For the third and final task of this summer project, our final outcome has to be a triptych (a 3 part image) of a forgotten object; We have to work to visually give the viewer some context of this object, answering questions such as ‘is the object ever found?’, ‘how has time affected the appearance of the object?’ and ‘will the object ever find new life?’. I’ve already given this task some thought, and I know what I want to create; a drawing of a lost sword, abandoned in the forest. The sword is tattered and rusty, but emits a bright and mystical light that illuminates everything around it. It’s eventually found by a young and wimpy elf boy; I aim on creating two short animations as an opening and an ending to the picture, to show the elf discovering it. I’ve come up with a short story for this sword;
‘Long ago in the mystical world of Alberon, demons escaped from the underworld and threatened to invade the peaceful elf kingdom. The elves, with their backs against the wall, prayed to the goddess for a way to defend their land, and in response, she sent a powerful enchanted blade, Cerulean. Not only was cerulean charged with heavenly magic, but he could take on the form of an elf and speak to his wielders to guide them to victory. This powerful sword could only be wielded by a hero pure of heart; For generations, he was passed down to strong and noble elves, who used his power to fend off the demons. However, as time went on, news of cerulean’s power had spread and caught the attention of all types of elves who wanted to use his power for selfish reasons, or sell him for a hefty price. On a fateful day, cerulean’s wielder at the time was ambushed by a band of thieves, and the sword was stolen as he was defeated. Cerulean’s power, however, only worked if a noble hero fought with him, and was rendered powerless in the hands of his tainted new owners. Without the power of the sword the elves were helpless, and the demons took over their kingdom.
100 years passed since the demon invasion, and cerulean had become somewhat of a myth, his whereabouts unknown. Demons were the new leaders of Alberon, with elves reduced to a slave race who spent their lives serving the demons. One of many slaves was kyubi, a small and skinny elf who wasn’t good for much; he seemed to mess up everything he touched, causing him to be an object of hatred for elves and demons alike. Still, Kyubi kept his head held high and tried his best with every task he was given; where he lacked in skill, he made up for in ambition and optimism. One day, Kyubi is sent on a dangerous mission; there has been a mysterious glowing in the dangerous woods for about a month, and everyone who has been sent to find it’s source hasn’t returned. Kyubi is sent out into the forest alone to investigate; however, strange glowing spheres lead him to a tattered sword stuck in a rock, emitting an icy and bright light. After some struggling, Kyubi manages to pull it out, and to his surprise it floats up, repairs itself and takes the form of a tall and handsome young elf, dressed in an odd manor and with a confident and booming voice. The sword informs Kyubi that it is the fabled blade Cerulean, and that it’s purpose is to accompany a young hero in defeating the demons. Shocked to find out that he has been asleep for 100 years, Cerulean lets Kyubi know that he is the pure hearted hero of this generation, and that he must get strong enough to restore peace to the elven kingdom. Will kyubi be able to fend off the demons and lead a rebellion with Cerulean by his side, or will the demons prevail?’
This story straight away paints an image in my head of what kind of imagery will be present in my triptych; a wild forest, a magical sword, a young elf boy and possibly some demons. I feel that things that will make this piece effective are the angle, the small details and the lighting. The lighting is especially important in creating a magical atmosphere, as it can add a mystical tint to everything. The background is also important, which will be a challenge for me; I usually draw people and not backgrounds, so it’s a fun opportunity to present myself with the task of drawing something new. If I have the time, I’d also like to do short animations of Kyubi finding the sword and pulling it out of the ground, and of Cerulean’s spirit waking up.
With my story down, I was ready to start creating my moodboard.
On the moodboard, I included some imagery of magical swords. A common trait between these swords seems to be a strong and clear silhouette, a hidden location and some kind of light emission. I think it’s effective because it makes what the object is very clear to the viewer, but the use of the background and lighting adds a sense of mystery and importance; it indicates that there’s some form of a story behind the sword. I also noticed that even if lost or in mysterious locations, the swords seem to be in top condition; there aren’t any scratches or rust, adding more mystery to their stories.
I also included a lot of magical forest pictures, and I found some interesting features that I’d like to try out; firstly, the compositions place the object of importance a little higher than everything else, which guides the viewer’s eyes to it. This is effective because even without a clear background to the image, You can tell what is important and probably plays a big role in the story. The lighting in the forests is also usually quite dim, creating a sense of intimacy; it makes it feel like the person in the forest is somehow meant to be there, and similarly to the soft yellow lights I used in my photography experiments, it feels homely. It lets the viewer know that the character in the scene is safe.
I added some nerdy and friendly looking characters as inspiration for Kyubi; I want him to look helpless and wimpy, but also polite and friendly. I’m not sure if I’ll include the demons in my triptych, but I also added some inspiration for them in case I do; they have to look strong and menacing, capable of destroying a whole kingdom and enslaving it’s people. Lastly, the wildlife in the forest can be quite effective in setting the overall mood and atmosphere; things like glowing plants and mushrooms add an extra air of mystery and magic.
After creating my moodboard, I had a look at some triptychs, to familiarise myself with what they are. Some triptychs depict one image split into 3 parts, While some are 3 different images that connect to each other; I think I prefer the former, as it paints a clearer picture of what’s going on and allows you to just focus on one scenario wholeheartedly.
I like the use of colour in this triptych; It looks somewhat mysterious and cold. It reminds me of walking through grass on a rainy and grey day and feeling wind and rain on my face; I feel that the tone of the piece has been well portrayed through the cold shades of green and the emphasis on how big the trees are, reaching up to the sky. I imagine that it would be intimidating to be amongst these trees, it would feel desolate and cold. I also like that your eyes are guided along the three images, with the sky being slowly made more visible as your eyes move from the left to the right. I really like this triptych as I feel the composition is really effective; the light being the biggest image and right in the middle draws your attention to it, as well as it’s position high up amongst the branches. The light also stretches out and touches everything else in the image, giving it a sense of power and range. The colours are all quite warm which makes the picture look more vibrant and happy, but some contrast is used with colder blues and greens scattered across the background. To me, this makes the sun look even more important; It gives me the illusion that it’s a cold day in the woods, but the sun is bringing warmth and light to the atmosphere. I think I’ll use the idea of using my middle picture as the one with the action in it, and the other two as atmospheric images depicting the background. I like the idea of making the sword the primary emitter of light, as it will add a sense of importance and mysticality to the object.This is my least favourite triptych because I have no idea what’s going on. I think it’s a bit crowded, and it seems like the artist has tried to communicate too many different happenings at once which makes the overall scenario unclear. I don’t understand what the tone or mood of the piece is meant to be, and I don’t understand whether this is depicting 3 different scenes or just 1. I’d like to avoid over crowding my triptych, as I want to communicate clearly to the viewer what is going on.
