Elective 02 – Polyworld

Electives

My very first idea for this project was to create a doll-house interior. However, as I started working in Maya, my ideas shifted to creating a gothic room instead. I began to collect references from illustrators including Vincent Mallie and Charles W. Stewart.

I began by learning hard-surface modelling, working on the furniture and panelling first. I had a particularly difficult time navigating Maya’s marking menus – right clicks and mouse dragging. I find keyboard shortcuts much more useful, even if I have to learn different sets for different software – this was a huge disadvantage for me.

Other than that, modelling was relatively easy. I inserted edge loops, offset edges, bevelled them etc. until my shapes had begun to take form. One unexpected difficulty I immediately ran into was scale – it was actually quite tricky to figure out object’s sizes relative to one another.

I used a sweep mesh tool to create both of the picture frames – it allowed me to easily add details – small indents along the borders. I then made sure to delete the history once I was happy with their appearance. I also made a door. I created the panelling on the door individually as the symmetry tools I found a bit confusing. After many face extrusions, scales and translations, I completed the pattern on the door. Unfortunately the fall off of my lights later would mean none of these patterns actually get seen!

The window panes were unglamorously created through stretching a cube to be very long and thin, rotating it +45 or -45 degrees in the X axis and duplicating them many times before combining into a single mesh.

The ropes were made of EP curves, as well as the curtains. The curtains I made with the following method. I began by drawing out an ep curve very carefully, thinking about how fabric might fold. I then duplicated the curve. I repeated this, visualising the shape of the curtain until using the Surface > Loft function to connect these curves.

Texturing was a lot of fun as it truly made my 3D models come to life and feel real. I created lots of different materials, some myself, some from pre-sets and others were downloaded textures from Polyhaven. I used the aiStandardSurface as a base for all of my shaders.

The alignment of textures is far from perfect, especially as seen here on the wallpaper I downloaded. However in this case, it might not be an issue as real wallpaper is not always perfectly aligned. My subpar UV unwrapping skills become more evident when the grain of wood is going in the wrong direction of where the armchair’s leather pattern appears patchy.

The textures on the books would only be seen from afar – so I did not UV wrap them individually. The dark line near the top of the books was actually accidental, but I liked the detail it gave so I kept it. I wanted the soft pale wood of the bookshelf to contrast with the rest of the dark wood panelling. Additionally, this bookshelf was mostly inspired by Vincent Mallie’s illustration I’ve included at the top of this post.

I experimented a lot with lighting. Ultimately I ended up using a range of area and point lights, playing with the settings, intensities, and exposures. I think the most valuable thing to change had been the colour of the lights – warm oranges and cool blues create very different moods. Below, I show the effect each light has on the scene.

The area light in the top right corner is very distracting and looks unnatural. This is why I actually ended up putting it inside a magical bubble. In my final render, it appears as though the bubble is emitting light. I especially love how the lights react with my reflective materials like the frame of the mirror.

I ended up creating another camera with a wide angle lens for the animation. I set two key frames, then played around with the graph editor to create ease ins and easy outs. I was also able to modify how rotations and translations changed at different rates.

For animation, I downloaded the Stewart rig from Animation Mentor, then changed the default orange colours to black to turn him into a little shadow boy.

I experimented a lot by trying to animation him jumping a little. However, I could not control the rig well enough and ended up making a total mess of the geometry in certain areas. I decided I would not be adding complex animation to my scene. Not only would it distract from my environment, it would also be too ambitious considering this is my first Maya project.

Instead, I opted for a simpler animation and did a rough 2D test of it in Krita.

You can view both of these animations here:

No matter how much I tried, the shadow boy simply did not fit into the armchair! His legs would not drape over the armrests properly, or his torso was not long enough to lean on the other side. Ultimately I decided to make him sit on the set of drawers and swing his feet.

Exporting this animation was a whole other issue. It took approximately 8 hours to render at 540p, however upon rewatching, I realised this quality was far too low. Another render (and many long hours) later, I had a high quality sequence of PNG images which I could then import into After Effects.

