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A typical day for Billy Ker starts at 4.00pm when he reports to The New Paper (TNP) newsroom and works on his assignments until the newspaper is sent for printing at around 1.00am. As an infographics journalist, he conceptualises eye-catching graphics to go with the news articles so that readers can understand the story better through the visualisation. Sounds like a lot of drawing for Billy. But it�s certainly not a bad thing for someone who has always been fascinated by cartoons and animation, especially those from Disney. So the passion for animation started rather young for Billy. After his �O� levels, Billy naturally gravitated towards his passion. He visited Nanyang Polytechnic�s (NYP) Open House and learned that the polytechnic offered an animation course that was pretty specialised and made it his first choice during the Joint Admissions Exercise. His three-year NYP journey was as fruitful one. �The course prepared me for the real world, in areas such as meeting deadlines and m...

Theng Yeong (second from right) and his classmates with their very first studio project  By his own admission, Kong Theng Yeong was a bad student in secondary school. Homework were never completed, exams were a non-priority and he barely attended CCA. Needless to say, his grades were far from average and eventually his parents gave up on him. But the day came when he decided to change all this.   He started to work hard for a place in the Polytechnic Foundation Programme (PFP). He managed to get a good score for his GCE �N� Levels and chose to pursue the Diploma in Digital Media Design (Games) under the School of Interactive & Digital Media. On enrolling in NYP via PFP, Theng Yeong said, �I wanted to get a head start on art classes through the PFP since I took food and nutrition option in secondary school. I thought I�ll be left behind since my peers would probably have an arts background.� What initially seemed like a flippant choice for Theng Yeong turned out to be one o...

Weaving visual magic into National Day Parades since 2011 If you have seen the brightly coloured animated graphics accompanying each act during the National Day Parade (NDP), you may be surprised that they were not created by professionals, but by third-year students from Nanyang Polytechnic�s Motion Graphics & Broadcast Design (MGBD) diploma course. From left: Kristine Chua, Wilson Low, and Patey Ng, some of the 20 students involved in the NDP project For the past five years, students from this course have been behind the animation and special effects that you see at our NDP. Each year, about 20 Final Year Project students work on creating the vivid imagery for NDP�s various acts, bringing excitement and realism into each scene of the show. Their work includes sourcing for reference materials, creating storyboards, modelling the storyboards in 3D software, improving on the graphics and remodelling the graphics to the client�s expectations. This takes a whopping six months to compl...

Recently, in June, the School of Interactive & Digital Media (SIDM) held a 3-day exhibition at the ArtScience Museum. Entitled the SIDM Art Interactive Experience, many artworks from students and alumni were showcased. This is the second year the ArtScience Museum was hosting SIDM. This year, our alumni were also invited to exhibit their works to celebrate SIDM�s 20th anniversary. I headed down to the exhibition and here are is what I saw. Food Artist Catherine Leck  The chameleon�s skin is made out of nerd candies! Who would�ve thought! Since young, our parents have always warned us to never play with food. Miss Catherine Leck here is a rebel and decided that she is going to do just that. Catherine took the road less travelled and made art with actual food. Cool! Her pieces are so well put together that you would not have known food ingredients were used.  Catherine is a corporate logo designer but she does innovative work like food art as a hobby. She wishes to let peopl...

 Ever wondered what's in the bag of a future graphics designer, a visual effects artist or an animator? Look no further! Quench your curiosity as I inspect Valery Seng�s bag. She is a Year 1 Motion Graphics & Broadcast Design student. Of course, you would expect a laptop! What is poly life without a laptop right? Valery here owns the Macbook Pro 15-inch. The extra 2 inches is definitely useful as she needs to create and edit pieces on software like Photoshop and After Effects. This particular model weighs a hefty 2kg! Valery will definitely train her muscles carrying this. Here�s an unconventional pencil case! In it is a notebook that is vital for a course without worksheets. But look closely, the black and white stick is actually a KNIFE! Being in a design course means there is a lot of crafting and cutting. So this X-ACTO knife is definitely handy in class. She also has a pen to take notes with, and a kneadable eraser for her Fundamentals of Drawing class! On days when Valery...

DMMM students Kan Jia Xin (right) as well as myself (left) with Jackie Chan  7 May 2015 � In our three years at NYP, this was the very first time we saw such a large crowd gathered at the atrium. It was insane, and people filled up every level, every staircase, and all the bridges facing the atrium.  They chattered excitedly, craning their heads, poised and eager for the emergence of a certain individual. Who could it be? Well, it was none other than the renowned celebrity known to everyone regardless of their age or nationality, the juggernaut of Hollywood action blockbusters, and action hero, Jackie Chan! Jackie Chan waving to throngs of NYP students passionately receiving him Unassuming, yet dapper, in a classic red checkered shirt and a pair of glasses, he strode out with confidence, flashing a smile at every ardent supporter whipping out a cell phone to snap at him, while his entourage struggled to keep him within their sight amidst the crowd. Jackie Chan whipping the cro...

  British politician Sir Winston Churchill once said: �Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.�  You may think Jerome Yap�s route to success was smooth; he graduated from NYP this year with 3 awards - the inaugural Lee Hsien Loong Award, Infinite Frameworks Gold Medallist Award and Infinite Frameworks Outstanding Project Work Award. Contrary to expectations, he comes from a humble beginning, with little motivation to excel in studies in his childhood. He was only interested in drawing during classes, and thus only scored 98 for his Primary School Leaving Examinations.  On top of that, he mixed with the wrong crowd in Secondary School, which led to him performing poorly during his GCE N Levels. Jerome�s only option was to enrol in the Institute of Technical Education (ITE) for his Nitec and Higher Nitec studies respectively. But it was in ITE that Jerome found like-minded friends that shared his passion for design. Through the...

SIDM Movie Night, an annual event for NYP�s School of Interactive and Digital Media (SIDM) students and alumni, was back for another year. This year�s movie pick was Avengers: Age Of Ultron, sequel to The Avengers which premiered in 2012. I attended the event with my fellow Write Stuff member, Nauli. The event was held on 30th of April at Filmgarde, Bugis+.  It was a great opportunity for students to hang out with their friends, and alumni to catch up with their former schoolmates, lecturers, and network with each other. Before the screening, our guests mingled at the box office. It was great to see many SIDM alumni still keeping in touch with their alma mater. A Chat With Several SIDM Alumni While waiting for the movie to start, we went around the box office to talk to some of the moviegoers and guests. Muhammad Farhan and Cheryl Lim  The first alumni we talked with were Muhammad Farhan who graduated in 2014 with a Diploma in Game Development and Technology and Cheryl Lim, wh...

 The Journey: Tumultuous Times (??:?????,) is into its second season as part of MediaCorp Channel 8's ambitious nation-building trilogy. It stars Shaun Chen, Romeo Tan, Andie Chen, Jeanette Aw, Felicia Chin, Chen Hanwei and Carrie Wong as five young people who live through World War II and the Independence of Singapore. From left: Arthur Chan, Nicole Goh, Lim Pei Yi , Koh Ming Hui, Kabilan Panneerselvam, Leong Chee Loong and Jame Woon. Visual effects play an important role in creating an authentic-looking, historical period drama, so MediaCorp turned to our School of Interactive & Digital Media (SIDM) for help. This season, the team had to produce visual effects for over 250 scenes, and this massive undertaking would turn into a Journey in its own right for our students. Mr Daniel Tan, Director of the School added that, �We are very appreciative of this opportunity given to us by our partner MediaCorp. It may be hard work but the actual experience can only be claimed by those w...