To conclude, there are 3 things I aim on having completed in the following weeks; A triptych depicting the moment Kyubi finds the sword, a short animation for a prologue where kyubi is walking through the forest and discovers the sword, and an after scene animation where kyubi awakens Cerulean. I want the triptych to be 3 different drawings depicting one image, with the middle one being the focal point of the whole thing, and I’ll draw a sword in a mystical forest.
Before starting my ‘forgotten object’ triptych project, I have to complete 2 tasks; observing light, shadows and reflection in my daily life, and taking pictures with emphasis on mood. I started with the former, as I felt it would help me to do the latter better.
Observation
Observation for me was harder than I thought it would be. The biggest challenge was taking influence from everyday scenery, and not looking for more intentional and set up photographs that purposely utilized things like light and shadows in an effective way. I feel that it was very helpful, however; I noticed things that I was able to take into consideration while taking mood photos. The first thing I found was that lighting can greatly change the overall atmosphere of a place; I walked around my house in the day once and then in the night with the lights off, to see how the light affected my mood. In my house, when it was bright, everything felt more inviting and casual; it’s been a sunny week, so the sun is making everything very vibrant which enhances my mood. However, when it’s night time, everything looks a little more threatening; somehow, it feels more lonely to be in a big dark space than it does to be in a light one. When everything is dark, it causes a sense of unease and tension; even though I was in a familiar setting, I couldn’t help but feel a bit more cautious when it was pitch black. You have to rely on your other senses more than sight in the dark, which is a little scary.
I also observed how the colour and intensity of light can affect mood. When I walked around in the dark, I brought a flashlight with me and shined it on individual parts of the house. The intense white light from the flashlight added a ghostly tint to everything it touched, somewhat washing out the colours and casting a bunch of contrasting black shadows. It also caused one object to stand out in otherwise pitch blackness, which was effective in bringing attention to that object alone. I also experimented with dimming the lights in a room; slightly dimmed light add kind of an intimate feeling to a room, while dimming them a lot makes the room feel kind of gloomy. Dim lighting makes me think of horror movies, and I think I could possibly use different light intensities to bring out different moods and emotions in my own work.
I played around with light colours, which was an interesting thing to do. Colours are known for being able to evoke different moods, and I saw that well through experimentation; Red light is very intense and reminds me of heat and anger, while blue light is calmer but a bit cold, reminding me of sadness and cold water. Pink and purple lights look a bit mystical, reminding me of magic and unnatural happenings, while green light is surprisingly unpleasant and more intense than I would’ve thought it to be.
Lastly, I focused on shadows; I feel that the amount of shadows and their intensity is quite influential on mood. In dark spaces with less light, shadows become more intense and dark; they’re more noticeable, and in turn you notice how big and intimidating they can be. When they’re both very dark and quite a bit distorted, they become angular and a little creepy, while in bright spaces they’re less noticeable, taking on more of a small and dim grey appearance.
Photography
Taking into consideration what I learned from observation, I took a walk around my block and took some photographs in the sun. I wanted to focus on happiness first, so I took vibrant and bright colours to evoke positive moods and thoughts. I’ll share the ones that I feel were successful;
This is a photograph of the outside of a restaurant. I took this picture because of the vibrant colours; they contrast with the white and everything else around them, which makes them eye catching. The colours are very warm and saturated, and the plants give the whole thing a kind of healthy and natural look. There are also a lot of round arches, and rounder shapes can make things look softer or more inviting. I took this picture of the sky, because it caught my attention. Since it was a sunny day, the sky was especially vibrant and blue. I feel that the sky has connotations of wonder, curiosity and aspiration; people want to know what’s beyond the sky, and it’s a big and limitless space that connects everyone, we all look up at the same sky. The appearance of the sky can also influence the overall mood of a day; bright blue skies make everything look colourful and it lifts your mood, while stormy skies make everything look a bit grey and gloomy.I took pictures of some graffiti I saw on the road, as it was bright and eye catching. Similarly to the outside of the restaurant, I feel that the main thing benefiting the graffiti was it’s colour; It was unnaturally bright and saturated, which caused it to stand out from everything else. I feel that the imagery adds a lot to the mood; it’s all quite unusual and whimsical, which causes it to stand out a lot in comparison to the ordinary brick walls and scenery that surrounds it.For me, this was the image that added the most to the atmosphere of the wall. Graffiti itself is looked at as something quite rebellious in nature, and this piece of art depicts a young child making a taunting gesture. It brings about feelings of youth and being young, reckless and carefree; everyone can relate to and enjoy being young and having fun, and so the wall successfully evokes feelings of youth and brightness for me.I took a lot of pictures of plants while I was on my walk. Flowers are naturally vibrant and beautiful; everyone can appreciate the beauty of a flower, and they have connotations of love, appreciation, congratulations, peace and beauty. I feel that flowers are a useful tool in giving a happy overall atmosphere and mood to a piece; they add a sense of freshness and naturality wherever you use them, and they’re naturally very eye catching. They also make for powerful imagery because of their multiple uses and meanings; a single flower might look a bit mysterious, a bunch of flowers could mean something happy like a wedding or something more tragic like a funeral, and flowers growing naturally in the wild add some contrast and beauty to a piece, but also a sense of wilderness.
Next, I wanted to focus on a darker and more desolate mood. For most of these pictures, I took them around my house, as I could better capture more desolate and lonely looking pictures here.
