We had our meeting with Isobel to discuss our initial ideas and she gave us a preposed schedule which will help me to plan out my time management and make sure that I am keeping on track. She also gave us advice which we can apply to all of our works such as to consider the gender of the characters and consider who the characters are in terms of personality and motivations. I will consider these this week as I flesh out my idea and designs.
I started this week by doing research into my theme and creating mood boards based on different aspects of the designs I need to create. I did this by looking at different sites such as Pinterest and Google and then sorting and collaging the images that I found. I hoped to find some more abstract and interesting sources of inspiration. Based on the feedback I tried to find a variety of characters in terms of race and gender to have a more diverse line up to be inspired by.
Now that I have my mood boards I wanted to solidify my characters personalities and find poses that reflect the characters that I can use for my sketches. Using the brief, I identified some of the key poses that the characters would be doing and then I researched model references for these poses. I also created a mood board showing some character design layouts and examples of character design for 3D characters to use as inspiration.
Based on the feedback from last week I wanted to spend some time establishing who my characters are, their personalities and motivations so that the designs I create can reflect this.
For our GCS project we took a trip to the Van Gogh Immersive Experience London to explore how to turn a space into an immersive experience. This will relate to a GCS session in a couple of weeks so it will be great that we will go in with prior knowledge and first hand experience. I had heard about the Van Gogh experience before but had not bothered to look into it any further so I didn’t have any expectations going into it. Here are some photos that I took of the experience and the various artwork displays.
One part of the experience was that you could colour a Van Gogh painting and then take a picture of it and display it on a big screen. Then you could leave it blue tacked on the wall in a collage of all the other drawings. You were limited to a limited colour pallet of crayons so it was difficult to achieve certain colours. It has been a while since I had coloured anything with crayons and so I did enjoy getting to create art abstractly and not think to hard about the result but just enjoy the process.
Overall, I did enjoy getting to see it before it closes next month, and I learn a little something more about Van Gogh. However, did I think it was a worthwhile experience? It’s hard to say because it might have just simply not been my preference but the whole experience did seem a little lacklustre. It is interesting to see how these immersive experiences are being created and displaying artworks in new ways.
To prepare for this weeks session I watched the interview with Michael Morgan the Co-Founder and Director of Original magazine about cultivating a digital platform and audience. I then answered the questions in response to the interview which really made me question my own views on creativity.
During the session we talked about social media and online marketing and then we were tasked with in our breakout groups to chose a pre-existing person or brand and establish a social media plan to market them in a different country. We chose to focus on Lola Young who is already known in the UK and Canada and we chose to market her in South Korea.
We had to research about the ways that they use social media in South Korea and combine that with our pre existing knowledge of the country. We followed the prompts to consider how we would market Lola young in a way that aligns with their culture and encourages the existing Korean music fanbase. Ultimately, we did finish this task before our time was up and so we spent the rest of the time talking and getting to know each other and talking about our experiences and our countries. We got to hear some other groups submissions and it was interesting to hear how they would market different artists to different counties.
After the session, I answered the weekly manifesto questions in regards to social media.
At the beginning of this week we received our brief for the Isobel Stenhouse project. We started with an introduction where she told us about all the projects she’s worked on and the different roles she’s worked in before explaining the brief to us. Below I have included the project slides that are relevant for the character option which is the one that I have chosen to do.
Going into this project, I think the biggest challenge for me is going to be adapting to a lineless art style as the characters are intended to be interpreted in 3D so this is going to push me out of my comfort zone and explore different designs. The first thing that I want to do is decide on a location and genre so that I can personalise the brief to match. I started by mind mapping out some ideas that I can choose to explore. I wanted to come up with something more original and not something that first comes to mind when you read the brief.
I considered a bunch of different locations and concepts and then I decided which of my ideas would be better suited for the brief and that felt unique. In the end, I decided on choosing the Christmas one for my final idea because I felt like it fits with the timing of this project and can fit with the requirements of the brief. Now that I have chosen a genre, era and location, I am able to rewrite the brief to include this information.
A kid drops into a north pole toy workshop on the top left, cushioned by teddy bears when they land. They sneak their way past where Santa is working alongside a robot elf. The kid finds a present to place under a bookshelf. They climb the present to reach and steal the naughty or nice book. They exit to the right of the screen (if they don’t get caught).
Then I can start to generate some rough thumbnails and sketches for this project such as characters, props, poses and story based on my existing knowledge. Using the thumbnails I now know which aspects and elements I need to conduct research for and areas to look for in search of inspiration. I also plan to look into examples of character design specifically for 3D.
This week we had a UAL only online session where we recapped some of the concepts explored in the previous weeks and addressed how we should approach our Virtual getting to know you submission. Due to our busy schedules my group was unable to meet virtually so we chose to create introductory videos and share them between us. To prepare for this I went out to collect my own video footage as well as outsourcing some videos of our UAL campus to show what our University looks like. I then recording some voice over and edited it with the visuals using what we had learnt on premiere pro training last week.
I was then able to share my video with my group which i did by creating a collaborative padlet to share. I was also able to watch everyone else’s videos and see what where they live looks like and more about them and their culture. This gave me the opportunities to ask questions in order to gain more information and compare the similarities and differences in our culture. Afterwards, I had to write a overview reflection about the experience including screenshots.
