Illustration and Visual Narrative-Task 2

22/04/2022 - 13/05/2022 (Week 4- 8)
Yong Kai Yi (0352826)
Illustration and Visual Narrative 
Task 2

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Lectures:

Week 4: 22/04/2022

Lecture Report 3: Visual types & Shots

Take pictures that depict the six different types of composition shown below.

Fig  xx: six different types of shots

1. Establishing

Fig  xx: establishing

2.Bird's eye-view

Fig  xx: bird's eye-view

3. Frame within a frame

Fig  xx: frame within a frame

4. Medium shot

Fig  xx: medium shot

5. Close-up

 Fig  xx: close up

6.Worm's eye-view

Fig  xx: worm's eye view

Week 5: 29/04/2022

 

Lecture Report 4: Foreground, Middle ground & Background

 

1. Foreground

 

Fig  xx: foreground

This is a scene from the movie, Klaus. The main character, Jesper appears at the foreground of the scene. It lets the audience to focus on only the expression of Jesper. This scene is mainly about Jesper as a son of the Royal Family being sent to the northern island of Smeenrensburg with the task of posting six-thousands letters within a year.  The town's two familial clans—the Ellingboes and the Krums spending more time hating each other than writing letters. Thus the town is actually very dark and scary. Thus this scene can shows clearly how Jesper reacts to the situation that he is witnessing, which is disgust, shocked, fear and so on.

 

2. Middle ground

Fig  xx: middle ground 

This is the scene when Jesper is finally busy posting letters. At first the town will never post out any parcels or even just an envelope. An incident brings Jesper to a woodsman named Klaus who lives faraway from the town. Klaus owns a house filled with handmade toys.  Jesper left a sad drawing he had found from one of Smeerensburg’s Krum children. Klaus forces Jesper to bring him to the house depicted in the drawing, and then to secretly deliver a toy to the boy inside. 

After this event, the children of Smeenrensburg believes they will receive a toy if they send Klaus a letter. Thus Jesper came out an idea in order to achieve his goal to post six-thousand letter within a year. He asked Klaus if he can donate his toys; Klaus agrees and they deliver the toys in secret.

This is the scene shows that the children keep posting letters to Klaus. 

3. Background

 

Fig  xx: background

 This is a beautiful scene from the movie Klaus. The subject matter was placed in the background, this is the scene when Klaus and Jesper on their way to deliver toys, as it is sunset, they usually deliver parcel at night.

Week 6: 06/05/2022

Lecture Report 5: Perspectives

Find visuals from any visual media that express stories that captures the three different types of perspectives- one-point, two-points, three-points.

Fig  xx: one-point perspective

Fig  xx: two-point perspective

Fig  xx: three-point perspective

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Instructions:

Week 4 - 9: 

Task 2: Decisive Moment

Week 5:

Exercise: Chiaroscuro

Fig  xx: Chiaroscuro exercise (29/04/2022)

Using pen tool to trace the subject matter and trace the shadow in a separate layer.

Fig  xx: final traced outcome (29/04/2022)

Fig  xx: final outcome (29/04/2022)

Using compound path and clipping mask to add texture on the shadow.

Week 6: 

Exercise: Color Basics

Fig  xx: filling colors (06/05/2022)

Week 7: 

Exercise:  Transparency, Gradient and Noise

Fig  xx: gradient and transparency studies (13/05/2022)

Week 4 -8:

Task 2: Decisive Moment

Visual Research:

Fig  xx: visual research of Alice in the Wonderland

Fig  xx: visual research of Alice in the Wonderland

Fig  xx: visual research of Alice in the Wonderland

Fig  xx: visual research of Alice in the Wonderland

After been through the visual research of minimalist poster, I had a rough idea of the poster. In the movie (Alice in the Wonderland), Hatter ( staring Johnny Depp) often held tea party with his friends, he's also sometimes being mad, thus I use the idea of pouring tea on his head to emphasize the madness of Hatter. Besides, I also wanted to use this  idea to create a little contrast of the hat. 

Pre- Sketch: 

Fig  xx: pre-sketch of Alice in the Wonderland poster

I wanted to create like the tea pouring through Mad hatter and creates color on it, in order to create contrast on it. 

