Project process – Storyboard and character design

The main task this week was to complete the storyboard and character design. Since our story content is about a little boy lost in an amusement park, we will design the main character and the style of the scene in a fantasy style.

About the Storyboard

The initial storyboard was done by Xu from 2D Animation, who designed the first version of the storyboard.


The first version storyboard

After seeing the draft storyboard drawn by Xu, we met again to discuss the structure of the storyline. Since we were making a preview, the storyline needed to be compressed, but this version of the story was a bit tedious and very fragmented without a lot of useful content, so we decided to make changes to the storyboard after the discussion. The initial storyboard is very important for the mid-term modeling and animation, and is the foundation of the whole project. Therefore we pay a lot of attention to the quality of the storyboard and the storytelling.

About the 2D character design

The character’s design was drawn by Gou from 2D Animation, who designed several versions of the color scheme.

Gou designed a total of 5 versions of the image of the main character

Red and blue version

Green and grey version

Red and white version

There is also the design of the supporting characters, although the final part of the supporting characters deleted

Xu also designed the characters, but we did not take this version.

Xu’s character design sketches

We finally decided on the image of the main character, using the red and blue version, which can reflect the naivety of children. The second reason is that our story takes place in an amusement park at night, and the main character will be more noticeable when wearing red and blue-based colors.

Week3 Establishing A Research Topic

This week involves trying to choose a theme, which can also be called a research topic. The chosen theme must in some way relate to the fields of art, design and visual culture.

My tutor gave me good guidelines and explained how to choose the right topic correctly. The direction and extent of how to choose a theme is explained in detail. In addition, I need to have the following requirements for the theme.

  • I need to stay interested in this topic for more than a few months
  • The selection of this topic should be neither too broad nor very narrow.
  • I was able to find reliable data and materials to research my topic.
  • I choose topics that are intellectually challenging and also reflect criticality

To help me understand the meaning of the appropriate topic, the tutor listed broad and narrow topic selections respectively. Through the two examples of topics, I broadly understood the extent and importance of the topics.

Week03 – Telling stories through the camera

Session with George

Since I wasn’t very specific about the previous story, I was still a little unclear about what I wanted to do with the story. So I rewrote the script about the second story. And re-storyboarded the shots that I wanted to show.

The script

Scene 1 Studio

Medium Shot of a woman being interviewed in a studio

Close up The woman is telling what she sees as the main character is a mean person

Medium The woman who is the daughter of the main character

“When I was little, he wouldn’t even pay for me to sign up for a hobby group or take me to a restaurant to eat”

Scene 2 Information Cocoon Room

Medium The protagonist is sitting in a dark and quiet room with his back to the camera. He is facing the digital screen on the wall, watching the interview with his daughter on the screen, and he still does not speak.

Close up The daughter continues to be interviewed on the digital screen in the room.

The camera advances

“I sometimes wonder if I might not be his own daughter and that he doesn’t love me at all.”

Medium The main character bows his head and sighs

Scene 3 The studio

Medium The interviewer is replaced by another male who is wearing a prison uniform and claims to be the main character’s boss.

Close up Man sitting in a chair telling the protagonist is a greedy man.

“If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t be sitting here dressed like this, this sickening guy.”

Scene 2 Information Cocoon Room

Medium shot Back shot Main character looking at the interviewer on the digital screen.

Medium shot Back shot The main character changed his sitting position, from hands on knees to hands around the arms

Full lens shot  Side shot The main character sitting on the left, the middle is a layer of glass, the right is also the main character himself.

Full lens shot  Side shot The main character sitting on the left is static without changing his posture The main character on the right has been changing from his original appearance into various kinds of characters, but they are not himself.

Close-up  A light shines on the main character’s eyes, and he closes and opens the eyes again.

“It’s not me.”

Full lens shot  Back shot The wall around the main character disappears from around him instantly like a series of digital codes.

Scene 4 The sea of the mind

Full lens shot  The main character is sitting on the beach, with an endless sea and blue sky in front of him. The beach behind the main character is covered with large pieces of diamonds.

Full lens shot  There is a white staircase in the middle of the sea that connects to the sky.

Medium The main character is standing on the white staircase steps, one step forward.

Close-up The main character twisted the handle of the door.

Close up The main character looks back and smiles

Close up The main character opens the door, behind which is a dazzling light, and the main character goes into the light.

Session with Nick

Project Process—Discuss the story with group members

The second week we met to discuss the story content of the project. At first we were stuck on what theme of story we wanted to do. Our agreement was to do a dark style story.

The second week we officially set up the project team, I was the team leader, the members were Qiaoqing Yu, Jiazhuo Tang from 3D Computer Animation, Yinyun Xu and Guowei Gou from Animation.

