BRIEF

This project is about choosing a theme from Adventures of old, Magical and mysterious, Dark and dangerous, Out of this world and create a 3D model of an inhuman character or an object. The theme I chose is Out Of This World. And I created a character with mantis feature, but her arms and legs will be displaced by machines.

MINDMAP

MOODBOARDS

REFERENCE

CHARACTER SETTING

CHARACTER DESIGN

So about this character I am trying to combine the biological elements and technological elements. Her body was designed with the elements of mantis, and her arms and legs were replace by the mechanical limbs. In fact, personally, making this mechanicla limbs into 3D models is much easier than making the body, so it’s a kind of way to be lazy. In the settings, after this character No.0119 escaped from the laboratory, she replaced all her arms and legs with mechanical limbs in order to become more stronger.

3D MODEL

See my 3D model 1 at: https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/mu-no0119-0e56b4b18dde4606a61c8ef2c036f70b

See my 3D model 2 at: https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/mu-no0119-9bcdf057cc3342dc8e4fc356e0795ef3

REFLECTION

So my first idea of creating a character was to design a monster or a creature that follows the settings of Kamen Rider. However we have a rule that the final model should be no more than 2000 polygons. So I tried to add some mechanical elements on her which was replace her arms and legs with the mechanical limbs. So I could make the base model more simple and try to mech a texture with higher polygons onto the model with lower polygons. This way also allowed me to make the model much more easier. But here I faced my first problem, how should those mechanical limbs look like. I redesigned the character again and again, and finally, I just design the limbs in simple cylinders, which not looks very great but easy to build.  

When I started to build this character in Maya, I was confident and excited cause I didn’t have too much big problem on making the model with the lower polygons. It was just not look like my 2D design very much due to the polygon limit. I was a little unsure where the muscles are in the biological part, so the biological part may look a little bit strange. But I really like the parts of the mechanical limbs that I made, they looks well and fit my 2D design version. And thanks to Luca’s teaching in the class, I learnt how to combine two points and how to mirror objects in Maya, which are so useful for making models. 

However when I brought my model with low polygons into the Zbrush, there came a lot of problems. For example, cause I needed to allow my character’s limbs act like machines, I should make the limbs into parts instead of connect them with the body, so I had to divided them in Maya and import to Zbrush indifferent parts. This process was a little bit annoying, and I needed to do the UV editing again. I think I should make two version from the beginning next time, one version keep the objects in different parts and one version connect all the parts together, which will make my process of modeling much easier. By the way, this was the first time to do the UV editing, this work was so difficult and complicated. I think it is the most challengeable work in this project for me. I did again and again, no matter how I edited, there were still some problem can not be fixed, I just let those problem go at the end. I think next time I make a 3D model, I must build objects and consider the UV at the same time, so that I can make the UV of the object more logical.

After I brought all my parts into the Zbrush, I started to add details and made the low poly model into high poly model. And to be honest, I used to thought that the Zbrush is very easy to learn,  but it is not. It is so different to the software like Maya and Blender, it is basically for sculpture, so there are too much tools which need to learn carefully. I didn’t think there was enough time for learning the Zbrush deeply, so I just use some basic tools for sculpture to add details such as the texture of the muscle on the biological parts. I didn’t think these details works very well, but it was good enough for my low poly model. I used Substance 3D Painter to add color and textures. I just added basic colors and added metal texture on her mechanical limbs. As I still don’t understand how to render in Substance 3D Painter, I used the Sketchfab to make the final rendering model, which was much easier for me. But I will try to learn rendering in Substance later. 

I tried to push myself work harder, so I learnt a bit of rigging. That allowed me to make my character have different poses, which lead to a better effect of the final render. In this process, I thought rigging was fine, cause I asked Luca a lot of questions, painting the weight was so difficult especially for the biological part of my character. Fortunately the limbs are machines, which were easy to be painted the weight. 

For this project, I really enjoyed it especially at the end I finally could pose my character, which felt like my character was alive. But I still need to learn more about model, sculpture and render in the later study.

