Category: Experimental Design


Jan
2026

Experimental Design Reflection

categories: Experimental Design

Reflection

Reflecting back on this module, I myself have found it fascinating with sharing our Irish stories with the other students in China who shared theirs for us to choose and become more cultural aware for these myths as part of our research and skill sets for this project. It gave me the chance to improve my skills and techniques with Character Design and to experiment more with the 3D Character Modelling with the optional Grease Pencil. I was overjoyed with the Character Design stage and how much of a difference it was compared to my previous works and the many improvements I’ve done. However, when it came to 3D Modelling, I struggled through the process especially with the UV and textures towards the end making sure everything was exported and acceptable even having doubt I wasn’t going to get it done in time.Β 

Overall, I enjoyed this module and it’s tasks as I put in the best of my effort and learnt more of the Blender than I every did before. Also getting the feedback I needed from my lecturers Alec and Yuan as well developing my skills and hope that in the future would aid me in my future career.Β 

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Jan
2026

Experimental Design Final Design Portfolio

categories: Experimental Design

Jan
2026

Experimental Design Research and Process of 3D Character Modelling

categories: Experimental Design

3D Character Modelling

I went ahead with the 3D Character Modelling as the other skillset I chose to experiment with and try for the first time as I never modelled any 3D characters from sketch before as I always did have experience with prop modelling previous years so I hoped to practise with that and with Blender more. Moving onto the modelling I picked one of my 2D characters from the White Snake story and chose Bai Suzhen the protagonist to take the challenge of creating the character from scratch and maybe have the optional choice of grease pencil.Β 

I started with the base of the model with the character sheet as reference added in to model with multiple mesh and watched tutorials online from blackboard to help prepare me for the sculpting after the mesh sequence.Β 

 

Sometime after the base mesh I started with the proper blocking out for the rest of the body and quickly started the dress in which I viewed previous workshops where the cloth is stimulated against the mesh, I wanted to test it out first before moving onto the rest of the block out process but it was an interesting experience with viewing tutorials on the cloth rendering and collision. I struggled a bit to sculpt the face and bring the extra mesh like the nose and ears altogether and most importantly the eyes to help make a mask around the head as well as the hands.

 

I tried a couple of times to render the piece altogether and experimented with the top as well, but the skirt was more flexible than than the top as I tried to make the sleeves longer and glitched more so I decided to go along with the bottom of the dress more than the top as it made more sense to do the rest of the body blocked out then to go back to it later.Β 

 

I was able to block out the rest of the characters clothes and body before our last class when we got off for the Christmas holidays and received amount of feedback for the model itself and following my appropriate pipeline when also doing the other modules class assignments before the Christmas. It gave me the time to finish what I could from the other class then proceed with the rest of my work before submission.Β 
I went back to the head and hands that needed significant improvement’s as Alec was able to help me with the sculpting of the face and hands to make them more accurate to my sketch and frames in the proper place. After that I started working around the face more with secondary details like accessories, facial hair and theΒ  the hair itself as I watched more tutorials to help with the strokes and strands only the viewer would see.Β 
Thereafter the blocking stage was over with every mesh included, I moved onto the secondary details to make the mesh more smoother and completely accurate for what I was going for. Looking back at the tools I used for Maya with that amount of experience I had previously, I went ahead to add seam cuts, extruding faces and modifying mirror and subdivision to aid me with the smoothness and time save the project which I found very useful. I was then able to modify the hair and clothing to the model’s likeness .Β 
With the basics done, I went back to the bottom of the dress and started rendering it and remembered the ways my lecturer told me to shortcut the dress once rendered and to copy and paste it so I could modify and sculpt it from the base which I was pleased with it at the end after a few hours working on it matching from top to bottom andΒ  watch out for any errors.Β 
Just when I realised I was at the very end, I knew I needed to fix the UV mapping before I could combine all the mesh which was the most challenging for me this semester. Before I began the UV grid I went back to refresh my mind of UV’s with experience I gained from Maya years back but with Blender this time. As I did my bet effort to shape everything and cut lines to help with the better processing of unwrapping maps. However once I got everything included and saved, I noticed when I had added the checker texture to see the map of the character, most of the proportions didn’t line up so I had to work around that so everything was the same size.Β 
With the UV done, l went ahead to experiment with the grease pencil wondering how she would look sketched just like my 2D sketches but in 3D appearing like any hybrid art style and gaining reference from the White Snake trilogy from the ink scene as reference. I got onto the texturing phase making multiple materials and colours for the model to bake for Unreal and back again to the Blender putting in the last adjustments. It was difficult for me for the texturing along with the Grease Pencil as I went back and forth and the files having problems being uploaded.
Adding the materials and textures were draining for a while in unreal as I couldn’t bring in the grease pencil and ran into problems with the software turning off on me so I took all the textures I could with a few roughness and effects brought back to Blender and improved the materials better before submission and added the link to my final in my portfolio page.Β 