To speed up our pace, we started brainstorming. We asked each other about scary scenes, especially as young kids, where was the first place that came to mind? I said the first thing that comes to mind is an empty amusement park. Group members propose the empty shopping malls, after-school classrooms, etc. Then we decided that the main character was a young boy of about 10 years old.

Record the setting keywords during the discussion

After we determined that the story was set in an amusement park, we further discussed the plot development of the story. At first we conceived of a storyline about lost children, and later mentioned about raising awareness about disadvantaged people.

Considering the volume of the project, we still consider doing the content of the little boy getting lost, so that the story sense of the game promo can be reflected.

After that we confirmed the project and group members’ information.

Week02 – Establishing my world

Session with George

This week I told George about three of my ideas. I made three 3D storyboards.

story01
story02
story03

All the stories are still in preliminary attempts, three different topics about kinship, self, and exploring the unknown respectively. After discussing with George, I was most interested in the second story, about self-awareness, in which the main character gradually comes to know himself and releases himself between the conversations of others.

My mood board

Session with Nick

We’re doing mechanical fingers in this class, and it’s a fun way to start. Since Nick tells us we’re going to end up making a great looking robotic arm, I’m looking forward to what I’ll be making.

Week2 Experimental Animation

There is an integral link between conceptual application and technological advancement in the innovation of film and in particular, animation, raising complex and challenging questions.

The limitless potentials of developing visual and film language fuelled by technological advancement has and continues to motivate independent and ground-breaking work.
Personal Vision through independent film and animation remain central to the development of the medium.

Experimental film umbrellas a vast variety of concepts, models and approaches. The work may by nature hard to to categorise and define. It is therefore important to：

  • Find systems by which we can recognise qualities, aesthetics, abstract themes and concepts.
  • Analysis the influences of new technologies, society and culture on individual works or movements.
  • Determine the individual motivations and priorities of the artist/s
  • Establish the significance of work from a historical and contemporary context.

A link of implied narrative：https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6vzDo6it9o

Experimental visual effects evolved from the combination of sound and image

Thesis and Proposal Structure

This session introduces the basic structure of the paper, and discusses the content and format of each paragraph in detail.

 About my FMP thesis：

As for my orientation after graduation, I prefer to work in the animation and film production department, focusing on visual effects and 3D animation. Since I saw the first animated film, I have been looking forward to participating in the production of an animated film in the future, so I chose major in 3D animation.

Because I hope that the work I am responsible for is more inclined to the combination of theory and practice, I need to improve my professional skills, such as software proficiency in the middle and later stages. At the same time, I also need to exercise my ability to cooperate. Animation production is a team project, which requires the whole team to have the same goal and coordinate and cooperate.

I will record my exercises through the content of my blog every week, and work in groups on the actual learning content to complete a meaningful animation project with my classmates.

Personally, my learning content is more practical and technical. The paper can help me record the content and problems in the process of practice, and discuss and reflect. To some extent, it can help me exercise my ability to solve problems, and also make my mind more peaceful.

At present, I hope to do a good job in my professional field. If I am skilled, I can cooperate with people in other fields and carry out some cross-border integration, which is a good development direction.

Collaborative Unit -Week01

This is the first week of the project and I’m leaning towards the idea of doing a game promo. I’ve always loved fantasy game titles, so I looked for games in my favorite genre for reference. Considering the workload, we won’t attempt to make overly complicated game promos, but rather focus on making short and delicate content.

After we decided the direction of our work, we started looking for the right partner. We needed partners for 2D animation and storyboarding. Within a week’s time, we found a partner. I worked with two students from 2D animation and two students from 3D animation.

After this, I searched for a large number of stylistic reference images about characters and scenes. Through these reference charts we were able to more quickly determine our design style and direction.

About the style of the game characters

These are the character designs we are interested in

About the style of game promos

I’ve always loved the art style of the game 【Identity V】, so I wanted to create a similar dark style promo. Also, I appreciate the art design of【 Brawl Star】. It uses many delicate, childish and cute elements to enrich the picture, and I learned a lot.

Week01-Elements of Mise En Scene/Camera

Session with George

This lesson introduces about the rule of third and the camera lens. My goal was to build a scene and worldview on my own and to tell the story as a director. I needed to come up with three different ideas and do the initial set-up.

To better understand the creation of the story and the construction of the world view, there are some basic introductions.

Understanding mise en scene and compositions help define our stills/shots. To get to that point where you can communicate what you want you first need to establish the world.

• Where is this taking place?

• What era?

• Future, past or present?

• Space? Western? East Asian? Steam punk?

• What governs your world? Laws? Gods/religions?

How do these things effect your story?

point of knowledge is about telling the story with camera shots/angles

Different camera shots have different meanings.