N.E.mation 7 begins!

I first got to know about N.E.mation about 2 years ago and immediately thought that it was an awesome and cool concept for students. I guess I wasn’t the only one who felt so because this is year 7 for the N.E.mation competition. For those who have no idea what N.E.mation is about, well, you’re reading the right article.

N.E.mation! is an annual inter-school animation competition forstudents from secondary schools, junior colleges and centralised institutes toexpress their thoughts on Total Defence. The competition is organised by Nexus through Animagine Pte Ltd and more than 9,500 students haveparticipated in N.E.mation! since its inauguration in 2007. If you have been a fan of  our National Day rallies, you might even recall the  five Total Defence animation clips featured in the National Day Rally of 2006 that wowed many Singaporeans over including me! Several of the 50 clips produced through N.E.mation competitions so far have won local and overseas accolades over the years, such as the MediaCorp Viewers Choice & the Annecy Awards. Such big awards for our young bright Singaporean students!

I’m very honored to announce that this year, I will be one of the 5 N.E.mation 7 ambassadors and will be bringing you updates on the teams, exclusive behind the scenes footages and learning more about animation in the process.

I was absolutely impressed by the teams of N.E.mation 6 last year and I’m looking forward to have a closer look at how the teams are going to strive for their goals this year!

Each season, an average of 700 story ideas is submitted by teams of 3to 4 students from over 80 schools. Following rounds of intensive pitching by the students, the final 10 teams are selected to produce their story ideasinto 1-minute animation clips. The whole production period for these 10 final teams will last 3 weeks and is currently being held at Nanyang Polytechnic where I will be frequenting these few weeks to bring you the latest updates on what goes on.

This is how the tents look like when I visited the production site last week before the students came in. The whole area have been categorized in multiple little tents where the individual teams will take root and where the magic of hard work and creativity will find their home. In fact, for Animagine Pte Ltd, they have already been hard at work in setting up the production site last week!

View the video below to see how the production area was created from just an empty hall!

The video can also be viewed on youtube at http://youtu.be/MBEml60DWnk

For the next 3 weeks, this is the Home of the Top 10. I’ve been randomly assigned 2 teams which I will root for during this year’s competition!

• ShiNyGirls (#NE7C07, http://nemation.sg/facebook/top10/shinygirls/)
• Yarney Barney (#NE7C09, http://nemation.sg/facebook/top10/yarney-barney/)

I’ll be following their progress and introducing them to you on my next post. But if you can’t wait and what to check out who they are immediately, please click on their links and of course, do “like” them to show support for my 2 lovely teams!!!