Year 1 Portfolio
my work :)
3D Computer Animation: Retro Device
Visual Narrative: retro device Video
Animation Arts: Living Voices
Visual Narrative: lip-synch video
3D Computer Animation: Retro Device
Retro Device Elective
At first, I could not think of what device to create, let alone what era I would place it in. after brainstorming for a bit. I decided on the Ming dynasty, as it has a very distinct style, and therefore would make for an interesting process. I thought about what the most useful invention would be to have been created in that era. Many of the paintings I found consisted of royalty being fanned by various servants, and so I chose a ceiling fan.
Of course, that meant I had to figure out how it would work, as electricity didn’t exist. However, one of the things that inspired this idea of a ceiling fan, were portable nonelectric fans, which relied on a pulley method to generate fan power. I made the decision to incorporate this in the final design.
Porcelain as that is one of the things the era is most famous for, so I created a porcelain design based on lots of research. I searched what materials were commonly used and found that the metal materials included bronze, which was mainly used for intricate objects, copper, mainly for coins, and iron, which was used for hidden objects like chains and screws. During my research I found that most inventions created in the Ming dynasty had incorporated wheels., so I wanted to incorporate a wooden wheel in the design. Modelling was simple as a ceiling fan consists of various shapes. The most interesting part was texturing as there are many different textures included.
My main criticisms are on the final animation. I struggled a lot with the pulley system as I wanted to include a rope being weighed down by a vase, however rigging the rope proved difficult. I decided on a revolving rope, which I got help for from my personal tutors. I would like to work on correctly rigging it, so there is more of a flowing motion of the rope. If I could change anything I would have animated the gears and wheels to be spinning along with the fan, so that there is some use for them being in the design, other than aesthetic purposes.
In the future I would like to work on creating more intricate designs as this was relatively simple. And would like to work on a more difficult rig to figure out how that should have worked.
Mood board:
After figuring out what device and era I wanted to create I did some research into the materials and devices used.
I then researched how a fan would work if it was non-electric
Some concept sketches:
The official design:
A 2 paragraph creative writing piece inspired by this device:
As the golden sun spilled its warm glow through the intricate lattice windows of the palace, an unexpected sight greeted the courtiers and dignitaries gathered within. Suspended from the high coffered ceiling, was a mesmerizing contraption. Its fans whirled around, casting shadows across the ornate tapestries adorning the walls. It was a ceiling fan, a marvel of craftsmanship and ingenuity that seemed to defy the boundaries of gravity. The cool breeze it emanated whispered secrets of distant lands, evoking a sense of wonder, and curiosity among the ancient dynasty’s inhabitants.
The Emperor was captivated by the sight. He marvelled at the fan’s delicate design, its blades curving gracefully like ribbons. With every gentle rotation, it seemed to carry with it a touch of modernity, an intangible connection to a world yet to be discovered. The courtiers, initially confused by this foreign invention, soon found peace in its gentle breeze, which offered respite from the sweltering heat of the summer days. Soon enough, the entire population was won over by the ceiling fan, leaving its permanent mark in history.
The final animation
The audio I used in the final animation:
Informed practise essay
Your assignment is to write an essay (1,600 words, +/- 10%) in response to one of the three prompts from the project brief (below). Your essay should deal critically with your chosen subject and reference at least five scholarly texts relevant to your enquiry. These could be sourced from textbooks, the writing of philosophers and cultural theorists, academic journals or texts used during the unit.
All research sources in-text must be fully referenced (using the Harvard system) and a bibliography at the end of your submission must be included.
Project Briefs
write an essay in response to one of the three prompts below:
a) Select a visual narrative of your choice that is broadly dystopian or speculative (either comic book, film, television programme, animation or video game) and discuss the role fear or hope plays within the narrative. What is the source of the fear? What formal techniques are used to manipulate the feelings of the audience? Explain how the narrative, and in particular the representation of fear within the narrative, relates to broader cultural, social or political issues in play at the time the work was made
b) Choose a storyteller/philosopher/artist known to you whose work deals with broadly dystopian or utopian themes, and whose ideas have been adapted for the screen. Is the adaptation a straight or a loose interpretation of the original idea/story? Is there a shift in how formal elements (such as the theme, characterization, style, tone, and plot) are presented within the adaptation? Is the overall message of the original text retained?
c) From the Utopian Play List – choose one documentary (or compare two) and for your essay analyse how the director addresses the audience; how the voice-over, the cinematography, the editing and the way subjects in the documentary are framed to represent a particular point-of-view. Or how does the director disrupt the typical documentary mode of address? And what ultimately do you think the films say about the future.
For this assignment, I chose the first project brief. The media I chose was Train to Busan 2016
Interim Assignment Presentations
For this assignment, I worked together with Hunter Main. the brief was to create a 40-60 second film on the phrase ‘the last night of the world’
We met up over the break and went to the national history museum to get some inspiration for the project. After discussing it, and creating a moldboard, we decided to go with a more science fiction approach with an alien invasion concept, using 2D animation.
