After looking over the future plans for after my undergraduate course, I settled on applying for a taught Masters degree for the purpose of learning discipline and not being distracted by other things while I am working on an animation, another reason being so I can learn new techniques to enhance my animations. When it comes to studying masters, I could do a research degree or a taught degree. Research degrees are much like the dissertation I did on Studio Ghibli, and are far more complex than that and especially the essay I did on Richard Williams last year. I would have to research many different topics on the one I am researching, and knowing my heavy handedness when it comes to researching, I discussed with Sarah about taught degrees, which simply use the skills we have used.

Looking through the notes Lisa gave me, I also noticed there are several different types of both degrees:

Timing for animation- a more advanced version of certain modules I’ve covered, for example the walk/run cycles I did last year. I can practice timing for animation in 2D or 3D for my portfolio.

Design research and development- a theory module that will prepare me for postgraduate research and is vital for PhD.

Animation Production- crating a project where I have a topic/idea to start. I would meet each week with a mentor. Will be a pilot for a show.

Experimental design- working with a limited set of assets to help explore a skillset e.g. a set of brushes, understanding what is available and experimenting with it.

Portfolio project- A smaller scale version of the major project I was focusing on.

Looking back at my first CV from last year, I was disgusted by how simple and amateurish it was. Using the video I used from last year, I worked to make a more professional and polished version of my CV for this year, while adding my own unique flair to the layout of the CV.

However, as with last year I had very little time to do my CV, as I was juggling preparing my art book and showreel along with my animations.

I wanted to create a CV with a distinct and more professional look than the last one, with a wider range of colours used for it, so I followed the video I used to make the first CV more closely, learning some cool techniques such as rounding out the edges of the rectangles used to separate the paragraphs by selecting vector points at each edge and then pulling down, and copying over many of the portfolio links from last year to use in my new CV. I also used icons in my CV to ad more visual appeal, and a new profile pic for my photo. I also looked at some classmates’ CVs, such as that of Will Dolan, whose CV uses only a few colours but had a border at the bottom of it, and had the layout of his CV clearly defined.

I also looked back at the other CVs I looked at last year for my first CV- I noted the exclusive pictures that decorated Daran Carlin Weber’s CV, and added a few of my own to my CV, such as a bust of Brent Sawyer, the character I used for our project. I also noted the simplicity and roughness, but I felt that if I made my CV look rough it might come across as messy.

Looking at Liu Binlang’s CV, I saw the layout was very cluttered, with a lot of words spread all over the place. I wanted my CV to be easy to understand and readable, and I felt that Liu’s CV was way too complicated. It also had a large column to the side that had some of his details put in, which was far easier to read and understand than the rest of the CV. I wanted to be careful when making my CV and ensuring to make it easy to read was my top priority.

The most inspiration my CV took was from the tutorial I used for both last year and this year, as mentioned before. The tutorial was by Graphic Island, and his content is conprised of how to create professional graphic designs spanning a wide range of different mediums, such as crisp packets and logos as well as CVs and business cards.

I created several posters for the display for the EOYS. The first one was a test poster with a main focus on Javi and Brent’s relationship, with Javi carrying Brent bridal style as he runs across the stage. As an early beta poster, this really was nothing more than a proof of concept, with far too much clutter with the sunflowers, but it was fun to make, especially with the posing of Brent and Javi’s bodies. It was interesting to see how I was able to handle drawing someone carrying another person bridal style, as I usually just have characters standing around.

The second poster takes inspiration from a really dynamic shot Cor found of someone being illuminated by the moonlight. I was impressed by how the main subject was illuminated from behind and wanted to incorporate that into my second poster.  What I created was Javi standing at the top of the stairs being illuminated by the spotlight as he looks down on Brent far below. I liked this poster a lot due to the technical effort I put into it, and also Sarah helped me out with how to make certain parts of rendered clothing stand out more, by putting Brent’s clothes on a separate layer and adding different multiply and filter layer values to it I can make stand out a bit more from the rest of Brent without it looking too dark.

