Category: Rotations

During this rotation, we had to create a 3D environment. My final model is displayed on the left, which shows a somewhat eerie house with the lights on. I wanted there to be a sense of creepiness, with the dim streetlamps outside, and dull colour palette. I used a few shades of green and brown for the house and environment, and used yellow lighting for the windows, lamps and area light. I also tried to change the lighting around in order to create a ‘mood’ within the environment, with the front of the house facing the source of light, and the back being only illuminated by the light source within the house.​

​A hurdle with this rotation is that I do not have a very powerful PC and work primarily on a laptop. This meant that I had to use Blender instead of Maya, and learn the software with no prior knowledge.​

On the other hand, this rotation made me feel less nervous about 3D design, as there is a lot of freedom and ability to develop your environment that may be difficult to do using 2D software such as Photoshop.​

​Going forward, I will continue to expand on my 3D skills even if it is not required in future lessons, as it is gratifying when everything goes to plan.​

These are some images I used for inspiration on the type of structures and colours I would want to keep in mind while modelling. Although my final render is not as complicated a either of the two buildings above, they helped me understand how I could keep a somewhat eerie mood within the environment.

Pictured to the right are some initial concept ideas I had for the model. I wanted there to be sloping in areas of the house in order to creates some interesting shapes.​

​I also wanted the windows to be have an interesting shape as well, however I was unable to do this due to time constraints. ​

​I intended for all the windows to be lit up since it would create lighting within the house rather than just outside.​

To view the above text and image in a downloadable format, please click the download button below!

Analysis

For this rotation, I wanted to explore beyond my usual artstyle while designing a character. I generally opt for more detailed designs, however, I wanted to imagine a character in an animated environment. Overly-detailed characters can suffer in animation and be tedious to draw, so in order to create a simpler one I thought about basic shapes.​

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I wanted my character (based around the season ‘Winter‘) to have a roundness to them, so I used basic shapes with harsher edges and softened them (for example, the coat of my character is just a simple triangle with around edges). I aimed for my character to be like this as I consider Winter a childlike season, and thus, I wanted a childlike character. I also wanted some type of animal motif (a deer) that represents Winter, as I believe that a fantasy-type character matches the ‘magic’ of the season.​

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The colour palette I chose makes the character stand out in perhaps a snowy environment, with the darker blues and purples, and I wanted a pop of colour on the design with the slightly yellow fur. I also included a texture on the clothing, to emulate that thick, warm feeling Winter coats have.​

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Overall, making a character that I wouldn’t usually make was both challenging and rewarding. Learning about how to make interesting characters from basic shapes was helpful, as I was able to make an eye-catching character without thinking too heavily about details early in the design stage​

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Below are just some basic outfit choices I was considering when designing the character (moodboard in .pdf file).

Before I started the project, I also did a warm-up exercise.

For this task, I had to create five different characters that comprised of different shapes. This was a challenge for me, as I am more used to drawing humans as opposed to characters that have human traits, but are not. Overall, it was a fun exercise, especially adding finer details to the characters to make them unique in their own way!

To view the above text and image in a downloadable format, please click the download button below!

Analysis

For this rotation, I wanted to work around a story based on a photo, and keep it as a short story, as opposed to the beginning of something longer. My immediate thought was to write about sickness, as it is not archetypically ‘dark’, however can be depending on the sick person’s view of their own illness.​

​The image used is a page from a book that discusses illnesses found in the pre-modern era, and the shocking effect they have on something as resilient as the human body. From this, I decided to write about a man who is partially in denial about being ill and believes that only sinners can develop disease. At the end I heavily imply that the man has passed, likely due to his illness.​

​This rotation was challenging in the sense that I had to make sure the story was compelling and make sure that it was within 150 words as well. I wish I could delve into the mindset of the character more, however I also wanted to make his negative impression of sickness clear.​

​Overall, I’m pleased with the outcome of my story. There are a few improvements that could be made with the pacing of the story, otherwise I believe that the intention behind why I made the story comes across clearly.​

To view the above text and image in a downloadable format, please click the download button below!

For this rotation, we were asked to create 3 x 10 second audio films. Going into this
rotation, I had never ventured into sound design too much, so I thought it would be fun
to experiment with the different noises I would hear when venturing outside and within
my household. For the first 10 second clip I used the sounds of water dripping and the
noise of construction outside of my house. I felt that the two sounds combined created a
very eerie atmosphere, so I distorted the audio of the construction in Adobe Premier
Pro until it sounded almost musical. I then added a reverb to the water dripping so that
it was more in the foreground of the audio. With that I paired it with unsettling visuals
and was fairly satisfied with the result.

The next clip uses only the sounds I recorded in a local café. I only used noises from the
café alone for this animation since there was a lot of layered sounds, from the music
playing to the sounds of clattering utensils. I pitched the audio down to create a shift in
the tone of the audio, I then created animation that also had a shift in the visuals, with
something slightly darker.

The final ten seconds uses the audio of me crushing fruit using the bottom of a glass,
along with a knife scraping across an empty chopping board. I initially started off with
only the audio of the fruit being squished but thought it would be more interesting with
the sound of knife chopping something. With the audios combined with some reverb
and deepening the audio, it sounded like pieces of meat being cut viscerally. I left the
animation slightly more ambiguous, with just a simple ‘slideshow’ of raw meat that I
drew, with illustrations of human organs quickly popping up.

Overall, this rotation was both interesting and challenging. I generally don’t work with
editing audio on Premier Pro so I was slightly worried that I would spend too long trying
to work on it. However; this ended up being a lot easier than I thought it would be, and
experimenting with different sounds and hearing how much they could be morphed to
sound like something else was very fun.