While I was walking, I saw this tattered and alone plushie on the street. Since our theme for the next task is ‘forgotten objects’, I felt this was a perfect photo opportunity. The object is a toy, meaning it was once loved and played with by a child; however as the child grew older, It became more distant from the toy, until they eventually felt they didn’t need him anymore and threw him away. It’s sad to think about the life cycle of a toy; it receives a lot of love while someone is young and is seen as very important and needed by the child, but as it’s owner grows up, it’s reduced to just a useless object and thrown out, no longer with much importance or an identity of it’s own. The toy makes me wonder what kind of a life it had before, which is what I would like to achieve in my triptych; I want to evoke a sense of wonder in the viewer and make them wonder what kind of a life my chosen object lived before being lost.I took these pictures of a bridge near my house that has been locked off for a while. I feel that these are interesting shots; firstly, they display the more threatening and negative side of plants, and how the scenarios they’re used in can influence the mood of a piece. They’ve taken over this bridge because nobody is there to stop them; they’ll grow wherever they want to, and nobody can stop them. They can cover something that was once useful and full of life, reducing it to an abandoned host for wild plants. It reminds me that the earth isn’t really ours, whether people are there or not, plants and nature will continue to grow over the world as they want to. The cold and rusty metal gate keeps humans from entering the bridge, but plants have no restrictions and can grow wherever they want to. I feel that they can be used to add a wild, desolate and abandoned vibe to a picture or a scene. I also feel that the angle in the second photo added to the atmosphere; It gives a sense of distance and hierarchy with things getting smaller as they get further, and we can’t see beyond the top. It adds a sense of curiosity; what is beyond the gates? what waits at the top?I took this picture of my baby sister’s painting late at night, with a flashlight. The contrast between the childlike imagery and the overall gloomy atmosphere, intense and limited lighting and the darkness make the picture look scary; it feels like you’re exploring some kind of an abandoned space and looking for clues. Children in general can be good imagery for horror as it’s very uncharacteristic of a child to act in an evil and threatening way, which unsettles viewers. The use of a single light source is also effective in creating a scary photograph; it adds a sense of vulnerability, painting the picture that one person is exploring alone and nobody can help them if things go wrong.I feel similarly about this image, but I feel that shadows are what makes this one effective. The harsh black shadows in contrast with the ghostly white light and the washed out colours of the objects create a somewhat eerie atmosphere, as mentioned in my observation paragraphs.
Lastly, I wanted to focus on creating a whimsical and magical mood through photography. I took these pictures to achieve that;
I took this picture at a low angle; I wanted to give of the illusion of the viewer being a tiny person, or the world being gigantic. I think angles and composition can greatly influence the mood of a picture; they can add suspense, illusion or a sense of movement. I wanted this picture to put the viewer into the scene mentally; you can imagine being tiny and walking through flowers, having to dodge through them, and the angle makes the gate look like it’s half the size of the building in the background when it’s actually a lot smaller. I took this picture because the small yellow flowers contrast a lot and stand out amongst the darker leaves surrounding it. I feel that this image has a sense of magic to it as the flowers look like the could be special somehow; I can imagine a story where the enchanted flowers only grow in one place and are hard to find, rumoured to have great magical abilities. Contrast can be an effective tool; If something is a lot brighter than it’s surroundings, it catches your eye and looks a little unnatural and out of place, which can be used as an advantage.I set up this scene using objects that look vaguely enchanted; a glowing glass frog, some books, a single flower, a pendant and an odd light. I took the picture multiple times to play around with the lighting and angles. For this lighting, I used a torch; I think the kind of spotlight look with everything else around the setup being dark works really well. I like how the piece is very shadowy, It adds a sense of mystery to everything. The tint from the red light also adds a bit of a magical, mystical look to the whole thing. I like how using light and angles, you can give life to a picture that doesn’t really have much of an identity without them.
I took the same picture, but with different colours for each light. I feel that the light colour slightly changed the vibe of the image a bit each time;
White looks pure and innocent, a bit more friendly.Pink looks magical and mysterious, adding a sense of wonder.Bright pink works similarly to white, adding a purity and softness to the image.A darker purple looks more intense, retaining a magical and mystical vibe but adding some aggression and harshness, tinting the things around it.
I took some pictures of the frog under a blanket, with a coloured light and the pendant, so that the light would show more intensely.
This yellow light looks warm and inviting, somewhat cozy. It puts the viewer a little bit at ease.Green looks mystical but a little bit cold and slightly intense; potentially dangerous.Bright pink looks passionate and slightly playful; warm, but with an air of magic.Lastly, the frog alone looks peaceful, but a little bit mysterious. It reminds me of a save point in a video game; somewhat comfortable, a place away from everything intense, and kind of warm.
I took these two pictures with the coloured light as the only light source, no flashlight.
This one is the most magical looking I feel; the light is intense and unnatural, and only touches the things it wants to bring your attention to. This could be effective in a drawing; lights that guide your eyes to the object of importance.To me, this one looks a little more sinister; The light reminds me of candle light or fire light, giving the image a mystical old vibe. It makes me think of old mansions and fancy buildings, that perhaps hide a dark secret.Lastly, I took this picture of a mirror, as mirrors are often associated with magic and parallels. I think the image looks slightly mysterious because of the angle and the lack of a reflection in the mirror, As well as the butterflies around it. The butterflies are obviously fake, But I think they’re effective; it looks like they’re naturally attracted to the mirror, but you don’t know why. It adds a sense of mystery and possible magic.
To conclude, this task was greatly beneficial to me. It helped me to think of what I can do with light, shadows, imagery and colours in an image; I can use them to paint a luxurious image of whatever I draw, a more sinister one, or one that looks enchanted and evokes wonder and mystery. I can definitely look back to these images when I create my triptych and think about what things work together to give off the overall mood and atmosphere that the picture invokes in me.
I’ve started doing my research tasks for this project; I have to make observations about light, shadows, reflections and movements, create an online scrapbook of visual inspirations for myself and take some pictures to experiment with mood and what kind of things change the atmosphere of a photograph.
