Week Three

In class~

In class, we were assigned to create a drawing related to the world we were currently working on. I decided to depict a sweet crown, a sweet, and a lollipop tree. Among the three drawings, the lollipop tree turned out to be the most successful as it effectively captured the appearance of a tree while resembling a lollipop. However, I struggled with the crown drawing as it didn’t convey the impression of being made of sweets, and the combination of the two elements also made the crown unclear. Although I managed to achieve good shading on the sweet, I found working with pencil challenging since it has been a while since I last used this medium.

Homework~

Our assignment this week was to create three landscapes for our world. Alongside the thumbnail assignment, it proved to be the most challenging for me since I have limited experience with landscapes. I struggled with understanding perspective and composition, so I heavily relied on references of towns and other photographs to improve my drawings. The three landscapes I chose to depict were the gloomy city alleyway, the entrance to the sewers, and the final building in the candy world. Among them, I found the perspective of the alleyway to be the easiest, while the candy world presented the most difficulty. Although I didn’t find much to like about this assignment, it did help clarify the final vision for the animation, which is essential in creating a good final product.

WIP~

These two landscape drawings were my initial attempts at refining the concept before settling on the final technique. I experimented with two different approaches: color blocking in grayscale and outlining, while also incorporating varying line weights to achieve depth. While these techniques had their merits and I did incorporate certain aspects of them in the final pieces, I found that they fell short of creating the desired depth, and the composition lacked clarity. In particular, the grayscale drawing didn’t turn out so well as I used similar shades, which made it hard to tell the colors apart.

Refined pieces~

These are the final grayscale landscapes. I made some changes to improve their composition. In the alleyway drawing, I decided to alter the composition by removing the dead end. It was challenging to figure out the shading in the previous attempt as I wanted the foreground to be dark but the background being a deadend would also be in darkness which meant everything ultimately the same shade, which made it unclear. The new version has more depth and clearer contrast between shades. I think it captured the atmosphere well, although the original idea with the dead end had a darker and gloomier feel, which I liked.

In the second landscape, I raised the lollipop to frame the castle and lowered the castle to fit with the rule of thirds, enhancing the overall composition. I used the clouds subtly to draw attention to the castle and guide the viewer’s eyes towards it. I initially had a concept with a rat statue, but it was hard to execute effectively and disrupted the composition. So, despite losing some storytelling in the piece, I decided to remove it.

For the final landscape, I made some compositional changes while keeping the features like the fence, buildings, and sewer entrance intact. I removed the building in the foreground as it was distracting from the main focus, the sewer. Originally, I wanted to use negative space to draw attention to the sewer, but it didn’t work out well. Removing it entirely actually improved the composition. I also added a hazy fog on top to recreate that gloomy atmosphere.

Overall, I believe there is room for improvement in these landscapes, and I consider it one of my weaknesses. However, I think the resulting work turned out quite successful, with my favorite being the alleyway. I found myself constantly revising and experimenting with different compositions and techniques throughout this week. This was partly due to my lack of skill, but this process ultimately led to achieving a good result that would have been impossible otherwise.

Week two

Classwork~

Composition & Perspective~

In week two, we focused on perspective and composition. We drew cubes in one-point perspective and two-point perspective. To practice composition, we drew a scene following the rule of thirds. I found creating compositions using the rule of thirds quite difficult, but I enjoyed perspective drawing. I liked being able to check if the work I’d done was correct, which made perspective drawing more comfortable and enjoyable.

Groupwork~

Symmetry~

In this group excersise we had to take 5 photos that displayed symmetry. (I contributed the first, third and fourth image)

Geometry~

In this exercise, we had to identify leading lines and geometry in the composition of animated movie scenes. I looked at the last ‘How to Train Your Dragon’ poster, and I found the leading lines in the poster to be quite distinct in the way they were used to frame the main character. I feel that the shape created by this composition creates a protective shape around the main character, likely referring to the friendly and special relationship between Hiccup and the dragons.

The geometry used in the first image was used to frame the character and place him as the main focus. Using a circle to frame him instead of a triangle, like with Hiccup, creates a softer, less intimating framing, pointing to the scene and movie being friendly and not dangerous.

