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.
