LAUAN603: Live Brief #1 : Yostar-Netease

After my collaboration with Yostar games in early October, creating a piece of illustration for their i.p Azur Lane, they reached out to me again for collaboration, this time involving another giant name in the Chinese game market : Netease, which I decided to include as one of my live briefs. However, as things are still in the works and protected by NDA, more information will be available comes January when the illustration will be publicly release. Until then, the best I can reveal is that it is also a piece of illustration !

LAUAN504 : Weekly update for week of 14/5/2018

Submission week ! And last update to the project. Everything is in order and ready for submission, but we did ,make a choice to replace Dotty our tutor as narrator with Zhama from the first year who is a Londoner. Although did have a better-trained voice, we all feel like Zhama did a really good job on his part and the fact that is a London accent helps set the scene even better.

LAUAN504: Weekly update for week of 7/5/18

This is week saw the final crit for our animation. First thing to mentioned the fact that we're really proud to be the first team to have a finished animation up for the crit and that the overall animation work and sound design done by the other two members was brilliant. With that said, within our crit, we did have some improvements needed pointed out to us, mainly regarding the text and narration of the animation. One of the point was that that in some of the shots , the camera works made the scene feels off center, which can be easily adjusted. The biggest point that was mentioned then, was that the worry that the audience was to distracted with reading the text rather than noticing the animation in the panel, some of which, are really subtle and can be easily missed. Therefore, we were strongly advised to get a narrator for the project, which we did right within the day and got the file in over what we have. Now its up to the guys to edit them to the highest of quality, which I'm confident they'll pull off

LAUAN504 : Weekly update for week of 23/4/18

This week was a pretty easy going week on my part as revolves around mostly replacing my place-holder assets within the background files with the final one, as well as making adjustments to make them fit better in the scene. Moreover I also did some test for the animation within each scene. which I think looked really nice, but we agreed on leaving the animation for the other members. I also started looking into sound, with the focus on effects in the bg like ambient noise and horse galloping. Something that signifies the streets of London in 1888.

LAUAN504: Weekly update for week of 16/4/18

This week was a continuation of the making of the background on my part, which by the end of the week was completed. For the most part , all the backgrounds looks really good as they portray the atmosphere at the time really effectively, as well as matching really well with the animation examples and assets my team has done already. All of the elements in the background are on separate layer as well, ready for animation. With that done, my role now will turn to support for the other members atm, specifically in the area of helping them match the assets with the background and any additional lighting and detail to make the scenes look better ( of course, that means a bit if waiting for them to finish the assets). However, as an overall role, I think I've done a pretty good job in terms of being an illustrator for this project.

LAUAN504 : Weekly update for week of 9/4/17

Concept and finalizing background:

With the bulk of the research finished and ready for presentation, I went back to finalizing my backgrounds and create more scene. Instead of the very rough and sketchy style of the early concept , I decided to be a bit more tidy , as well as keeping toward a more realistic lighting set up, as to create more atmosphere for the panels. All the while, still keeping a level of the cross-hatching style we decided on. As far as the other member go, all of us are pretty happy with these new bgs, with some of them considered good to go as the final backgrounds as well

LAUAN504 Weekly update for week of 2/4/18

THE INTERVIEW :

For this week , I contacted Richard Jones, head of the Jack the Ripper tours in London, as well as an author of numerous books and documentaries on the case, and is considered on of the premier figure of authority on the matter , just by the amount of knowledge he has gain through out his research.