However, I never created the poster with a title card in mind without it feeling mindlessly lacked on and coming across as unnecessary clutter, which poses a bit of a problem for me. So, I created another poster that would wind up being used for our display. This is based on one of the scenes I worked on, where Javi is giving Brent the flower after he twirls toward him. I practised my lighting and rendering in this scene, like the previous poster that had Brent looking up at Javi as he is illuminated by the spotlight. The space between Brent and Javi was for placing the title card in. The title itself uses a Sunflower for the O and since its’s mostly comprised of greens and light yellows it stands out from the mostly red and orange background. I had a lot of fun making this poster, as it was based on one of my favourite and most complicated scenes to work on for the project.

 I wanted to make a business card for this year, feeling much more confident in my skills as an artist and animator, I looked at several other students’ cards from throughout the years. Some were very simple, but a little bland, as I wanted to convey a professional yet simple and appealing feel with my own business card.

What I came up with was one side having a stylised version of myself and an inspirational quote from the Walking Dead Telltale Series. I merged together two different quotes from two different Characters; Lilly and Salvadore Garcia. In the latter’s case, Salvadore tells Javi at the start of Episode 5 of Season 3:

‘Legacy, Javi. It’s all anyone leaves behind. That and their bones.’

I wanted to use the quote as all I really want is to leave behind a legacy and have someone, my child or some other, to inherit that legacy and follow in my footsteps and tell my story when I’m gone.

As for the former, should you chose to spare her, Lilly escapes on a raft and tells Clem:

‘Nothing lasts, Clementine. Not friends, not love, not the place you call home. They’ll all fall eventually. Never forget that or they’ll drag you down too.’

As much as it’s true that nothing really lasts, and all of us fear the unknown, I want to ensure that even still, as long as the legacy continues, then surely that will last. So I merged the two quotes together to bring about a more hopeful message.

For the back of the business card, I wanted to make a piece of art that demonstrates my skill as an artist. Since making the Find your Joy project I had grown incredibly fond of Brent Sawyer, so I used him in the project in a scene in a forest where a fight is taking place off screen.

The artbook was the most fun part of the creative futures submission. I enjoyed designing my own artbook and giving it my own unique flair. I looked at several different artbook examples, such as one for The First Eclipse, which had a simple layout for a lot of its pages and Amata, which had an introductory segment I took inspiration from.

For certain pages of the book, I created exclusive artwork of inside the circus and for others such as simple line art of characters like Brent Sawyer and Javi and sunflowers on a purple background. I also went in depth on the origins of the project and how it fits into a larger story I have planned. I put in the artbook bios of the two lead protagonists, the storyboards that were used for the animation of the project, talked about the ideas that were discussed at the planning stage of the project, and also talked about two unused characters I made for the project.

For the covers of the book, I used lineart created for one of my posters for the cover, specifically the third one where Javi is giving Brent the flower, and created a slightly stylised version of Brent Sawyer giving the peace sign for the back. My favourite part about the artbook is that it gives me the chance to show off several different concepts that didn’t make the final project, such as two characters that went unused.

Overall, I had a lot of fun making my artbook, and I really believe I have made a really good artbook for our project. If I ever make another project like this again, I’ll happily do an artbook or it.

Find Your Joy- Artbook

Finally there’s the portfolio. Since I had so little time left and After Effects ran awfully on my Laptop, I went in one day before submission date to work on it. I found the original copy of last year’s portfolio and decided to use it as a basis for the revised version for this year. I greatly extended the run time of the portfolio so it can also hold some of my favourite scenes from Find Your Joy, the project Cor and I worked on, specifically, from where Brent was storming off after his mural was ruined to when Javi notices Brent has his artbook out. I also updated the intro so that more stuff goes on, such as using a purple shape to show my name rising up inside it, and two pieces I made for the art book fade into view. I am very happy with how this new version of my portfolio has turned out, as it perfectly shows the great work I’ve done this year as well as all my work before and during my time at Ulster University.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/11YutwO7H1z6YOgKWeD-eGpkBjJka_Q0H/view?usp=sharing

I have Cor to thank for helping me out with my project. I know I haven’t nearly been as attentive to my work most of the time but I still managed to complete all the scenes I needed to do for Find Your Joy. Thanks to her, I learned a lot on designing, refining and bringing my original characters to life. I hope I will be able to do something like this again next year for my Master’s Degree, or even start developing original animations for my personal use and admiration.