ONLINE SCRAPBOOK
I started with the online scrapbook, as I felt it was the easiest of the 3 tasks, and I felt it would be useful to do the observation and photography one after the other. I created this giant moodboard on Pure Ref, filled with all the things that inspire me most as an artist;
(I had to include it as a screenshot, since it was too big to directly put it into the blog). This mind map is full of all sorts of images that I consider inspirations; Character designs from shows and games, art by certain artists and from certain art movements, art from games and fashion and stills from music videos, amongst other things. Generally I like things that are cute, colourful, lively and unique when it comes to art. I’ll zoom in on some parts to give an idea of what inspires me; Here on the top left is art mostly by artists I follow on social media. Namely, the main 2 artists are Ramdaram, a cartoon artist from south Korea, and RocketBoiArt, an animator and artist from south Africa. I’m a fan of Ramdaram art because it’s very distinct and recognisable, a quality that I admire in artists. It has it’s own sense of personality and it’s very colourful and expressive. Also despite having a simple art style, they experiment with a range of angles and ideas in their work which keeps it interesting. As for RocketBoiArt, I find his style of colouring and drawing really cool. He’s good at capturing energy and movement in still images, and his palettes are always well selected and bold. His art has been used for promotional material and album covers, and I like how he always puts a lot of consideration into the projects he creates art for. Further down are screenshots taken from K-pop music videos. K-pop is a personal interest of mine, but I often find myself looking to it for artistic inspiration due to the quality of the music videos; They’re always directed well to reflect the overall vibe of the song. In the examples on top from Heize’s ‘happen’ music video, directed by Digipedi, influences are taken from the work of Edward hopper to create a vibrant and slightly eerie looking set, which matches the song’s meaning well. I like how colourful the music videos are in general, and there are often small details that have large benefits and add to the videos a lot. On the bottom here I’ve included some fashion, Again mostly from South Korea and Japan. I personally think that the way you dress a character can say a lot about them, So I always try to carefully consider the outfits I put on them; a shy character would probably wear something that doesn’t stand out too much, while a confident character would try to enhance their look as much as they could. I like odd looking fashion pieces, like big platform shoes, abstract headpieces and baggy, puffy clothes, and I often try to incorporate them into my character designs a bit. Styling can also add an atmosphere to the image well; a colourful outfit adds energy and vibrancy, while a dark outfit or one with a lot of contrast can feel more intense. Shape also matters a lot; sharper and more aggressive shapes can pair well with more harsh colours to give off a strong and tough look, while rounder shapes with softer colours on an outfit makes the character look more friendly and cute. Clothing is self expression, and so the way a character dresses themself should reflect a bit of their identity well. Here, I’ve included some fine art; paintings from the Rococo art movement. This movement started in France with an emphasis on pastel colours, movement and theatrics. I’m not really a fan of fine art, but I love how full of life Rococo paintings are. They’re very colourful and looking at them feels like watching a scene from a movie even though they’re still images; the paintings always seem like they have a story behind them. I’ve also included some fun and creative architecture as it encourages me to think outside the box; even things like buildings can be abstract and colourful, and you don’t have to shy away from making things stand out. Here, I’ve included some character designs that are interesting to me. I like how with most of these images, you can get a sense of what kind of a person the character is through things like their facial expressions and body language. I also added some photos I’ve taken myself of artefacts from museums; In a way, some of the art pieces are like ancient character designs, and even back then they considered things like their stances and faces, and what this said about the characters.Lastly at the bottom, I included work from professional artists that I admire, such as Murakami and Daisuke Nimura. Again, I admire how unique and characteristic these artist’s styles are, and I thrive to develop a unique identity as an artist too.
I included other things here too such as album covers, creative packaging for various things and work that I considered interesting and inspirational. As I find other things that interest me, I’ll add them to the mind map. I can look back to this mind map for visual inspirations later on, so I think it’s a useful thing to have.
There are many reasons I chose this pathway. First and foremost, My dream is to one day pitch my own cartoon idea to a network and have it picked up, and I believe that taking this pathway is pushing me one step closer to making my dream into a reality. It’s something I’ve always wanted, but now I get to actually make decisions that push me closer toward becoming a cartoon producer, so I’ll take every opportunity that is presented to me. Secondly, although it may be a cliché answer, I really love everything about 2D animation; the research and planning, the developmental art and the process of seeing an animation gradually come to life as you work on it. Watching animations makes me happy, and I want to be able to create animations that will provide other people with happiness and entertainment; but wanting to be a good animator alone isn’t enough, so I need to practice and study animation so that I can get better at it, and I believe that this pathway will allow me to do this. On the more technical and artistic side of things, One of my other dreams is to develop a unique and identifiable animation style, as well as a unique art style; similarly to animators like James Baxter or Tim Burton, I want people to be able to look at my creations and say ‘This is definitely something that Jahiem made’. I want my work to have originality and a lot of my own character, and I feel that learning about 2D animation formally will allow me to learn certain rules as well as which of these rules I can break and bend to give my work a life of it’s own. Lastly, despite having done art generally for a long time, I feel like I haven’t experimented much outside of my comfort zone; I know that this pathway is one that allows a lot of creative freedom and opportunities to experiment, so I think I’ll be able to challenge myself well.
What inspires me within the animation community?
I’m inspired by things both in finished pieces and things that happen behind the scenes when it comes to animation. For finished pieces, I love seeing pieces that are created with a lot of ambition, whether it’s by a studio or a small team/independent animators on YouTube or other social media platforms. I admire people’s ability to tell a story, set a tone or evoke an emotion though animation alone, even when there aren’t many words. I admire how animators are able to make small choices in things like light, colour and sound that have a big impact on the viewer. From a storytelling perspective, these are some animations that I really love;
This animation has no dialogue, but everything is considered so well that you understand what’s going on and certain emotions are evoked at certain parts of the short film. The art style, colours and music give it a kid’s film kind of vibe, showing that the animator/s know their target audience and what works for them. The expressions are also always kind of exaggerated and silly, which gives the animation a playful atmosphere throughout. It’s short, but it manages to tell a whole story without any parts feeling rushed as it’s all timed so well. I want to be able to set atmospheres and moods well in my animations like this person has, even if I’m presented with restrictions like a short time to work on the animation and no speaking.
Stylistically, this animation is similar to the last one, but they use the art style to their advantage in a different way; the disconnect between the overall mood and the cutesy art style add a lot to the film. There’s also always a sense of unease, the viewer is always anticipating something dark because of decisions that were made for this animation such as the black and white colour palettes and subtle hints at the dark ending. This animation also makes me feel good about my own art style; I really enjoy drawing cartoony and cute characters, but sometimes I fear my work won’t be taken seriously because of it. This piece managed to tell a dark story through a cartoony style, which shows me that style isn’t so important when it comes to an animation, it’s about what you do with the style and how you can bend your disadvantages into advantages.