This year, I was able to attend In Motion for the first time after hearing about it last year. I attended the first day of the event as the schedule had many artist talks that were interesting to me. I really enjoyed hearing from the different studios and seeing how they approach making work and running a studio. I also attended a talk by Netflix featuring sneak peaks at their newest animated film which was really inspiring to see this storytelling and it’s important to know what is currently being worked on and released in the industry. It was also a great opportunity to reconnect with some of my uni peers that I haven’t seen since the first year and catch up with what they have been working on. Afterwards, I wanted to quickly edit a little video of my day to share online on social media.
One of my favourite things from the event was the expo where they showcased some of the stop motion props from Blink ink and some sculptures by Cat Johnston. This included the puppets featured in Don’t hug me I’m Scared which was very exciting to see them in real life to see the details and the scale of these pieces. Cat Johnstons works were very interesting and I loved how unique and creative they are whilst still portraying a personality and character. I would definitely attend this event again, it was very busy this year and it is sometimes difficult to see everything as a lot of talks overlap.
We had a week full of training for adobe software in order to refresh and develop our skills and also prepare us for projects ahead.
Adobe After Effects
Here are some screenshots from the first session where we recapped the preferences and the interface such as how to use the tools and to set up a composition. We imported the files we would be working on and then got started keyframing the rotation and scale of certain assets as well as adding ease to make the movements smoother. Most of this was not new to me except I did learn about using functions to loop keyframes.
In the next session we finished off the musical animation by motion pathing the notes and adding effects such as hue / saturation. I then exported the final animation with the combination of all the things we were taught in after effects
We then started setting up our character animation file by downloading the resources and adjusting the anchor points ready to learn how to set up a character rig and animate it.
We then parent and linked each of the layers so that they would move together and then we animated each layer individually to make it look like the character was stumbling. I tried to incorporate the animation principles like anticipation and secondary movement to make the movements look more realistic and dynamic. We then made a puppet and moved the bones of the limbs to make the arms and legs bend and less rigid.
Next we created a character pre comp so that we can apply a drop shadow to the character entirely and not each layer individually. Then we created a new comp and adjusted the curves and hue / saturation effects to change the colours. Lastly, we duplicated it again and added stacked drop shadow.
Next we added some vignette to the adjustment layer and learnt how to add solids and masks. Then we imported a paper texture and overlayed it on the animation. We were then taught how to export but I already use Adobe Media Encoder to render and export my projects. Having done this training although I may not have learnt many new thing, it has made me more confident in my pre-existing abilities.
We started our next project which was text based where we applied transformations to a piece of text as well as animating its tracking. Then we experimented with applying different animation presents to the text to finish with.
Adobe Premiere Pro
We started by importing all of the video and audio assets into premiere and then created a new sequence. Then we marked the in and out of sections of the footage and imported them into the timeline including the interview clip where where created L and J cuts with the audio by trimming the visuals on either end. You can see in the screenshot below that we ducked the audio when the dialogue is playing so that you can hear the speaking better.
Next we added an exponential fade to the end of the audio and a dip to black effect on the last visual clip. I also added a cross dissolve effect between two clips to create a smoother transition. We then added the transcription, converted them into captions and adjusted their position and design. We also explore different graphic templates and added some to create titles to introduce the concept and the speaker.
In the next session we began by editing in the rest of the interview and learning what some of the other editing tools do. I then combined what we had learnt before to the full video. Lastly, we were taught how to export our videos.
In our last session, we looked at colour correction and changing the colour curves to affect the look of a visual. we experimented with different creative film adjustments as well as adding vignette.
Lastly, we looked at how to resize content for different aspect ratios for social media. It’s clear to see the limitations of this effect and how some would require more additional editing than others.
In preparation for this weeks session I read the three interviews that were supplied to us which all had a common theme about creating content for different cultures and international audiences. I then asked the weekly response questions where I thought about a foreign show or movie that I had seen recently and discussed how elements of culture are represented and its global appeal.
In the online session, we discussed in our breakout groups about the international shows or films we had watched recently and then compiled them into a shared google document. We then thought about what contributes to something becoming successful globally and summed that up into bullet points. There was them the opportunity for a couple of groups to share their works and it was interesting to see similar shows appearing more commonly than others.
Afterwards, I filled out the weekly reflection manifesto and answered the questions about the tension between Local rootedness and Global resonance in creating media and how the younger generation views cross cultural media.
Before the session, I watched an interview with Annette Büchele from Kosmos Publishing, which gave useful insight into the company and its audience.
In the session, we joined students from around the world, including Canada, Chile, India, and Germany. After recapping the interview, we moved into breakout rooms to create a persona for a Kosmos customer. My group focused on a single mother and discussed how her lifestyle and culture might influence her purchasing choices.
We then shared our ideas with the wider group, which was a good way to see the different perspectives and considerations others brought to the task. Overall, it was an engaging start to the studio and a great chance to work collaboratively with international students.
After the session, I also went and answered the manifesto questions in response to what we had talked about this week.