This Semester I was given the opportunity to make a placement for several different Job riles in the animation industry. I focused too much on my other module in Game Development to really give it much thought, but upon realising that fact, I managed to book a placement for a few local animation studios within my area, such as Paper Owl Studios, FlickerPix, and Dog Ears.

My sister helped me out with preparing my placement,  sending me an information pack with requirements for the jobs I applied for so I can take a read over them. I actually had experience with trying to book a placement before- I tried to apply to Paper Owl films to be a trainee animator for one of their projects- Happy the Hoglet. I really didn’t understand the requirements for actually booking a place in the animation industry, so I was rejected. This year however, I booked in potential placements for an Undergraduate placemen course so that I can get a taste of what working in the animation industry could look like.

We were also tasked with creating a CV as well. CVs are supposed to be representative of the kind of person you are and someone who wants to work in the profession of your choice. I learned a good deal of how one is supposed to present information that is relevant to the job I am applying for. For example, a CV that has cooking awards in will be good when applying for a chef but not when applying for cosmetology or music making. CVs also have to have the essential criteria that is relevant to the job I wish to apply for, but it must also have short, simple points. I learned that to make a good CV, I had to:

• start with a header
• put a short introduction/bio
• put down my expertise/skills in a brief summary
• talk about my education
• making sure to include GCSEs for Maths and English

and talk about what software I used and any awards I may have gotten.

I made the CV using Adobe Illustrator, which until now I hadn’t used very much, but I did learn a good technique with adding pictures inside circles using masks. I put my education and software skills on one end of the CV, and my about page, hobbies, links to personal work and portfolio in another. I kept my CV simple and concise, so that it would be easy enough to read by my potential employers, and I created my own title in photoshop and my own pictures to the CV so that they get an idea about my art style.

CVs need to be saved as a PDF, and in addition, had to have a style that was all my own. I looked at certain CVs that focused on 2D animation, including one in particular that I liked by Binlang Yiu, who was a proficient generalist animator in many different types of software, such as After Effects, ZBrush, Photoshop, and 3DS Max, along with other pieces of software I have not heard of. I also looked at a CV by Darin Carlin Weber, who lists each of his bits of information in their own bullet point paragraphs that don’t take up much space but are still concise and readable, despite the hand writing being fairly incompetent, and has a wee illustration at the lower corner of the screen. Having knowledge of both 3D and 2D animation, I made sure to include the software I used, such as Blender and Maya for the 3D animation side of things, and Toon Boom Harmony and Adobe Animate for the 2D animation, while also including After Effects and Photoshop. In addition, My CV had to also be grammatically correct, to ensure a professional attention to detail and competence.

My own CV has many different links to a portfolio that I created when I tried to get into University in 2021, as well as another portfolio created ages ago, and even showcasing my education. when I began making it, my notetaker said it had a simple, eye catching art style, so I leaned into that aspect of my CV so that it remains eye-catching while also being minimalistic and simple enough and organised. I even created some original art to go into my CV so that artists can get a glimpse of my art style, following on from Darin Calin Weber’s own style. I also found some templates for other CVs that I could take inspiration from, and apply to my own style. I provided links to various portfolios and showreels that show I am a generalist animator with how I have many 3D animations where I modelled, rigged and textured characters for animation purposes, and how I have created 2D animations for both Uni work and personal work.

Cover emails are meant to be sent to a potential employer for the purpose of applying for a job. A Cover Letter has to be written giving a good reason why you want to work for the job, with points that are relevant to the industry, and is ultimately meant to complement the CV, and act as an insight to who you are and what is important that they should know about.