Jan
2026

Experimental Design Research and Process of Character Design

categories: Experimental Design

Character DesignΒ 

Once I picked out of the four mythologies/stories which was ‘The White Snake’ that had the most popularity and familiarity for myself, I knew I wanted to go with one of the skillsets which was Character Design for it’s characters involved in the plot and a way to improve my drawing and techniques for this part of the project with further research involved. There is a total of 4 characters which include Bai Suzhen (the white snake protagonist), Xu Xian (the doctor and love interest), Xiao Qing (the green snake and sister) and the Buddhist Monk (the antagonist). I brainstormed many ideas with the characters and gathered many pictures from multiple movies, shows and operas together in Miroboard online to showcase as I thoroughly checked each character and design for research.Β 

Once I got my first stage of the pipeline planned out for the character design process, I continued on with my research finding ways to build the characters with accurate descriptions and appearances with everything related to the story which included the setting of the story being the Tang Dynasty, around that specific era which included accurate accessorises, fashion and hairstyles for each character which would assist me in their creation.

 

I went back to the characters starting with Bai Suzhen the protagonist of White Snake with the references collected that I really enjoyed with beautiful hairstyles, dresses and pure colours that would match with the character’s signature. Once I got the inspirations I was motivated to get the colour palette for her with white being her base colour for purity and innocence and with the blue colours as her secondary colours for trust and goodness and gave the idea to the rest of characters to fit in contrast with the monk being the opposite of colours, her sister who is closest to the blues and most closest to her romantic lover who would share her colours.Β 
I would then do the same with the 3 other characters with inspirational themes of clothes, appearances and accessories and most importantly their colour schemes.Β  The sister Xiao Qing would take the green as her base colour for her youth and mischievous behaviour being the younger sister but also protective with secondary yellow for happiness, teal for loyalty and black to match with her style and opposite to the white. Xu Xian having the blues and and purples as his primary colour alongside black and white similar to Bai but purple as his divine loyalty and a mixture between blue and red to signify the morals and ethics of his own religion and plot to the story. Lastly the Monk having the warmest colours of red, orange and yellow in contrast to the other 3 characters as symbolised as a warning of anger, power, superficiality and to represent his own religion/faith in Buddhism. After jolting down their colours and personality I moved ahead with the concept art of the characters into my sketchbook.

Personally for me I’d prefer to sketch concept art into my sketchbook than using the digital tech for only later as it gave me freedom to sketch and practise with the characters I took down with different hairstyles and body shapes I preferred first glance. Following previous experiences from University I thought about the body shape, exclusive hairstyles, height differences and clothes to match with the character even being the first stage of the process I knew these wouldn’t be final but was a happy enough to continue onwards.

When I already picked out the hairstyles for the two sisters and the two men once they were sorted I experimented with clothing using the line-up sheets digitally on Krita and measured of the heights with shapes to keep the accuracy for each character to make 4 different pieces of clothing with the same characters hairstyles. I realised the Monk and Xu Xian with appearances as I hoped to figure them out from relooking at the references again to help me understand these fictional characters better.Β 
It was a tough call but I managed to pick out the four clothes I realised were good enough and asked for opinions from my friends to what they thought worked best. Soon after I meshed some of the clothing and head appearances together and went with the final versions of the clothes that I needed to draw out again for the characters.Β  But before anything else I needed to fill out facial expressions to showcase their personalities and emotions through non verbal communications and body language for how I view the characters and how they would act in different scenarios in different moments of their time. I took inspiration from other artists from films to assist me from artbooks to think over emotions I could convey in such as marvels spider verse movies to aid me for a better way to understand emotions better like lip syncing.Β 
Then after finalising before completion with the selected pieces of clothing and adding secondary details to their designs to make them more realistic but keeping their cartoonish appearances I was able to go over each character’s line up using the lines to match the structure of their bodies from facials to the tips of their toes. I watched previous videos to help me through this process and improve my character turn arounds and sheets much better.Β 
I soon got feedback about the character sheets and line ups with a few key points but overall a great design to my characters and my final in my portfolio.