To give a less formal answer, I’m really into fast paced, action animations with a lot of fighting and movement. I just love seeing characters use powers and fight, it makes me feel energized. Animations like these are a big part of why I’d also like to be an animator;
This is an opening by the Japanese studio Trigger for the game Shantae 5. It’s so cool to me for a number of reasons; firstly, it has the typical ‘studio trigger’ vibe. Trigger are known for fast paced action sequences, a lot of movement and really expressive characters. The animation happens so quickly that it feels energetic and very lively, but if you slow it down, you can see that a lot of small decisions were made to give the animation it’s fast paced appearance; there are a lot of smear frames and times where it seems like they drew less frames, adding to the rapid and quick look of the finished animation. I also feel that colours were considered well here, everything is very bright and bold which compliments the quick animation. I want to be able to create things as cool as this, as well as things that are identifiable as my pieces of work. I admire how trigger has developed their own style of animation, and I want this for myself.
This is a fan made opening for the nickelodeon series Avatar the last air bender. I love how the animator has been able to capture the vibe of the series and each character so well despite these being existing characters and not original ones. I also love how bright and optimistic it feels; it makes me feel excited and like I can jump up and touch the sky, or fly like a bird. I’d like to be able to create cool animations like this for my own cartoon ideas, and set the tone for the series as well as this animator has.
Lastly, as for the behind the scenes aspects of animation, I especially love pre production. I really love seeing ideas flesh out and develop, and I find it super interesting to see how things change as you develop them. My own cartoon ideas have changed a lot through the years, and I just love to see how character designs, backgrounds, settings and the characters themselves develop overtime. As an example, I’ll link the original pitch bible for Adventure Time; https://www.scribd.com/document/3122798/Adventure-Time-series-presentation#from_embed I love working on ideas and helping them to develop into what they end up as, and animation allows me to do this with practically every project I work on.
What do I hope to gain from this pathway?
I hope I’m able to create some artwork that I’m proud of and want to show off a lot, first and foremost. I want to challenge myself a lot and produce pieces of art that are on the next level and better than my last pieces of work; I want to constantly better myself. I also hope I’m able to feel like a more complete and confident artist and animator by the end of this pathway; I want to have more confidence in my abilities to make decisions and create things. I feel like I second guess and doubt myself a lot when it comes to animation; I have a kind of fixed mindset with things in general, with thoughts like ‘I can’t do it so I won’t attempt it, I should just stick to what I’m good at’. I want to become more of a risk taker; even if things don’t turn out the way I’d like them to, I want to be able to say that I tried an be proud of myself for it. Overall I hope to gain confidence and more refined skills through this pathway.
(sorry for writing so much, I ended up going way over a paragraph for each point. Here’s a rock lee for if you actually get to the end of this)
As of writing this post, we have finished with our lip sync animation. I’ll attach it below;
Our animation was met with mostly positive responses. We were complimented on our sound design, as each noise was carefully selected and matched the character’s actions well, and the overall soundscape was believable and harmonious with the visuals. We were also complemented on the interaction between our characters, as they were expressive with their actions matching their words and tones, and they matched each other well by reacting to what each other were staying (e.g. the girl laughing at the boy’s ironic comment, the boy pulling an awkward expression after the girl gets excited about money, etc.)
Our criticisms were mostly to do with our lack of scene changes; the camera angle and setting never really changed once the two characters started talking, so it got a bit stale. We were advised to use more moments like the cutaway with the exploding car, as they kept the scene from getting too still and long. In future, I’ll consider the shot composition more during the storyboarding stage, so that I can ensure nothing lasts for longer than it should or becomes too repetitive.
Overall, I’ve learned a lot through this elective; I had never lip synched an animation before, and it turned out to not be as daunting as I thought it would be. This was also the first time I went through the full process of pre production for an animation; initial designs and research, character designing, storyboarding and then animation, and it was useful to experience what the workflow is like as I can plan things more appropriately in the future now. I’ll work hard to improve on varying camera angles, and I’ll practice the new skills I’ve picked up.
This week, our focus was on getting some pre production material ready for the animation. We had a lot to finish; designs for the bar and the outside of it, character designs and a storyboard showing the points where the camera would move in the animation. My partner and I chose to work on most stages together, so that we could combine our ideas well.
First, we worked on the setting; we split up and created a rough concept design each for the outside of the bar, before recouping and sharing our ideas.
This was my concept for the bar. I tried including references to some experiments that musk has spoken about, and implications of them going badly, such as the moon colonisation (which resulted in a broken moon, replaced with a robotic one) and a flying car that would explode. Around all this chaos is happy propaganda pictures of musk, creating a contrast between his actions and his portrayal by the controlled media. The bar is called tesla tavern, showing partly the extent of how much of an economic powerhouse musk has become; he went from solely owning tech to owning things as trivial as bars. This was my partner’s design. We both liked the shape of his bar better, as we agreed that it fit the setting nicely. My partner and I agreed that he would draw the final background; a mix of the two, with the shape of his bar and the creativity of mine.In the end, my partner created this background design. He took inspiration from the game cyberpunk 2020, giving the whole thing a cyber punk aesthetic which paired well with the dystopian vibe we had going on. We agreed that in the animation, the bar’s logo would flicker to give off a run down look, and he’d add a robot and a flying car. We put the musk posters around the bar, as they were an easy indicator of the kind of future this was. My partner incorporated neon blue and purple lights into the design, which I think was clever for two reasons; These colours are often associated with unnatural happenings, which adds well to the robotic and cyber aesthetic of the animation, and the neon features made it look more futuristic.I came up with this rough design for the inside of the bar. I tried to include musk branding while not taking away from the characters too much, since they’ll be the main focus for this scene.My partner came up with the idea to incorporate musk branding on to the drinks, which we both thought was a clever and subtle detail, so we went with it.My partner designed the inside of the bar, which matches well with the rest of the place; it has a sense of familiarity to it so the viewer will know where it’s meant to be, but it also has some futuristic elements such as the lights, and some tesla branding. The tesla branding is pretty much everywhere, again reinforcing the fact that musk owns almost everything.
