Exploring 3D Playblast-To-2D Animation Rotoscoping Techniques

Rotoscoping can produce believable 2D animation and movements when the process is done correctly. However, not all live-action footage can be easily rotoscoped due to scenes or fictional designs that are impossible to shoot. To overcome this technical challenge, 3D playblast can be used as footage for an alternative source for rotoscoping. This research aims to explore and evaluate two rotoscoping techniques of transforming 3D playblast into 2D animation. Two different animation software (Adobe Animate CC and Toon Boom Harmony) were used to explore those rotoscoping techniques. The method began by designing a storyboard with dynamic camera angles. Then, animated 3D models were developed based on the storyboard as footage for rotoscoping. Then, those animated 3D models were rotoscoped frame by frame using ‘Toon Boon Harmony’ and ‘Adobe Animated CC’. The rotoscope outputs were evaluated for their effectiveness and weaknesses. Findings show that rotoscoping frame by frame is viable for both software with some nuances. Nevertheless, the proposed rotoscope techniques can maintain consistency between each frame without losing the proportion of anatomy and style when animating in an extreme and distorted scene.

The Globalization of Hallyu Phenomenon: Impact on Malaysian Young Female's Attitude and Behaviour

Hallyu phenomenon is a globalized cultural product from South Korea that has spread uncontrollably into many parts of the world, and Malaysia was no exception. With the aid of media and the internet, the domination of its significant products such as K-drama, K-pop music, K-Food, K-Beauty, and technology brands left an indisputable impact on society. Hallyu's wide acceptance in Malaysia, however, received backlash from the anti-Hallyu group who criticized it for degrading the value of Malaysian culture, specifically targeting young females in Malaysia for their "obsession" with this foreign culture. This paper aimed to study the relationship between the globalization of Hallyu phenomenon and young females in Malaysia. It employed a quantitative method to explore the impact of Hallyu on young females' attitudes and behaviour by distributing online surveys to 300 targeted respondents with prior knowledge regarding the topic. The findings showed that the most popular Hallyu cultural product is K-Pop, which consequently further influenced their attitude and behaviour towards other Hallyu products. The success of Hallyu culture among young females in Malaysia owed a lot to the internet and social media as the tools to disperse information, hence shaping their thoughts, attitudes and behaviour on the issue. The results also noted a few behavioural changes among the respondents in terms of time and money spent on Hallyu products. Overall, this study suggested that most respondents have a positive attitude towards Hallyu and that any behavioural changes were still within their control, hence denying the claim of "obsession" and "degrading one's cultural value" as claimed by the anti-Hallyu group.

Political Satire and Its Influence on the Youth Political Perception

This article is based on research that explored the different forms of political satire on social media and examined whether political satire has any impact on the political perception of the youths. Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and so on. A mixed methodology was adopted in this research involving content analysis and survey. This study was conducted in Kuala Lumpur involving 50 respondents from the age of 18 to 40 years old. Content analysis was used to explore the forms of political satire. There were seven different forms of political satire analysed in this research, namely, political graphics by Fahmi Reza, political cartoons by Zunar, political anime from a Facebook page entitled “Bro, don’t like that la, bro”, memes from “SarawakGags”, “HarakatDaily” satirical news site, Dr Jason Leong’s satirical tweets on Twitter and parody videos by Douglas Lim. These themes were derived from social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. The study found that political satire has profound impacts on the political interests of the youths as it not only helps to increase their political understanding, it also presents political issues to the youths in creative and interesting ways. It is argued that political satire will grow faster and shape the political thinking of the youths especially. The direct effects of political satire, however, on voting inclination, are still inconclusive and need to be explored further.

Pandangan Dalam Kalangan Kaum Melayu dan Cina di Kawasan Sibu Terhadap Cukai Barang dan Perkhidmatan (GST)

Pelaksanaan GST merupakan satu strategi makroekonomi dalam merangsang pertumbuhan ekonomi di peringkat nasional. Pengumuman pelaksanaan Cukai Barang dan Perkhidmatan (GST) untuk menggantikan Cukai Jualan dan Perkhidmatan (SST) pada April 2015 yang lepas telah membangkitkan keresahan dalam kalangan masyarakat. Lebih keruh lagi apabila masyarakat terpengaruh oleh andaian negatif tentang GST dan pada masa itu, Barisan Nasional (BN) terpalit dengan skandal rasuah serta hutang negara melambung naik. Keresahan rakyat apabila terdapat persepsi bahawa GST berpotensi untuk meningkatkan kos sara hidup. Tingkah laku politik masyarakat juga berubah terutamanya semasa Pilihan Raya Umum ke-14 apabila pertama kali dalam sejarah UMNO-BN telah kalah dan diganti dengan Pakatan Harapan (PH). Tujuan kajian ini adalah untuk menganalisis persepsi kaum Melayu dan Cina terutamanya di sekitar kawasan Sibu yang berada di kawasan Democratic Action Party (DAP) iaitu parti pembangkang, terhadap pelaksanaan GST dari aspek pengetahuan am mengenai GST, kesannya terhadap taraf kehidupan dan sumbang saran dasar tersebut kepada mereka. Objektif kajian ini adalah menunjukkan bahawa terdapat persamaan dan perbezaan mengenai GST dalam kalangan kaum Melayu dan Cina serta mengenal pasti sama ada kaum Melayu masih setuju dengn pelaksanaanya jika kutipan GST untuk membayar hutang negara.

