CAGD 493 - Fall 2020

Week 15 - A Reflection

This semester, what I had intended to do was to do vector characters and to animate them using Adobe After Effects. After nearly 7/12 weeks of progress, things started to go very wrong and I realized I needed to regroup and redesign. The question was, to what exactly? After a lot of time and thinking, I realized that it needed to be something that I was passionate about. Animal Crossing seemed like a good option!

We started here...

...and ended up here!

My new goal for the semester was to make my pre-existing characters into Animal Crossing inspired designs and make a poster for the movie with these new designs. Within these bigger ideas, I wanted to take some side tangents to do things like expression sheets and paint overs. Since I didn't get to do a ton of these, I was able to spruce up the poster a little bit more at the end of it!

Overall, what worked? Thinking back on the project, the one thing that I am really excited about is the fact that I got a lot of practice working in Adobe Illustrator. Up until last semester, that program was completely foreign to me and when I first worked with it, I wanted to avoid it like the plague. Now, I feel pretty comfortable with it and I love that I can make graphics that are easily scalable! As far as what didn't work, it's been a little bit of an adventure. I found that rigging in Adobe After Effects is a little bit of a nightmare and also that sometimes, the best-laid plans do not always work out.

Things don't always work out...

...but sometimes you get better things out of it!

Next semester, I would really like to find something that I know will work. I think that I kind of painted myself in a corner this semester (no pun intended) and it led to me not really knowing where to go when everything went wrong. I definitely wouldn't change anything that I did this semester because the things I did make, I am proud of them. Things might not have gone totally to the plan, but I still have some good experience that I can put into bigger projects. I wished that I would have made something that is "portfolio-worthy", but with the experience that I have had, I can definitely revisit and make a product that I am even more proud of.

The idea wheels are turning for next semester...

Without further ado, please enjoy the fruits of my labour and the final product. (I also made a cool paint-over).

Week 14

The semester is just about finished...therefore this project needs to be too! 

This week, I pretty much finished this final poster. I am pretty happy with where it is at, but I still think that there is something missing from it; I just can't put my finger on it.

It took a moment for me to get all of the things together and the background was the thing that sort of caused me the most grief. Once I had figured that out, everything just fell into place!

Below, you can watch the progression of the things that I did this week and then see the final product!

Maleficent's "Staff"

 

Updated Leaves and Castle

Background (alone)

One last thing! I have been trying out some more art styles and I decided to try the Pokemon art style! I tried it out with some of my friends, so I hope you like them. :)

This is Dylan

This is Shawn

Week 13

This week was poster progression! I want to say that it looks really cool, but I suppose that that is up to your opinion.

After some sketching last week, I first went with getting the final initial layout of everything. Below, you will see the final composition. It looks just like the original, but I am adding a little bit more flair!

I was super excited because I had found the Animal Crossing font that I could download and use, I made my own brush out of the Animal Crossing leaves, and I made the logo for the movie, but with an Animal Crossing flavor. Below, you can see just the logo (because I am pretty proud of it).

After I had finished all of the sketchy things, I decided to go after some color. I was able to get in the initial characters as well as the fairies that will be around Aurora. I am a little bit confused as to what I should do for my background because the initial poster is too detailed for the Animal Crossing world. I am going to noodle around with some gradients, but I do not want to make it too fancy.

That is it for this week! I am super excited to continue and very happy with where I am. :)

Week 12

This week was a lot of back to the drawing board! (literally but not terribly)

I decided to go after an expression sheet and an initial layout of the poster that I will be making. It has been a little bit of a challenge, not to make the composition, but to get the proportions right on everything. The expression sheet was also a little bit of a challenge in the way that the heads of the reference pictures that I found were all straight on.

Here were the final expressions! I wanted to make sure that I got a little bit from each outfit so that also posed a unique challenge.

Then here is the poster that I started with! It was a little bit hard because of the fact that everything was disproportionate to the actual poster, but I think that it will turn out alright! I wish that I had more to show, but I didn't want to include anything that was not "nice" looking.

That is all for now! I am excited for more next week and very excited to see where this poster goes! :)

Week 11

This week, I have been getting a little bit more direction of where I want to eventually end up with this project. I want to continue working on my characters and I think the end goal might be putting together a poster like the one that I showed last week. 

