27/10/2023- 27/11/2023 (Week 6-Week 10)
Lizzie Tanaka (0362065)
Illustration and Visual Narrative | BDCM | Taylor's University
Task 2: Illustration of Decisive Moment
Week 6
On week 6, we were briefed on our project 2 which was to illustrate the
climax/turning point of an urban legend of our choice with art deco style.
The end result would be an animated version of it. A decisive moment is the
climax of a story, the turning point.
Lecture PPT:
Week 7
On week 7, we were explained about the composition theory; foreground,
midground and background and how they are able to capture attention easily
for the audience when used correctly. Foreground is the position closest to
the audience, background is the furthest from the audience and midground is
positioned in the middle ground.
Using contrasting elements such as size difference can help us put
highlights on the main object. Our layout should also be able to direct
the viewer's eye throughout our work and influence how it is understood.
We were asked to watch a short animation video titled "The Soloists." It
is linked
here.
Here are my takeaways:
- The establishing shot gives us a view of the environment: the
condition of everyone and the surrounding place
- Frame in a frame: they began to introduce all the characters. Use of
foreground background and mid ground to introduce the characters one by
one (emphasizing the focus).
- I think the use of foreground, background and mid grounds is really
good in capturing the emotions of the current scene and how the
character feels. Even though most of the background is in 2D, and the
character in 3D, it doesn't feel flat.
We were also taught about noise, gradient and transparency.
Fig 0.1 Demo 1 (W7 06/11/2023)
Fig 0.2 Trial on gradient noise (W7 06/11/2023)
Week 8: Independent Learning Week
Week 9:
We were briefed on how we should create our GIF which was with secondary animation. Secondary animation is basically additional animation moves that helps emphasize the main animation with the purpose of creating more dynamics.
Task 2: Decisive Moment
1. Process Work (Poster)
a. Research, sketch, moodboard
Beginning my work, I researched on several urban legends. I came to
Bloody Mary at the end. Bloody Mary is said to appear when someone
chants her name three or more times in front of a mirror in complete
darkness at midnight. Bloody Mary is known to actually physically hurt
or kill her victims, unlike other ghosts who can only scare their
victims. Most stories tell that victims are disfigured, decapitated or
had their eyes scratched out. Other harmful ways include turning her
victim insane (rarer tales) or drag them into the mirror. There are
many variations, I decided to go with the version that tells us to do
the game in a candle/dimly-lit room and play with one candle which
will be shown in my drawing.
Source
After knowing about the urban legend I wanted to illustrate, I came
up with a moodboard to capture all my ideas. I went through Pinterest
to search and get a gist of how art deco style looks like. I like the
color and the mood from these pictures so I created a color palette
out of these works. Below is my sketched out idea.
Fig 1.1 First sketch (W7 06/11/2023)
My idea was to have a backview POV of a woman holding a candle from a
full shot that shows everything top to bottom. This was expressed in
the first sketch. I didn't want the background to be too plain so I
gave candles on the table and I added dripping blood on the mirror. As
I asked for feedback, Mr Hafiz told me to try and sketch it closer
(medium shot) to capture more emotion.
Fig 1.2 Sketch after feedback (W8 13/11/2023)
I also asked for feedback on this sketch and Mr Hafiz advised me to
check 'Framed Ink' as reference for my composition and I decided that
my sketch looked flat and empty because I didn't have any shadows or
lighting. I kept that in mind during the digitization process.
Fig 1.3 Moodboard (W8 13/11/2023)
B. Digitization Process
To begin, I started tracing my sketch using the pen tool and put them
on black strokes with no fill. For some parts, I utilized the shape tool
such as the mirror and the two candles as well as the table. I also used
the pencil tool to draw better with freehand for the blood
dripping.
There are some things I changed when digitizing my work. First is the
position of the girl, I felt like putting her in the center closed the
mirror too much and I wanted to emphasize the mirror. I decided to move
her to the right side of the artboard. I've also decided to take
reference from Pinterest on hand positions.
Fig 2.1 Traced sketch (W8 15/11/2023)
Fig 2.2 Colorized (W8 15/11/2023)
I decided to add gradients and gaussian blurred them on the candles
to show the light coming from them. I also figured that making the
shoulder to waist proportions a little extreme could portray more of
the art style deco. After this, I moved on to adding the lighting
and shadows.