PERTEKMA Financial Reporting Tool

A financial management system is essential for any organization to manage its cash flow and keep track of its spending and earnings. Currently, our faculty-student organization, Persatuan Teknologi Maklumat (PERTEKMA), still uses multiple Excel spreadsheets to log in financial records and depend on physical ledgers printed from the Excel sheet to keep track of its accounts. This project aims to develop a web-based system that keeps track of the PERTEKMA association's revenue and spending and prevents inconsistencies between different ledgers such as activity and kiosk ledgers maintained by various executive committees (Exco) members of PERTEKMA. The system's targeted users are PERTEKMA Exco members and the lecturers responsible for supervising PERTEKMA. The methodology used to develop the proposed project is the Rapid Application Development (RAD) model. An interview was carried out with two treasurers in PERTEKMA to obtain the requirements, and their suggestions were used to develop and design the proposed system. In addition, an interview session was carried out with two PERTEKMA advisors to collect the system requirements to design the system. The system developed aims to replace the current approach to managing financial records through a centralized online platform.

The Determinants of Gold Price in Malaysia

The purpose of this paper is to look into the linkage between inflation rate, exchange rate, stock market return with price of gold. The sample collected for this empirical study covered 30 years of data from 1991 to 2020. The secondary data was collected annually and total 30 observations are taken for each variable. Multiple Linear Regression model is developed to find out the linkage between variables chosen with gold prices. The independent variables included Inflation rate (Consumer Price Index), exchange rate (Malaysia to USD), stock market return (FTSE Bursa Malaysia Kuala Lumpur Composite Index) and dependent variable is Price of Gold. Besides that, several tests are used including Unit Root Test (Augmented Dickey-Fuller Test), Jarque-Bera Normality Test, Breusch-Godfrey Serial Correlation LM Test, Heteroscedasticity-White Test, Ramsey Regression Equation Specification Error (RESET) Test and Granger Causality Test. The time series analysis used as the methodology by using Eview 11 to proceed all the test. The result showed that inflation rate and exchange rate have strong positive link to gold price while stock market return does not have significant relationship with gold price. In summary, this research can provide reference for other investors.

The Role of Foreign Direct Investment Inflows in Economic Growth in Malaysia

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between the inflows of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and economic growth in Malaysia. The sample collected for this empirical study covered 30 years of data from 1991 to 2020. The secondary data was collected annually and a total of 30 observations were taken for each variable. Ordinary Least Square (OLS) regression, unit root test, several diagnostic tests and Granger causality test were used in this research to investigate the relationship between FDI inflows and economic growth. Eviews 11 was used to analyze the time series data throughout all the tests. The result showed that the inflows of FDI has a significant negative relationship with economic growth and there is no causal relationship between FDI and Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Keywords: Economic growth, FDI inflows, Granger Causality Test, Ordinary Least Square regression, Unit Root Test

MH370 and MH17 airplane catastrophes

Reporting verbs are important in news articles on controversial events or issues because of the need to present one’s position on the topic or at least indicate the attitudes of the sources cited in the articles. The The study investigated the usage of reporting verbs in MH370 and MH17 airplane catastrophe in Malaysian English online newspapers. The aspects analysed were the reporting verbs for speaker stance and writer stance. A total of 80 news articles on MH370 and MH17 airplane catastrophes taken from two online English-language Malaysian newspapers, New Straits Time and The Star, were analysed using Thomson and Ye’s (1991) framework on reporting verbs. The analysis identified 931 instances of RVs: 764 instances for speaker stance, and 167 instances for writer stance. On the speaker stance, about 90% of the articles on MH370 and MH17 were reported positively, and the various sources of information were stated clearly. Negative and neutral speaker stances were infrequent. As for writer stance, the overall results showed a balanced use of counter-factive and non-factive reporting of the writer stance (42.51% and 47.90% out of 167 instances). The two newspapers were similar in their use of verbs for reporting the writer stance in MH370 articles in that over half of the writer stances were non-factive, and about 25% were counter-factive. In their coverage on the MH17 catastrophe, The Star maintained the same pattern of balance between non-factive and counter-factive writer stances but New Straits Time leaned towards a counter-factive writer stance, suggesting more critical reporting. The study showed that the articles on airplane catastrophes leaned towards safe reporting focussed on the available details of the incident.

Integrated Speed Bump Detector to notify road users using Internet of Things

Every year all over the world, many lives are lost due to accidents on the roads. Different factors have contributed to this tragic death, such as the poor condition of roads and bad weather such as rain. To solve this problem, an Integrated Speed Bump Detector to notify road users using the Internet of Things (IoT) has been proposed to help road users to detect speed bumps earlier by getting notified through sound from the buzzer and red light from an LED. This also increases the safety of road users during their trips and provides information if a speed bump is approaching. The ultimate goal of this project is to prevent an accident from occurring during road trips and to promote a careful attitude among road users.

Proximate and antinutritional assessments of stingrays

Stingrays are one of the marine fishes that inhabit the shallow part of the ocean. They are well known to the locals as cuisine and its parts as accessories for items such as handbags, belts, and decorations. Stingrays of species Himantura undulata and Maculabatis gerrardi are commonly caught by fishermen of Sarawak, but most of its nutritional and antinutritional factors both species are unknown. This study focused on the analysis of some proximate composition such as moisture, ash, and lipid content. Analysis of total organic matter was done as well. The stingrays were obtained from local fish market in Kuching, Sarawak. The method used for moisture (wet basis), ash, and total organic matter is of AOAC (method 930.15), while crude lipid content was based on the Chedoloh method of extraction. The study revealed that H. undulata and M. gerrardi are nutritious in terms of moisture, ash, and lipid content to be 78.44 and 80.74% (dry basis), 0.48 and 1.37%, 2.46 and 7.74% respectively.