Illustration & Visual Narrative Project 3

Week 9 -14
Chan Meiling 0337771 BDCM
Illustration & Visual Narrative // Ms Anis & Mr Faizal
Project 3

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INSTRUCTIONS

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Project 3 Proposal

Before doing the thumbnail sketches, I jotted down a brief idea of my flow of the story.

Story flow 

Thumbnail sketches 1

Thumbnail sketches 2

At first, I was really clueless about the approach of visual style that I'm going for which is like the Hayao Miyazaki's style because I have never tried something like that before and I didn't really know how to make my lines accurate and smooth. Since I was really lost on how to start I decided to explore a few other ways of illustration styles. 

Exploration Sketches

Exploration 2

Exploration 3

Exploration with colours

After exploring different visual styles, I realised that I didn't really like the sketchy look in my explorations on the characters and I decided to find a way a figure out how to illustrate with thin outlines. 

Then, I have decided to draw on paper instead of using a drawing tablet to trace my sketch later on using the pen tool. This is because I find myself more comfortable by making accurate sketch by drawing on paper physically.

Sketches to trace:

Sketches before tracing 1

Sketches before tracing 2

Colour palette

After finished sketching, I moved on to illustrate the characters by tracing and filling in colours.

Illustrated characters

IVN Comic

After getting some feedback on Ms Anis, I have changed the font and moved on to start animating my comic.

I have decided to use adobe after effect to animate my comic since we have learnt how to make a short animation in dpi class. Also, I have watched a bunch of videos on how to animate on photoshop and after effects. For this motion comic, I have explored and tried many effects such as camera and null objects, opacity, scale and position.

After animating my comic, I have uploaded it on youtube so that the resolution will not be much affected.

IVN Motion Comic

Final Motion Comic

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FEEDBACK 

Proposal:

Mr Faizal said that I have quite a good progress after looking through my proposal. However, he did remind me that since the style that I'm going for requires tracing, I will have to show my sketches to prove that I am not tracing other people's work. Besides, I will need to make sure that the proportions are correct and the smoothness of the lines while tracing using the pen tool.

Storyline:

Ms Anis said that she likes the story as she thinks it is simple, straight forward and interesting.  

Comic:
I've sent a message to Ms Anis asking her feedback on my comic, she said that it looks okay but suggested to change the font. Besides, she also sent me a link to access various type of comic font which was really useful and I was able to find the ones that I feel more suitable to my comic.

Motion Comic:

Ms Anis said that I did a good job on animating the comic and she also mentioned that I have a good knack for timing.

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REFLECTION

This project is definitely one of the most challenging and time-consuming projects throughout the whole semester. In my opinion, I think the hardest part of this exercise is the planning and all the thinking process step by step. To be honest, the hardest part of this project was to figure out a new art style that I have never tried before. At first, I struggled a lot and was really lost on how to proceed while worrying about the time constrain that we had, as I had no idea how to start and got really worried on the visual part. Thankfully, my friend Tze Earn was able to make me feel better by telling me that I will do good at the end even though I was struggling at that moment and even sent me a few examples on Pinterest that could be useful for me which I am really grateful for. 

Besides, one of the most challenging parts of this project is the animating part. Even though the example that Mr Anis showed was just a simple animation, I wanted to do something more than that after seeing really cool and advanced examples on youtube. Also, I realised that trying to get all the timing right while animating is also requires many efforts by rewatching it again and again. It wasn't easy for a first-timer like me but I am glad that I got to expose and explore more tools and effects on after effect.