about The Band of Hamsters (contains a little bit of spoilers)

• The project started pre-production in October last year, and was fully completed in May this year, spanning over 8 months. The real production hours/time is only about 3 to 4 months though, because we did this project during our normal school days (where we had lessons to attend, homework to do, graduation show to prepare, etc).
• The teardrop in a sequence near the end is entirely painted in Adobe Photoshop. Yes, every single second of that teardrop flowing down is painted, by me, USING MOUSE! No pen tablet used at all. *proud* Lol. There were roughly 86 paintings of teardrop altogether and it took me about 2 weeks in total to paint? I know it might sound like a freakin’ waste of time for you, but to me it’s quite an achievement. Heh.
• There are no female characters. The rats are probably genderless, I don’t know. Haha.
• The ‘paintings’ hung on the walls in one of the sequences, are actually photos of our team members, if you look very very very closely. Haha. But they are all very blurred.
• All the characters are ‘nameless’. There is no introduction of the characters’ names at all. But among our own team, we do give each of the hamsters a name so that it’s easier to work on.

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If you have watched the animated clip, The Band of Hamsters, you might have noticed that there are quite a bit of fighting sequences in it. Craving for more kung fu fighting? Here comes Kung Fu Panda!

This is a really nice movie. One of the best from Dreamworks (the other best would be Shrek). I had high expectations of this movie and it didn’t disappoint.

The story is quite straightforward and carries some very cliché important messages/lessons about life. The timeless humour is heavily based on funny dialogues and slapstick moments, and fortunately not on spoof nor parody of recent movies. I love the animation style, and the treatment. It doesn’t try to achieve an ultra-realistic look, but instead try to bring out the emotions and atmosphere using colours and textures.

I can see that the production team has done a lot of homework to create an animation about China. From an Asian/Singaporean Chinese point of view, I sensed nothing super wrong about the culture reflected in this movie.

At one look, you can tell that the production team had tremendous fun working on this movie.

All characters in this movie are animals, so you will only see vegetarian food, haha. (Oops that’s a spoiler, but quite harmless) There are no roast ducks nor roast pork, as there are pig and duck characters around. There are rabbits too, and they are super cute! =p

This is a must-watch for everyone of all ages who wants some harmless enjoyment for about 88 minutes. It entertains you from the very first second right til the end of credits. Yes, do stay until the credits is over as there is an extra scene.

Get ready for awesomeness! XD

8.5 / 10

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