BRIEF

This project is about making a 10s to 15s animation with a voice. So the voice I chose is number7. One man is asking the other man whether can he dance, and they also say that Sarah is a great dancer. I will cut some part of the voice, cause the total voice is longer than 15 seconds.

MOODBOARD

My idea was to set this communication in a banquet. So I found some illustrations of banquets. During this time, I found a film “Crimson Peak”, I really enjoy the dance part in the film, I also like the colour style and the environment of that part. So I decided to use this style to design my characters and environment. And I extracted a lot of colours from the dance part in that film.

CHARACTER DESIGN

There were three characters in my animation. One is human, the other two are ghosts. So one ghost can’t dance but the other ghost which is a young lady is very good at dancing.

BACKGROUND

STORYBOARD

My animation of  living voices is about one man and one ghost were have a communication about dancing on a banquet. And this banquet is not only for man but also for ghost. The man asked whether the ghost can dancing, the ghost said no. However one ghost called Sarah is really good at dancing, and at the final part in animation she was dancing in the front of the man and the ghost. But her dancing is showed as turning around in the animation, this was due to I thought I don’t have enough skills and time to animate someone dancing. The other reason was that part only show few seconds, I didn’t think the time was enough to show a fantastic dance.

X SHEET

During this project, we were been taught to make the X sheets. This is my first time to make X sheets, to be honest, this is really confusing and difficult to make at the beginning. I mean confirming the sound of each frames of a dialogue is a little bit difficult. I have to listen the dialogue again and again. However, as all the mouth shapes and the sound are showed in the final piece, I thought this really makes animators much easier to arrange the details of the animation. And in the subsequent production, the X sheets really increased the efficiency of drawing the mouth shapes of characters. To be honest, I personally think X sheet is the most useful thing I learnt through the living voices project. I definitely will keep practicing it in my animations.

CHARACTER A

CHARACTER B

KEY FRAMES

REFLECTION

Through this project I found myself some weaknesses or rather something to work harder on. The first thing is that I need to observe more about how people move. There are few actions of the characters look not natural. Although, with the help of my teachers I had changed some parts so the characters look better than before, some actions were wrong at the beginning and I didn’t know how to change it. In fact, I designed my characters in a cute style so that I could draw the actions much easier, this was my idea. However, it doesn’t work that well, I still need doing more sketches and focusing on the movement of people. The second problem is my background and characters don’t mix very well, it looks like my characters are stand in the front of a background instead of in that environment. I think the main problem is my background is a little bit strange. Cause they were in a banquet, however the people in the background was been simplified and they didn’t move. And in some part the background was just filled with colour. Although I thought there was not enough time to design the background, I was so bad at drawing the environment, I need to spend more time on practicing background. 

And this is also my first time to use Toon Boom Harmony, in my opinion, it isn’t an easy software to learn. It took me whole week to get used to the basic operation of it. I may need to relearn how to it. After all, although there were some problems of my final animation, I had a lot of new experiences about the production process of the animation. 

I (ι, iota )

BRIEF

This rotation is about creating a character. The theme I chose is winter. I combined the elements of the arctic fox (Vulpes Lagopus) and the clothes of Eskimo. So here is my character. This character is included in my own story world PLAN H (ETA). Her name is I(ι, iota ), she is a clone man, number is 0090. She was converted to the high  mobility  type in the arctic. Her helmet can help her to keep warm and breathe, and also help her fight in high speed mode. Her weapon is a submachine gun that based on Project 90, and I add some cold districts style.

DRAFTS & COLOURS

REFERENCES

SKETCHES

REFLECTION

I think I need more practice on human body, I used a triangle to dicribe her legs on one hand I was trying to use shape to design a character, on the other hand was that I’m not good at drawing human legs. I also need more practice on emotional sheets cause I think they don’t work well.

You can download my PDF about this project here

First Contact

Crossing the blockade line, the detective entered the scene of the crime. This is a two story house. The dead man laid in the living room, the back of his head looks like it’s been broke from the inside, and the brain and the blood were exposed. 