I created a kind of cover letter while I was applying for the jobs I wanted as I was applying for my placement years. I wrote in the descriptions for each of then how I was a student working at Ulster University, and had knowledge of certain important aspects that are vital to my applications, such as knowledge of the Principles of Animation, and even talking about making a game alongside others as part of my modules at the University. My sister helped me to word it so that I can make it professional and concise, and then word proofed it on Discord to make sure it was all correct.

But since I had to actually submit a cover letter as part of submission, I revised the ones I had created for my placement and created a more focused and researched Cover letter using the knowledge I had acquired about them to create a 300 word one to be sent as a potential application to FlickerPix.

Portfolios are meant to be the summation of you and a showcase of your own work. A grand and expansive display of your growth as an artist.

I looked into the portfolios of the different studios that I was applying for as well to get a sense of the kind of projects that they worked on. I found that Dog Ears, one of these animation studios I applied for, worked on several children’s shows, such as Puffin Rock, which was nominated for an Emmy, won two Kidscreen awards and a Royal Television award, and is being distributed by Netflix internationally and by the China Nebula Group (CNB) for distribution in China, and Saturday Club, which was first aired back in 2019 where it topped charts on Hopster.

Dog Ears were looking for a Trainee Animator who had good knowledge of Toon Boom Harmony and/or other 2D animation Software along with knowledge in 3D software such as Maya, as well as have a passion for character animating and be able to work with others in a team.

Paper Owl Films specialises in producing programs for younger children as well, and are responsible for the creation of Happy the Hoglet, along with Pablo, which is about a little 5 year old boy on the Autism spectrum. The show was described as both award winning and BAFTA nominated. In addition, Paper Owl even worked on a film- Sol, which was a film about a boy struggling to deal with grief.

Paper Owl looked for flexibility, excellent oral and communication skills and  advanced knowledge of Microsoft Office and good technical knowledge. They had put out applications for two different jobs, Trainee Editor and Production Trainee.

The last company I applied for a job to was Flickerpix, who have a much more obviously wide range of different projects compared to Dog Ears and Paper Owl, with a wide range of different mediums, such as 2D, 3D, Stop motion and even dabbling into commercial work. Projects include Luna and the Land of Dreams, Mimi Infinity, Progressive adverts from 2006-7, and Zig and Zag for 2D animations, Welcome to Bloomfield and Ollie and the Octaves for 3D and I was a Rat and A Bug Lego Christmas for stop motion.

Flickerpix were looking for the applicant to have strong drawing and design skills, experience in both 2D and 3D animation, the potential for animating in both 2D and 3D mediums, designing and creating assets in Photoshop and working closely with other people on a collaborative project.

Due to focusing more on my other modules, such as Game Development, writing my essay and focusing on personal work on top of that, I found it difficult to fit in much time into my placement. However, I managed to successfully apply for jobs from several animation Studios under NI Screen who might be able to take me in. I also took into consideration whenever or not it would be feasible for me to travel for my job to the studios- I specifically chose jobs around Belfast for this reason. I really would like to be in a placement year so that I can get a taste of the animation industry, and because I would go straight into final year if I don’t.

I realised I needed to make a new updated Showreel incredibly close to the final submission date, so I looked at what I’ve done and realised I had built up an extensive amount of material I could work with for my new portfolio from working in my other modules and from my own personal work, as well, from as early as my first year at Ulster University. Using footage of work from an older portfolio I had created to get into Ulster University, I added almost all of the animations I ever created both from working in my Game development project, along with any 3D Models I made during the game’s development, my character I had created from a few semesters ago and the 2D animations from my previous year, to my showreel.

This is the final result of my portfolio.

Unfortunately, I found out later that the showreel had to be just a minute long, rather than 3. So I created a new showreel with much of the older content removed to focus on the newer content I had created.

I found making the showreel incredibly stressful, not just from crunch time but also from the fact that I had to sort which animations in my portfolio was worth keeping and what would be considered too old or unprofessional to be used in the portfolio. I had to consider my newest work more than the older material.

