For our Creative Futures module, we have to prepare materials to show to possible clients. It’s a way to allow us to market ourselves and our project. We can make business cards and decide how best to display our own booth with the project shown.
A main part is creating a poster for our project. I chose to do an animation, with concepts of self love, forgiveness/acceptance of the self and overcoming your fears/anxiety. The protagonist is doing a presentation in school when her anxiety starts to go haywire, and feeling helpless, retreats into her own headspace where she faces the anxiety. I needed the poster to convey that feeling of helplessness, but also show how anxiety feels. To me, anxiety makes everything feel like its underwater, like I’m falling and the bottom is a dark pit, only I’m falling forever. The question was; how was I going to coherently convey that on a still poster?
Though, I did like the idea of having the protagonist and Anxie be opposites on the poster, something alike to the Persona 3 Portable game cover where Makoto and Kotone (the two protagonists) are back to back, symbolising the two different paths the player can take. The Missing: JJ Macfield and the Island of Lost Memories has similar concepts with my animation; with the creature chasing the main character being a reflection of her, only Anxie isn’t intentionally harmful as they are just trying to help. So I looked at its cover as well, and took some inspiration from the poses. I threw the idea around in my head before ultimately deciding to scrap it. I don’t think it would convey everything I wanted it to. I made a rough draft of the idea though, just in case.
(design 1)
I went back to thinking what anxiety feels like; the way your heart beats so quickly, how you can feel the thump-thump-thump behind your teeth, how you can start to feel lightheaded and even how everything begins to feel foreign. The butterflies in your stomach, the ache of your muscles as you strain to maintain calm, the weakness of your legs; there was so much I could include in the poster to convey it. I wondered how the audience could interpret this – it all makes sense in my own head, but what of others? Talking about it is different, as people can interpret art in many different ways that deviate from the true intention. So I’ve decided to keep it relatively simple and kept with the falling theme, as it is a good way to show how out of control everything can feel like.
At first, I wanted to have the main character be content with falling – an easy escape from confronting her fears would be to simply give in.
(design 2)
Eyes are a main part of the animation, as they are constantly watching her, so I wanted to include them somehow.
(design 3)
I drew up a second sketch with the falling idea, with a very different take on it. I wanted everything to be floaty, but she is falling down a hole, like the ground gave out underneath her, with the eyes coming from the hole. I wanted her face blank as well, because while it is not a horror short, I thought it would be a nice touch to show her anxiety. For some people, anxiety has been apart of their life for so long, it’s much easier to just accept it even if we’re tired of feeling that way all the time.
I received feedback, and was suggested to maybe make the falling look more out of control, and also instead of doing the one eye ball, to add two to make it similar to a face. For this, I looked at the Haunted Mansion wallpaper, as that has eyes only slightly hidden.
I coloured the rough in, as I haven’t decided yet if I want to make the poster black and white or colour. At the very least, I would like to colour some aspect of the MC, like her blazer or hair in order to make her stand out more.
(design 4)
I added a yellow tint to the upper right corner of the poster as well in order to show her reaching for a figurative light; she is struggling to keep her head above water, even when the anxiety chokes her. I elected to have her eyes hidden behind her hair, as I feel like that would be a lot to have in one space. I like this poster draft the most out of the ones I have drawn up so far, simply because it’s ambiguous enough to leave questions and also show what it might be about. I might end up drawing another rough, implementing both Anxie and the falling, but at the moment, I need to focus on my professional materials.
I sketched up a very rough design of a business card. I wanted to include a character of mine, as I’m mostly interested in character design, and I looked at business cards that character designers had as well.
(rough sketch)
Most of the cards I looked at where really simple, and I liked the idea of the character being on the other side of the card. My writing isn’t very clear, so I will probably end up using icons instead. I’m not sure on the font yet either, but something legible would be ideal; if I can, I would like to make my own font to use on the card and the short poster. I would prefer to have a couple of designs for the back with the character, just so there’s some variety and can show off some different designs. I have been more focused on the actual poster than the promotional materials, due to the fact I am not sure what I will do after this year. I need to improve my CV as well, and create an actual design for it.
I have created templates for possible CVs, pictured below.
(rough CV templates)
I would probably add a contact me tab to the side of the picture, along with my name obviously. For colour, I would do pink for the background and maybe white for the font. I would also add little characters in some spaces if I could fit them. I haven’t been focusing that much on my CV, which I need to fix before moving forward too much.
I like the idea of making it a character profile you could find in a video game, or a fan website. Some of them looked a little too busy for my liking, I personally found them hard to read. I like Callum Fowlie’s the best, as it fits the theme of character design and also conveys the most information without being too cluttered. My main concern is the fact I stick to using the one program – Clip Studio – and rarely do I ever use another software, so the skills tab would look a tad bit empty, though I could replace it with other things like Krita or even some of my own artwork, mostly to fill up the space. I also like the idea of having some art work there, enough to show to the person reading what my work is like.
I will need to clean up my CV template, and also rough out a sketch of how I want the final booth to look. I have an idea of making it look like a study desk, where we could see the main character’s work and also her notes that she uses for her presentation. This would be good to add little sketches along the margins too, or even tear marks, to make it look like a real notebook she uses during class and that she was crying over. It could be neat to use my old notes as well if I can find them, or even replicate some of the old ones I had. I could have them be my own notes for the animated short too. If I have time, I would like to have a small art book showing concept art and final designs, and also shots from the short.
As of this time, I’m still not sure what it is I would like to do; but I like the idea of writing. I enjoyed writing the dissertation for Drakengard and Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers, and I would love to continue critically analyse video games and animation, and I have been writing in my spare time for practice. Why did the creator choose this method of story-telling? Why is the character designed that way? How does a characters’ choices influence others around them? Looking upon art critically and trying to find the creator’s true intentions has always fascinated me, and the media that has me ask the most questions keep my interest. I have been told that a PHD would be my best bet in order to pursue that career path. Though I am not sure if it’s quite right for me, and I need to have a talk with a couple of more people about it. Failing that, I could turn to either game journalism or making videos talking about media I love. Game journalism seems like another good route to take, though it seems to focus more on reporting on what is happening within the industry, rather than looking at older games and critically looking at them. I could always make my own blog though and become a freelancer where I focus on media literacy and look at characters.
I like doing research, and again, I love writing, so pursuing a four year course in order to improve my skills wouldn’t be too intimidating for me. However, I still practice character design, as I like designing characters and drawing them; my favourite parts in art books for games was seeing the different concept designs for characters. Though, I haven’t been taking much time to further my career goal in this, I practice often enough.
I still have a long way to go in terms of being prepared for the end of year show because I have been very focused on the main project. Moving forward, I need to start dedicating some time in the week to this module as well. My CV definitely needs some attention paid to it, and I will start focusing on that. The business card shouldn’t take too long to do in theory, so I will be leaving that for last. I will also start doing more research into career options for writing and begin considering options for a career in character design/colouring.