Maggie Chan

Oct 26, 20187 min read

Design a World (week 5-9)

Week 5 COLOUR

Monday:

On Monday class we started looking into colours and how to apply the right colours to different settings/objects in order to achieve an appealing image. We started exploring complementary and analogous colours in different settings.

I also showed my tonal studies to Priya (during her class) to get some opinions and she thought it was a good start but she advised me to include more depth by looking at references on landscapes and lighting.

Only I and Jack was present today so we didn't do anything thing drastic. We began discussing the plot to our world as it will help us to define what colours are most suitable. We decided that the bad germs/viruses are trying to take over the good germs/cells- like a war is going on in the petri dish. For that reason, we decided to have the bad germs in colder tones while the good guys in warm tones. Jack came up with a great idea to combine all our landscapes into a map to lay it out and make sure it all connects well with each other. We then decide the areas that the bad guys have taken over will be in cold colours and the areas that good germs/cells live will have warm colours. We then sent this information on group chat so the other members can catch up.

Tuesday:

Started thinking about the colours to use.

Thursday:

On Thursday we spend most of the day trying to finalising our drawings so we can insert it into the PowerPoint.

I took Priya`s advice by adding more shadows and cross-hatching in order to create some depth & detail. I also share these with my member and he thought it looks better. I also ensure to use complementary colours in my pieces to achieve that pleasing look. I still find it lacks some elements but I hope when the characters and cotton swab clouds are inserted it will fill in those missing areas since I think If I were to add more to it, it will make it messy which I don't want.

Friday:

On Friday, 'Matthew Bass' went around the groups to give pieces of advice. He mentions to me that I should show how one area is relatively in size with other elements in the setting and he also points out that our team should ensure to have same ratios for the images we were working on. For that reason, I tried to fix those problems.

Digital pieces:

I also did demonstrated where I have added the cotton swab clouds (from forms) and (potential) characters to show its size in relation to those environment/ landscapes.

Week 6 SOUND

Monday:

Presentation

Monday was the day where my group presented our presentation; on the direction, my current world 'Ortus' had developed into so far over week 1-5. Successfully we had our presentation slides done over the weekend. We did this by sharing a google doc. powerpoint- this provided us with easy access/distribution to the presentation. Our group full the powerpoint mostly with images and titles as we planned to deliver the message through our speeches rather having it noted down on screen as the images can also speak for itself while we explain the idea behind it.

Sound

We were advised (from Alec, Priya & 3rd years) to expand the idea of good and bad germs as it was too simplistic. We were also told to work more on the landscapes as it was going in a different direction from the petri dish idea.

In class we were advice to start exploring sound in our world. We were told to discuss with our group on what our world would sound like. After discussing we talked about wind passing through the crystal structures, heartbeat in the cells and eventually went with the idea of musical instruments e.g. chimes, bells, etc. which adds a magical essence to the world.

Tuesday:

Group change

On Tuesday our groups had changed and I was disheartened to leave the world 'Ortus' as I have been working on it since the beginning but I was excited to work fresh in a new world created by another group. Jack and I were allocated to the world called, 'Dragon's Crown (Industrial Revolution)' with Josh, Joel and John.

Our class rep. discussed with Alec about the target for this week. We were told to focus on areas where we needed development, improving our individual struggles within the world and to explore sounds in our worlds.

Friday:

I spent these days catching up the work they had done so far by accessing their group chat and presentation slides and this had helped me to understand their world bit more.

What I've learnt was that they started with the idea of having a world on a creature's back. They went from a turtle shell to a snail shell then eventually having it as a behemoth creature. They wanted the theme to be an industrial revolution. Similar to Ortus they included the idea of having fluorescent crystals but instead of being a home to the organisms, they use it as a source of energy/life source for their world. For the work distribution, they had spit different sections of society to each member. I think my next step is to take a section where a pass member was working on but I will wait until we meet up to make a firm decision.

I had a chance to talk to a group member and we decided we discuss it thoroughly next week together when everyone is present.

Week 7 CHARACTER

On Monday we had a one on one session. This was a very great opportunity to express my progress/concerns and it had been a very valuable time for me.

During the free time after class, I had a meet up with my new group. We introduced ourselves and quickly started working on the project. For this week we were asked to design the characters that will exist in our worlds

After discussing I learnt that they change the way they work after the feedback they received from the presentation. They were told that they need to work together more rather than having everyone split into sections then combining it all.

Therefore we decided to work in two teams on a specific area then switch around so everyone has a part in every area. We started chatting that the characters in our world would be insects. After listing a bunch of insects we divided it into different societies based on its appearance/character. We also decided that the characters living in the poorer area will be darker and vice-versa the rich will be in brighter colours. As we decide on the colours I suggested that for the rich society it will be great to include the colour purple as in the historical times purple is regarded as wealthy and it helps to emphasise the idea of royalty. Joel, Jack and I were to focus on creating the middle-class creatures/characters whereas Josh and John will focus on the higher-class and then we will eventually swap over.

Tuesday:

For the character style, we decided to follow a similar style to Pedro R.M. Andreo Art. We wanted to have a dark outline around the character and Andreo work really reflects that.

Below is a link to his Instagram where he displays most of his work:

https://www.instagram.com/electrocereal/?hl=en

Using that as a guide I tried my best to achieve that style in my designs. It was quite challenging but I tried my best to stick closely to the style as possible.

Character designs:

Society- middle class- colour: turquoise

Creatures- beetle, wasp, grasshopper

Thursdays:

During our discussion before, we had allocated specific colours to each society and for the middle class, the characters are to be in turquoise (fresh, clean, wisdom). Below, I've had tried to apply these colours by changing its value, saturation etc. so we can distinguish its parts.

Friday:

Presentation

On this day we had to deliver a presentation. This would be my second one of this year but this time it's a practice one. We were given a task to do our own personal research on any short film and my group had decided to look into a film by Disney Pixar called 'Piper' (2016)- Alan Barillaro. We fell in love with the film after watching it and we thought we could get enough information about it, for us to deliver it to the class.

My group members were Eilish, Bethany and Sian. We got on pretty well and together we shared a google doc. to create PowerPoint. The presentation went pretty smoothly in my opinion although I thought we could have made it a bit longer. The PowerPoint we presented wasn't our best as we had another one where we had made certain changes be somehow we weren't able to put it up but I was glad it was only a minor fault. Compare to the last presentation I think my skills had improved a bit as I was able to look at the audience more frequency than the last time.

Week 8 CHARACTER 2

Monday:

During the morning lesson, Gerrald had gone through a slide about characters, mostly about how the shapes of a character can simply express its characteristics. We are then told to try to apply these to our characters.

Reading: https://graphicmama.com/blog/conveying-characters-personality/

Below I have demonstrated the use of shapes in character design:

My group has already started designing our characters so we had to go back try to change specific areas to give them more personality. I was pretty much satisfied with my drawing already so I didn't make any major changes and since we are swapping our work with other people later on. It will make more sense that they can see the areas that won't work or needed to be changed more easily.

As shown below I had redrawn the beetle as I wasn't satisfied with the last one as it seems too cartoony and it didn't really capture the character accurately. Therefore this time I drew over the images of the sketches I did traditionally and this had worked better for me as my digital skills aren't as good yet.