I feel pleased with the results I have laid out, especially so close to the final submission, and I feel that next year I should spend more time looking into potential placements so that I won’t forget to do them while doing my other modules. I feel I really messed up my priorities this year, but the least I can do is do the best I can and hope that will be enough. If I get into an animation studio then I can focus more on work and not on other things.

 

This is the Portfolio of different ideas that I made for our Race Against Time Project.

Models

Ramps

Low Poly Castle

Detailed Castle

Arrows for future level

Barrier

 

Future Buldings

Future tube

Icicles

Leaf Piles

Wagon

Snowpiles

Stall

Trees

Evergreen trees

2D Animations

Concept Art

Astronaut

Early Past art concept

Present Day Concept

Collectibles concept

Distant Future Concept

Scrapped Imperial China Concept

Dr INsanio Concept

Final Results

Aaron:

Contribution to project/team as a percentage – 40%

Feedback on their contribution:

Aaron was a person I regularly turned to for help with Github and anything related to submitting anything to the databanks there. He worked on several assets, creating 2D animations for the Future level, Medieval buildings, a castle and a church, market stalls, medieval props such as anvil and created sound effects and a modified stock car as a backup for the time machine. He was a very big help to me and helped me out a lot when it came to Unreal Engine.

Luke:

Contribution to project/team as a percentage – 25%

Feedback on their contribution:

Luke laid down the main concept for the future level, creating multiple concept arts for what the future buildings should look like. He created the concept art for the Time policeman, and also worked on the textures for the roads of the future level, adding the black outline shader to give the game a comic book effect, and created the buildings he conceptualised in the future level, along with the ground textures for the future and past levels, as well as level effects like bog and the skyboxes. He taught me how to create new materials to apply to my models with my textures.

 

Dillon:

Contribution to project/team as a percentage – 20%

Feedback on their contribution:

Dillon worked on modelling on the car and created a phone box inspired by Doctor who as well as a medieval gas station. He also made templates for a billboard, a futuristic wall, and concept character designs for the main character. For the concept stage, he found a potential game to draw inspiration from for our project, Extreme Pamplona. He created a main title logo for our game, and created a blank powerpoint for us to put our art guide in. He had to put his studies on hold towards the end of development, and told us he can’t guarantee he’ll submit his work on time.

 

Self:

Contribution to project/team as a percentage – 15%

Feedback on your contribution:
I mostly focused on modelling low poly trees and future props for my group and also made textures for them so that they can be ready to be put in the project. My models were put into the project by other members of my group and I also contributed my making 2D Animations for the future level, along with concepts for what the past and future levels would feel like. I honestly feel like I could have contributed a lot more to the project, since I also focused on exercising and other personal activities, but then again I had a lot of fun contributing to the project. I learned a lot about new ways of modelling.

Our project for this semester was based on the concept of ‘Unstable’ and had to portray something along those lines. It was known as ‘Race Against Time’ and was originally about an insane mad scientist who sent his worker to different time zones to gather data. There were originally at least three different time zones, and I had made a concept for an Imperial China one, and many different characters, but they were all scrapped. and the story was later changed so that we were simply a renegade on the run from time cops as we jump between the distant future and the medieval past. A lot of the work that I was responsible for was in low-poly 3D Modelling in Blender and exporting then as FBX files for use in Unreal Engine, with any textures made in Photoshop and then exported as PNGs. I also did several 2D Animations in Toon Boom Harmony, creating Backgrounds and assets in Photoshop, where applicable, and then added finishing touches and extra effects in After Effects. I also learned of interesting wall generators what allowed me to make castles and castle walls easily and quickly, and in addition to this, I made super low poly versions of the castles when it was found out they were too high poly for the relatively low poly art style we were looking for.

