Illustration and Visual Narrative / Task 2

23/09/2021 - 21/10/2021
Esther Vanessa [0350751]
Illustration and Visual Narrative
Task 2

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LECTURE 

WEEK 5

Flow and Movement

• Rhythm in art
• Good rhythm = Good movement
• Shapes and Lines to maximize composition
• Dynamic scene maximizes overlaps
• Establish Patterns and Rhythms

Figure 1.1 Overlapping in sketch

Figure 1.2 Patterns and Rhythms in sketch

• Also important, the use of negative and positive space
• To improve : practice and look at artworks

Chiaroscuro

• Refers to the use of light and dark to create the illusion of 3d volume on a flat surface
• Chiaro = bright; Scuro = dark
• Increase dramatic tension
• Create sensational effect
• Pull your attention to subject in an intense way
• Create a tasteful composition with negative vs positive space

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INSTRUCTION

Think of a moment in time that changed a narrative for the better… or worse. Or a scene in a movie that turned the tide of the story. Or a particular part of a video game that made you rejoice or cry along with the character. Or a memorable chapter in your favourite book that made you return to read it again and again.

These are decisive moments that impacted a story and you as an audience. Whether the moments are based on real life events or fictional narratives, human psychology is easily affected by moments like these. As a designer, you are to capture these moments and translate them into a single piece of animated artwork

• You can use any known narrative from published media like movies, animation, books, comics, manga etc.

• Capture the unique, fleeting, and meaningful moment of that time, ideally one involving movement and action.

• Create a sophisticated background to the subject that interacts both visually and psychologically with the subject in a synergistically meaningful figure/ground relationship.

• Exercise anticipation, ambiguity and uncertainty of the moment as a visual gap, interval, or suspension of some kind through the animation loop.

• Provide a logline to describe the moments, but not enough to reveal the whole story behind the picture.

TASK

Immediately after given this assignment, all I could think about was that one moment in the movie "The Marriage Story" with Scarlett Johansson.

Figure 2.1 The iconic scene in the movie

So with that I quickly do the sketch on my iPad in which I will move to illustrator.

I keep in mind that I also need to do small animation of the poster in the next few weeks so I have to keep the sketch simple and so I don't need to animate anything too advance.

Figure 2.2 The sketch of marriage story

After some thought, I decided that it was probably too static for an animated poster. I tried to look for more alternatives. I came up with another 3 sketches; 2 from the animated movie Luca and one from the game Genshin Impact.

Figure 2.3 Genshin Impact Sketch

Figure 2.4 Luca Sketch (1)

Figure 2.5 Luca Sketch (2)

During consultation session, Ms. Anis, Ms. Jen and me chatted and discussed about the 4 posters. Initially we all agree that the first poster of Luca is good and has potential, however we decided to chose the last Luca Sketch as the most decisive moment and they gave me the green light to digitalize the poster in illustrator. Ms. Jen mentioned that I should probably also include the Luca on top of the Vespa. So I went back to my iPad and drew the supposed Luca riding the Vespa.

Figure 2.6 Final sketch on iPad 

I went ahead on Ai and started building the poster layer by layer. I separated the layer of Luca + Vespa with the background and the title + tagline. 

Figure 2.7 Building the poster 

I used reference to check the color scheme of the Vespa since it is especially hard. I also tried to simplify the poster.

Figure 2.8 Finished building the Luca and Vespa

Initially my layers are all over the place. At this point I made the mistake of not creating it on a different layer (which I will regret it in the next few pictures..). As you can see in the picture above, I was gonna try create a light source from the Vespa, set in night time. But I quickly changed it up because the decisive moment based on the movie is during day time. 

Figure 2.9 Building the foreground

I soon also realize that the foreground in which the path of the Vespa will go is too tricky for me and too flat. So I change the background to something more looking like the actual scene from the movie. 

I made some minor changes to the layers, which I regret not doing it since the beginning because everything is now too messy and I'll have to redo the leg drawing when I want Luca to pedal down. (But it's ok we're all learning here..)

Figure 2.10 Progress Work

Figure 2.11 Final Poster before animating

ANIMATING PROCESS

For animation, I'll be twisting the wheels as Luca pedals down the hill. The process is pretty straightforward however I have to keep changing the position of the pedal and leg position, which is pretty tricky at times. I also added animating the clouds moving to make the poster more interesting. 

Figure 2.12 Adjusting the leg position and pedal

As can be previously seen in figure 2.13, the process for animation is pretty straight to the point as I created the movement frame by frame so I created each separate layer for every movement. 

In Photoshop, I used the frame by frame animation window instead of the timeline animation window since I figured I should create so many changes with the leg position and pedal that it'd be too complicated to do in timeline animation window. The way I do it is that I saved each file from Adobe Illustrator one by one; per frame. 

Figure 2.13 Frame by Frame animation

After adjusting the time for each frame, I exported the work. Here I found some problems with how the GIF is rendering. At this point I also realized that I probably need more frames to create smoother animation, and had to fix the front wheel of the 'Vespa' since it is not that circular. 

Figure 2.14 More frames added 

I exported the gif and here is the result.

Figure 2.15 GIF Result before feedback (GIF)

After receiving a couple of feedback, I tried to modify the timing on the clouds so it won't look as jagged.

Final Submission 

Figure 2.16 Final Submission (JPG) 

Figure 2.17 Final Submission (GIF)

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FEEDBACK

Sketches

• Marriage Story is lacking, probably won't know how to animate the poster
• Genshin Impact is okay but not much of a decisive moment
• First Luca sketch is cute but also not much of a decisive moment
• Second Luca sketch is very solid
• The digitalization is also good, next just need to animate pedaling and the wheels moving
• Clouds need to be animated better

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REFLECTION

Animating is hard. It is complicated, frustrating and time consuming. I learnt a lot during this second task that animating is pretty taxing, although I can also now appreciate animators more and realize that people do have fun working on this. I think the one thing I learnt that is really important is that you have to be consistent with the work when working on animation, and you need lots of patience. I do enjoy parts of working on this task and look forward for our next task.