We soon presented our presentations of what we done, 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. 

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 and adding wrinkles/lines to give it liveness to my character and to make the bottom of the dress flow. I sent the progress to Alec while he gave 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. 

After the base 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. 

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 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 character design and how I can improve it. 

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. 

I went ahead with facial expressions after the choosing of fabric and accessories of each character from the White snake. Taken inspiration from multiple movies and shows for facial expressions, I looked into both spider verse movies with random characters facial expressions taken from their artbooks with their respectful artists and how they would display their characters matching with their appearance and personality. 

With both sisters I created more expressions with them and how they would be similar but total opposites because their appearances and personality. Especially with their hair and a snake face to toy with but found it enjoyable to explore my own characters as different versions of the original white snake movie. Afterwords I drew the two men, the doctor and the monk with less expressions but simple enough to read them especially their roles in the story and what type of people (archetype) they are. 

We showcased our progress for our presentations on what skills were doing, the story we picked and where we currently stand in our progress same with the other students. For my progress I’m still in the Character Design stage and hope to get facial expressions, characters sheets, silhouettes and colour scheme done this month. This week I focused on my characters hair styles and clothes to see what final design I would go with the gathered resources I had in my Miro board. I also looked at online at websites exploring through character design and concept art to give me more ideas on how to expand my character design skills using these particular websites from Blackboard and a few artbooks I own such as Encanto and Spider verse to look at examples on how artists displayed the clothes for their characters and which to choose from. 

https://characterdesignreferences.com/art-of-animation

https://livlily.blogspot.com/

After collecting enough resources for each character, I went on to the concept art stage. I took each character from the story and started experimenting with shapes, colours, hairstyles and clothes for each one to match their appearance in my art style and above all else their personality. Using Miro board I created and simplified their roles and personalities to help with their concept art and appearances to both match with each other. I sketched out in my artbook hair styles and the characters shapes and heights to experiment with specific clothing and accessories.  I also drew a few snake doodles along the way so understand the appearance of a snake’s anatomy better. 

I narrowed down my choice’s through multiple designs of appearance, silhouette, colour schemes, historical clothing and accessories across multimedia films/shows and story illustrations for designs I preferred.  I thought more about concept art and character design stages once I was still planning and collecting my research. There a total of 4 characters that I picked which are Bai Suzhen (White snake), Xiaoqing (Green snake), Xu Xian (Love interest/Doctor) and the Buddhist Monk (antagonist).

Going through appearances I thought hard about hair, clothes, accessories related to myth and cultural background especially in the era of the tang dynasty, most importantly what colour scheme I would go for each character. Using Miroboard, I brought all my research and inspirations for each character, to brainstorm ideas how I would draw them into my own art style with accurate details and matching each characters personality with their specific type of hair, clothing and body shape. 

Research and Planning Mood board

Pipeline for the first stage of Character Design

After choosing one of the four Chinese mythology stories, which was the tale of ‘The White Snake’ I took this time to further research the story, variations and other films and tv shows that tells the same story but adapted from many creators and artists with their unique  art styles and visual storytelling. In short summery it tells the tale white snake spirit, longing for human life, finally managed to transform itself into a charming lady after centuries of practice and cultivation. Bearing the name of Bai Suzhen, the beautiful snake maiden fell in love with a respected doctor, Xu Xian at first sight.

In some other versions, the pair’s first encounter took place far earlier. It holds that when Bai Suzhen was merely a young snake, she was once saved by Xu Xian in his past life. It was driven by gratitude and the eagerness to repay such a life-saving kindness that Bai Suzhen, through her constant efforts, accomplished her transformation to take on human form. After which, she set out without hesitation to look for Xu Xian and repay him back for his generous deed. The young couple set up a medicine shop, enjoying a harmonious and happy life together. But there was a looming time bomb threatening to shatter the couple’s joy, since Xu Xian had no idea of the fact that his beloved was a snake spirit. And the appearance of Fa Hai, a Buddhist monk at the Jinshan Temple, was the catalyst that lit the fuse.

Believing that such a marriage was unnatural, Fa Hai told Xu Xian that his wife was not a human being but instead an evil snake. He also convinced the doubtful husband to make Bai Suzhen drink a special wine that would prove his word. Xu Xian followed Fa Hai’s advice, tricked Bai Suzhen into drinking the wine, and witnessed his wife turning into a white snake. He then broke down and died. Bai decided to save her husband. She braved the land of the immortals and stole a sacred magical herb from there violating a rule that a snake spirit was never supposed to break. Xu Xian was brought back to life, taken by Fa Hai to the Jinshan Temple, or Golden Hill Temple. To reclaim her husband, Bai Suzhen unleashed the waters and flooded the temple.

One popular adaption for the myth is a fantasy film known as ‘The Legend of the White Serpent 1958‘ developed by Toei animation, the same studio behind Alakazam the Great which adapted the myth of Sun Wukong (The Monkey King). It follows the main story and adds additional background characters for character support for the main two love interests beating all the odds and the animation has a mix of western and eastern influences with realist character design and a beautiful varied colour palette which contrasts with the rough limited animation and poetic quality with charm. It shares it’s traits and style with other movies such as Monkey king Havoc in Heaven franchise and Nezha Conquers the Dragon King, both produced by Shanghai Animation Film Studio (SAFS) by the Wan brothers. 

Another popular adaption of the story would involve the white snake trilogy by Light Chaser Animation Studios which took the approach of a 3D art style but keeping the traditional western/eastern style of it’s Chinese roots. The first and last film focus on the early centuries of China during the tang and southern song dynasty. The second movie focuses on steampunk modern time similar to ours with technology use involved outside it’s normal time zone. It also shows many art techniques for it’s animation such as their colour palette established for each character, mood, culture/environment and lighting for it’s sense of direction with all characters who are morally good, bad or grey. Also to mention the trilogy besides it’s visual effects and animation is the amount of 2D they put in for the characters journey and growth such as using the Chinese style of a ink painting and colour palette washing out looking like a mix of 2D and 3D (Hybrid) animation.

We prepared our presentations for this week where Abdul and I went ahead with the Morrigan and presented her to our classmates and other students from China on live stream. It went really well as each pair presented our Irish mythologies and put a lot research into each one with motivation and interest. After we had shared our presentations the other students went and shared 4 stories which included The 9 Tail Reindeer, The White Snake, The Red Mansion and Jingwei Filling the Sea. 

After the talk and reviewing each one, we (individually) had to pick one of the stories which would become our main project and pick 2 or 3 techniques to follow through with the project. I decided in the story of the white snake, which I came familiar with growing up and watched the Light Chaser Animation Studios with it’s exquisite character designs, special effects and storytelling that caught mine and so many eyes of audiences intentional. I thought about going beyond the techniques that we would be choosing whether it was something I’m good at or something that needed more work done. So I took it upon myself to lower my choices between Character Design, 3D Modelling and Grease Pencil/Look Development before starting the new project.