When it came to researching for the project, I mostly looked at games such as Cyberpunk 2077 and New Yoke City from Sonic Prime, and Movies such as Blade Runner 2046 for sources of inspiration, and for the Autumn level I mostly looked at autumn forest references and also looked at Ni No Kuni. I also gave out possible inspirations for our game, such as 2 Fast 4 Gnomz, and laid out possible ideas for our game, such as power downs that hinder how you play from the SNES Game Kid Klown in Crazy Chase, as well as laid down numerous concepts for characters that sadly went unused, and getting images of Bing of red brick Victorian buildings for a scrapped Victorian level. I also drew up potential power ups for the game, such as a cola for the future chapter and a wine glass for the Medieval level. We as a group also looked at Crash Bandicoot 4, Persona 5, Comic Jumper and Sly Cooper for sources of inspiration, especially for the comic book art style.

I worked very hard on providing for my other peers in my group project this semester, making several models for both the future and past levels as well as trying out Unreal Engine again for the project as well. I often went to Aaron for help with sorting out certain stuff with uploading to Github and also received help from Zakk when retexturing my models to have the correct textures. Zakk taught me how to create new materials that used unique textures that I could use for my models, and Aaron made a new file in Github that all the files I made can be put into. We would have infrequent calls in the run up to the final deadline, some were for all of us but there was also one that focused only on the game design students, rather than the animation. In addition, some calls were planned but due to a shortage of participants they were quickly scrapped, and we settled to simply write up our updates instead. Making a game project was something that I never really touched upon before, so this was a new learning experience for me to utilise the skills I learned in Unreal Engine to help out the others in my group. I was the only girl in the group, so this was also the chance for me to make new friends other than the ones already in my group.

I used my skills I’ve utilised in Toon Boom Harmony to create several animations for use in the futuristic chapter. I also took up After Effects, which I largely ignored after using it back at the Belfast Met, to chroma key the greenscreen used for the Toon Boom Harmony files, and add backgrounds to make the final product look a little better. When it came to making the models for the project, I researched Cyberpunk 2077 and New Yoke City from Sonic Prime to help me out with making the models, but once we got a finalised style down I settled for following the mock up one of the members of my group had created. I also created several unused concepts for the project, such as a conceptual Chinese chapter as well as art for a timid astronaut, a swole superhero, and giant holographic women. I also made art pieces for concepts that were used, such as an autumn forest and a futuristic dystopian city in Winter.

I mainly contributed to the project by way of making models such as low poly trees, and I learned some interesting techniques, such as merging a cube into a single vertex and extruded it to make the framework of a tree, and then used the skin modifier to create a mesh of a tree trunk. I also looked at several tutorials on how to make different models, such as a stall, a Barrel, several medieval crates as well as futuristic buildings and billboards and barriers, and found some interesting generators, such as one to create castle walls, that bypass manual creation of the walls, and another that allows to generate snow to cap off selected geometry faces, though the results were often to high poly to be of use, as we were focusing on a more low poly approach. All the models, along with simple snow and leaf piles, were created in Blender using simple primitives such as icosahedrons, cubes and cylinders and cones which have been extruded to have bases, and using the skills I inherited during my time at Ulster University, where applicable, I marked seams on each to create UV maps. I created many 2D animations, such as advertisements for Cologne and gust of wind with leaves and snow, in Toon Boom Harmony, and using the green colour card, I chroma keyed in backgrounds for the animations in After Effects.

This was the first time I’ve worked on an actual game with other people, but not the first time I’ve worked on a collaborative project with others. Since I was in the animation class, rather than the game development class, I didn’t have nearly as much experience with Unreal as I would have liked this semester. I also found Github a bit fiddly, and felt that the slightest addition to the project could ruin the whole thing, so the most I did was post whatever I could onto Github and create materials with textures that matched each of the models correctly. All of the textures that I created for the models were done in Photoshop on the UV maps unwrapped in Blender for each model, and then exported as an FBX file to Unreal where the textures are then put on.

I had very little proper knowledge with Unreal before I started collaborating with the others in my group, and the project got to a bit of a slow start at first. The game was in the test stage for a bit longer than other projects of its ilk. However, the game development members of our team were able to swiftly turn things around and move the project fast enough to catch up with how the other projects were developing, and we were able to start constructing the real game. The people I interacted most in the group were Zakk, Aaron and Luke, I mostly came to them for advice on my work.

