[Extended Practice] Lauren's Character design[2]

More character designs for Lauren done during Christmas!

For Lauren, I decided to give her shorts because she looked more active than Maressa when little. I think it would make a good contract between her and her sister. She requested gaps in fringe which also makes the character looks more realistic. I tested out three styles, one with round eyes, natural facial expression; second one is more cartoon-y with longer eyes and less detailed eyes, hands are simplified a lot nearly have no knuckles; the last one has detail hair in strands and pupil, bigger size head.  Personally I like the second one because it looks more characterised and easier to animate and Lauren chose the first one. She wants it further simplified which I am more than happy to do!

For Maressa, I have more ideas for her character because she is the typical younger sister in my mind and her features are very distinguishable. I gave her a dress according to the photos Lauren gave me. She is always in two pony tails so I made her super cute. The first design lost a lot of body shapes and does not really focusing on a particular part of the body,. The facial expression is not bold but modest. It is the most unlike Maressa design. The second design has a squashed head, every facial features are concentrated and the head is the biggest part of the body. The third design has detail hair and facial expression drawn, ordinary body proportion, it is the most realistic design. The forth design is a combine of the previous three designs. I do not like the last design because it shows no characteristic because of the eyes and the lack of expressive facial features. Lauren ended up choosing the forth one which is also my favourite! I think the design of Lauren and Maressa would go well together with some changes and sure they are pretty easy to work with.

I also tested the adult look of both of them. I found it difficult to design detail characters for someone to work with. I always concern about the difficulties when other try to copy the design. Therefore I want the characters to be less realistic and less details. Picking most important features of face is harder than I thought... they do not look like the person in real life. It is so difficult!!! I need more practice before coming up with the final adult character design for Lauren.

[Extended Practice] Lauren's Character design[1]

I think in November or the beginning of December Lauren asked me on facebook if I could design the characters for her extended practice animation. I said yes without doubt because I love character design! and I treasure every collaborating opportunity because it gives me chances to involve in someone's work and communicate!

At first Lauren told me her idea and what she wants from the characters and sent me a lot of photos of her and her sister Maressa. Since she wants the characters based on her childhood and probably also want them to be resembling therefore I want to practice a bit of the realistic drawing before simplifying them into cartoon style.

 May also want adult characters?

I have not drawn realistically for quite a long time but weirdly it was not too difficult to pick up. Although they might not look exactly like photo, it is very different to what I normally draw so I am quite proud of these drawings. What is more, I learn to focus on the proportion of face and the head size of kids are so different to adults though this practice. However Lauren said she wants the style of last time when we collaborate, the children's tales one, where I used watercolour style. It is very cartoon and soft. The practice still valuable and motivates me to do more realistic drawings!

In time management wise, Lauren said she would not need these in December but best after we come back from Japan. So I decided to start off during Christmas and make a start so everything would not be a rush, also allow more time to test out different styles. I think i will simplify the design and the lines, pick out the important features of the two models, aiming to create a character that Lauren could easily copy and work with as well as make them resemble to the person in real world.

[Extended Practice]Researching evidence and facts

I knew that the case of my animation was a famous and big news at that time in Hong Kong so I hope there would be still quite a bit of news or evidence left online. I searched youtube and other news website and luckily found some really useful material.

From the news:

Police arrested a gang involving serious crime in Kam Tin this morning.

The gang armed with grenade and led to a gun battle with more than 40 shots between the gang and the police.Two members of the gang were killed by gunfire.

At first it was kind of a pain to find such old news online. Especially when they are all in Chinese and there are not many left online. I am not satisfy with only this amount of material therefore I ask my Dad if he kept any of the news at that time. Although he did not keep any but his friend did!!Therefore I have more secondary resources and facts to strengthen the animation. I am planning to make a collage of these news cut at the beginning of the animation so as to emphasise the fact that it was a real event happened back in 1991. What I need to do now is to visit the actual place in Hong Kong during Christmas so as to collect more primary resources and voice record my dad.

I am very happy with the good quality of news cut! There are even English news cut which is absolutely a bliss to include in the animation. It is amazing how the news even have a diagram describing where the police and the bad guys located which also help when coming to create a animation base of fact.

Extended Practice pitching 8/12/2016

I got a lot of useful feedback on this pitch. Generally, people in the class like the idea and they seems quite interested in this fact based animation idea. They suggested Chris Shepherd, Wall Street cashier to look at because they have similar elements of mix media in their work. The most important thing I have to do during christmas is to buy a voice record device to interview my dad. I am also going to the actual place of the event in order to take pictures and talk to people to get more important resources that could be put in the animation. I may have to be ware of the time since COP3 is due the first week we come back after Christmas and hence I plan to spend more time on that. Also I think my dad has some newspaper cutout at that time so I could make a copy of those as well. Basically, I will be collecting as much materials as possible during Christmas and also to chill a bit!