Jan
2026

Experimental Design Week 14

categories: Experimental Design

For the last week over and after the Christmas holidays I finished the UV grid and reviewed any mistakes and moved onto the colouring of textures and grease pencil for the final step. I immediately thought of using Blender to fill in the textures and colouring once I experimented with Grease pencil as found the outcome appealing to ones eyes as I watched inspirational videos to bring my sketch to life as the model just looked bland looking at it as I took inspiration from the The White Snake Movies from the light chaser trilogy with an example from a scene that uses hybrid animation mixed with the 3D and 2D effects where the line art is visible digitally with the textures looking like Ink.

 

 

Afterwards I then went onto the colouring phase and used my character sheet as reference to fill out the colours using different materials for each colour presented and finally completed but went over any mistakes or systems I forgot to do. I couldn’t use the substance painter for errors so I gave Blender a go to help with keeping my colours and textures in place and discovering and struggling with the materials for quickness as I asked my lecturer about the render phase and line art.Β 

 

I took the chance to create multiple materials for the colours displayed in the shader editor and baked the textures which I brought into Unreal Engine to view the model and to edit the roughness of the maps and a few extra effects to make the character less shiny but couldn’t export it properly and grease pencil couldn’t be added in, so I took the textures I had amended and went back to Blender. Just after that, I found it straining when I had attempted to export the Grease Pencil mesh but having no success thus far and almost gave up but found solutions on the way. After watching the last aid of videos I was able to overcome this difficulty and add the grease pencil to the model onto Sketchfab. I tried the best I could do for this assignment once I exported the model and uploaded everything all together when I have been rusty over the past year with modelling and trying to remember the requirements on uploading models but and I’m glad of the outcome I have made which I feel is great and my best work as I only wished there was more time for the module to work on this and watch out for the time management.Β 

 

 


Dec
2025

Experimental Design Week 13

categories: Experimental Design

After the modules were finished and we were off from our University for the Christmas break, I took the time researching and continuing on with my 3D modelling after I sent Alec more progress afterword’s as I knew it would be the last week. I started to add more details once I amended her face and ears by adding accessories of the earrings and facial hair such as eyebrows and eyelashes to give the same appearance she had on the character sheets for reference.Β Β 

Later on I added a bit of mesh to clothes, fixed the fringe/hairline on the head and started to add secondary details to her long hair, clothes and facial as I was making incredible progress aligning and smoothing the mesh altogether and watching videos to help me with the bangs and curves for the hair by making baths to make it easier than the simple manual way of creating and aligning curves. As I did struggle at first at the front of the hair with the fringe and bangs as the long hair at the back was separate and had no problem as I tried to keep it between a low poly appearance but the front curves needed improvements as I watched more videos to help me with the curve path tool.Β 

I quickly done the fixer uppers to the hair and a few extras to the body when I went onto the next stage which involved UV Mapping. Now I done UV mapping before back when I used Maya Autodesk as with Blender it was still a new beginning for me as the animation and prop modelling where easy enough but for character modelling was the huge stepping stone for me to climb as I needed to recap myself on the tools of using UV mapping objects and lay them out flat for every piece of mesh I was finished with.Β Β 
I struggled with the UV a lot even having experience from using Maya in the past but Blender was tougher with this version as I needed to reflect myself with videos and instructions online to help me through with the model before meshing everything altogether but most importantly I needed to render the Dress first as I used the modifiers from previous weeks with the collision, subdivision and cloth to help create the effects of the dress and was able to copy and paste the mesh effects to be able to modify it as I added a few other designs in the sculpting mod to highlight it better.Β Β 

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After reviewing the videos for recap I went ahead with the UV mapping and was careful with the cut seams and brining all the UV mesh together fitting the grid. The only problem I faced was the stretching of the meshes as how they appeared with preview textures as I had align the meshes and watch out for the colours of the mesh to make them all blue or even closer to the colour other than red to make them have less distortion and have the same sizes in the same proportion which was difficult for me but I did what I could and was happy with the outcome.Β 

