Mandala
One of the things I appreciate about symmetry, as demonstrated in Mandalas, is the alignment and proximity. In my opinion, Mandalas are like a mirror room. Creating patterns to offer some very unique rhythms. I wanted to create a mandala that focuses on personality. The main intention I was aiming for in my peace is Goofiness, and eerie. To achieve that, I went ahead to take a picture of my mom with my phone of a dead stare like you did something wrong and use that photo for inspiration for the piece. Originally I was mostly inspired by the movie Everything and Everywhere all at once about how mothers have the capabilities to multitask all at once. Though that is what the hands are for. I created the mandala in the art software Illustrator. I thought it would be an interesting idea to create the non focus part busy and the focus part not busy. Despite the amount of line this file has it was slow. I usually get in the flow of things, and I get it done after 5 hours. Overall I’m pretty satisfied with it. Though my mother was not pleased with it at first when I told her that this was her. But for some reason this Mandala really make me smile.
Zenith Animation
Originally I wanted to make a short story about the character Xahyna to show off my directing and storytelling skills. I decided to spend most of my winter break creating multiple animatics, and the reason why I made multiple drafts is because your first draft is likely going to be terrible. But that’s okay, that’s why critiquing exists. That way you can transfer your terrible piece into something amazing. Even though I want to add animation to my project, I want to also surround myself with areas that I’m not particularly good at. I would say that I’m okay with sound edit’s, but I wouldn’t say that I’m great at it. Communication has been a really big issue for me throughout my entire life. I want to be involved in directing, and I really wanted to really put myself far out of my comfort zone as much as possible. Before I even started on the first anamadic draft I knew nothing about this character, her personality, her wants, her needs, nothing. How did my first draft turn out, As you would expect. Pretty bad. Then the person I reviewed it with was my father because he is a graphic designer, and we both have brotherly mindsets. I remember him saying that he wasn’t really invested in the character because she lacks a lot of likable traits. After the revision I took all of that advice, and recreated the entire draft from start to finish, and by doing a little revision my story was much more engaging. It was like magic. After that I revised it again, and asked my friends what they wanted to change. Maybe there’s a few things that I want changed to make this Xahyna a little more appealing, like despite being 17 she’s slightly immature like a kid. To visually communicate that, let’s have her swing her feet while sitting on a branch, balancing on a tree branch, eating with her mouth open, these little details that create depth to any character. Coming into this project I knew that animation takes time. It requires dedication and patients just like raising a child. What I didn’t know was how long it takes. You see, my animadic was 5 minutes long, and even if I were to animate for lets just say 6 fps. That makes me feel way too ambitious. So instead I would strive to create a chunk of 45 sec for the animatic which was up to 17 scenes which feels a lot much more durable. Next I decided to make a 6 sec test animation on blender grease pencil to understand the logistics of the project, which I did. Without any experience on blender this 6 second animation took 2 weeks to complete. That’s how I ended up with 2 scenes. During this process the rough animation was pretty easy until you get to both the clean and the coloring, that’s where the process gets really tedious. There’s a reason why a clean up artist and a coloring artist are separate jobs. But after the nightmares are over, polishing the animation scenes In After Effects is my favorite part because it is so satisfying. Moving on I want to discuss something that wasn’t as mentally draining as animation, Sound Design. Sound design is a lot like creating digital artwork or editing a video for a film because they all have one thing in common. They have layers. The image that you just saw may look complicated until you break them down into 3 sections. The Melody, the body of the sound, The Movement, the energy of the sound, and the Background which is the core personality of sound. When I first had an idea of what the mute was going to sound like. I learned a lot working on this project. Specifically, I learned a lot about time management. First, I had a very compressed timeline to achieve certain goals. If I was to do this project again, I would stick to the original story and make this film similar to a webtoon comic and disregard animation. With the animatic that I already created I would create a graphic novel with the already existing skills that I gain from doing this project.Speaking of character design let me show you my processes of character design.
LightBox:
The lightbox was one of the most satisfying projects I’ve work. Because the illusion plays with 3D the idea of a city scaped image made it magical.
Reel Video
The reel video is just my montage of my work of the course of the year, well for me.