At first I tried adding nose and playing with the colours, but later realised adding a simple vignette would be enough.

Below, I have my completed renders for this project. I particularly like the top one it has an appealing, balanced composition using the rule of thirds and the bubbles and well-placed. The contrast between the night sky’s deep, cold blue and the interiors soft warmth is particularly effect. For the bottom image, I do like the latticed shadow cast by the window panes – this is something that was tricky to achieve and required a lot of trial and error with rotating the blue-hued area light. However, I wish more of it could be cast on the door to the right – it falls completely into shadow – we cannot even tell it is actually a door.

My final animation can be viewed below. Though I think the sound supports the eerie atmosphere and the camera movement displays the scene effectively, there is something off and washed-out about the video. This was the highest quality I could export it as within reasonable time – and yet I do not think the textures look convincing enough. Next time, I will experiment more with normal maps and bump nodes – I think the shaders should have been more rough and textured – there are too many flat and matte areas. However, I do overall like the atmosphere created – especially with the purple glowing bubbles refracting the room around them to create a surreal, dream-like effect.

Elective 01 – Lip Sync

Electives, Uncategorised

For this elective, we had to record an unscripted 15-second audio to the theme “London.”
I decided to interview my friend, and chose a piece of dialogue which reflected a lot of strong personality and attitude.

Then, using the audio, I began to explore different character designs. I wanted to depict a historical setting so I looked at early 19th century clothing styles to begin designing my character. Below are some initial character explorations.

Character Inspo:

Fashion Explorations for Antoine:

Now, I also wanted to create a second, contrasting character who this first character (Antoine) would be talking to. I wanted this character to have softer colours and more smoothed, curved shapes in direct contrast to Antoine’s strong red waistcoat and sharp shape language.

Initially, I decided to make Bella, a very meek-looking quiet character, however this would have created an obvious power imbalance. I wanted a character who would not just wordlessly accept Antoine’s torrent of unsolicited advice, but be abhorred by it.
I made her a more vibrant purple in the second version, giving her a haughty and spoiled impression.



When Antoine says “If you see a rat scurrying into an alleyway, you do not follow it to give it a name”, they will point to Bella’s hideous little dog, to which she will take grave offence. Unfortunately, this design did not make for a convincing dog. When posted, I’ve had over ten people think it was a cat.

While working on refining the character designs, I also created a very rough animatic. I wanted to use two different camera angles, one focusing solely on Antoine and another where we reveal to the audience who he is talking to.

Then, I had to decide on an environment for them, initially, I wanted to put them in a gothic-style parlour, where they might be talking over tea. However, I suddenly had the idea of putting them in a train setting as this would also make for better storytelling. This could create the impression that a young noblewoman, Bella is headed for London for the first time. However, her peaceful time of reflection in her cabin is interrupted by Antoine, an eccentric noble who becomes exceedingly passionate in giving completely unsolicited advice, warning her of the dangers of London and even insulting her ugly little dog in the process.

Environment Mood board



Here, you can see the two rough sketches I had of the background, then a rough colour experimentation with a Turner painting pasted into the painting hung above the seat.

I then proceeded to complete the two backgrounds, creating clean linework before shading use a range of layer modes. For the final piece, I will need to create more layers for the outside world as the train speeds past, however this would be best done in the compositing stage, which is beyond my current scope of this project. I drew both backgrounds as 3840 by 2160 pixels to make them twice as large as the final video output will be.

I used a stormy, tumultuous Turner painting to go above Antoine’s head and a calm still life by Mary Moser to go above Bella’s seat. Additionally, the lamp on Antoine’s side is crooked to show his eccentric nature where Bella’s is perfectly straight to reflect her perfectionism and fastidiousness.

Following this, I drew up an X-sheet, carefully scrubbing through the audio and recording the different sounds being made at each frame. I also moved each sound up two-three frames so the mouth shapes happen before the sound is heard. Secondly, I have started planning thumbnails on the x-sheet but I didn’t do this completely as I realised I preferred planning separately so I drew the rough poses in a different document.
The x-sheet proved to be very helpful during the animation phase.

