Photos and story by Joanne NH Wong, student of 12IMP
May is a very busy month. Right after the obligatory celebration of Vappu, students of 12 IMP are spitting blood and sweat, working really hard on their towers of assignments, rushing and burning midnight oils to produce good work on animation task, besides many other final tasks.

What could be a good way to relax for a day, get inspired and away from the computer screen during such period of time? A field trip! TAMK Media lecturers kindly organised a visit to Helsinki, where students participants are able to choose to visit 2 venues from 4 options. 12IMP students of Animation and Multimedia course are taking part, too.

As early as 8 o’clock in the morning, the bus departed from TAMK Finlayson campus to Helsinki. With smooth traffics, we arrived at Helsinki at 10am, and first venue is Heureka Museum. Students  who signed up for this took off from here for a world-famous exhibition about the structure, functions and health of the human body. It is very unique opportunity to see how a human body is built, with real body parts!

Emma Museum inside WeeGee talo

I did not get off from here but instead, eight of us including one of our lecturer, Carita Forsgren, went to visit  the original artwork and films by Warner Bros. from 1930–1960 at Emma Museum. It was such a nostalgic experience for me, revisiting the cartoon characters of Warner Bros and getting in depth with the character design from study perspective.

Nostalgic Warner Bros cartoon characters

The exhibition explores the elaborate creative process behind the making of classic Warner cartoons, and I am amazed by the production art dated as early as 1930, an era when modern computer has not been invented yet. Cel painting is one of the technique used.

Character sketch of Tweety bird

‘What’s up doc?’ iconic catchy phrase from Bugs Bunny

We only have 45 minutes to spend in the museum and it was definitely a compact learning experience by watching some cartoons and mesmerise the great art in traditional animation. I personally was moved by the catchy phrase of the characters, such as “I tawt I taw a putty tat” and “What’s up doc?”. What’s your favourite ones?

After this, we were picked by the bus and reunited with the gang, heading toward city centre of Helsinki. One group dropped off at Shared Gems 2013, a game event. And the other group went to the city centre to get some lunch before visiting Anima Boutique, a creative production house that produces many excellent character designs and animation works.

Lounge area at Anima Boutique, posters wall

Learning After Effect tips from the industrial production expert, Jyri

We were greeted by production manager of Anima Boutique, Martti Sirkkola, an alumi of TTVO who graduated last year. The friendly Martti brought us through the portfolio of the company and answers all of our questions related to animation tips, work flows, and satisfied our curiousity with many examples of the animation produced by the company and also their latest project with producing game app based on their animation series, Giggle Bug.

Student Jungsoo Moon playing with Giggle Bug app

Students wandering around the interesting collections of Anima Boutique

The field trip ends with chilling and relaxing in the beautiful weather in Helsinki’s city centre, which I happened to bump into Finland’s prime minister, Jyrki Katainen right in front of Helsinki Cathedral!

What an eventful and fruitful day, although long and exhausted when we got back to Tampere in the evening.
I sincerely thank to TAMK media lecturers for organising such trip!

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The author is a student of TAMK Degree Programme in Media
Read more stories by and about IMPs, the international media programme students
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Read the story about the previous visit to Anima Boutique