Reflection on the Pitch and Planning Module

The workshops were really useful in this module and had allowed us to get some help with the preparations for our presentations and to be confident with our ideas. Most of the things we had covered for the module were beneficial on the long run for our major project and it has helped me to get a clear vision with what I want to go for in my FMP. The ideas for my FMP are now clear, however what is currently lacking is the designs of my characters and the fictional world I am creating, as at the moment there is near to nothing to show what I want to produce as a starting point, besides using some original artworks from the past few years to showcase what I am aiming for in terms of visual outcomes.

I have all the ideas in my head and I know what I wanted to do, it’s just that the designs or initial roughs of the characters have not yet been created to show the first stages of building my fictional world of reality with fantasy, which is a bit unfortunate as I could have a fair amount to show and to support my ideas to my tutors when I did my presentation. Reflecting on what I could have done more to the module, was to at least produce some content of character designs to support my ideas. Things could of have been a little different in terms of progress if it wasn’t for the lack of character designs.

FMP proposal - PROPOSAL UPDATE

For my Final Major Project I am going to produce original content of characters and scenes as a collection of artworks that will loosely have narrative(s), as well as being standalone artworks individually. These characters and sceneries I will be producing will inform my interests within the genre of sci-fi fantasy in games, storyboards and film/entertainment.

The idea of creating my very own ‘world’ or ‘universe’ is to establish a body of original content that will identify myself as an artist to the audience. Considering the time I have ahead after university, I would want to work from the original content I had created, therefore using this Major Project as the starting point of introducing and creating visual content under my name as an artist. The artworks for my characters is to make each one as standalone artworks, while at the same time they can be viewed as a collective that will loosely tell a story or narrative about the fictional world and its characters. Included in these works will be ‘easter eggs’ or visual motifs (reoccurring objects or characters) as I would like to add little twists of hidden details.

The artworks I will produce are to express my imagination and the concepts that I am interested in drawing: characters/creatures and atmospheric sceneries. I will be using a mixture of both concept art and storyboarding to create my images. In addition the art style I currently have will be pushed to be developed further and to be established as my visual style of painting (this will be an ongoing process throughout the project and it may slightly change).

The content I will be aiming to illustrate will consist of:

Characters. 4 Characters (at the minimum) will be designed and illustrated by me. A male, a female, an animal character and a spirit character (subjects may change). These will be approached as Concept Art (a full body illustration of the characters).

Sceneries. Conveying the beauty of the world using colours and composition. These will be approached as storyboards and concept art. These artworks will include some of the characters that will illustrate a moment in time within their narrative(s). I will be using real life locations as a starting point to build my fictional world for sceneries and environments, including characters’ homes and their narratives.

The intended outcome for my FMP is to have physical artworks to be displayed on the wall (the sizes of each artwork will vary), while the rest will be presented as a digital portfolio (PowerPoint presentation in loop) on computer alongside with the physical pieces. Accompanying these will be prints of the artworks.

Visual themes and genres for FMP

THEMES AND GENRES – BLENDING THE WORLD OF REALITY WITH FANTASY

One of the main themes for the fictional world I am creating is fantasy and enchantment. The settings of the fictional world I will create will set in places that we are familiar with (a forest, a lake, a street, etc.) or places that celebrates an event (e.g. festivals). It could even be a place where it holds personal/special memories, such as a faraway home from childhood. Basing on real locations to work with I would incorporate fictional elements to produce the blend of mixing fantasy with reality as my fictional world.

The Japanese animations of many Studio Ghibli films such as “My Neighbour Totoro” and “Howl’s Moving Castle” show some examples of mixing in fantasy in a reality-based world. The animation films holds some of the influences that I would like to incorporate in my works, such as the enchantment of the world and the simplicity of the characters.

“My Neighbour Totoro” (1998) has a friendly giant creature, who is mythical forest sprite that is living in the woodlands in rural Japan. An example of mixing a fantasy/fictional character with a reality-based location is perhaps the key thing I want to produce in my artworks.

"Howls Moving Castle" (2004) a story set in a fictional world where both magic and 19th century technology is predominant with strong anti-war themes, reflecting on the director's (Hayao Miyazaki) opposition of the Iraqi war in 2003. 

I always had interests in these kind of genres where you mix imagination with the world around us, yet relate to the things around you, whether they are personal to you or something that reflects the world we live in. 

