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Guided Mini Project Brief
PROJECT BRIEF: Create a human hybrid manifestation that represents the essence of your soul in the form of a 3D soft puppet.
This was a guided project that I followed step by step. This page shows my research and mind mapping. I formatted my mindmap in an underground plumbing style -as the concept of the project required some research into the manifestation of my soul as a human/hybrid character. To narrow down my ideas I researched animal caricatures, myths and archetypes and looked at how hybrids have been visualised by other artists such as Picasso. It was interesting to observe how internal fears and the ego are represented through forms of distorted animals and humans. Thus the mind map led me to a more personal ideas explored in my research. I focused on what I associate with the fear of my existence and exploring what animal characteristics symbolise and link to me and this idea.
Additionally I also collected research in the form of observational sketches of sculptures, and artefacts that reflect east and southeast asian myths and culture - combined with sketches of other existing character designs and caricatures.
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Research & Idea Development
On the left-side corner is the mood board - I collected a collage of images that reflect a specific eerie but dream-like atmosphere - one that reflected how I internalised my inner psyche. Below that are various collages of different animal features combined with an image of my own face. This was a useful reference point to help me generate my own puppet design ideas.
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Puppet Concept Designs
Human/Hybrid interpretations developed from the previous collages - using dip pens and indian ink.
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Final 3D Soft Puppets
The structure of the soft puppets are made from a pair of tights, some pillow stuffing, and sewn together with a needle and thread. Since the nature of a soft puppet allowed for less control, and more intuitive creation - this gave me the opportunity to break away from the usual aesthetics I have previously used for making models. The final result is dark, unfinished, and a little macabre - some inspirations came from watching the puppet creations in Jan Švankmajer’s 1988 ‘Alice’ and 1994’s ‘Faust’.
Creating this type of puppet taught me that I can let go and push my own boundaries of surrendering control and allow the process to find it’s own style and uniqueness - and even though it is visually flawed and and incomplete it was interesting to see how that has actually added to the character and concept.
The materials for the puppets include (in more detail): fake colored moss from an old diarama set piece, strings, buttons, cotton, cloth and wool.
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Drawing From Life: Observational Drawing
Pages 5 - 13
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Xian Museum, China
The drawings were made using pencil overlined with pen and ink
- The figures on the left are observations of life sized statues of historic soldiers in the 'Xian National Museum'
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Northern China, General Architecture
Observational pen and ink sketches from the streets of Xìan China.
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Figure Drawings From Life
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Figure Drawings From Life
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Figure Drawings From Life
Online Life Drawing Workshop at the Royal Academy of Arts, London
Drawing the model in multiple poses for short periods of time.
For each pose the tutor gave a set of challenges, for e.g drawing with your non-dominant hand, or only observing a pose for a single minute, e.t.c.
The sketches were made using a 4b pencil.
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Animal Studies
Drawings / studying From life
Observational sketches and a painting of a jellyfish from my visit to an aquarium in Singapore and a few details of bones and scales that then inspired my own imagined illustration of mutated fish and sea creatures [below]
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Concept Designs
The four panels then became a concept design for the introduction to a sci-fi comic book idea.
Materials used: pastels, chalk, and a few pen outlines - size A2
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Edinburgh, Scotland
- A4 sized street drawing from life
- Drawing and pastel colour - interpretation of university campus
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Animal Studies and Concept Designs
[Left] Observational study/drawing of Alpacas I came across on a farm in Scotland , along with more architectural sketches of buildings I observed in Edinburgh . [Right] Concept design sketch for a comic book cover (for an original sci fi short story) that combines both alternate designs of the alpacas and the building structures from the left.
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Illustration and Concept Designs for Short Sci Fi Story
Pages 13 - 17
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Concept Designs
Alternate cover page sketches for the short sci fi story.
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Concept Design for Kitchen Scene
Detailing a concept for a singular scene for the short sci fi story - in this scene the backdrop is a kitchen with alternate sci elements added in ; such as the mutated mice, engineered food and stylised tech pieces. At the very bottom is a detailed sketch of one of the main characters present in the scene.
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Detailed Shot for Kitchen Scene
Colored and detail scene shot with two interacting characters, following and building up on the set piece and concept design on page 15.
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Kitchen Scene - Animation Tests
Test Animation sequence for the kitchen scene.
The test was mostly to experiment on creating a dramatic close-up of a character through frame-by-frame animation. I had to animate the background and the character movement separately. It took a lot of time to get the scaling right and Adobe Fresco Motion Panel editing software that I used didn’t provide many options to digitally scale frames when in motion, so I had to do a lot of prior planning for each planned frame before I added it to the animation editing programme.
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Animation Tests
Pages 17 - 20
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Studying Key frames for dance movements as well as testing a performance sequence that encompeses two interacting characters - since these are only key frames they aren't ready to be smoothly animated but was done to get a better idea of testing full body movements in frame-to-frame animation.