I also went ahead and started making my little spirit guides. They look a little derpy, but I love them just the same. :)

I was a little bit concerned that they didn't look right next to the other characters that I have so far, so I composited all of them together!

It didn't look so bad! (...but I suppose that I will wait for feedback...)

I will work a little bit on posing next time, but I am really happy with where I am. Making that final poster will be the end goal and it's going to be an adventure, but I am excited to make it happen. :)

More to come next week!

P.S. Enjoy this quick draw that I did in my insomnia. :) (I was really proud of the mouth that I did....it looked like a mouth and not a dentist trip gone wrong!)

Week 10

Well, I would have hoped for more progress to show this week, but it is okay.

From last week's endeavour, I decided to hit the drawing board on characters again. One thing that I realized is that I have the opportunity to make something really cool. I know that I like both of the dresses, so I can always put that on hold. I found this...

I am not entirely sure what I want to do with that information just yet, but it is a great transition to my next thing...

I made Maleficent! I went back and forth with myself about whether or not to make her a little bit more "cultural", but I decided to keep her the way that she was. The other thing that I brainstormed is that when I go after the Three Good Fairies, I wanted to model them after alebrijes! I will go after that next week, but for reference, here is what I am talking about:

They are very colorful "spirit guides" in Hispanic culture. :)

More to come next week, but I am thrilled to see where this goes!

Week 9

Update: I am much happier with the progress that I have made this week. :)

As far as the new direction, everything is looking fantastic and I know that it might not look like much and it is a very weird direction change, but I am happy and hopeful of the outcome here.

As far as last week's castle went, I was able to block it out in Maya this week! It is very primitive, but it's getting somewhere! The trick to it is that it will not be super complex in geometry and most of the work is going to be going into the textures. When looking at Animal Crossing, there is less geometry in some areas and more just intricate texture work. Below, you can see my very basic blockout. There is obviously a lot of work to be done in regards to proportions, but I am liking where it is going and it is matching my concept pretty well and adhering to Animal Crossing style.

Along with my castle, I am very happy to announce that I have also redone my characters to match the style that I am going for. After an immense amount of research...

I was able to get two new versions of the pink and blue dresses. :) Along with that, I went back into Premiere and I made a new edit of the video! All of that progress is shown below.

I'm super happy to share all this progress with you and cannot wait to work on more! Until next time!

Week 8

As far as things go this week, I decided to take a step back and reconfigure. I like what I do have right now, so how else can I do things?

Well, at the moment, I am a big fan of Animal Crossing. It is the one thing that I can focus on that doesn't make my brain want to explode. That being said, I figured that I could rethink my art style. 

Moving forward, I want to revisit my character and try to make it more to the Animal Crossing art style. On top of that, I want to go after some backgrounds. I am hoping to maybe make these concepts into 3D models, but we will go one step at a time. 

That being said, I started with the backgrounds this week. After looking into a lot of art, I wanted to tackle the castle. I love Disneyland with all my heart and so I figured I would use that as the image of reference for the castle...

After that, I had to look into some references in the art style I was going for. I found one image in particular of an Animal Crossing house that I felt would get us going in the right direction...

Once I did that, I started going after a concept! Here is where we got...

It's not much...but it's honest work.

Hopefully, things will start going in the correct direction. 

Until next week!

Week 7

Update: This is the week where everything came crashing down.

This week, I tried my best to do some research and make some things come to life! After watching multiple videos, I was feeling a little bit skeptical, but I figured that nothing could go wrong if you follow the tutorial...boy was I wrong.

First of all, I wanted to make my model animation ready. I didn't want to start with the dresses until I knew that the main body would work, so, needless to say, I had a little bit of fun...

After that, it was time to go into After Effects...aka my new enemy.

I tried everything. Okay...maybe not everything, but I tried two different methods. There was a plug-in that I attempted to rig things and then I also tried the puppet pins. Nothing worked out.

With the plug in, the issue that I ran into is that you cannot skin anything. With that, comes breaks in the model. The other issue that this brought was the fact that it required so much breaking up of the model beforehand. Below, you can see a video of it in action, but the other thing is that it makes everything run at about 2 frames a second on my computer.

...there is not a good way to skin it...

After messing with that for about four hours and screaming...a lot...I decided to go back to the first method that I had very much failed at the first time. This time that I did it was a little better than the plug-in, but it came with a lot of distortion and muckiness...