I had to juggle producing material for my group with exercising, which took up enough of my time to concern me greatly as the deadline approached. I realised that many of my models, some which I made months ago, didn’t have any texturess, and I really wanted to get some of my models looking presentable for my portfolio, so I quickly made textures for many different models. I also had to deal with an essay for my other module, which also took up much of my time. In addition, my laptop is hardly strong enough to properly run Unreal without experiencing slowdown, and that was another problem I had to deal with. In addition, when trying to actually play the game in Unreal, my Laptop crashed when I tried to record footage using OBS studio.

I found drawing out different animations the most fun during game development, as I really wanted to practice 2D Animation while creating content for my other members. I created several 2D animations, a simple horned character bouncing up and down, a model advertising cologne and a cola line, and several 2D effects of a gust blowing leaves and snow around for each level. I applied my knowledge of secondary animation to the characters hair as well as touched up and chroma keyed several of the animations into After Effects So I could place a background into each animation, and then export it as an MP4. Any animations directly exported our of toon boom harmony did not have transparency, and I realised I had to make transparent MOVS of each of the animations I had done through Toon Boom Harmony.

My best works would have to be the Crimbo Cola advertisement and an advertisement for a perfume called Icarus, using an early version of an OC who I plan to use in future content. I used chroma keying to make the animation transparent so that a background can be set over it. I feel I like the Crimbo Cola ad more than I do the Ikarus one, as some of the animation in the Ikarus ad goes by extremely quickly, and I know that in any future animations I make I have to make sure that the animations do not instantly disappear once they’ve finished- If I hold them in place after they finished then they will hold the viewer’s eye for longer without immediately disappearing. Using the skills I learned in Toon Boom  Harmony, and learning how to Chroma key with the software, and then adding additional effects using Photoshop and After Effects were incredibly useful in creating full fledged mim advertisements for the project.

I think I’ve contributed a good bit to my group with the tree models and the animations, even if I still found it difficult to properly focus on the work. Asides from exercising, I also focused a lot on doing an essay on Richard Williams and his impact on Animation, which I had already submitted by this point. I booked a placement for several places in animation, and I hope with my learning experience I can learn to be less distracted from my work to focus on personal art. I also learned a lot about the art style of a comic book, such as characters having bold black lines so that they can stand out from the background, which has thinner, coloured lines. Objects have thinner black lines, but not coloured ones.

I would really like to do something like this again, working alongside other people working on a massive project like a video game. Since coming into University I’ve learned a lot about being able to work with others, coming to them for help with my own work and learning from them. In addition, working alongside students from other classes was also a learning experience for me as their inherited skills could be useful for me when I want to do work in Unreal in my own time. They put any completed models I made into the game so that I could see them in the finished project, and helped me out with how to put materials into Unreal Engine.

In today’s class we blocked out a modular kit for a hallway of their choice. Our teacher showed us a tutorial on how to block it out- she broke the scene down into incredibly simple shapes, such as an arch way which she will duplicate to form the structure. chose a simple plane structure for the window planes and told us that when one was done she duplicate it along the way down.

I chose a more modern design for my attempt at blocking out a modular kit. This is the result.

Today was also the day of our presentation and submission for our research into the art style of our game. I stayed up most of last night helping out my team, and we got a lot of feedback from the teachers for our efforts. They noticed a lot of things:

• They were concerned about a lack of communication between members of the group.
• we didn’t delve deep enough into the styles, and needed to point out differences.
• it lacks specificity
• lines were undecided
• creating your own concept art is not required.

When we were looking into the style of the game we were developing, we decided to follow a graphic novel art style. This style generally uses black outlines for characters and objects, but backgrounds tend to have coloured outlines, to ensure that props and characters are able to stand out. Graphic novels primarily target all ages, as dynamic eye catching poses and expressions can capture the attention of a viewer very easily, especially if the viewer was read picture books as a very young child.