Here are some of my thumbnail sketches and pose ideas – I worked on some of these from observation but I also acted out all of the movements myself and looked at that for reference.

I’ve also thoroughly studied an absolutely beautiful pencil test from The Prince of Egypt – the subtlety of the acting had my jaw on the floor. It was phenomenal and wonderful to analyse.

Below are Antoine’s mouth shapes I drew. Initially I wanted to give them lips but I ended up going with a simpler line for a mouth. This is common for more masculine characters – otherwise it may look like they are wearing lipstick.

I then started animation. I worked in Toon Boom Harmony at 24fps, animating on twos (although some frames are held for longer).
I began by drawing in my key poses super rough. I worked from the 41 reference videos I had filmed of myself, as well as my own imagination and knowledge of art fundamentals to create the poses. Ed Hooks’ Acting for Animators was a very useful resource in helping me understand characters better. For developing Antoine’s personality, it was also helpful to thoroughly study characters with similar attitudes – notably Tulio from The Road to El Dorado and Kuzco from The Emperor’s New Groove.
It made me especially happy that, when I posted my work on social media, people likened Antoine to both of those characters without being told they were the influences!

I cannot entirely describe my animation process – I created 5 complete passes of Antoine’s acting, reaching countless dead-ends and difficulties. It was a lot of trial and error and pushing through that helped me get the animation to a polished stage. It was especially helpful to think of only one thing at a time – for example I animated the hair straight ahead on a separate layer – this helped me implemented the principle of follow-through and make the hair bouncy and dynamic.

In the video below – I show all iterations of my project from storyboards to rough animation, to cleanup and final coloured animation. You can view my progress here:

I drew the shadows by hand, using a blending node set to multiply and a cutter node to ensure shadows did not extend outside the characters’ bounds. This was a very tricky process, especially because the location of the shadow changed depending on the orientation of the body part it was on. I should have done a separate illustration to better understand where the shadows would be at different points of the animation. I also do not think the shadows are very accurate considering the lighting inside the cabin, however, this does not seem to be distracting or obstruct the storytelling.

Love through a Prism inspired my shading style.

Finally, I assembled everything in After Effects. I used the 3D features and camera to create the parallax effect of the background.

I also added several little details to enhance my animation. For example I added contact shadows beneath my characters using shape layers.

Subtle chromatic aberration added a special touch to my animation.

Here is my final animation on YouTube!

This was such a difficult yet valuable learning experience – I am very excited to keep creating character animation!

Out of Your Head – Group Project

Production Principles

For this project, we worked in a team of 5 (me, Sophie, Anushka, Zeng Zeng and Ceren) to create a 30-second animated short film. Though we spent the first week thoroughly developing an idea inspired by the Faustian bargain: a dangerous creature luring a desperate prince into a trap, that idea was ultimately rejected. Though I think it was a promising story and it slightly hurt to part from it, I do understand why our tutors said it was too cliché and I can see what they meant by it feeling more like “a scene from a movie” rather than a self-contained short.

These are the characters I designed for the ultimately scrapped idea.

Then, we decided to go with a simpler story which builds from an entertaining premise rather than a well-known storyline. Our story would feature a small gnome who unsuspectingly orders a mushroom-making kit, only for the mushroom to grow into a scary mushroom creature!

Zeng Zeng built on my original design to make the mushroom – creature even scarier.

When designing the main character, a small flowery gnome named Phool, we went through many iterations. We wanted him to feel bubbly and happy, approachable and cute – a direct contrast to the frightening sharp-teethed creature. We discussed colour palettes as a group, and when I designed Phool as a character, I took great inspiration from Cartoon Saloon’s work. As a group, we had collectively decided to mimic this whimsical and enchanting art style with their geometric shape language, magical swirls and natural motifs. It looks like a storybook come to life.


Here are some of my pencil sketches for Phool’s design.

Phool’s colour scheme, however, was not quite right still so I played with the colours and showed the team, who all agreed that this should be the final design. This colour palette is autumnal, warm and cosy, befitting a happy little gnome who lives in a little flower shop.

During one of meetings when I was ill, the other team members created rough storyboards.