I then tried it again and this time I played with some more pin types and it was a little bit more successful, but there was still a bunch of distortion that I did not want to have. 😥

The other thing that was a huge problem with all the types of things that I was using was that it required so much prep and it made everything vector that I spent so much time doing null and void. All the images became super pixelated and I was unhappy with the result...

We shall see what I end up doing at the end of it all, but at the moment, I am super frustrated and am just trying to figure out what  I want to do...

More to come next week, but until then, please enjoy the art project that I have been working on for my art class. (also, I made my own font this week!)

This is a font that I can use on my computer now and in most things :)

Week 6

Things are picking up faster than I can even blink anymore. Weeks are flying by and next thing I know, blog posts are due and progress is needed. That being said, I didn't get everything I wanted to be done this week, but I did get some progress in.

This week was a little bit more of a challenge than I thought that it would be. I told myself that doing Asian accessories would be easier, but they definitely were not. The biggest challenge was working around the hair that I already had in place.

One thing that I have found in my research is that a lot of times that Asians have formal wear on, they put their hair up. Since I have the hair down on my model, this posed its unique set of challenges.

I figured the best place to start would be the earrings. I had a lot of inspiration in this department because I knew that I could work a lot with length and the color red. After I had finished these, I then went after something that I could put in her hair.

The hairpiece was the hardest because I knew that I couldn't do any kind of "chopstick" idea; she didn't have any hair that was tucked away or up. I then decided I would go after a comb, but I had to be careful not to make it too much like Mulan's; she is not Mulan. After much deliberation with myself, I got something that I am generally happy with.

Last week, I talked a little bit about trying to do some backgrounds, but after studying them for a long time (the ones from the actual movie), I realized that doing something like that would be like trying to replicate Picasso...aka, impossible. That being said, I just went to the Internet and found this beautiful background and slapped it in there....just for the video.

Background By: Eyvind Earle

Next, I want to make the prince. I will need to figure out where I want to go with that but also doing Maleficent might be fun...we shall see.

Anyhow, that is all for now, enjoy the video and the final looks with the backgrounds!

See you next time.

P.S. Enjoy this little break I got to take to do some concept art for 495. :)

Week 5

Here it is! Another blog post.

I have another very important word for you: flowers.

Me Thinking About Making More Flowers...

Just when you think that you are done with flowers, they come back with a vengeance and they come in swinging. Though they were the bane of my existence for the second week in a row, they still ended up turning out really pretty. The biggest thing that it took was looking for reference images. Once I had found something that matched my style, I went after it. (as seen below)

As for what I really did this week, it was about accessorizing. Normally, that might be fun, but in this case, it was a little bit of an added nightmare. First I started with some research on Mexican formal wear. I wasn't super sure about what would go with the dress that I had made since my reference images either weren't on people or weren't accessorized.

When I did look up images though, I had a very heavy inspiration from elegant jewelry and Frida Kahlo. I loved the way she had these long earrings, which I have seen in my family, and lots of flowers in her hair:

    

After I established that, I went after some of that. I took some of the inspiration for the earrings on the right and the flowers on the left. I liked that it wasn't perfectly centered on her head and I rather liked that it wasn't super symmetrical. I ended up re-using a couple of the flowers that I had made for the dress because it looked a little bit sparse with only the roses.

After that, I went after the completed look and no girl is complete without a good pair of shoes. They gave me some trouble because I realized that I needed to make something elegant but that also fit in with my art style. I liked the idea of sandals, but I also had to think of the other dress. I ended up going for something basic because I could easily change the color and they would work for the other look as well.

So, now, I am super happy to say, that I am done with this look!

 

The last thing that I did this week was that I went back into the Premiere file and I was able to swap out the image in the video so it has the updated blue dress. :)

That is all for this week! Next week, I want to finish up the pink dress with accessories and I want to ground these images. I am in love with the art of Sleeping Beauty so I might go for the art style in the backgrounds of that movie....we will see...

Anyhow, until next time!

Week 4

Another week, another blog post. Let's talk about what we did because I'm pretty happy about it.

I have one very important word for you: flowers.

Flowers were a nightmare but ended up looking really pretty and in the end, I realized that I liked them. I am specifically talking about the pattern that I put on the top of the blue dress. I ended up having to do some research about flowers, how to make them in Illustrator, and then I actually learned some new tools in the process!