The final scene is from the Lorax movie. I think the geometry in the scene is utilized to create leading lines from the main character to the side characters, placing some importance on said characters. I believe the traingle and leading lines are also used to place importance on this scene and those present, as it encapulates all the characters.

Homework~

Thumbnails~

In this homework we had to create 6 thumbnails that could be a part of our animation. As I made the thumbnails I followed a certain order beginning with an establishing shot of the gloomy city and slowly introducing the important aspects of the story. I followed the establishing shot by focusing for the second and third image on the rat which will be our guide throughout the story. Next, the fourth thumbnail shows the sewers which then leads us to the fifth image as we exit the sewer and enter a world made of sweets. The final image shows the rat king. I found this homework quite challenging as I had to keep in mind the rule of thirds, perspective and other composition techniques for it. I found that the close-up shots and wide shots were quite successful but the thumbnails that had utilized a medium shot did not have as great of an impact and were quite underwhelming.

Week one work

Class work~

Warm-up excersises~

We began the first class by doing multiple warm-up exercise in relation to lines, this ranged from drawing straight lines, to circles and S-shaped lines. We followed up this exercise by creating 3D shapes and adding contour lines. These exercises aided in both loosening up our lines to achieve more natural, confident and flowing sketches and to think of shapes as 3D objects, using the contour lines to create forms.

Creating characters out of basic shapes~

In the second exercise we utilised the ideas and techniques from the first exercise to combine forms and shapes to create unique and visually interesting characters. I enjoyed this exercise as it gave me a chance to be creative, and I was able to use one of these designs in the following homework.

Group Work~

Our group worked well together and managed to come up with 100 ideas, from these 100 ideas we narrowed it down to our five favourites, originally we planned to combine these 5 as deciding on one single world was proving to be quite difficult however as we worked on the world and discussed the story we realised the 5 ideas were very different and was beginning to overcomplicate the world, we foresaw that this could cause complications with the story and how we’d implement all these world elements into it. Furthermore we were very conscious of the limited time of the animation which also contributed to our decision to remove another 2 ideas, those being contracts with spirits and a game simulation, we chose to remove these as we wanted the rat world to be the main focus, and we already had a few ideas to combine it with skeleton and sweet world.

Our final idea is a normal, gloomy looking New York style world that transforms into a world made of sweets after the main character eats a magical sweet. A rat becomes the main characters guide throughout the story and leads her to a rat empire hidden in the underground of the city.

Discord messages~

(Toyis=Me)

Homework~

For the week one homework I chose to trace the character ‘Wasabi’ from Big Hero Six and find his construction line, I referenced the characters ‘Ursula’ from the little mermaid and used a basic design I created in class during the ‘creating characters out of basic shapes’ exercise and developed it into a full character using simple shapes then added the construction lines.

I chose Wasabi because his shape language was immediately clear to me, and I wanted to focus on characters with clear or exaggerated shapes. Although his form is very clearly square, unlike the other characters I chose/made his body is still somewhat realistic, which also contributed to my choosing him as my first example.

I then chose Ursula, as I knew Disney characters all have very recognizable shapes. I specifically chose her because her form is the complete opposite of Wasabi, therefore giving me a chance to practice different forms and create construction lines for them, which I needed for my final character.

The final character was a character I created. I got the design idea from an earlier exercise. I went through all the designs I made and chose which one had the most personality and interesting form. To create the body, I followed the same formula I did for the head to keep everything consistent: a large followed by a small circle, which creates a pear-like shape. I flipped the shape to balance the body and head (therefore having the large circle act as the hips) and gave him large circular shoes to keep the shape language consistent. The final element I added was a skateboard. Originally,  he was holding it, but I thought this broke up the character’s shape too much and was distracting. After a couple iterations of the design, I chose to have him leaning on it and have the skateboard be a very sharp rectangular shape. I chose to do this because I believe it adds to the characterization and adds interest to the design, but by having the board at the bottom of the design, it does not take away from the main focus.