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Testing Animation for Full Body Movement & Character Interaction
Further animation tests of walk and run cycles, as well as tests and studies of animating two characters interacting with each other.
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Further Animation Tests
urther animation tests using frame-by-frame animation
This first test I explored camera movement possibilities - tracking characters from the outside before zooming into the inside. The idea was to simulate or replicate transition scenes they use in films where they make a scene transition look like a single camera movement.
The second version I tried to figure out combining two interacting characters and movement - however the limits of the programme I used (Adobe Fresco Motion Panel) made it difficult to track the placement of the characters. I realised that the speed and position in which they need to move in to the last frame needs to make more spatial sense.
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Additional 10 Pages
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These final ten pages present a project that I personally lead - titled
The Panopticon Project.
Throughout these additional pages, you will see how this project illustrates both the development and transformation of a creative project as well as how it visually communicates the things that are currently inspiring me.
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Panopticon Project
Inspirations and Ideas
Panopticon Project
Inspiration & Ideas
A world environment concept for a personally led animation project idea. Narratively inspired by Terry Pratchett's books such as ‘The Discworld Series’ and ‘Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy’ - where multiple stories, themes, and fictionalised cultures span across non-sequential time periods and exist in one universe.
The story and concept of Panopticon is inspired by both the structural components of its circular architecture as well as the philosophical concept behind its meaning - that of dystopia and free will
The idea follows Zamyatin’s dystopian novel ‘We’, where instead of just a singular city being watched it’s an entire universe - spanning through decades of time. Adding non-sequential time-frames within the story allows me to create very specific visual atmospheres that distort existing history and culture into my own version. Thus, inspirations were taken from multiple types of art and media, for both the concept as well as for the characters within.
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Ideas Development : World Environment Sketchbook Page
Planning and devising the overview of how the world/universe looks and functions
The specific internal logic and concept - includes a short animated clip of a zoom-in to the fictional map design. The idea going forward was to stop at a zoomed in small town and show a short montage of the city changing through decades of time (like the montage in the first Futurama episode) then to have the map zoom out to show that the rest of the world/map and how it had also changed (reduced) through time.
Creating something unique from my imagination is the one thing that helped me to make sense of myself and mind. To find the transcendental over the reality was something I could retreat to at my lowest points and helped me to feel more in control of my own mental blocks and thoughts. I found that I could make up my own rules to explore every possibility even the ones not in any physical realm. I also realised that I wanted to bring my ideas into the physical reality through drawing and animation to help myself and others see the world through my mind.
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Environment Design: The Orphanage
The Orphanage turned food factory
A place that exploits children both through labour and in their campaigns. Visually the ship factory designs are adapted from ideas of old pirate ships with industrial revolution steamboats. Conceptually the idea is reminiscent of the Chimney Children of 16th century England.
The right side illustrates two panel sketches of a short introductory storyboard. The first panel includes an employee setting up a billboard ad with the smiling orphans consuming the product. The contrasting second panel shows the actual injured chilldren watch the board being set up. The smiling children visuals were adapted from observing and studying old 1950's ads that used unnatural cartoonish expressions on the children for commercial appeal.
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Planning Concepts: Sketchbook Page
The Idea: To visualise and contrast two perspective shots of the same building - the back of the hotel building where the alien creatures work. In this case it is to contrast the wonder of introducing what seems to be a fantastical world to realising that there is something sinister digging beneath its roots - un-noticed to the main character as a spectator until the narrative forces on her to be both a spectator and a subject.
The Inspirations: The design was taken from 1950's Fascist Italy housing block designs, that used a very specific almost uninviting design. I was drawn to the symmetry and the lack of ornateness for the general concept design. The 'multilogue' scene was inspired by The Italian show 'Lamica Geniale' (My Brilliant Friend) - the first and introductory episode uses the perspective of a child observing arguing adults within a round and communal structure of the landscape to create a sense of onlooking and visual spectacle.
The second perspective visualises the building in the shape of a Well with the character looking down instead of up. The scene is inspired by of one of Tarkovsky's earliest films 'Ivan's Childhood' - in particular the narrative being through a child's perspective and the themes of dreams and losing sense of a material world. On a metatextual level it's one of the only one of his films that specifically pay homage to other filmmakers of that era rather than the extremely unique and personalised style of his following work.
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Final Concept Design
Final Overview design (flat/front facing) of the building structure
Types of alien species designated to different 'service centres'.
Fictionalised versions of travel documents - with an iconography of the world-design imprinted on the passport.
The visual titled for 'induction theatre' includes a small easter egg which is a reference to a visual from the original 'Twilight Zone' ; The narrators (Rod Serling) narration at the beginning of a specific episode.
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Concept & Storyboarding
Story development
Short sequences visually demonstrate both the supernatural ability of the character as well as setting the tone for how the narrative will present itself.
