Simplicity in Design

This project was based on the book, "Dim Sum for Everyone", by Grace Lin about dim sum, the Chinese tradition of eating tiny dishes of food (much like a tapa) along side tea. Growing up, my family called it 'yum cha', which translates literally to 'drink tea'.

As I always like to mix things up, I made the students approach this project a little differently. In short I made it more like an 'art school' project' and asked them to give their interpretation of dim sum through a thirty second animation. The first task was to go 'yum cha' with their team mates and use that experience as a jumping off point. There were some great responses including a special appearance by famed 'Piece of Mind' director Ori Ben-Shabat in drag (Ori, you gotta' shave those arms).

I chose to post the group of David Igo, Steven Chen and Ljubomir Milic who's response was a shining example of an intelligent art direction that addressed their weakness by playing it as a strength. Being modelers, and I'm paraphrasing here, they said, "We can't animate". True - they couldn't 'animate'. My advice in this situation is to go for a style that will allow you to simplify the animation, thus matching the skill level of your team.

Wanting to temper the amount of animation, they chose a simple cut-out style for the look.This made their asset creation phase move fast, giving them more time to spend on other areas of the project.

The end result tells a great story and although they said they couldn't animate in the end they did. Excellent work boys!