By:
Ng Choon Hau (Sr1A)
(Certain images taken from the APU and MADFest Facebook Pages)
This modern and technological age requires us to think creatively and innovate more than ever. On Saturday, 20 July 2019, a group of teachers including Ms. Chin Lee Foon, Ms. Chow Pui Fong and Ms. Wong Sheau Hong took 133 students, mostly from Sr1ScA, Sr1ScC, Sr1ScE and Sr1ComB, on an outing to take part in the Fourth MADFest (Multimedia, Arts and Design Festival) hosted by Asia Pacific University(APU). MADFest is an annual student-run festival celebrating the expression of creativity which is held in conjunction with Gamefest.
Three buses set off to APU at 8am with students having hopes to learn new things and high expectations as to how fun the workshops will be. An hour-long bus ride brought the eager students to registration and then for a briefing on APU and SoMAD (School of Multimedia, Arts and Design). Looking around the auditorium, one can see that Kuen Cheng students were not t the sole attendees of MADFest. The crowd of 500 people comprises Form 4 and Form 5 students from SMK Seksyen 4 Bandar Kinrara, SMK Bukit Sentosa, SMK Cheras Kuala Lumpur, Kolej Vokasional Shah Alam, and many other schools.
Students got led to their workshops after the hour long briefing. There were altogether eight workshops including Chroma Key Madness, Kitbashing Your Style, Animate Your World, Crushing Stigma & Taking Gaming (eSports) Into the Next Level, Practical Solutions: Moving Objects, Model Making with Foam, Parallax Scrolling Animation and If I were a Computer…I Thought I Would Think it This Way… Kuen Cheng students did not join the workshop at Kitbashing Your Style.
Chroma Key Madness was a hit amongst students, where so many of them signed up that some had to be moved to lesser attended workshops. It focused primarily on Adobe After Effects and green screens. Students got to shoot a video of them on a green screen and then edit themselves into many fantastical situations like outer space or deep in the sea. This workshop surely piqued many interests in students who were interested behind the scenes of visual effects in film.
Kitbashing Your Style was a more hands-on workshop, where students got the opportunity to make 3D models out of recyclable objects, such as plastic bottles, cans and pen caps. Though there were no on-school accounts as to how fun this workshop was, from the looks of it, it surely was fun getting creative with handmade models!
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The workshop Animate Your World should be pretty self-explanatory – it brought students into a world of animation making. The so-called Animation Masters of APU taught students the fundamentals of animation, as well as teaching them the ways of making flipbooks and their very own short animation clips. Animation rigs were also provided to students to show them how certain animations are made. You could truly say that this workshop was nothing short of interesting.
Crushing Stigma & Taking Gaming (eSports) Into the Next Level, is a less hands on workshop – provided gaming-obsessed students with the necessary excuses for them to game their life away. Stigma around eSports is still very prevalent in society today, therefore APU sought to break the negative connotations people have about gaming. Besides that, students also got enriched with skills and tips from their favorite games like Dota, LoL and Cs:Go.
Students looking forward to pursuing design as a major may have chosen the Practical Solutions: Moving Objects workshop. Similar to the workshop Kitbashing Your Style, this workshop focuses on students working with recyclable objects. However, rather than building students’ abilities in visual design, this workshop enhances students’ thinking skills to overcome problems in design.
Another workshop mainly about design: Model Making with Foam led students through an amazing arts and crafts workshop which aimed to motivate students to create. Students surely got their hands dirty working with physical foam and painting them to make them absolutely gorgeous. Creativity is often repressed in the classroom; therefore this was the perfect place for creative students to shine.
Parallax Scrolling Animation was a workshop that was similar to Animate Your World; while the latter workshop focused more on animation in general, this workshop leaned more towards making 2D animations. Adobe Animate CC was the primary software used to make a scrolling animation background that one can often see in cartoons. Future animators surely did not regret attending this workshop!
Interested in the basics of coding and logical thinking? Seeking to improve your critical thinking skills? Look no further than the workshop If I were a Computer… I Thought I Would Think it This Way… Besides learning the theory behind programming, students also got to get practical with this workshop via Blockly Games and designing their own game levels. People nowadays lack the ability to think using logic, so this workshop designed to offer solution to the students concerned.
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