The panel to the left under ‘concept’ visualises the character’s ability to twist the physical reality of her surroundings.
The ‘Dream Sequence’ is a storyboard that features visual aspects of old ‘childhood’ cartoons.
The puppets were inspired by 1930’s black and white cartoons, specifically PopEye and Betty Boop. The background was inspired by early concept designs of the cave in Disney’s animation ‘Little Mermaid’.
The song ‘Hidden In the Sand’ by Tally Hall inspired the beginning of the sequence (bottles turning into sand) as well as the ‘thematic’ background - for a aerie but charming tone and the music ties everything together.
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Concept & Character Development
Character concepts for the older version of the child and a group of fictionalised alien species.
The general visual idea was to introduce characters through different mediums - in this case: a magazine, tarot card, wanted poster, and a single panel comic. The visuals and concept are largely derived from the works of socialist, political cartoonist Art Young - who produced caricatures and cartoons that attacked the upper class, monarchy, and politicians in the 19th century. ‘The Masses’ was inspired by an actual magazine that reported on labour struggles - thus I wanted to revitalise this concept through the view of the alien races in my fictional universe that exist in a ‘funhouse’ mirror view of the same masses.
Additionally, the comic strip was also inspired by Young’s cartoons, dealing with the hypocrisy of intellectualism. How we can typically view animals (especially primates) and how general atrocities take place for the sake of knowledge and progress.
Visually, the tarot card is designed and coloured similarly to the album cover ‘Queen II’. I’m connecting the era of the music, image style and colour tones of this album cover to my visuals. In terms of story, my drawings show the character getting older - in cartoons as a child through to rock music as a teenager.
Materials Used: 'Pencil sketches', water color and ink - digitally painted - collage of old newspapers (for the magazine.
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Character Development & Narrative Style
This page is a combination of character and narrative development as well as an introduction to the second lead character ‘Jude’. I chose the 1970’s as the time-period to span the largest majority of this storyline. The 70’s in general was known to be decade of profound change in social norms and politics - specifically the London and was a significant period for ‘youth culture’ in terms of its music and general shift in norms.
Jude and the other character are lesbians - who find comfort in the general rebellion of punk rock bands, and the gender non-conforming style of glam rock which inspired the visual and tonal style of their character development.
Album cover colour pallets are visual references for both the chapter outlines as well the city scape (on the top right).
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Character Development: Model Making
Designing a clay model in the shape of a stylised chess-piece - a re-working of an earlier sketch when planning and introducing Jude as a character. The designs of the mini blank faces are a reference to the concept in the story that deals with the idea of alternate versions of each character - in a metatextual sense. The idea of the many faces are in reference to a stop motion puppet making - replacement animation ; where multiple versions of the same face is constructed and would be used when a character makes an expression.
The model was constructed using plasticine baking clay - several issues occurred after baking the clay. The hair drooped down due to the weight because I neglected to add additional structures inside the hair pieces to maintain the flowing shape. I also realised that clay pieces are extremely delicate and by the time I took the final photograph of the models (after painting) several hair pieces had broken and had to be hot glued back in to place.
However the final result visually and conceptually looked similar to the idea I had in mind - and was a useful learning curve and success.
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Singular Set Design: Model Making
Building a stop-motion set from of one of the planned/sketched environmental concept designs
I decided to make a model of an abandoned train cart /interdimensional book store. I wanted to create a model for the outside and to show the 'workshop' as a cut out section of the inside of the cart to exaggerate the concept of how things are made. The idea of using stop motion is also a visual representation and reminder of ‘how things are made’ by existing elements for a revitalised story.
A large amount of the set is made from cardboard, and styrofoam - to create cracks and wall structure. The materials apart from the clay were all recycled - and made mostly without prior architectural scaling. I wanted it to look a little destroyed and used over time - especially the workshop part needed to look a little dirty.
To progress, I want to add in a short stop-motion animation of the hands creating the mini books inside the workshop, and an sequence inspired by the opening of Tim Burtons - 'Coraline' and Brothers Quay -'The Street of Crocodiles'.
My aim is to start developing a story that combines both 2D and stop motion animation - wherein both sets can be hand-crafted whilst the characters remain hand drawn or vice-versa - depending on the specific theme and message of a certain plot point.
The entire ‘Panopticon Project’ was self-motivated and self-made. The outcomes of this stage of the project are story-boards, character world-environment ideas and scene explorations. As I gain experience I would like to develop this project further in to a full sequential story - that I can then develop into a short animation film.
I've realised that the creative process is a way for me to explore things I had trouble understanding, through speaking or through therapy, or through reading scientific articles. It's how I can connect to my own self care; my creativity is somewhere I can go when Im most afraid and process an uncomfortable emotion. Creating a multifaceted view of reality that can be captured in the largest realm of possibility (endless possibility).
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