Click the download link below to view the text above in a .pdf form!

To begin with this rotation, we initially started by going to a specific location, and making location sketches of whatever we found interesting. Pictured on the left are ten of the many sketches I did while in the Waterloo area, and a few in other parts of London. From this exercise, we had to choose one image as a middle panel for a three-panel comic strip, shown above. ​

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The picture I chose was the sketch in the middle of the ones shown on this slide, with a woman staring into a vintage bakery. From this I thought of a story where a lonely young boys longs to go outside and enjoy life like how others his age would. In the middle slide, he stares at the cakes in a patisserie, and essentially decides to buy all the pastries in the store with his immense wealth and eat them by himself. ​

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Overall, I had a great time working with this rotation, especially since it was my first-time doing location drawing in a while (due to restrictions). I initially felt slightly nervous going out and drawing people, however with a little bit of practice it became a lot easier to grasp, including people/things who were in motion.​

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Click the download link below to view the text above in a .pdf form, including the location sketches! (also includes the image above in a higher quality)

After looking through the photos I had taken for this rotation, I decided that I wanted my initial concept to be slightly dark and have a sense of foreboding. Using a layer mask, I removed the background of the poles located at the back, centre and bottom of my composition. For the poles behind the building, I lowered the opacity to make the shapes seem as though they are further away from the viewer’s perpective, and make them have a slightly ominious, looming feeling over the shorter buildings. Additionally, I overlayed some shadows on the flat background image to create that effect to a larger extent.​

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The shape at the foot of the composition was used the ‘Multiply’ blending mode, which makes it look more like a shadow, and then additionally, a ‘Guassian Blur’ filter was applied for the shadow to blend in with the ground. The same was done to the shape within the reflection, however, I left it a lot more prominent, so the eyes are initally attracted to the centre of the composition. The overall image itself has both the ‘Levels’ and ‘Curves’ adjustment layers in order to manipulate the blacks and whites within the composition and add depth to certain areas (e.g. the buildings in the background).​

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The doorframe in the centre of the composition was also removed from its original image using a layer mask. I thought it would be interesting for the frame to be placed in the middle (where there was originally a staue of a man on a horse) as it has very soft, curved shapes in contrast to the rest of the composition, which has straight-cut, uniform shapes. That way, the viewer’s eyes are focused on the middle of the composition, and then starts to see the more rigid shapes around it. My intention in this is to create a sense that there is freedom in an iron-fisted, dystopian world beyond the reflection, however, the looming shape within it says otherwise. I used the blending option ‘Drop Shadow’ to create a darkness around the centre shape to aide this.​

Overall, I am pleased with the outcome of my composition, however there could be adjustments, predominantly along the bottom of the composition, which feels rather empty. If I could do this rotation again, I would focus my camera higher on the background photo so that there is more in the distance for the poles, which would make them look more threatening. This would also remove some empty, unsused space within the composition.​

Click the download link below to view the text above in a .pdf form! (excludes screenshots)

We started this rotation with a ‘straight ahead’ animation. Out of all the animating methods, this one was not too difficult, as there was more creative freedom and flow in the movement of my animation, however it was challenging keeping everything at an even scale. When I line tested, I noticed that certain aspects would grow and shrink. 

Initially, I felt as though pose to pose animation would be rather tough. When I started working on the inbetweens, it was not as difficult, granted that I constantly line tested. Overall, the method is straightforward, but suffered from having a dull process. Next time, I would go for a simpler character to save time.

In the third task, we looked at ‘arcs and motion’ and ‘timing and spacing’. Drawing out the arc shape helped greatly with making sure that both the ball and the character moved in a ‘realistic’ way. Although the animation looks simple, making sure the ball stays consistent in size all the way was quite the task.

This was not mentioned in the pdf, but the tuft of fabric connected to the character was rather difficult to animate as I was not sure how exactly it would move when the ball rolls across the frame. I ended up deciding for that tuft to just hang limpy off the side of the ‘ball’ part of the character.

For this task, the process was almost like ‘pose to pose’, except it required more inbetweens at the beginning and end of the pose. This creates a more natural movement in the character, as opposed to the slight robotic movement in the second task. In that regard, this was a lot harder than ‘pose to pose’ animation.

Click the download link below to view the text above in a .pdf form!

During this rotation, I wanted to think carefully about how I interpreted the theme ‘Connection’. I aimed to create a short motion graphics of a coffee bean growing, and eventually transitioning into a mug of coffee, conveying a brief connection between each step. Below is a small storyboard I made when deciding the key scenes.

Before the making process, I wanted to make sure that there were scenes where I could make use of the Bezier curve graph in order to make the animation smoother (for example, in the second act, where the blonde bean becomes ‘roasted’).

I also explored with different features in After Effects, particularly with Motion Blur to create a realistic, natural movement between each sequence.

Overall, exploring with the different tools in After Effects helped me achieve a smoother animation. Experimenting with the curve graphs created interesting movement in some of the transitions, for example, zooming into one of the fruits in the first scene. I am also pleased that I was able to include the three core principles of animation in many of the scenes, and used colours I usually wouldn’t use in my work to create staging for the focal points in the animation.

Areas to improve can be the speed of the animation, as some transitions were too quick which can be very distracting, and leaves no time for a reaction. I believe that this can be improved upon by cutting out scenes that are maybe not as important, and making key scenes more ‘explosive’ which leaves a longer lasting impression on the viewer.

Click the download link below to view the text above in a .pdf form!