For the presentation stage, I had a really fun time putting all my work and effort together and presenting it to the class and my mentor. Though we can’t schedule a meeting for me to meet up with my mentor team since she is doing freelance remote work, I have a blast presenting it to her. With the mindset of impressing the audience, there was a lot I wanted to talk about, so the timing for five minutes was a challenge. As for the solution, I cut down the time of explaining my brief. I also changed the layout of my presentation layout to improve the readability and create a better flow for my presentation.
Oh boy did I have a lot of hiccup for this phrase? This was the first time I did a character turnaround so there was a lot of redraw and lots of tracing to keep the consistency throughout all five angles. I was lucky to have really quick feedback from Rhea to point out all my little mistakes like how some of the details were not aligned and keep paying attention to the clean line art
I was able to fix the height of where her ears are and fix all the hands to make it look correct anatomy-wise and also some fixing for the lighting to bring the character to life.
For the character lineup, I looked up some of my favourite movies like “Lilo and Stitch” and ” Bao” to learn how to express the character’s personalities through their pose and prop. All the characters have their own distinct personality. Niko is a rebellious child who refuses to stay still which is why her clothes are all thorn and messy. Her hairstyle was inspired by a Japanese dessert called Dango and the crab claw, sweet and mistrevious at the same time.
The first rough draft was too stiff with no lighting and just flat colour. Rhea gave me some suggestions on how to push the lighting to tell a story. I am really happy with how this lineup turned out.
For this environment piece, it was tricky to show the depth from the foreground, middle ground and background. I want to showcase a drawing in ” the ghost and Molly McGhee” style with the vehicle which is a prop you often see in animation. After Rhea’s revision, I was able to add more realistic texture and highlights to make the background more believable.
There are some more revisions for the room layout that I’m looking forward to finishing it
It was really rewarding to push all my designs to a final look that is coherent and professional. I learn so much more about photoshop and how to use the tool to my own advantage. Overall I would give myself a 9/10
For the first stage of this project, I got into contact with Rhea Wong. She is a background and visual development artist who is working in Titmouse studio. She is a really talented artist who has a strong eye for lighting and composition which are the two things I want to improve on. I was really lucky to get into contact with Rhea.
Rhea Wong works
We got into a quick QnA about her experience in the industry and understood more about the studio and what they are looking for. After going back and forth explaining the idea I have, she suggested I should copy the style of a show from Titmouse so I could curate my portfolio for the studio. We decided that we would stay in contact in discord so I can update her on my process and she can send over and paint over and critique what she wants to give me.
Things I find the most challenging are overthinking a few times when I was doing my research. The storyline needs some sort of logic while making it fun and exciting for the young audiences. Deciding how much I want to draw for this project so the project doesn’t look unfinished. Learning how to set up my photoshop layer to match the industry standard was challenging and rewarding at the same time.
Objects need to have their own layer so the animator can edit them later on if needed. Overall, I would give myself a 7/10 for this process.
I had a fun time working on this assignment since the mood board is my favorite thing to create. It took me about two days, I did not do everything in one sitting but have a look at it again a couple of times to make sure I got what I liked on the page. I realized that I love quirky visuals and images that make people curious to understand what is the meaning behind them. I’m really exciting to ideating a logo based on my mood board and to create a visual and represend my brand. Overall I would give myself 8/10
I came up with the visual side for more mine ad pretty quickly but the process of writing the ad was quite rocky. I would probably edit the writing later on. Visual-wise I still really like how everything flow but if I can do it again I would redraw it to fit a horizontal frame and also make fix the lighting since it’s quite dark.
Writing the mentor’s email is quite challenging yet fun at the same time since I get a good reason to reach out to people I admire for the longest time. I want to get a respond from Yun Ling, who is a professional visdev working for multiple animations and games.
1.General placement: simple and basic features, a sketchy of arrangement, a sense of shape.
Example: each one has self-awareness about his or her own physical appearances, but this picture is not what the other look at, it just a general placement
2. Non-visual awareness: people are aware of themselves, even though they cannot see what we look like.
Example: people can know their facial expression although they couldn’t see it
Another form of non-visual awareness is when people interact with inanimate objects. Example: like when driving, driver can receive more information beyond five senses report. The whole car became an extension of the body
3.Objectifying power: act of treating a person, sometimes an animal as an object, empowering the character by realistic art in order to emphasizing the difference among other characters
Example: when most of characters were designed simple, some certain characters were drawn more realistically to objectify them
4.Sequential art: art form that use pictures in a specific sequence in order to transmit purpose of storyteller
Example: those pictures individually just a picture, but put in a sequence of related pictures, it will show the action
5.Pictorial: to indicate resemblance to the subject
Example: pictographs of ancient Egyptian depicts the image of the objects
6.Word specific combination: pictures illustrate, but don’t add to a largely complete text, the using of word is to transmit the meaning of images
Example: those pictures is using box of word to transmit the message in the picture contexts
7.Picture specific combination: words play the role of soundtrack to make the sequence picture clearer
Example: words only to describe the sounds effect that make the frames become more vivid
8. Duo-specific panel: the use of both word and picture is to send the message in each frame
Example: Words are used to describe the sound effects, expressions, and thoughts of the characters, and the images make the reader easy to imagine
9. Montage: words become integral content of the picture
Example: The
words are drawn large and heavy describing concepts that make the character
tired
10. Costume colour: The colour of the character’s clothes represents the character’s character. The colours were picked for strength and contrasted strongly with one another, but no colour dominated
For example, superheroes are depicted in costumes with bright primary colours, while villains are depicted in dark secondary colours.