With my partner doing most of the background work, my focus was more on the storyboarding and character designs. At first, we chose to divide the work into one character per person; I would design the male speaker, cyborg with a human head inside a glass tank attached to a robotic, tesla branded body, and he would design the female speaker, an ordinary human girl.
This was my initial design for the boy. I based his outfit on a Robo sapien toy, while keeping his head relatively human looking. I tried giving him an expressive and young-looking face, in part to match his voice, but also because he has a line about not trusting musk near his head, which is ironic since he’s seemingly trusted musk to alter the rest of his body, so I wanted him to be able to pull kind of dumb and cartoony facial expressions to match his character. I made him wear red so that he’d stand out in front of the background, and I added some green gloves to compliment the red. I also gave him a glowing tesla logo, where he can project images out of his body. He’s a result of some kind of a musk experiment; whether it was consensual or not isn’t disclosed, but he seems happy with his robotic body. My partner produced this turn around for the robot boy. Upon further inspection and some opinions from others, we realised that he looked a bit more like a space man than a robot. This was down to my inexperience in drawing robots, but luckily my partner had drawn quite a few, so he redesigned the outfit;This design was less close to human proportions, so it was a lot more effective. The stretchy arms were a cool feature, and the top bit looked a little more dethatched now. I pitched the idea of rounding off the helmet a bit which my partner liked, so we’ll make it more round in future depictions of him.I produced this more polished model sheet of the boy’s faces, trying to capture his overall slightly wacky personality and vibe. I opted to exaggerate his expressions a lot, and i tried working in a style somewhere between mine and my partners. His pupils and mouth are the easiest indicators of his mood; He has to make big expressions since he can’t move his body around naturally like a human.My partner designed this outfit for the girl, but he left out a head for her as he wasn’t confident in drawing girls. I, however, love to draw girls, so I took over the design process for her;I kept her outfit more or less the same, as she’s an ordinary girl and I felt that the outfit was already a good middle ground between normal and futuristic. I liked the purple colouring of it, and I gave her soft yellow hair to contrast with it a bit. I gave her a tanned skin tone as I felt it worked well with her palette, and I included some Tesla branding on the back of her outfit, implying either that musk owns a fashion line or that she works for a company under him and this is her uniform.I also made an expression sheet for her. Her expressions are a little less exaggerated because she’s less of a big character, but she still has her moments. I added a lot of notes, as I knew my partner wasn’t confident in drawing girls and I wanted to try making it easier for him.Next, I worked on the rough thumbnails, depicting when the camera would change angles. I included some contextual shots so that the viewer got a good look at the whole bar before the scene started, as there wasn’t actually going to be a lot of camera movement while the two spoke. As we had extra time, I was able to line and colour this storyboard.
Finally, I created this animatic on TV paint, matching the scenes up to the audio, which was relatively easy and gave an indication of how long each scene would be held. It also gave us an idea of what kinds of other sounds we’d need; some ambience for the bar, drink pouring sounds and a few robotic beeps and boops.
And that was it for this week. Next week, we’ll be able to start doing the rough animation, which I look forward to, but we still have a few steps to go until then.
I have now started the lip sync rotation. For this project, we’ll need to produce a 1 minute animation in pairs using unscripted audio, with a heavy focus on how we can creatively come up with situations to match the dialogue and how we can use body language to bring the characters to life.
To begin with, we had to record a minute of unscripted audio in randomized pairs about a random news subject. After this, we were sorted into different pairs, and together we had to choose a total of 3 audios and come up with rough initial ideas and loglines for them, before narrowing the decision down to just one audio. Me and my partner chose 3 audios; two about house prices in the UK and one about a crazy elon musk experiment. For each idea we came up with rough concepts, using a website called miro to document a few pictures and notes for our ideas;
Our first quick concept was two hobbit like creatures planning to riot about house prices. This idea came from a few lines in the audio; one speaker referred to herself as a ‘little hobbit’, and they spoke of not being able to afford their houses and rioting about it. We considered making up two cute hobbit characters and having them plan this riot together, with one being more enthusiastic and the other being slightly dim witted.This idea involved two girls speaking about how hard it is to afford a house, mentioning drastic ideas such as finding sugar daddies. One girl spoke of her brother quite vaguely, which gave us the idea to make a comedic piece where her brother was some sort of a shady drug dealer, like Walter White from breaking bad.This conversation was about Elon musk’s neura link experiment; a chip was embedded into a monkey’s brain, allowing it to play pong purely using it’s mind in exchange for a banana smoothie. For this idea, we came up with a futuristic concept; a world where everything was owned and run by Elon Musk, as some form of a supreme leader.
We chose to go with the musk idea, as it was the most visually interesting and we seemed to be mutually most interested in it. We developed the logline for this concept after choosing it, and then tried developing it further;
We decided to have the characters be two people from the future in a run down bar, speaking about musk and his latest antics.
We started to look more into visual cues we could use to communicate our dystopian future setting to the viewers in an effective way. Upon the recommendation of a teacher we looked into propaganda posters from the war, and thought about incorporating them into our setting’s design. As for the setting itself, it would be a futuristic but run down bar here on earth, but many years into the future. Musk has somehow lived this long with the aid of technology, and rules over all of mankind, who don’t view him very favourably.
Over the course of the week, we added a few more things to the board; reference images for art, links to the news story so that we could understand it better and some rough ideas. I look forward to seeing how our idea will progress in the following weeks.
The objective this time was to produce a 30 second scary video, proving that you understood the things we had been learning about. I chose to do an animatic, as it was the most efficient way for me to work. I briefly considered a live action film, but I don’t really have any equipment that would make that work.
Again, it took me a whole week to come up with a spooky story, as i’m not good at making up scary things and I don’t watch any horror at all. I already knew that an unsuspecting, ordinary victim made things scarier for me, so I knew i wanted to go with that. My first idea was to have a dystopian world where everyone was forced to act happy, but dystopias aren’t really scary in my opinion, it’s more like it’s own genre. I also didn’t want to go with the whole contrasting happy imagery with a dark theme idea again, so I decided to drop this idea.