COLOUR MIXING - TONE AND ATMOSPHERE

Over the years of practicing digital painting I always sought to produce some visually appealing artworks through the use of colour mixing. It has recently becoming more and more relevant in my current works and is becoming part of my painting style. I want to continue the process of colour mixing to create atmospheric sceneries that would help support the tone of the visual narrative of my characters.

“5 Centimetres per second” (2007) with some of its scenery based in the afternoon/evening times. The colour palette and colours makes some of the scenes visually appealing, one of the things I like to see in artworks where colours play a role to bring a sense of joy, happiness or sadness, depending on the colours that are being used, in combination with composition, to illustrate the tone within the image’s narrative. 

Reflection - Pitch and Planning Presentation - 19/10/2016

The presentation was ok at the start, however it kind of fallen short in terms of expressing my ideas clearly and my intentions. There has been a lot of critical responses and analysis of my project’s main goals and it appears I have not backed up with enough structure when expressing the ideas. They understood that my aim is to create original content of fictional characters in my fictional world (world building) however the tutors believe that the project at the moment is lacking structure, in terms of characters’ homes, environments, moments in narrative and character designs.

They say that the concepts of my ideas needs to be more grounded and I cannot really rely on the characters and scenes I have already produced previously in my spare time that I want to establish as part of my FMP, considering that they already exists and it adds nothing new to the project. They are indeed correct, however the artworks I had shown on my presentation board is nothing more but to show my development of my digital painting skills and to show what I am interested in creating when it comes to original content. I was hoping to develop an animal character I had designed a few years ago to be as part of my FMP, though after discussing with the tutors about what the project critically needs now, the character adds nothing new to the project so I will perhaps drop the character and start all anew, however I will be using some of the artworks I had produced as a stepping stone to continue creating visual imagery for my FMP.

My FMP just needs more work with the development of the world I am creating and its characters, which is what I am lacking in producing at the moment. The tutors suggested at looking at real world places, such as the locations of my hometown, the places I go to, or festivals/holidays we celebrate in cultures, which is something I could actually delve into, to give more ground to my project to work directly from as my primary source of research (real world locations) rather than making places up. This somewhat ties in with my initial idea of blending reality with fantasy on my initial FMP proposal, which is something I kind of completely forgotten about, so I will actually take and tie in that idea with my research on real world locations.

One half of the presentation board showcasing mostly the visual quality and the genre of fantasy and enchantment that I like to paint in my previous works. On the left of the board are images from a few Japanese animations (mostly Studio Ghibli) as inspirations for the genres and themes I will be incorporating.

Bottom half of the board shows a original character (top left image) I am hoping to develop further to be as part of my FMP, though due to the lack of structure and original designs it may be scrapped and start anew. 

It has been a critical discussion of where and how I should move forward with my initial ideas in order to harden the structure behind my intentions and I think it serves as an important moment to help my ideas and to have a clear vision of how to develop the project. 

Preparation for Pitch and Planning Presentation - 14/10/2016

In preparation for the presentation of the Pitch and Planning module where I will reveal my intentions, ideas and outcomes to my tutors, I’m considering creating a design/mood board that will visually explain and back up my ideas. Accompanying my pitch will be of visuals artworks I had created as well as inspirations, which should hopefully help the tutors to understand my concepts for my FMP.

Following the tutorial session with Fumio earlier this week I had asked if it is possible to bring some content that would help me in the presentation and he said yes, which in turn lead me to create a design/mood board. As I am currently lacking some designs of my characters which I have not yet produced for my FMP, I was thinking of establishing some original characters I had illustrated a few years back and giving them the light to be part of my Final Major Project.

For the mood/board I will be bringing to the presentation will consists of some recent original works from the past few years, mostly the character(s) I will be establishing and developing further. Included on the board will be a few fanarts of existing franchises I had produced to explain the progressing art style I am aiming to improve, as well as some visual imagery of inspirations from films or animations that will be of some influence to the project in terms of the genre/themes I had chosen.

Considering there are many artworks I had done and many visual artworks to be inspired from, I will only be selecting a key few that will best showcase my ideas and understandings to my tutors when I present. Presentation of the board will be crucial as I want to organise my images in a way it is easy to follow and to look professional.

