Week 18

Over the weekends, I tried drawing with Wacom tablet. At first, it was quite uneasy and tedious. However, I find that drawing digitally has some benefits too. For instance, putting color over a big area can be done quicker and mistake can be undo.

Some of my drawings:

I tried to replicate Ryan Woodward's background design style (e.i. silhouettes over a textured color)

In additional, I also did some animations of fog movements in Toon Boom.

    

Week 17

This week I researched on different type of trees, especially oak tree. Besides, I also tried drawing in worm’s eye view for the first scene and tried different composition for the swamp scene. Here are some of my drawings:

Swamp scene.

A worm’s eye view of a tree.

On Thursday, everyone went over to my house for further discussion and as well as completing all the unfinished tasks together.

I did further research on Ryan Woodward’s drawing styles. And I noticed that the backgrounds for his animations are mostly silhouettes. Thus, I tried to replicate that in some of my drawings today. 

Oak tree on a hill.

A scene at the cliff.

As his style is rather unique and quite different from mine, more practice is needed for me. 

Furthermore, to be prepared for the production phrase, I will be trying to draw digitally soon.

Some of my other drawings:

Oak tree scenes.

Cliff scene. 

Week 15-16

During these few weeks, I continued to explore and look for different scenery references to improve on my background designs. 


Below are some of my drawings:

I was experimenting with different perspectives. As well as adding objects to indicate foreground, mid-ground and background. Thus, giving more depth to the overal scene. 


However, much more improvements are needed. So i will continue trying and experimenting. 

Week 12-14

At the beginning of week 12, we were stuck between the humorous "Aliens" story and another story called "Forlorn". After much considerations, we decided to proceed with the second story. This is because "Forlorn" has deeper meaning and more educational values. Thus, audiences could learn something valuable from the show.

As we were quite behind schedule, we proceeded on designing the characters and backgrounds straightaway.

My responsibility was designing the background for the different scenes of the animation. I was having difficulties with drawing in different perspectives and viewpoints. But it will be fine with more drawing practices.

Below are some drawings:

A scene with oak tree on a hill.

Swamp scenes. 

Week 9-11

After much considerations, we decided to work on a new story. We brainstormed and call the story "Aliens". This time, we focused on making the story humorous and entertaining.
The story has three main characters with distinct characteristics. I was helping with designing the characters, particularly the female character - Lexi.

Below are some sketches:

Lexi is a beautiful alien but unfortunately, she has very thick hideous lips. We did it this way to add more comedic flavor to the animation. 

Week 1-8

We were working as a group and brainstorming ideas. And with help from our advisors, we finalized our ideas and started developing on the story "Scissors, Paper, Stone". 


My role for this was creating the character designs, but mainly focusing on Scissors. 


Some of my initial designs:

After referencing more on different types of scissors and considering the character's personality, I created the final design for scissors.

And after finalizing on our characters and story, we proceed on to prepare for our first pitching session. My role was to illustrate a suitable poster.

  Our pitch session did not go very well as we were not prepared enough and our pitching style was slightly incorrect. The lectures gave us useful advises to improve on the story concept and as well as our pitching style. 

  After the next few weeks, we continue to identify and solve problems within our story. I have learnt that there are numerous things to consider when developing a story. Firstly, it needs to be suitable for our target audience and thus, we always need to keep in mind the targeted age group. Secondly, to capture the audience's attention, the story should have enough events and quests. As for character designing, it is crucial to show the character's personality through the appearance. This is because it would help the audiences to understand the character and the story better.