Projects and Exercises

27th August 2019 - x (Week 1- Week x)
Jennifer Tan Qing Ni (0333137)
Film and Cinematography

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Week 1 
Tuesday
For our first class, Mr Mike first briefed us about what this module will be. He showed us the module brief as well. After the brief, our lecturer showed us a short video on how Pixar comes out with stories. After that, Mr Mike then gave us our 1st task, which is to think about a memory, one that immedietly comes to our minds. The memory will help us in creating our story. With the memory being written down, we then shared our own memories to the class. Then we were given our next task to prepare for our next class, which is to do find the 3 recurring themes of the movies of Hayao Miyazaki.

Below are my presentation slides




Friday
We moved on to with the next lesson which is creating an identity of a character. Mr Mike showed us a video in which an 'elevator test' is used when struggling to create a character. This refers to imagining someone being trapped in an elevator and how that character would react. This helps in creating a unique character.

Then we were asked to think about one character that we love and adore. Then we were asked to explain why we chose that character. I recently got into the popular Netflix series called Stranger Things and I immedietly fell in love with one of the characters- Dustin.

The reason why I love Dustin is his view on the world. He sees the world as an adventure full of fun. His love for science and also for his friends is very pure. As long as he has his friends next to him, there's nothing that world could stop him. He's also the brains of the group. Since Stranger things is about fighting off a bunch of monsters, he doesn't only use his brawn but more of his brain. Because of his knowledge of science, it has enabled him to save his friends and also solve a bunch of problems.

Week 2
Tuesday
In this class, we talked about the external features of a character. We first watched a Pixar documentary showed by Mr Mike. Then we moved on to an exercise, in which we were required to chose 3 Pixar characters of from a compilation and describes their external features. We were also required to describe how their external features make them look like.
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Project 1: Proposal
After all our lectures from previous weeks, we moved on to project 1. We were asked to created a story to work on it towards the final project. The story I came up with was inspired some videos and movies. Below is the story in Act 1,2 and 3 form

Act 1,2 and 3.

Once upon a time, there was a cute, playful and adventurous alien that lived on a beautiful planet who really wanted to be an astronaut.

Everyday, he will take his astronaut plushie that he managed to find somewhere on the planet and play around with himself.

Until one day, a rocket landed on the planet. Astronauts were exploring the planet.

Because of that, the little alien was really curious since he saw the logo which looks the same as the logo on this plushie/toy. So he decided to explore around the rocket as well as in the rocket. 

Because of that, he started to play around in the rocket because of the excitement. He was feeling so excited cause he loved astronauts and also rockets. After jumping around here and ther, he got exhausted, so he decided to take a nap.

Because of that, he didn’t wake up. Suddenly the astronauts then came back to the rocket, not knowing that a little alien has entered the rocket. After taking off almost arriving back at earth, the alien eventually woke up. When he looked out the window, he was puzzled when he he saw that it was already night time and was curious why the sky is all of stars. He then only realized that the rocket have taken off. He then started to panic so he started to find a way out, but he couldn’t. HE tried and tried until he finally gave up. 

Until finally, he hid in the corner of the rocket and started crying, while holding on his astronaut toy. One of the astronauts heard a distance cry and he was curious about where the sound came from. He then stood up  and started to look for where the sound is come from. Suddenly, he sees a fluffy tail sticking out of the corner. He approached the tail and that’s when the alien knew that he was caught. After a while, a rocket is seen launching from earth. In the small rocket, the small alien is see waving goodbye to the astronaut. 

After coming up with the story, we were asked to draw a brief storyboard and prepare a proposal. I later decided to name my animatic, Jupiter as that will be the name of my alien character. Below is the proposal




I then proceeded to designing how Jupiter would look like.

I then settled on something simple. Below is Jupiter with colour.

After Jupiter will be the Astronauts. As I'm not that experienced with human anatomy,  I had a lot of struggles with the astronaut's physical look. I did some research and started to draw a few variations.

Below is the last sketch that I did and I was quite happy with it. I decided to name them Theo and Carlos. 

Below are the characters in colour. 

Project 2: Pitch Bible
We were then required to make a pitch bible, in which it contains the info of our animatics.



Then I proceeded to draw out the Storyboard


Final Project: Animatics
After that I started to draw the full frames in Photoshop and edited them in photoshop. I then rendered the video and put in Premier Pro to put some sound effects. Below is my final outcome.