A mock-up of one of my presentation boards (research and the content I want to establish) I will be bringing to pitch my intentions for my FMP.

Considering there were no design roughs of my characters I did an updated illustration of one of them whom I will be establishing. The design and colours are not final, as this is only the first step of development. 

Tutorial session - 11/10/2016

11/10/2016

The tutorial I had with my one of my lecturers, Fumio, was a session to discuss and to solidify my intentions for my FMP. We both agreed that thinking critically about the goals and having a clear vision of the outcomes is key to a successful project. After a few workshops in regards to the practice of Pitch and Planning, I am now more comfortable with the ideas I am moving forward with. It is just a matter of time to get those ideas all down on paper and to begin with the creation of my original content of characters and worlds. Fumio agreed that creating a body of original content is a good idea on the long run. I told him that, as someone who likes drawing things that are made up, whether they are of characters, narrative sequences, popular characters from existing franchises, I would want to create something original that I can at least make content for, or to expand even further as established characters or stories under my name as an artist.

Producing fanarts of popular entertainment or fandom had helped me boost my skills in digital painting and had told the tutor that the sole reason in doing so was to train myself, using existing characters to practice painting, learning new techniques or methods that I find comfortable and to establish a style that the audience would know me for. Fumio advised that I should start thinking about more original content to illustrate, which is true since I had experienced a good amount of time practicing digital painting by doing fanarts. Now it is the time to put my skills to the test and start illustrating and design my very own characters. I will continue creating fanarts as the means to practice as much as I can and to hone my skills, while working on my FMP simultaneously. 

Workshop - Brewdog Design Board - 06/10/2016

06/10/2016

As a team of four people we initially look into the design and colour schemes of the brand to get a glimpse of the company and its marketing. The first thing we picked up on when researching was the colour schemes and the typeface that was used on the beer bottles, including funny names that were used as the name or ‘taste’ of the alcoholic drink. It shows that, despite having unique tastes and different colours schemes on each bottle, the font and the visual graphics/logos are consistent between one another. Picking up these common traits (font and colours) we designed and visualised our very own drink label, dubbed as “Autumn Breeze, Flying Squirrel” with the colours of yellow and pink and a ‘punk’ typeface, including an edited image of a squirrel wearing goggles riding on a bottle (as the main visual image) that associates with the theme of Punk. We wanted to keep it close and consistent with the brand’s existing design, while adding our own twist to it (the image of the squirrel and name of the drink). Accompanying our design board with our very own drink label will allow the audience to visually understand what we are selling them with a prototype label of a new drink .

The finished design of the drink label

The label as if it is on the actual product

In terms of the design board, we gathered visual imagery that had influenced the design of our label, though with short amount of time after spending most of the session creating our drink label, we quickly put most of the research on there, including the prototype image at the centre of the design board to show what visual imagery we have created. Teammates thought it would be appropriate to doodle little areas to give the design board a more personal feel to it that would associate towards the genre of Punk, though to be honest I feel against that idea since this is supposed to be professional in terms of presentation. In the end they went forward with the idea of doodling and I was the only member who feel against it, considering our design board already looks unprofessional-like with it being rushed due to time constraints and for it to be doodled in the end with colouring pens just downgrades the presentation.

The design board of our visual research

At the end of the exercise we all gather to see how other groups fared and their design boards. Looking around each one I can clearly see the professional approach they had done with their boards, compared to ours which feels lacklustre. We explained our reasons about our approach with the design board though in the end it’s been met with “disappointment” in terms of how we presented it. The doodling is what got the attention from the tutor and they state it feels “amateur-ish” and it supposed to look professional, which I knew it was a bad idea to doodle around the board. The only thing we got good feedback was the drink label we had created and it was well received by the tutor and we are proud of producing such quality of a design label in a day’s worth of work. 

The only thing I was slightly bothered was how we had managed our time for the exercise. In the end it appears that we had spent a lot of time creating the visual imagery of the drink label rather than the presentation of our ideas and designs on the board (including the layout to present it) which as a result our design board was not as great in comparison to other groups’ boards. I realised that all four of us were concentrating on creating the label throughout the entire session, where we could of split in pairs (two working on the label and the other two would work on research and the presentation) so we would of have equally invested as much time on the design board as well as with the creation of the drink label simultaneously.