Dec
2025

Experimental Design Week 12

categories: Experimental Design

We soon presented our presentations of what we done so far, what are we currently doing and what are the plans for the pipeline before our submissions for January 5th. I showed my progress off to other students of myself finishing off the Character Design and my current progress of the 3D Modelling with the character Bai Suzhen. Here is the following presentation to preview m progress.Β 

 

 

After getting the last ounce of feedback alongside notes for the assignment submission requirements just after my presentation progress/pipeline. I sent off my present model and a video of my experimenting with the mesh of the dress making it more loose with adding wrinkles/lines to give it a liveness to my character and to make the bottom of the dress flow. I sent the progress to Alec while and in the meantime he gave me a full feedback on the head and hands of the figure to give it a major fix with vast improvements which I took time to amend. Here below is what I worked on this week with the face, eyes, mouth and ears for the character which I thought was a huge improvement to my last block out.Β 

 


Dec
2025

Experimental Design Week 11

categories: Experimental Design

After the base I got some feedback from my lecturer about the base and what I could do next such as the bottom of the dress and if I want to render it towards the end and only focus on the outside of the body base like clothes, hair and amending the face. I immediately thought about the clothing of the character and what way I should cloth them for the blocking before continuing onto the facials and hair. After blocking out the bottom of the dress, I went to view different tutorials with the notes I had taken from workshops I’ve attended back previous weeks to experiment the modifiers in Blender for the dress for a more flow at the bottom.Β 

 

It was interesting enough to experiment with the dress as I only started with the base mesh and started the blocking out stage but whether or not I wanted the flow towards the end with adding secondary details but having no render at all. But not getting ahead of myself I tried to leave at first so I could get more feedback after more blocking and sculpting of the character.Β 

Dec
2025

Experimental Design Week 10

categories: Experimental Design
Finishing off my character design stage after gaining new feedback, I corrected the character sheets with the characters showing off their hands with clean up of the lines, then moved onto the colour scheme and silhouettes for the characters to match the tone and highlight the clothing in contrast for the white snake and the monk taking the primary colours as their main setup and the green snake and the doctor taking the secondary colours in a analogous combination. Once I finished the basic colours, I went ahead to the next stage of developing my skills and techniques which involved 3D Character modelling in which I picked one of the following characters, Bai Suzhen (The White Snake) for the second phase to work throughout this December and to plan the rest of my weeks while doing my other assignments and get enough feedback before the Christmas break.Β 

I immediately went onto the blocking stage once I got my references, watched tutorial videos and uploaded my character design sheets onto Blender once I began blocking out from simple shapes. I started with the base and body to shape the person out by following the guidelines of the character sheet. Since the character looks more cartoonish and simple and not fit, I tried to make it less realistic and focused more on the upper torso and left the legs and feet only to be displayed for the height and size of the base as clothing will be added later on. Here is some shots.


Nov
2025

Experimental Design Week 9 Character Design Workshop

categories: Experimental Design

For my progress in my character design after I filled out the expressions in the previous week, I went ahead to the character line ups to present each character alongside each other in height, chosen fashion and at least 4 angles of the character’s turn around to see the full view of the character as a full 3D character. The back to fronts were easy and the one side as well as made sure to see the whole character and as well as the three quarter perspective for the last one for the 3 characters. Before I started the character sheets and turn arounds I looked at a couple of references and videos to help me reintroduce the previous years of understanding character design much better and how I can improve it.Β 

Once I watched the videos and analysed other character sheets I went ahead with no colour to see the line up of characters and seeing each perspective with the guide of the lines to shape them out. I found it way better than before as it understand it more than previous years and what I needed to do to improve myself and have a lot of understanding to achieve this task and raise my skills and techniques.Β 

During one of our days in the workshops we did a fun activity to create a character from a specific brand or company of our choosing, right colour scheme and the most references collected for our character creation. For this activity I chose the company Amazon and experimented with references as I had many ideas for a character based on Amazon and representing them with an easy to go bright colour scheme and many characters I’ve seen on TV Shows, Movies and Playable Games to aid me on designing the character.
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