Zeng Zeng’s Storyboard:

Ceren’s Storyboard:

I combined a few of these ideas, along with my own to create the first very rough version of the animatic in Storyboard Pro. It was difficult to fit everything into the very limited time frame of 30 seconds, but thankfully the story was simple enough to be reduced and clearly told in such a short time. 

Our tutors Jess and Chris gave some useful feedback. Jess helped with a lot of composition and helped improve the storytelling of each shot. For example when Phool gets picked up by the creature in the first storyboard, he is quite high in the frame so when the creature’s hand reaches down, he doesn’t have far to go up. Jess suggested we put him lower and this created a much better balance. She also suggested changing Phool’s positioning when he leans down to collect the broken bits of mushroom. He was too far to the right, leaving a lot of space on the left which created a false impression that there was something behind him. Fixing this helped the story. Chris also gave interesting suggestions, one such was to remove the text from the box and focus purely on visual storytelling so I redesigned the box by adding some happy mushroom logos. 

In the first animatic, when Phool carries the box inside, he is struggling with its weight. I realised that this struggle tainted his happy moment and did not fit – Phool’s shock and fear should contrast with his unbridled joy at the beginning. So I replace his struggling steps with cheerful skips. 

Please follow the link below to see all 3 iterations of the storyboarding and animatic process on padlet: 

https://padlet.com/artslondon/out-of-your-head-c81r1u8vhu1uenbs/wish/wKmOZ56o4oEnWzMA

After our project and animatic were fully greenlit, we decided to split the workload. I would be fully animating 14 seconds and cleaning up and colouring two of the shots I animate. I would also be compositing.

I decided to work in Toon Boom Harmony for this project. Though it was my first time using the software, it was not too difficult since I only needed to understand its basic frame-by-frame features for hand-drawn animation and none of its complex rigging capabilities. I put all of my rough animation in the same Padlet page.

I did all the animation, clean-up and colour for the first scene, where Phool is beyond excited to receive the mushroom-making kit he had ordered. I really liked adding the cute little sparkle effects for his eyes. Additionally, I used shape layers in After Effects to create a strong, atmospheric rim lighting around Phool. I composited everything with the lovely background Sophie had drawn.

For the second shot, I created a parallax effect by incorporating the 3D features in After Effects. I did the animation here and Anushka did the clean-up and colour. The background and foreground move at different rates to create a sense of depth.


I also fully animated the third shot, did the tie down and Anushka completed the clean-up and colour in Toon Boom. This scene was very tricky and took me a week to animate since it is over five seconds long. I took inspiration from the seven dwarfs when Phool’s hat flies off his head in surprise! Additionally, I used After Effects’ particles system to create the little explosion that happens when the mushroom pops up. Simple drop shadow effects were added for Phool’s highlights.


Here I worked on the clean up and colour of shot 4 where Phool reaches down to pick up the dropped spray bottle. I did some FX animation for the first time as the mushroom grows ominously.


This project was certainly a huge learning experience for all of us. There are many things I would do differently. To begin, I realised just how important communication is and how every small, tiny piece of information should be clearly stated, otherwise confusion can easily occur. For example, different group members chose different colours for the spray bottle. This was such a small prop that we completely forgot to establish its colour scheme! Another thing that we would need to do next time is collectively discuss the animation. For example, when the mushroom’s creature’s shadow first appeared, I assumed it would be obvious that a big shadow creeping up would have a slow ominous movement. When the other team member animated it, they gave it a bouncy, sudden motion which was completely different to what I had expected! The most important lesson I learned is to be super clear, discuss everything and don’t assume the others know what you are thinking. There were other small areas of the project which I thought were small choices and forgot to tell the others but led to misunderstandings.
Next time, we would also have to use a shot list and keep track of how each shot is progressing. Though we had a PowerPoint which outlined weekly roles, it would have been useful to be able to view the production timeline as a whole.
Additionally, since this project had quite a tight time limit, we didn’t have enough time to do pencil tests, style guides or even character sheets! We paid a grave price for missing out on these! It would have been much more helpful if we had these and would have allowed us to have better consistency too!