Fig 2.3 Shadows near the held candle (W8 15/11/2023)
I made sure to add the shadows near the light sources such as the
hands that didn't get the lights and parts of the hands/arms that
are hiding from the light. Also the table and parts of the
dress.
Fig 2.4 Shadows on the woman (W8 15/11/2023)
Next I added shadows on the woman, on her hair, the side of her
dress and made her skin tone a little darker on this side
because no light is here and still added the shadows on her
arms.
Fig 2.5 Highlights on the blood dripping (W8 15/11/2023)
I added highlights to the blood dripping on the left side of
it because there more light source on the left area of my
drawing. Lastly, I used the gradient tool in radial to create
shadow of the background. The right side is darker than the
left area.
All my shadows are made using the pencil tool and the
shapebuilder tool to cut of excess areas.
Week 9-10 Process
After submitting the poster, we are tasked to animate it but only doing secondary animation so it is a simple GIF. I didn't really like my initial poster outcome so I tried to change it up first before animating it.
I added grain to some shadows such as the background, the hair shadow, and the mirror shadows and added note paper texture to the wall and the table.
Fig 2.16 Grain texture on hair shadow (W9 22/11/2023)
Fig 2.17 Grain on mirror shadow (W9 22/11/2023)
I also modified the glow for the candles and lights. I added a radial gradient to each glow and added the outer glow effect to it. I've also decided to add gradient to the candles.
Fig 2.18 Candle glow 2 (W9 22/11/2023)
Fig 2.19 Candle glow 2 (W9 22/11/2023)
Fig 2.20 Candle glow 2 (W9 22/11/2023)
Moreover, I also added the shadows on the subject such as the arms and the clothing.
Fig 2.21 Shadow on subject (W9 22/11/2023)
For the blood dripping, I struggled with shading it because there is two light source on either sides. I decided to use linear gradient and adjust the lighter part to be more prominent when the blood is nearest to the candle lights.
Fig 2.22 Shading on blood (W9 24/11/2023)
At the end, I also decided to add the reflection of bloody Mary because I felt like it didn't capture the climax of the story well enough without the reflection. I put the illustration on gaussian blur.
Fig 2.23 Blood mary reflection (W9 27/11/2023)
Fig 2.24 Final Poster (W10 27/11/2023)
After finalizing my poster, I moved on to animating my GIF. My idea was just to make the reflection appear slowly whilst the overall lighting gets darker by modifying the candles and the shadows as well as making the blood drip. Here is a screenshot I took when everything was done and ready to be exported to Photoshop. I ended up not doing the grain for these because I ran out of RAM storage during the process and it couldn't render some of the additional textures I had already included. I also had to do this with a smaller sized artboard so that I would still be able to work on it.
In total I had 11 artboards/keyframes. I first began to modify the lighting such as the candles, making the glow smaller and dimmer. To show the effect of this, I changed the shadow as well, especially in the wall to make it look darker. Then to show the blood dripping, I used the pencil tool to freehand on it for each keyframe. For the reflection slowly appearing, I started with 10% of opacity and worked it up until 100%.
Fig 2.25 Keyframes in Illustrator (W10 27/11/2023)
Fig 2.26 Photoshop process 1 (W10 27/11/2023)
Fig 2.27 Photoshop process 2 (W10 27/11/2023)
At the end, I ended up also moving the shadows of the hair as it gets darker and modified the candlelight glow on each keyframe. The animation was not smooth enough and I noticed that some parts were messy so I went back to Illustrator to fix the edges so that it will look smoother.
c. Final Result
Fig 3.1 Final Result Poster (W10 27/11/2023)
Fig 3.2 Final Poster - Drive (W10 27/11/2023)
Fig 3.3 Final GIF (W10 28/11/2023)
Week 7
General: -
Specific: Try drawing it closer to the viewer to capture more emotion
Specific: Try drawing it closer to the viewer to capture more emotion
Week 8
General: -
Specific: Check 'framed ink' for reference on how to tighten your composition, add shadows, lightings to your sketch.