I looked at one graphic novel artist who found an unique art style by relaying prompts through an AI Program called Midjourney. He liked some of the art illustrations that it created, but it also helped him discover other artists, such as Ralph Bakshi and Frank Frazetta, and through trial and error he found an art style that really worked for his graphic novel, one with muted colours in the background with a little bit of detail, though you still can have graphic novels with lots of details.

While it was really interesting to learn how he used AI to help find him a style, I lamented that he also felt a little amateurish to research the Graphic novel style.

I Found a Cool Art Style for My Graphic Novel (youtube.com)

Then I found a video by Kelsey Rodriguez, talking about how to find your art style in 3 easy steps. She says to collect pieces of art that you really gravitate toward, even to go to an art museum and jot down notes about the piece that really speaks to you. Then you figure out what connects all the pieces together to you, such as the lighting and colour to convey a feeling to you, for example, she collected 50 pinterest pictures and noticed there was a balance between realism and abstraction. Then she draws fudamentals to utilise to help create her unique style.

As part of an exercise, we looked at three different games to serve as inspiration for our own art style, Crash 4: it’s about time, Persona 5, and Uncharted 4.

Persona 4 has a very dynamic, stylised anime art style that is very bold and fun to look at. Many of the characters have very eye catching designs that are boxed within a comic book esque window. The artbook for the game has a lot of art that seems incredibly inspired by dynamic, eye popping 1980’s esque art, in an anime style reminiscent of Devilman and FLCL.

Persona 5 Official Design Works ARTBOOK By KBG : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

Uncharted 4 has a much more realistic art style, with a murky and edgy aesthetic and colours. A lot of the game takes place deep in the jungle, with highly atmospheric and detailed jungle environments that draw in the viewer’s attention, and makes them want to explore.

The Art of Uncharted 4: 100 Concept Art Collection (iamag.co)

Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s about Time has a very cartoonish playful and very stylized art style. Many of its characters have coloured lines, and highly expressive faces and postures, which are immediately eye catching to the viewer, especially if they grew up with Crash. The art style takes a balance between the old concept art for Crash and the old in game model, and the artist designing crash struck a balance between what he remembered as a kid, matching the concept art and matching the old model.

Graphic Novel | Definition, Styles & Examples – Lesson | Study.com

I was assigned as a concept artist for my group’s game development, and was tasked with making a concept for a futuristic race track. I looked at dystopian futures, Cyberpunk, and Blade Runner 2049 for inspiration, as well as look at pages of graphic novel to try and replicate the style.

Borderlands and The Wolf Among Us also served as great inspiration for the Graphic Novel style that we were wanting to go for, as their bold, eye catching styles catch the viewer’s attention easily, with Borderlands having bold lined characters stand out in a semi realistic environment and the Wolf Among us having a very comic book inspired graphic novel feel, with bold outlines and muted backgrounds.

Concept art I looked at:

AI generated images

Concept Art of Blade Runner 2049

Screenshots of New Yoke City from Sonic Speed Simulator

Pure Ref Mood Board

Finished illustrations and character designs

An early design for one of the mechanics, who would have appeared in an early draft of the distant future chapter which would have been in space.

A design for one of the characters in the game, Dr Insanio

Distant Future City- An illustration of the Distant Future Level which was greatly inspired by Cyberpunk 2077, Blade Runner 2049 and Sonic Prime’s New Yoke City.

Medieval Concept- We decided to change the Victorian level to a medieval one. I created a silmple illustration of a castile close to a river and a winding road, following the graphic novel style.

City at night- I requested if I could do an illustration for the Modern Day level of our game, and I got the go ahead from Aaron.

Scrapped Concepts and Rough Sketches

A finished concept for a level set in Imperial China. It had to be scrapped when we cut the levels down to just 3 from 7.

Scrapped Mechanic designs for different levels, ranging from Wild West to Prehistory, and Imperial China and Distant Future.  

An older design for Dr Insanio

A scrapped concept for a fantasy level that was ultimately scrapped.

Sketches of different vehicles for each level.