View the finished short film here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6X3zGuR1EQ

Rotation 4 – Stop Motion

Production Principles

For this last rotation I tried a new form of animation, which I had never worked with before. Stop motion.
We began by exploring a new material, cardboard, and to construct various faces from it. This was very fun and I created three different iterations of mask-like faces.

I particularly liked the owl-like appearance of the second mask, with almond-shaped and upturned eyes, a long flat nose and little circles for the cheeks.

After this initial experiment, we were put into groups of 3 to construct a puppet which could be manipulated by two people in order to be used as both a traditionally manipulated puppet and a stop motion puppet. We chose to create a human character, though ended up using one of my initial masks as its face to create an uncanny look. Our puppet, who we’ve named Gavin, has a rectangular body with bendable limbs, four fingers, a mask-like face and cardboard dreadlocks.

All of the stop motion experiments can be viewed on Padlet:
https://padlet.com/artslondon/stop-motion-a5z7pn36adhtkah7

We created several experiments using low-key lighting and a software called Dragonframe. For these initial experiments, we struggled with timing as everything ended up looking much faster than we had thought while adjusting the puppet. We also played around with light temperature – how warmer orange and colder, bluer lights affected the mood of our scene.
Then, we proceeded to play around with the technique of pixilation. We filmed some of our group members interacting with Gavin as though he were a puppet come to life. These achieved some remarkably interesting results! In both of these short animations, Gavin gets fed up with his pesky human companion and decides to pummel them with little cardboard fists.

Then on the second week of the rotation, we were given the task of creating a 30-second short film with the theme Metamorphosis. Our puppet had to undergo some sort of transformation.
We actually did little planning for this animation and wanted to experiment and see where the process took us. However, we knew we wanted Gavin to feel overwhelmed and trapped, then transform as a result of this. We used pixilation by involving our own hands and proffering Gavin various objects , most notably money, which he rejects with an adamant shake of the head.
I think the beginning is particularly successful as we played with shadows of our hands to create the impression that Gavin is constantly surrounded, giving context to his consequent transformation. We then used masking tape to create a cocoon around him and emphasising his feelings of entrapment. Finally, we went with the traditional symbol of rebirth and starting anew as Gavin transforms into a butterfly (using replacement animation) and flies away, finally free from the materialistic and shallow attitudes of the world he experienced.

Lastly, we tried replacement animation, a different form of stop motion. We were given three shapes: a circle, a square and a triangle. Then, we had to cut out a series of shapes which would allow these shapes to morph into each other. I preferred this form of stop motion to posing puppets as I thought it gave me more control in how the animation turned out. I really liked this technique.
This animation can also be viewed on the Padlet page.

Rotation 3 – Animatics

Production Principles

We were given the task of creating a short, 30-second animatic conveying a conflict of some sorts. Though we had a range of scenarios to choose from, I decided to come up with my own scenario. In my story, two best friends meet up in a tavern to celebrate their long-lasting friendship, only for it to shatter the moment they realise they fancy the same woman.

My initial goals for the project were the following:
Learn basics of Storyboard Pro
Utilise a wide range of shots in my storyboard
Have a clear narrative that engages the viewer

Choreograph a convincing comedic fight scene

I wrote a rough script (not properly formatted) as a word document. Some tiny tweaks were made later, but the initial script was very similar to the final one.

After this, we were given several post-it notes to do thumbnails on. I really enjoyed this and it allowed me to explore story beats, camera angles and compositions all very freely. I drew on about 80 post-it notes, generating as many ideas as possible which I would then refine.
After this, I took photos of all of the best drawings and edited the animatic together in Premier Pro. This was quite simple as I had experience with Da Vinci Resolve and other video editing programs before.
While I was doing this, I had to find voice actors to deliver the dialogue. My brother and Favor did an absolutely excellent job and I am very grateful for their help in bringing these characters to life! Additionally, I tried experimenting with sound design, however quickly realised I would struggle to create convincing sounds of crashing without causing damage, so decided to look online on sites such as freesounds.org and BBC sound effects, which I could use.