After that, I just went full speed ahead and went after the next dress. I ended up changing the design a little bit based off of the concept because of where the hair on my character fell. The other thing that I realize as I am typing this is that I might want to experiment with different hairstyles...but I guess we will cross that bridge when we get to the accessories part.

Once I had finished both dresses, I realized there was no reason that I shouldn't go back and make the little animation that I was talking about. I didn't want to get into After Effects just yet, so I stayed with what I knew (Premiere) and made a little thing in there. I will probably edit it once I have the full look of the princess done, but for now, I was really happy with what I had done!

Moving forward, I have some research to do as far as hair, accessories, and shoes and things, but I am excited to continue with it! Everything is shaping up quite nicely. 🤗

Week 3 (yea, sure...let's go with that)

Here we are again! Another week, another blog post. We have made some progress this week!

Instead of panicking about what I was going to do, I was just panicking about what I was doing. So that's cool, I guess.

In terms of where we are at, I finished the dress concepts! I was able to get a really good idea of where I wanted to go with those things so that made me feel good. However, that was just in Photoshop...there is more.

I then made the model in Illustrator! It looks a little funky (yea, she's in her undergarments) but I didn't get the opportunity to block out the clothing yet, so I figured instead of just shapes, I would add a little something funny.

I was quite happy with how it turned out and I think that the biggest issue that I had was making sure that it was not only symmetrical but that all the highlights and shadows followed the flow of the character that I was working with. I showed this concept to my friends and they thought it was me...haha....no. The other thing that I got from them, though, which was a little more constructive, was that the legs being two different colors was weird. I thought about this for a moment and it does look a little funky, but then I started blocking in the first dress and it didn't look so out of place.

Moving forward, I am a little bit concerned about the patterns on the dresses, but I suppose we will cross that bridge when we get there. The other thing that I realized is that I will need to adorn the model with not only shoes but also some accessories; I will do some more research for that about what will be culturally appropriate. The next thing I hope to accomplish is getting both of the dresses on the model in illustrator and then making a quick transition animation with the sound bits in the background saying "Make it pink" or "Make it blue" (respectively).

That is all for now! Until next time. 😊

Week 1 (or I guess Week 2?)

Greetings from Senior Portfolio and the new Blogger UI set up! It's wacky right?? I mean, not just the new Blogger UI, but also the fact that I am speaking to you from senior portfolio. It's been nearly four years and I never thought it would come this fast...or come at all.

Anyhow, the meat and potatoes: the project.

Honestly, if any week was going to be the hardest, this was probably the one. The biggest issue that I ran into was the mid-life crisis when I was deciding what on God's Green Earth I wanted to do my project on. The first polarizing thing was deciding whether I wanted to be in a section pointed toward animation or a section pointed toward modeling. (Me Internally: Well, neither....HELP.)

Real Time Footage of Me Deciding My Project

I realized that modeling might be more encompassing of what I wanted to do and that section also included 2D Concept Art, so I went with that. One decision down...now the bigger one.

What was I passionate about and going to continue being passionate about for the next 16 weeks was the biggest question that I wanted to ask myself. I don't know where the idea came from, probably in a fever dream or something, but I realized that I was passionate about two big things: Disney and self-identity. The idea might have sparked from the fact that my Spanish teacher from high school just had a child...I don't know.

Putting those two things together was a task, but I came up with the idea of making twist on a Disney Princess that included persons of color. I don't know where down the road this will lead, but the plan is to make some concepts, turn them into vector art, and then end up in After Effects doing some puppet rigging and some looping animations. (I saw this cool video and I thought that I would do my best to make something like this.)

This week then included lots of research, thinking, and a little bit of concepting. I don't have a lot of progress...which could be a problem but making the creative gears in my head turn requires a lot of mental grease that is currently spread thin in a variety of other courses that I am taking right now.

At the end of the day, here is what we got:

• A Pinterest Board - filled with some vector character art that I would like to emulate
• A Story and Twist - which will remain in my notes until I finally get the finalized touches on it
• ...and a little bit of concept...

Since the story that I wanted to try to tackle was Sleeping Beauty, I thought it might be the easiest to start off with some designs for the famous "make it pink/make it blue" scene. The idea here is that I will be making dresses that show the Princess's different cultures (one is still in progress).

Make It Blue = Hispanic
Make It Pink = Asian

Anyhow, that is all that we have for now, but more to come later!

(I also started this cool Fall Guys image when I was hitting a creative block...)