The fear was that, as his role of tour guide, Richard could potentially dramatize some of the details of the case for the purpose of interest but in contrast, through out our conversation, he was factual, insightful and without any exaggeration at all, giving us information that has logical backing behind it, all the while still keeping it very very interesting (skill of a guide, I'd say). The most valuable information that he gave to us, was his judgement on what were the important events regarding to the Catherine Eddowes, especially from the police perspective like we're aiming for in the documentary. This was helpful as it help us to formulate our event script, choosing the right one to focus on with our limited time. The other interesting bit was his mention of the conflict between the 2 police involved at the time, : the metropolitan and The city of London police force, the former being hated by the press and the latter being praised by them, as well as the controversial decision made by MPD head , Sir Charles Warren. Finally , through providing a larger context of London at the time, it shattered or perception for the press as being obstructionist of the police work, but rather, they're were very disheartening to the police working at the time, who faced numerous challenge from limited manpower and resources, having to deal with other crimes as well as an area that practice crimes like daily routine and is not incline to share information. The press's attitude themselves was influenced the corruption of the police force at the time, such as the Bloody sunday event where sir Charles Warren a clear out of a protest on Trafalgar square. so it give us a much bigger picture of the whole event. However, a major that all of us agree on , was that JTR was a press creation , and that JTR the legend, the murderer of White Chapel in 1888 are very different from one another.

As for Richard himself, he also shared some information his passion on JTR, starting his tour-guiding days on Charles Dickens, which due to Dickens's working focusing alot on the East end, brought him to JTR.

Overall it was an incredibly useful conversation. not just for the information that it gave for the research , but more practical things like an audio for a possible voice over.

LAUAN504: Weekly update for week of 26/3/18

Further research was done during this week, with my focus specifically on the ins and outs of the Catherine Eddowes case and the people who are involved with it. Thanks to the Casebook website , which contains such a amazing amount of information. I managed to created a very detailed timelines of the events that happened before, during, and after the murder. These information aren't just for the meat of documentary either but serves as valuable information on how the environments look, the scenes/characters etc. such as the information on the lighting of Mitre square the location where the body was found were extremely useful when drawing the concept out , as well as the autopsy reports being useful when it comes to drawing the body as accurately as possible. Moreover, the research also helps identified more theme that we can add in to our doc, such as the press's role in making JTR a legend. Finally , I managed to put out several concept arts to determined the style and look for our illustration, which at the end of it, we were all pretty happy with it and would only need more refinement when it comes down to doing the final thing. Also as, a positive note to close off the week, I managed to get in contact and set up a talk with Richard Jones , head of the JTR tour in London for our primary research.

LAUAN504: Weekly update for week of 19/3/18

First week of for our Documentary brief on :"Jack the Ripper" began with some initial secondary research including watching existing documentaries available online. After 4-5 of them , Myself and the members are now confident in our knowledge of all the major events and theories of the case. Out of all of those information we then decided to focused the attention of our doc on the murder of the 4th victim : Catherine Eddowes, as well as looking at it from police point of view. Our director Alex is currently now working out the concept for the animation itself. The general idea is that it will be done in format that is similar to 1800s newspaper , but with the images and text animated ( similar to that of the poster in the Harry Potter universe. My role now, then, is to start conducting further research as well as making contact with leading Ripperologists for our primary source (and possible voice over).

The list includes:

Paul Begg
Richard Jones
Philip Hutchinson
John Bennet
Lindsay Siviter

     

Style our documentary is emulating 

LAUAN504 : Weekly update for week of 12/3/18

As of today, our animation is fully completed and submitted to DnaD. The sound design was quite straight forward, as much of the sounds from the animatic was kept intact, with the only exception being the soundtrack in the later half of the animation. For that we really looked for something that would convey a sense of action but not suspend say like Batman, but more towards the more upbeat and cool type, which fits the feel of the animation better. Luckily, we managed to found a good punk rock track online that more or less achieve the style that we want, and only required some small editing to make it fit to the animation. Overall, I'm very proud of what we have achieved for this project. Given the short amount of time we had, the efficiency of the production the quality of our final piece wasn't affected thanks to the fantastic cooperation between all members. It has garnered me more needed experience in terms of my own technical skills , as well as my management capabilities

LAUAN504 : Weekly post for week of 5/3/2018

With our combined efforts , the final animation was fully completed within this week and I am very happy with it. The most challenging part was working out the pan out of the character in scene 2 and how to sync it with the background, but after a couple of tries, I managed to got it lined up nicely. The colours are great on both the character and the background, and all the timing works out really well. Major praise also for the team's take on the logo. With all this done, the only thing left is sound editing which shouldn't take that long as most of the sounds in the animatic worked really well already. Other than that , we just need to start putting everything in a nice format for submission to the competition and we can end this project on a high note .