Within my generation process for this idea, I remembered this video that I watched once about a pop app. K-pop is one of my interests, so I watched this video just for fun in my free time, but it ended up inspiring my project. To summarise the video, There was once an app called MyDol, which allowed people to ‘talk’ to Korean idols. In reality, the messages were just auto generated by an AI, which responded in accordance to the types of things it had learned from conversations with you. The app started off pretty innocently, but eventually the AI started sending very scary and unusual messages to people. Some even report the AI telling them their own addresses and personal information. I find the idea of AI kind of creepy within itself; to me, it’s like a puppet performing with no puppeteer behind it. You’re interacting with someone who doesn’t actually exist or have a from. Is it self aware? are it’s responses planned? it’s pretty scary to me.
From this video, i knew that i wanted to work with some kind of an anonymous being that interacted with people through technology. I thought it would be really scary to have a being with no clear origin and questionable objectives; there isn’t a way to get through to a creature like this because we don’t know why it’s acting the way it does.
I came across this hideous video that I couldn’t sit through, and as of now I’m having a hard time even looking at the thumbnail while typing this. There’s nothing inherently scary about this, but I just hate things like it so much. It’s some kind of a robot singing with an auto generated voice; it’s completely robotic and very uncanny. It reminded me of some of the discussions we had in our lessons, and I tried getting to the bottom of what made it freak me out so much, as it could be included in my own animatic. I think what I hate about it is that it’s like it’s alive but not living; it’s moving and singing, but it lacks a lot of things that make it feel natural. I didn’t really want to work with a concept like this for my animatic, but I included the video in part because it perfectly displays why AI lives are creepy to me, and also in part because I didn’t want to have to experience this terror alone.
I came up with a story for my animatic, and I liked it so it’s what I went with. A boy would receive a text from an unknown source, asking him a simple question; Red or blue? the boy is doomed upon receiving the text, because with whichever answer he chooses, he’ll be murdered in a way that will present the colour; either strangled until he’s blue or beaten until he bleeds red. He answers the question, and when he does, all technology in his house suddenly gets corrupted. A shadowy and anonymous figure presents itself from his television, and strangles him.
I like this idea because it raises a lot of questions; how many people have fallen victim to this text? where does the creature come from? what is it? it seems like it could be an opening scene for a horror movie. I wanted to include a lot of details, such as a segment on the news of a string of young people being found choked and beaten, and the monster having some kind of a checklist for it’s victims, but I only had 30 seconds so I had to keep it brief. I also considered having the victim’s faces appear on the monster after it had killed them, but I think I couldn’t have conveyed this clearly enough to the audience with the given amount of time, so I didn’t include it.
Here was my finished product. I opted for a simple art style so that I was able to draw a lot quickly. For the sound track, I tried to keep it mostly ambient and silent, with the louder sounds coming in later as the monster appeared. I used a repeated glitching sound, to emphasize that every electronic in the house had malfunctioned upon the monster’s appearance. I gave the monster a childish voice, using voice clips from a character in a Zelda game, as i felt that this disconnect made him a little more disturbing; he was like a playful child, seemingly killing people for fun.
Overall, I think I was successful in this animatic. I managed to stay more on task, and I like how it looked. I have yet to see how other people react to it, but that will indicate to me if the story is clear enough to viewers. I think as an improvement I could’ve worked on the timings a little better, as I think maybe the texts go by a little quickly.
I’m a bit late on the blogging for this project, but here I’ll document the process of our first task, creating a scary 6 frame storyboard. We were supposed to make a ghost story, but I went slightly off task admittedly and just went for something with an overall spooky atmosphere.
To be frank, I hate horror and everything scary, so this task was challenging to me. My art style is practically the opposite of scary and I don’t have much experience with how to frighten an audience, since I go to great lengths to avoid anything even remotely disturbing. It took me quite a while to figure out how I would make something creepy, but after some quick research, I was able to produce something I’m somewhat proud of as a starting point.
Firstly, I thought back on a documentary we had to watch about the movie ‘the shining’. I was able to get through this documentary, and there were some pretty interesting ideas explored in it. although I did find some of the ideas to be very out there and far fetched. What I got from the documentary was that the things that made the shining scary were the subtle details and attention to detail, more so than the actual scary shots. There were a lot of subtle details added to create tension, such as very early foreshadowing, the use of different shots and sounds and subtle hints to more sinister themes such as the mistreatment of native Americans. I found this much to be interesting, as usually if I was thinking to scare someone, I’d go for something loud, flashy and visually disturbing. This documentary taught me that sometimes slowly hinting at disturbing themes can be more effective than revealing everything right away.
Next, I thought to myself about what scares me. In short practically everything scares me, but I’m more scared of things that are realistic and could happen to anyone. These things scare me because the victims are often just ordinary people that I can see bits of myself in; completely innocent and unsuspecting civillians who are dragged into dark situations, broken down and never given a happy ending or a way out. Things like this disturb me because they could truly happen to anyone. At this point, I knew I wanted to do something with an air of realism to it; something shocking, but still somewhat possible.
The biggest problem I faced was with the art. No matter how much I tried, I couldn’t draw anything that looked scary or sinister. However, I started to think that I could use this to my advantage; if the whole thing looks cute, the scare will be all the more disturbing and unsuspecting. A disconnect between the visuals and the scenario could be what helped my piece to stand out. I looked online for things that kind of blended more childish and cute imagery with scary themes, and I found two things;
This is a YouTube series called ‘Don’t hug me I’m scared’. It went viral because it’s seemingly just a piece of children’s media, exaggerated by the character designs and the song, but it unexpectedly takes a dark turn very abruptly. This is scary not just because of the visuals, but because it went on long enough to just feel like a kid’s show before suddenly turning scary. It also kind of felt like something was off from the start, with the out of place monotone voice for one of the characters and the odd behaviour of the notebook, which foreshadowed the sinister happenings toward the end. Some people theorise a deeper meaning to this series, claiming that it represents the corruption of children’s media and wrong agendas being pushed on to children for the sake of making money, but even at face value it’s pretty disturbing. I want to create something seemingly innocent with darker undertones, similar to this video.
The second thing I discovered was this show, happy tree friends. I actually used to watch this as a child so I was familiar with it; It’s a cartoon where horrific and gory things happen to the cute characters. This show visually is very cartoony and unrealistic, but even in this style it manages to be very gory and an unpleasant experience for viewers. It proves that style doesn’t matter as long as you have a sick mind and are able to come up with a twisted premise. I don’t know how I’d make use of gore in only 6 frames since I kind of have to push a story forward, but it was still helpful to discover.