Week 9
General: -
Specific: Adding grain to shadows is a good idea
Week 10
General: -
Specific: I asked if adding the bloody mary reflection appearing on the mirror is a good idea as well, and Mr Hafiz said it's a good idea.
REFLECTIONS:
Experience: In my opinion, this task was a little hard because I had little to no knowledge about composition and visual narrative so sketching out my idea was a challenge since it didn't turn out the way I pictured it. The digitizing process was fun since I get to explore many things I've learned and applied it.
Observations: I observed that I should practice more myself, on compositions and how to visually narrate.
Findings: I found that even when the sketching process seemed easy, digitizing it isn't as easy and sometimes things end up different than what we expected in our minds.
For this task, I decided to read Framed Ink by Marcos Mateu-Mestre provided by Mr Hafiz.
Fig 4.1 Framed Ink by Marcos Mateu-Mestre
Week 6: Chapter 2: Drawing and composing a single image (the basics)
Atmosphere: a sense of reality
> When we want to transmit the emotion of the landscape, it's very common to just copy exactly every detail and shapes into our composition. But at the end, the spirit of our drawings is more faithful to reality. Using a technique can result in a perfect transfer of every detail but we're not making any choices. All the features end up looking equally important but sometimes it isn't what we really perceive of the subject.
> The book suggests us to look for what stands out in the first glance, which will result in a more accurate representation of the subject. A photographic depiction of what we see is not always the answer, but it's about the expression, the mood and the energy transmitted through our composition.
Week 7: Lighting
The reality we tried to portray will change under different environmental conditions. How we see what's in front of us is even more important. Our choice of point of view, lighting and more in every scene needs to be intimately related to what we want to express. If we're about to create 2 completely contrasting worlds with different perceptions of the world and experiences, lighting is the first method.
Changing the lighting, we are also changing the reality and our perception. Making things lighter or darker, showing more or less, being more ambiguous or obvious will create different worlds and experiences.
Week 8: Shots
- Long or wide shot: establish a general sense of the scene, allows us the show the character within their context.
- Medium shot: offers a wide view but elements that would interfere with the message are excluded.
- Close-up: provides a better feel for the features and reactions of a character. The reaction will be more important to an audience than the cause of it.
- Extreme close-up: The audience will become one with the character.
Other tips:
- Rule of thirds: While drawing a perfectly symmetrical composition will do the job on special scenes, using it on regular scenes all the time will make the composition feel convenient with no natural feeling to it. Positioning our main elements on any of these axes on their intersections will result in an interesting and well balanced image.
Week 9 Basic tips: p26
- Lighting: Helps focus the audiences' attention on specific areas by creating contrast such as creating a major contrast and visual tension.
- Lines: Curved shaped lines will appear more subtle and peaceful. Diagonal lines are more dynamic and aggressive. Straighter lines will represent assertiveness while curves are kinder to the eyes. We can also use lines to direct the audience to a specific element in our panel. Lines can be anything from a tree branch to a row of clouds pointing in a certain direction.
- Avoid tangencies and weird concidences: Occurences like this will take the audience away from the main story moment by making them focus on what looks weird in the panel. This happens when we don't pay enough attention to how the elements in a shot are composed resulting in a panel looking like they are planned. This will disrupt the story we are narrating.
- Cutting in: When a moment requires us to jump closer to a detail in a scene, always make sure the subject stays in the same position in both panels proportionally.
Week 10 Basic Tips pg 27
- Size difference: creating an uneven balance of shapes in a frame makes an image way deeper and more dynamic. Some characters/elements will need to be more prominent than others for story narrative purposes.
- Perspective: Audience have the tendency to look towards where the vanishing point is, usually in architectural environments where the center of interest is obvious.
- Main character's look direction: Wherever the character is looking at will influence the general composition. As long as it isn't overpowering the actor, the audience will have the tendency to look in the same direction, anticipating something.
- Screen direction: We are used to reading in a certain direction, influencing the way we read screen. if the action is going in the direction we are used to, our perception is that things are going well. The opposite will translate into hard times and difficulty.
- Reinforcing action with background: Combining the sense of perspective in the bakcground with the general direction of the action in the scene will enhance the effect.
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