N.E.MATION! 5 IDEAS TAKE SHAPE

In the midst of the year-end school holidays, 10 teams from various secondary schools spent three weeks getting down to work for 2011's N.E.mation! - an annual digital animation contest for youths to express their thoughts on Total Defence.

Now in its fifth year, the competition asked students to use their creativity to produce storylines centred around the theme Home - We make or break.

Selected from an initial pool of 100 teams, these 10 teams comprising 40 students were selected for their strong story ideas, good understanding of the theme and commitment to turning their ideas into reality.

"The quality of ideas and stories improve year on year," said Mr Joshua Ngiam, Director Animagine. He has been involved in N.E.mation! since it began in 2007, coaching and training the students who have no prior experience in animation techniques. Animagine is a company specialising in animation training for youth.

For example, the team from Methodist Girls' School relied on light as their storytelling medium. For their animation clip Light it up, they used LED lights to "paint" images for the camera.

To produce the clip, they had to rehearse the whole drawing process countless times so that they could capture the images in one camera take. It was also a challenge to visualise where the next image had to be drawn so as to keep the animation consistent, said Kimberly Chong, one of the team members.

The team initially conceived the idea to encourage fellow Singaporeans to support each others' dream, but little did they know this concept would be thoroughly tested during the production process. "Working with light meant that everyone had to know exactly what they were doing because we had to know where to draw in relation to each other," said Kimberly.

"Through working as a team, we realised that dreams can only be realised with others' help," she added.

Thankfully, their coach stepped in to help by suggesting that they use cardboard silhouettes as a rough guide while drawing the shapes.

"Our instructor was very helpful and he made it quite fun to do. I think through the project, we all learnt about National Education hands-on which is not something we get to do all the time," she said in retrospect.

The team from St Margaret's Secondary School had another take on the theme. For their clip titled Love Bread, Love Singapore, the team chose to use the process of baking bread to symbolise nation-building. "It (the baking process) is similar to building a country; each step is crucial and there are no short-cuts," said the team.

The 10 clips will be launched on 22 Jan 2011 and will be judged by notable animators such as DreamWorks SKG Animation Supervisor Raman Hui. In addition, members of the public will also be able to vote for their top three clips through to 6 Feb 2011 via the N.E.mation! Website www.nemation.sg, Facebook or SMS.

To see photos of the top 10 teams during their three-week production phase, visit the N.E.mation! Flickr stream: www.flickr.com/photos/nemation

N.E.mation! 5 saw a total of 2,038 students send in their stories, a 37 percent increase in participation from last year. Results of the competition will be announced on Total Defence Day on 15 Feb 2011 and the champion team stands to win a visit to the DreamWorks Studios in the United States!

The N.E.mation! series is organised by NEXUS, the central coordinating agency for National Education.