Now, I was ready to create my storyboard. I decided that I’d add sound to it and make it into a video, as I wanted to put in a lot of effort for this piece and get my brain used to creating something disturbing. I knew right away that i wanted to include an innocent victim, and I chose an animal. People always talk about being the most sad when pets die in horror movies, and I feel that’s because the animals are just there doing nothing, they don’t get themselves into these situations and so it’s horrible when we see bad things happening to them. Humans make decisions for them, so it’s sad when these decisions lead to their demise. I chose to use cats, as a lot of people love them and have experience with them, so it adds an air of reality to the whole thing.
For the story, I wanted to have a person take in missing cats and give them seemingly good lives. However, the person actually kills the cats and steals their eyes for an unknown reason. For the whole thing, the story would go smoothly and cutely, but at the end you’d find out what the person’s real intentions were. I originally had the main character planned to just be an average person, but I changed it to a child because it added another layer of creepiness to the piece; why would a child want to kill cats? why would such a young mind already be corrupted, why does she even know about the concept of murder? I also chose to picture no other humans, to make it look like the cat only had the option to go with the child, so it trusted her. I wrote a poem for the dialogue, to give it a children’s book vibe.
Here was the finished result. I got my sister to narrate it, as it fit the character well. I added a relaxed backing track, and I drew the last frame in a slightly different style to emphasize how disturbing it was.
All in all, I feel this was a good start to creating something spooky. It was my first time doing it, and I feel I was successfully able to throw in enough curve balls to shock the audience in the end. I tried including a slightly disturbing atmosphere from the very start, with the absence of any other characters and the realistic backgrounds in comparison to the cartoon characters. To criticise myself, I went a bit off task, and i didn’t really talk about anything supernatural. Next time, i’ll try to stick to the task at hand more.
As of writing this post, I have finished my loop. Previously i finished the character’s line art and colouring, so all i really had left to do was add some colour to the background and add sound.
The background was nothing too complicated, I just used solid colours to make the place look like a room. I added some texture to the ceiling, but I’m not too sure if you can see it well. I chose to go with blue because I wanted to keep the palette relatively limited, I didn’t want it to pop or stand out too much, so i used a chilled and relaxed colour. I also think this suited Sulli well; he’s a character who enjoys relaxing, so it makes sense that he’d choose somewhere with a calming and relaxing atmosphere. I considered adding some things into the background, but I’d rather have all of the attention on Sulli so I opted for a more blank background. I kept a dark layer over the room so that I would look like the lights were off, as this made sense with the animation. It made the light pop a bit more, which I liked the look of.
With everything else done all I had to do was add sound, which completed the animation, as can be seen above. I was a bit stuck on what to do for this phase; shadows don’t naturally make sounds, so I had to be creative with how I’d introduce noise. The first thing I did was add some atmospheric background noise, as the animation takes place in an empty room so it would be a bit hollow sounding and echo-y. Next I needed to consider what sounds the shadow himself would make; I initially wanted to provide a voice for him, but I kind of liked his more silent nature, it reminded me of old cartoons where the characters wouldn’t speak, which relied more on body language, expression and sound effects to communicate what the character is feeling to the audience.
In the end, I chose loud and unrealistic sound effects for Sulli, echoing each one so that it matched the atmospheric sound in the background. I chose to use lighter an quicker sounds when he turned into a rabbit to portray it as small and kind of cute, while I used deeper and louder sounds for the monster to make it ‘scary’ in a sense. I liked the turn out of this, I think it gave off the personality I was trying to give Sulli well.
Overall on this rotation, there were parts I felt I did well, but I faced a lot of issues. The first thing I think I did well was planning out my timings; I never fell too far behind at any point, and I managed to finish on time. However, I think I was too eager to not fall behind at points; I wanted to move ahead quickly, so I didn’t stay on some stages for long enough. An example of this is with the stage after I finished my research; I didn’t do artistic experimentation looking back, and the lack of this lead to a final piece that wasn’t all that experimental in comparison to everyone else’s. I ended up producing something that looks like I could’ve produced it outside of a project, it looks like the kind of stuff I usually do. I think if I had been more flexible in the experimentation stage, I could’ve ended up with something more interesting as a final outcome. In future projects I want to experiment with a range of things before settling on one, I want to become someone who produces pieces of work that differ from each other a lot with each project, and to do this I think I need to challenge myself more to work with other art styles and mediums.
A second thing I think I could’ve improved on was being more clear with my audience. I’m not sure if it’s very clear what is going on in my loop right now, I don’t know if people can tell that it’s a shadow. I ran into a similar problem with my animatic project; I didn’t really consider that I knew a lot more about my work than the audience, so maybe it wasn’t clear enough what the story was. I think i can overcome this by becoming more confident in sharing my work, and asking people if it’s clear enough and what I can change.
Lastly, I feel a bit like all of my work so far has looked really similar. Everything is kind of in the same style, with the same kind of atmosphere. I want to become more flexible as an artist so that I can communicate a range of messages in a range of different ways; Every time I finish a project, I look back on it and feel a bit dissatisfied with it. This has been happening with my personal artwork as well; I think I should try taking a break from my usual way of working and find new ways of drawing and communicating. I’ll aim to practice drawing a lot, as I feel I’m not so good it it right now and it affects my animations and the way I approach them. Maybe I’m avoiding ambitious art pieces because of my lack of confidence in drawing, so I think improving in that area will push my projects forward.
Overall, I feel this project has taught me a lot about research. Truthfully, in the past I’ve felt like research was just something teachers made us do and wasn’t completely necessary, But I’ve seen through my own and through other people’s work how much a strong body of research and experimentation can drive a project forward, and how it can help to form ideas. I think research can strengthen any project now, even simpler ones, and I understand it’s importance and value it more now. Doing research can completely change your approach to your project, and it can also help to generate ideas when you’re stuck. In future projects I’ll treat the research just as importantly as I treat the process of creating artwork; I’ve learned that it can be a good thing to slow down and let ideas form themselves than to rush ahead to try and meet a deadline (deadlines are still important of course but, yeah). I’ll adopt this mindset into each new project that I come out with.