Lecturer's feedback:

The design can work, but the typeface of the title need to be improve, and ensure the hat must be looks like the ones from Mad Hatter's. Can try add the iconic orange hair on it to make it look more like "Mad Hatter". 

2nd sketch after feedbacks:

Fig  xx: 2nd sketch of Alice in the Wonderland poster

After receiving the feedbacks, I roughly made a new sketch with the hairs on it. I think it looks more iconic and better. Hence, I started to digitize it in Adobe Illustrator. 

Progressions in  Adobe Illustrator:

Fig  xx: tracing shapes of the mad hatter

I added a little shadows on it to make it more interesting. 

Fig  xx: animating the lips

For the animation part, I decided to keep it simple and clean. Thus, I decided to animate the lips smiling. 

Fig  xx: poster draft

In the middle of animating, I also requested some feedbacks from the lecturers. Thus, I made further amendments and touch-ups.

Lecturer's feedbacks:

In design and technical wise it's nice but lack of message given, the poster doesn't brings out one of the decisive moment from the movie. Can try look into the movie and find the decisive moment of Mad Hatter although he is not the main character but he does play an important role in it. 

Reference:

Fig  xx: "have I gone mad?" scene in Alice in the Wonderland

After the useful feedbacks and opinions from the lecturers, I do more researches and decided to use the scene where Mad Hatter ask Alice "Have I gone mad?". It is one of my favorite quotes from the movie. The scene basically is when Mad Hatter being locked and forced the make a hat for the Red Queen, he made a lot of nice hats, Alice said it's too bad that these are for the Red Queen, and this made Hatter gone mad. Alice immediately calm him down, and Hatter ask Alice " Have I gone mad?". This scene shows how important is Alice to Hatter.

Fig  xx: "have I gone mad?" scene in Alice in the Wonderland.gif

This is Hatter's facial expression in the scene, the eyes are slowly enlarged and the brows going up slightly. Hence, I will be focusing animating the brows and pupils.

Progressions:

Fig  xx: tracing mad hatter's eyes

Fig  xx: creating color palette 

Using eye dropper tool to pick the colors of Mad Hatter's eyes in order to fill in the shape I traced.

Fig  xx: animating the eye brows

To ensure the animation goes clean and smooth, I applied effects "Warp -Arc" on the brows, make sure the brows grows consistently. 

Fig  xx: animating the pupils

Next, I also used "Scale" to animate the pupils, to ensure every frame are consistent in ratio.

Fig  xx: mad hatter's eyes animation frames

First GIF outcome:

Fig  xx: 1st animated movie poster

This is the first outcome of the animated poster. I slightly tone up the color of the eye brows to shows the contrast with the hair. All the elements will be focus in the middle, and leave some space for top, bottom, left and right. Thus, the image can be more clean and simple.

Lecturer's feedbacks:

Design wise and technical wise this is not bad but if want to make this even better animated, the whole eyes should go big, not just the pupils. If have time, can add his mouth going "O". 

Fig  xx: mad hatter's lips reference

I observed the movements of the lips, and screenshotted it as a reference while animating.

Fig  xx: animating mad hatter's lips

Final poster outcome:

Fig  xx: final outcome movie poster

Animated movie poster outcome:

Fig  xx: 2nd outcome animated movie poster

I realized the eye shadow are growing together with the eyes, it feels a bit weird in my point of view. Hence, I made another one where the eyeshadow will not be growing.

Final animated movie poster outcome:

Fig  xx: final outcome animated movie poster

This is the final outcome of the animated poster. The animated part will be only the eyebrows, eyes and lips. It slightly shows feeling of unnerving just like Mad Hatter.

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Reflections:

I thinks this project is quite interesting, I made a lot of amendments throughout the progress. It helps me to learn from the failure, and the mistakes I made helps me improve a bit by bit. This is my first time animating a face expression, I found out it is quite challenging, although the outcome is not that good, but I am quite satisfied of it. I willing to explore more on how to animate the face expressions. Besides, minimalist poster is somewhat more challenging than a normal poster, as we need to deliver the message in simple and clean layout, there's limited space to do so.