“The deceased is 26 years old, male, we didn’t find any murder weapon on the first floor.” Sheriff said.

“Did you search the second floor?”

“Not yet. In fact, all the policemen are afraid of get into the second floor.”

“Why? Fine, let me do it.”

The detective slowly opened the door of the second floor, everyone was shocked by what they saw with the flashlight. The whole second floor was covered in disgusting drawings. Those drawings were full of darkness and evil, just looking at them made everyone sick. Some of the policemen even screamed, and the sound seemed to awaken something in the darkness.  

With the sound of an insect flapping its wings, they found an insect as big as a pigeon was watching and observing them from the dark corner. Those black glowing tentacles and the semicircular wings were all telling human, that creature was not supposed to exist on the earth. 

Fear filled everyone’s mind.

BRIEF

So this ratation is about writing a short dark story in about 150 words. And my idea is writing a fanfiction about the Cthulhu Mythos. So I writed a start of a story around The Insects From Shaggai. And my story is about the owner of a two story house called the Shaggai for some reason, however the controled him and one day  killed him. The police and a detective came to search, and they found the Shaggai hid in the darkness on the second floor. So the whole story is not that completed, I only focus on the description of atmosphere and  the Shaggai. 

REFLECTION

As the English is my second language, I understand there are a lot of strange description that are not exist in the normal English grammar. And compare to the original artictle, my description is simple and not enough. I think my writing ability really need more practice in the future.

You can download my PDF about this project here

BRIEF

This project is about making sound, which is the most difficult project for me. To be honest I am extremely insensitive to sound or I could say I’m tone-deaf, so this rotation really confused me. 

So in this project, we should make three film with  sound each in 10 seconds. My first is the sound of a monster  which is sleeping. The second one is about a girl was awakened from her sleep with a horrific background sound. Ther third one is a girl who was ostracized and beome lonely. 

REFLECTION

About this project I just want to say I know that I really messed it up. I really don’t know how can I combine the sound and what sounds should I use. This lead to my outcomes are so werried, the sounds don’t match the pictures at all. I really need someone to teach me how to make sound effect from the beginning. 

You can download my PDF about this project here

BRIEF

This project is about  location drawing. In the first session of  this this rotation, teacher led us to the Tate Modern for sketching. I sketched some people and some artworks in the Tate Modern which gave me a lot of ideas for my final work. 

So my final drawings are about a sculpture of an unfinished building. This building is located in Beirut, Lebanon, and it is a symbol of the internal conflict that has never really been resolved. However, I didn’t focus on the meaning of this sculpture. I just want to show the fate of an unfinished building through the drawings of this sculpture. In the first one, a sculptor was making this model. And as an unfinished building, it was showed to  the public. Finally it was destroyed by someone. (It’s just three drawings of a story that I imaged, it doesn’t  mean we must destory that sculpture just like an unfinished building. It is very disrespectful to destroy someone’s work.)

SKETCHS

REFLECTION

I really enjoyed this rotation because we went out and did some sketches. But my drawings haven’t got the level that I expected. Them are not colored due to I am not comfident with my ability of using colors. I will try to practice  more. 

You can download my PDF about this project here

BRIEF

This project is about making a dynamic composition with three photographs and focus on point, line, shape, texture. My initial idea is about to use the surface of a brick wall to show blocks, roads and the traffic on a city. However I found that was so difficulf to take the photographs I wanted. So I turn to focus more about the shapes the lines instead of keep thinking about the theme. In my final work, I compose a picture of the brick wall, a picture of trees and a picture of a road under the a bridge. And I use the vertical inversion so it lloks more abstract and dynamic. In my opinion, the elements that work well are the shape of the blricks and the lights which show into a line. And the walls with a little bit angle make the image more dynamic in some ways.

TESTS

PHOTOGRAPHS

Some of the photographs that I took for this project.