Hunter created some storyboards:
We ended up revising them as it seemed a bit too much to fit into 1 minute
I sketched out some character designs and Hunter redrew them to fit his style, as we have slightly different drawing styles.
We then animated parts of it separately using the revised storyboard as a basis and created this final animation:
Making babies: Women and Dystopia
Create a storyboard based off the concept ’the end of the world’
Animation Arts: Living Voices
Lip Synch elective
For this elective, we were given 7 example audios to choose from and were told to animate 2D characters lipsynching to one of these audios. we could also choose our own audio.
I chose the second example audio we were given:
After choosing the audio I came up with an idea of the characters I wanted to animate by putting together a Spidergram for the main character
Then I made rough mood boards of the characters I wanted to animate
I then refined these mood boards to create these ones:
Then I created the rough sketches and final turnarounds of how I wanted them to look like and interact with each other
After getting some advice from my tutors, here are the storyboards I came up with:
I broke down the sound transcripts and created x files of how many frames I would need for the lipsync and different mouth shapes for the characters
I created backgrounds for each scene I was incorporating
I drew out the keyframes and my animatic was finalised:
I then drew out the in-betweens and colourised them. here is the final animation:
Worlds End Introduction
Homework:
- select a sequence of moving image (film, TV, game, animation etc) and also a quotation from a critical text (not specifically related to the object) of no longer than five sentences.
- if you need to add minor transitions or effects so text and image sync do so (but not attempt editing multiple clips).
- The quotation should then appear onlife screen in some dynamic interaction with the video.
- Further, either replace or significantly alter the soundtrack.
I used a clip from the tv series ’The Haunting of Bly Manor’ and paired it with Ludovico Einaudi ‘experience’ and the quote ’death always leaves one singer to mourn’ by Katherine Anne Porter.
Out Of Your Head
For this project I decided to work with Sabir Rana, Adeolu Ogunyemi, and Alex Mallison. Having worked with Sabir and Adeolu previously I knew that we worked well togther as teamates, and I knew that we would all work well with Alex.
In our groups we had to chose 5 words from a list of words we were given and come up with a concept for a 20 second animation showing a storyline with a begining, middle and end. The words that we ended up choosing were: poison, village, shadow, swamp and castle.
We collectively came up with a concept of a King who sees his future in a crystal ball that he is fated to die at the hands of a shadowy figure. he then goes out of his way to avoid his fate, such as exiling all the villagers out of the kingdom. in the end because of his actions taken to avoid his fate. he ends up falling victim to it, and the castle crumbles down into the swamp it was built on top of.
We decided to include more of a comedic tone in order to lighten the moody undertone of the story, as we were focusing on a kind of Shakesperean and tragic storytelling and wanted to include something that would engage people yet not make the audience feel that it was too serious. of a piece.
Alex came up with a moodboard of what are piece was going to include based off of the words that we chose for our concept. We had decided on incuding colours that were visually appealing to the audience, so for our inspirations I suggested the show ‘Bee and puppycat’ as the colour scheme is bright and appealing while still showing serious and tragic topics and getting the point across, which is what we wanted to include in our animation piece. Alex suggested the film adoption of ‘Macbeth’ which works well as it is similar in theme to what we wanted our film to be, especially in terms of the colour palette.
Moodboard:
After our idea got greenlit, which involved cutting down on a lot of the ideas that we wanted to include in our final piece, I created these simplified storyboards that showed what we imagined our final piece would look like. We decided to allow for creative freedom when completing the final animation as we knew we may not have enough time to do a lot of what we wanted to.
Storyboards:
We made the decision to split up the tasks just before we broke up for winter break. I was tasked with the storyboard and some of the backgrounds, and Alex got started on the character designs of our two main characters.
Character Designs:
After we got back from the winter break we decided to get started on the animation and background designs. some of our group had already got started on their animation and I had got some backgrounds drawn. for the interior of the castle I took inspiration from medieval church interior and the colour scheme of ‘Bee and puppycat’
Background Designs:
There is a 5th background that Sabir created of the castle in full when developing his 5 seconds. Adeolu created some concept art for it (pictured left)
In order to work more time efficiently we made the decision to split the 20 seconds that we had to animate of our film into 4, and each of our team were tasked with animating 5 seconds of the story which we put together at the editing stage of production.
My 5 Seconds:
This took me around 2 weeks to complete. Originally I had planned to have things happen a little differently, for example, I wanted to animate the walking staff at the beginning of the scene with different designs, until iI realised that it would distract from the King and the Prince, who are the main characters in the story, so I gave them faceless designs, yet still included some staff designs in front of them to show that they are all staff from the castle. I also wanted to include the shadow scaring the king just like the storyboard presented but I realised there would not be enough time to include that in the final piece.
Final Video: REGICIDE