LAUAN504: Weekly Blog for week 26/2/18

The main focus of this week was finishing the line animation and at the end of the week , that goal was met with all main line animation finished for all scenes. Only some small VFX animation is left to finish it off. The next stage for the following week would be the colouring , which some scenes have already underwent. Looking to complete the final animation by the end of next week. The process of doing the line went very smoothly as the storyboard really helped with positioning characters and lines. However, the most challenging part about this that some scenes deal with complex actions + tricky perspective which made it quite difficult to work out at first. That said, it has enabled to gain much more experience in solving problems like this , as well as further streamline my workflow on TV paint. The back grounds are also coming along nicely.

LAUAN504 : Weekly blog for week of 19/2/18

With the concept week finished last week, production started rolling this week, first with the completion of the storyboard and then followed the finished line animation for scene 2-3. The pacing works quite well in the animatic , as well as the sound,( albiet they are still very much place holders.)and we managed to nailed it down to a reasonable 57 secs or so The backgrounds are coming along quite well as well with nearly half of the finalized background completed. Looking to finished line animation for more than half of the animation by the end of next week as well as getting all the final backgrounds done.

LAUAN504 : Weekly blog for week of 12/2/18

For the Competition study task, our group decided to go with the Beano Brief, more specifically , redesigning Billy the Cat as a female characters, as it was the task that relates to our main interest the most ( me especially as I'm focused on character design) . As the task required also producing a piece of narrative animation with only a month of work time, we aimed to be as quick and efficient with the preproduction stages as possible, including character design , environments and storyboarding, and in it we have achieved success. As the target audience were in the age from 10-12 , we decided to take alot of inspiration from shows from the early 2000s that were popular with both kids and young teens, mainly My life as a Teenage robot, as well as some style example from Panty and Stocking. We found that as this was a "hero" character , having strong dynamic shapes is essential , while keeping it as simple as possible for the benefits of the animation as well as creating a style thats pop and draws in a younger crowd. After finishing that stage, environments were created to follow the same style of the character which we were really happy with right from the first couple of tests. After that was the storyboard which we settled with creating a Opening sequence for the show that would last around 40s or so. In general , the first week has been extremely productive and we're looking to start animation by the following week.

Break down of shapes

 Finished character

 
  Storyboard

LAUAN503 Weekly blog: for week of 1/1/18

Week of work for the Christmas break are mostly handled by my other team mates, but I also have taken part in the colouring process of the animation , as well as developed the palette that it uses. Moreover , I also did the remaining back grounds for Act 2, with major efforts focusing on the last 3 as those are much bigger than the rest in other for the camera to be panned around.Overall I really liked the palette I've developed, as it really helps convey the proper mood for the scene. The colouring it self was quite repetitive, but thanks to TV paint's intuitive copy functions, it made the process goes a bit quicker.

LAUAN503 : Study Task 3 - Strike a pose

The task of modelling the moon model my first interaction with 3D model again for this year. Fortunately enough, It was very much straight forward, exactly the same as playing with my figures in my room. Through doing it , I've learned to know where and how much exaggerate body proportion and poses in order to convey the most feeling , as evidenced in my posed model being able to convey much more of the correct emotion I wanted than the reference photos. Using Maya again was enjoyable, though it did took a few tries before getting used to the express keys again. Overall a very enjoyable task

LAUAN503 - Weekly update for week of 8/1/18

The final week before submission also concludes with the completion of the animation. Thanks to my team member's hard work and my own effort in colouring all the scenes over the break , we manage to put everything in place in this one week . shadings and all ( but not sound yet so that will the very final thing to finish this project). Overall the planning was really good and although I did have some doubts, my team members manage to get the colour base out on time and to a standard that I wanted. Moreover, in the crit for today , we also have fantastic feedback , including some final points on where we can touch up the scene ( re-adjusting camera colours and scene lengths ) and at the end of they , we have something that is high-standard , has good pacing and character, animation and colour- something Im very proud of.