In the present era, computers have played an indispensable role in all
areas of life, especially in the field of arts. Computer drawing offers certain
advantages; however, hand-drawing is inherently the original form of art for
thousands of year still does not lose its importance.
When it comes to drawing with a computer, the biggest advantage it has
is its editing capabilities, the mechanism of the computer that allows users to
easily edit sketches with a few simple steps. Artists or designers can create
different layers that overlap a drawing, edit, duplicate or change as many time
as they want until come to the final work that they need. Besides, the support
of the computer is also extremely useful for art that requires high accuracy
such as architecture or design. During the drawing process, some time will
require accuracy at an extremely high level this is really difficult or even
impossible if only drawing manually. But the computer program can provide the
tool for the artist to achieve, reduce the mistake of the human process
On the other hand, Drawing is an art that
requires emotion and creativity. Human hands cannot achieve pixel-by-pixel
accuracy, or describe colors as accurately as they do on a computer. But the
artist can still create an emotional work with just a few sketches rather than
a computer drawing. Everything on the computer has been programmed and coded, neat
and tidy, but creativity comes from imperfection and improvisation itself.
Brushstrokes on the paper come directly from the mind of the artist base on
what they think and see, while computer drawing was run through a series of
binary strings, it was linear and somehow emotionless.
In my point of view, the artwork is the combination of both accuracies
of shape and color, and emotion of artist despite whatever tools you use,
manual or computer. However, because of the characteristics of each type of
tool, we have to focus more on either emotion or accuracy. For manual drawing,
the drawing is transferred from the depicted brain through the artist’s hands,
so the drawing is of the artist’s intention even when the lines may be
incomplete. On the other hand, drawing on the machine means that the image is
transmitted from the human brain through the technology’s brain and shows us
the image that the computer’s CPU sees, which makes us have to focus more on
the main description of the message that the picture brings. However, the
ultimate goal of drawing is to convey the message through images, the process
may be different, the way of thinking in different working processes but the
end goal is constant.
From my perspective, I still use both manual and computer tools to
perfect my artwork. When I need ideas and creative inspiration, I often start
from drawing sketches on paper and completing them on a computer. Overall, I
still prefer drawing with the aided of computer devices. Because I can set up
multiple layers to try combinations on the same work and choose the one that I
like. At the same time, the color, the parameters on the computer are also more
accurate, which makes it easier for me to visualize the whole picture than to
do the whole work on paper.
Indigenous people use their literature to express their traditions and to communicate their understanding of the world. Each group has its literature, language and culture. For First Nations people, traditional storytelling was mostly based on spoken words. Their myths, folklore and legends shaping the everyday life of the community and the individual’s sense of identity and they transfer it from one generation to the next. They also used other methods to record their stories, such as rock paintings, birchbark scrolls and carving but the foundation was always oral narrative. This all changed when European invaded their land and forced them to abandon their language, families were separated and in many cases instead of getting the knowledge from their Elders, books had become the way to learn. Nowadays, there are so many Indigenous authors, not only write about their culture and record what happened in the past but they also dive into many other genres such as mythology, action, crime, sci-fi, comedy etc….
Strategy/solution
First Nations tales is a program aimed to introduce and educate young audiences to Indigenous literature. People can find information about a variety of books on our website and social media. Our website include e-book, link to online/offline retailer and audio book. Moreover ,we encourage and share our program resources with local schools in Vancouver. English teacher and club leader can schedule a reading event with through our staff.
For the project logo I was inspirited by Indigenous art which also became the mascot of my project. The logo was made with two symbol ear and eye shape which represent how people can enjoy literature.
Challenges
It’s not easy to make book compelling to a wide audience and I struggle with how to grab the people attention with my poster.
Self critique
Overall, I struggle with this project quite a lot. I learn to not over complicate my design and overcrowded everything.
The topic I would like to focus on is raising awareness to is indigenous literature. Words have always been a tool for people to learn, connect and empathize with each other.
Indigenous people use their literature to express their traditions and to communicate their understanding of the world. Each group has its literature, language and culture. For First Nations people, traditional storytelling was mostly based on spoken words. Their myths, folklore and legends shaping the everyday life of the community and the individual’s sense of identity and they transfer it from one generation to the next. They also used other methods to record their stories, such as rock paintings, birchbark scrolls and carving but the foundation was always oral narrative. This all changed when European invaded their land and forced them to abandon their language, families were separated and in many cases instead of getting the knowledge from their Elders, books had become the way to learn. Nowadays, there are so many Indigenous authors, not only write about their culture and record what happened in the past but they also dive into many other genres such as mythology, action, crime, sci-fi, comedy etc….
Knowing about what happened, I feel a strong impulse to spread awareness about first nation literature in general and I also want to break through the boundaries of the average people’s impression about Indigenous literature. First nation literature is more than victim narrative and historical narrative , there is so much more about it that people should discover.
Charles S. Anderson is a well-known designer who famous for thousands of anonymous commercial- arts artifacts. His works blend nostalgic pastiche with contemporary aesthetics of colour and form.
Anderson graduated from Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 1981. By 1985 he joined the edgy Duffy Design Group. Most of his inspirations come from the mixture of mid-century New Bauhaus Modernism and carnivalesque pop culture. In 1989, Charles formed form his firm the Charles S. Anderson Design ( CSA) which specializes in identity development, packaging and product design. One really interesting fact about the firm is it has the French Paper Company as a long term client for over thirty years. Anderson’s long-running promotional campaign for the company, with its vintage type and logo icon, he called it ” the bonehead tyle”
CSA works have been exhibited in numerous museums worldwide such as The Permanent Collection of The Museum of Modern Art, New York, The Nouveau Salon des Cent and the Museum Für Gestaltung.