Below you can see the first version of my animatic consisting of only photographed post-it notes.

For this project, I wanted to challenge myself by incorporating a fight scene, something I had never done before. My strength lies in displaying emotion, not in dynamic action sequences so this was very tricky to come up with. I looked at several movies with this type of comedic fighting including the fight scene between Colin Firth and Hugh Grant in Bridget Jones’ Diary as well as fight scenes in old Bud Spencer films.
To challenge myself even further, I wanted to make this animatic fully digitally in Storyboard Pro, a program I had never used before. The interface was relatively easy to get used to, though adding and modifying camera motions could get a little tricky and tedious.

I also created brief character explorations for both Hubert and Stefan, whose main distinctive features will be their hair colours since their designs aren’t fleshed out for this animatic. I also did some sketches of Henrietta (the girl they are fighting over) even though she only appears for a few brief shots.


Below you can see the final animatic, created fully digitally and incorporating dynamic camera moves and different shots. I am particularly pleased with the clarity of my storytelling – nobody had any issues in understanding what was going on. I think I succeeded in creating an engaging narrative with a very obvious conflict. Nevertheless, the most obvious area I need to address is the length of my animatic, which is 1 minute and 47 seconds whereas the initial brief suggested 20-30 seconds. Though I think my animatic is well-paced, I could have focused more on the conflict itself, perhaps cutting the dialogue at the beginning and starting with Stefan noticing Henrietta and getting straight into the fight. The scene could also have ended with the “trunk shot” of Henrietta blinking surprisedly at the two guys to cut time.

Rotation 2 – Characterflux Making Character

Production Principles

This rotation followed straight after the character design one. Here, we would be creating a 5-10 second short looping animation to display the personality of the character we had previously developed.
I had come up with a little back story for Harold before. His house is constantly haunted by pesky ghosts but, being a rather grumpy old man, Harold will not put up with these troublesome ghosts! I wanted this animation to reflect his old age, but also his grumpiness.

I decided that the short looping animation would show Harold, lethargically and sleepily eating his morning porridge while steam rises from his coffee. This wisp of steam, however, curls upwards and expands until it morphs into a pesky ghost! Harold shoos the ghost away with a threatening swing of his spoon. This animation, I thought, would display his personality well and show an interesting range of emotions on Harold’s face.

Firstly, I started with a range of pencil sketches and key drawings, drawn rather chaotically on scrap pieces of paper. The little thumbnails sketches would be cut out, rearranged then stuck back together. I also added some numbers for potential timing for where each action would take place and how long it might take.


Additionally, I had to create the sound myself. The clatter of the bowl and the thump of the fist were relatively easy to do as foley sounds. The voices were trickier. I tried voicing Harold myself, to express his anger with a grunt and chew in the way old men who have no teeth do. I am not certain that my sound is synched well enough, nor do I think my voice fit his character – next time I would need to find a better cast. The voice of the ghost was much better. I got my mum to sing the ghost’s eerie and melodic squeal, then made the pitch even higher. I definitely succeeded in creating a comedic effect as the ghost’s voice elicited chuckles from the class upon screening.

Because the project’s duration was two weeks, I didn’t have time to colour the animation, though I was able to add in a rough background. Nevertheless, I was also able to add follow through of Harold’s wispy and sparse hair which flows after his head with delayed timing, as well as animating the morphing of the ghost.

Elephant and Castle – Group Project

Intro To Animation

For this project, we had to work together in a group of 7 to come up with an origin story of how Elephant and Castle got its name. We were encouraged not to read into its history and instead use our creativity to create a max 2-minute video whilst challenging the idea of a book.
For our story, we decided to explore themes of tyranny, avarice and how easy it is to lose sight of reason. Our story is about an elephant tribe, who decide to build a castle together, thinking it will be an elephant utopia. Getting carried away, they eventually start using each other to build the castle and raise it further to the sky.
Every member of our group drew an elephant which was photocopied and collaged onto the book pages. We used craft knives to slice windows and doors into each iteration of the castle to create a cohesive narrative where each page shows a sneak-peek of the next.