Introduction
When I first heard about the Zenith Project in my first year at Freestyle I was equal parts excited and terrified of coming up with an idea for a project as big as this one. I am happy to say that now that I have finished, it was the perfect project to give closure to my time at freestyle because not only is it one of the projects I’m the proudest of, but because looking back from my first day at freestyle and my last, this is the summed up collection of my improvement in a lot of skills I learned at this place.
I chose to create an Art Book of my original characters and snippets of their stories, in a way making a mock version of what it would be to have an art book should this plot and its characters ever get an animated tv show or comic.
These are characters that I’ve been developing for over a year and their compendium is really a lot like a time capsule for me to look back at when I’ve developed them more as well as a capsule of my current progress in my art and storytelling compared to two years ago. This was definitely very fun to create and one of the reasons why I love this project so is because I am still gonna be working on it as my time in freestyle comes to and end so I am very excited to see where it goes.
Process
Some captures of finished and concept pieces of characters ~
Final Product
Showcase
Presentation of my project in class and the final piece on video format 🙂
Reflection
Over the past two years, I have found myself very drawn to creating new characters and all that goes into that process, the brainstorming, the research, and obviously, my favorite part being, the actual concept art. My project is a compendium of the work I’ve been doing creating my original characters and their stories for over a year or so. I didn’t really start doing this up until the pandemic and lockdown began but ever since, I haven’t stopped creating and developing new and current characters, this hobby also made me realize that dedicating my time as a concept artist is something I saw myself doing as my job and that I would very much enjoy in my day-to-day. For my Zenith project, I wanted to create an art book that would show the work I’ve been doing for these characters and as a concept artist. My influences for this project, specifically the organization of the artbook include The Art of Avatar the Last Airbender, Steven Universe, and Howl’s Moving Castle in which the organization of character resumes and the inspiration for each of them as well as the concept worlds and storyboards were very similar. However, the inspiration for creating my original characters came from a lot of places, somehow I noticed that there was a pattern for a few of them being deeply influenced by my personal experiences as well as a little bit of my personality, but even so, I tried to make each of them their own person. They are also inspired by a lot of creators and producers like Guillermo del Toro, Hayao Miyazaki, Rebecca Sugar, Alex Hirsch, among others. My characters also have their Spotify playlists so you can say their personality is also based on those songs. In short, there were a lot of places I was inspired to create each of them.
I think if I were to redo this project I’d try for the design of each page to be more compelling, although I did inspire from the artbooks to make it look very similar I think I could have taken my own spin to make it more interesting and unique and not stick so much to the traditional art book design. I definitely think I’ve improved with my storytelling skills more than my first year at freestyle, or at least the concepts of those stories. When I used to write stories I just knew they were very cringing but now I kinda feel like they’re consistent and make sense to each character from their beginning to how they are in the present to what they’re gonna look like in the future. The cause and effect in my writing I think would be the main highlight of what I’ve improved on. I also made a few typos that I didn’t notice until it was too late so I’d love to revise it again.
As I previously mentioned, what I would take from this project and experience would be that it really shaped my vision for the future much better, before Freestyle I had zero clue where my life was going and what my future would look like, already in Freestyle I knew that I wanted to join the animation field and towards the beginning of my senior year at Freestyle and the beginning of his project, was the last piece of the puzzle to know where I was going, so I think this project really helped me start as a concept artist and take this to my full potential in the future.
This project is definitely one of the ones I’m the proudest of because I can say that I really enjoyed creating this each step of the way as well as having poured my heart and soul into it. I’m also proud of it because it’s really close to my heart and it puts me in a bit of a vulnerable spot to share it with the rest of freestyle and to whoever sees it as well. So I’m very proud of myself for not only making it into a full Art Book but for having the courage to share it.
I loved presenting this to the class of Freestyle animation because I was just so proud of it but also because they were so very supportive, I didn’t expect anything less but it was still so overwhelming to see the responses to each page of my art book in the comments of the zoom meeting and it really made me feel like I did a great job with my project and it made me so utterly happy that the rest of my class thought so too.
Finally, I mentioned this in the book itself but I would say it one more time that, if you took the time of your day to read it or at the very least skim it, I hope you get a vague idea of how much effort and work was put into this very personal project and that by reading it you’re truly taking a little piece of me with you.