REFLECTION

To be honest, I think my outcome is really bad. Sometimes I feel confused about what I am doing, because I am not sensitive to shapes and lines in photography, and I don’t know whether my final work fit the project requiremnets. I think the image I made deviates from the theme of dynamic. I also think that I made it too simple about how to balance this image, the centre point is just around the middle of the light part. But I would say this project does helped me to practice observational ability.

You can download my PDF about this project here

BRIEF

This project is about trying to use light box to make some traditional animations. I did four animations, each is in 2 seconds. The first line animation is a straight ahead animation. The second which is about a changing face is a pose to pose animation. Third ball animation is about bouncing object. And the fourth one is a character animation with the skill of ease out and ease in.

ANIMATION

REFLECTION

During this project, I found that I really didn’t know how the objects move before. Luckly, I understand some ways of how they act in this project. In my first two animations, you can only see 12 frames in one second, this due to if I made that with 25 frames in one second, it will be too fast, on the other hand, I really need to draw more frames. However, the other two animation is in 25 frames per seconds, and I think they work well. But I also should spend more time on adding more frames or add more actions to get a better outcome.

You can download my PDF about this project here

BREIF

The outcome I made for this Motiongraphics project is a kind of combination of the elements in my own story world which is called ‘Plan H(η, eta)’. It cane be seen as a world with elements of Cthulhu Mythos and cyberpunk. And my outcome doesn’t show a complete story, just some things and key words of that world. For example, at the beginning, the main character tried to run away from those tentacles which are chasing her, and she got caught at the end of the short video. However there isn’t a part shows how that happened. Instead, there is a part of different words changing in the frames. these are some key words and numbers of that world. ‘7’ is the nember of that plan, ‘eta’ is the other way of expressing the greek letter H(η, eta). ‘084’ is the production number of the main character who is a clone man. And ‘unspeakable’ is one of the main element of Cthulhu Mythos.

COLOURS

The colours I used in the video is found from the coolors.co.

CHARACTER

LOGO

STORYBOARD

In fact, I didn’t follow my storyboard during the making of the video, so the storyboard is more like a preliminary draft.

REFERENCE

In fact, I was trying to make a video which looks like the beginning of the film ‘Catch Me If You Can’. However it is too difficult for a beginner of AE and I just tried my best.

You can see the beginning of ‘Catch Me If You Can’ at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nv2S_S9MlU

REFLECTION

To be honest, the final outcome doesn’t get the level that I expected. The styles are not uniform, and I didn’t add sound, it is so strange. And personally, I think AE is really hard to use, I mean there are so many parameter need to change. One week is not enought time to be familiar with AE.

You can download my PDF about this project here

BREIF

Hi, I’m Shiyuan Tong. The story world I made in this 3D Story Worlds project is called ‘Plan H(η, eta)’. This is the world of my original character who is called H(η, eta), she is a clone man with two mechanical legs and a mechanical eye. This 3D model which was made through Maya is her room.

The story of ‘Plan H’ is that in a cyberpunk world, the main character H is investigating strange things happening in the city and trying to find out who she is. However the things she is investigating are about the unspeakable creaturs which are related to Cthulthu Mythos. The storys that happened on her are a little bit like COC TRPG, but it’s in a cyberpunk world.

DETAILS

Due to what H investigating is about Cthulthu Mythos, so I tried my best add a specimen of a tentacle in her room.

COLORS

Basically it’s a cyberpunk world so I tried to make the room looks more science fiction. I used the colors I found on the coolors.co. I think it works well.

MINDMAP AND REFERENCE

Please see my mindmap and references at: https://artslondon.padlet.org/stong0220201/92wp3puhquw499ux

REFLECTION

This is my first time modeling, obviously the final work has a lot of problems. First there are not enough items in the room, and also it doesn’t looks very cyberpunk, due it really takes time to model and I still don’t understand Maya very well. I really need more time to practice. Second, because I haven’t complete the setings of my story world yet, the style of the room is very strange, there are too few elements of Cthulthu Mythos. I may solve this problem in the future.

You can download my PDF about this project here.