Our World
For this project, Jasmine Sheppard, Alex Johnston, Corey Thompson, Charley Flint and I worked as a team to imagine a new world to animate and bring to life. Together we aimed to brainstorm 100 ideas for potential worlds using a whiteboard.
From this list, we collaborated both in person and online to narrow down the options to just five ideas. To do this, we each listed and numbered our own top five favourite ideas to find the five most popular ones. The team went with a rough idea I had put forward to have “Hell as a Convenience Store” with the general concept being a dystopian shop where satan is the manager who sells souls, spirits and everything in-between. Jasmine set up a time for us to meet on Discord where we brainstormed ideas and developed the world further.
One and Two Point Perspective Tracing
This task helped me to develop my ability at identifying the horizon line and character placement in accordance to the perspective of a scene. I took stills from some of my favourite shows and movies, opened them in Photoshop and traced lines over how I see the perspective of each still.
Scene Composition
I took the same stills and looked at how they made use of composition. They use the rule of thirds and the golden spiral ratio to draw the viewers attention to a given focal point.
Class Exercise: Take photographs with different compositions in mind.
Photography using the rule of thirds
Photography using symmetry
Photography using Geometry
These exercises made me realise the importance of composition when it comes to laying out a scene to engage the viewer. It ensures the focus is placed on what is important to notice in the scene. I will use what I have learned from this activity to inspire my own thumbnails.
Thumbnail Composition Studies (WIP)
The chosen world is “Hell as a Convenience Store”. Here are some thumbnails which aim to visualise this world.
To help engage the viewer, I used what I had learned about image compositions to make each thumbnail more interesting to look at. I found that I most enjoy using the rule of thirds, symmetry and golden ratio.
I think these thumbnails help me to better understand the environment that I will be working with for the rest of this semester. They are tonal studies which made me focus more on shape and depth, and will help me out in the future because I will not be limited to colours that I have all-ready picked out had I made full colour thumbnails- I will have the freedom to come up with colour schemes with my team members.
Concept Characters
I came up with two character designs for the story so far. The girl who ends up in the underworld shop, and the character she meets there.
Character creation Process
My method of creating characters usually begins accidentally, as I enjoy doodling in my free time. I might draw a person or character among other random drawings, and then realise that the other little sketches have made a kind of mood board for the figure I have drawn, creating a character.
Beelzebub; An alternative name for satan in Abrahamic religions is “Beelzebub”. I think this name is really sweet considering it is used for the devil – I think it suits the character I have given it to since he is kind and relaxed.
Trix; This name is similar to the word “Stix”, referring to the river Stix. Trix could be the girl who gets sucked through the portal to the underworld convenience store.
I imagine her to be a witty, erratic character much like Louise Belcher from Bobs’ Burgers.
