#cgi2026

So. This is a project I was very nervous about because I am not a particularly big fan of 3D modelling. The goal was basically just: make something as easy as possible. If I'm able to rig it, even better, but I really am just hoping to actually finish a model for once.

In my initial brainstorm my main thought was to create a cute little guy for a video game, super simple design, etc etc. As I was looking for ideas on google, I found this image of the mario party characters as n64 low poly models, and that was a pretty big springboard for me, especially looking at Toad, Koopa, and Shy Guy. I love a little creature. From there I also started thinking about games like Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and doing an animal inspired design. I ended up also looking at some pokemon and sanrio characters for similarly cute little animal guys, and found some examples of low poly models to get an idea of what the shapes would look like in 3D.

For my sketches, I started by playing around with shape language and some proportions based on my moodboard. I then tried translating that into some silhouettes (that I didn't really like), and a couple of potential animal ideas that felt a bit more like progress. Then, my brain kicked in and I did some studies of some of the characters on my moodboard so I could get used to drawing more chibi-esque proportions, and to see how their designs translate into both front- and side-facing poses.

After that, I made a couple of notes of characteristics I wanted my character to embody. Since I settled on a raccoon as my animal inspiration, I did a couple of sketches of raccoons based on photos I found to determine the basic shapes - though I did have to account for a bipedal design, so the placement of the head on the body changed a bit. I then used my aforementioned studies as bases for a raccoon design, testing out different head-to-body ratios, proportions, and shapes. I think my final design ended up being a bit of a combination of most of these sketches; I really liked the 1:1 head-to-body ratio, but decided I didn't want the limbs to look too thin/small in comparison. I elected to make them larger than in any of my sketches, and also to make them little blobs rather than paws with defined fingers/phalanges, like Toad on my moodboard. And I gave my character an oversized hoodie, mostly for fun and because I felt like it was turning into a little representation of me.

This is the week where I realised I couldn't keep focusing on the preproduction part of the gifs project, as much as I wish I could. I was actually looking forward to animating, don't get me wrong, I just genuinely wasn't sure how to translate the painted style frames into animated layers, since I think there are lots of moving parts and I don't want anything to feel purely static but I also know painting every single frame would be way too much work. Sivan and I talked a bit about animating the backgrounds on one layer with more of a simple boil so that they don't detract from the focal points of the gifs, and then animating bigger movements on separate layers that would still have their own underpaintings. So I think I'm going to have to trust the process there.

I spent most of class just trying to key the different walk cycles for the third gif - turns out that's a massive challenge. My thought there was to make sure that each character has their own distinctive walk/way of moving, especially the scarecrow and tin man, and that in itself is manageable. The bigger issue is the timing of their walks, since the gif as a whole needs to loop smoothly. So the plan right now is to key each walk cycle separately, then do some math to adjust the timing of the frames so that they all sync up at some point for the loop to work. Again, very much trusting the process. 🤞

(update from a week later: it worked! I did the math completely wrong at first, but I do now have a seamless loop)

Honestly... not my most productive gif project week.... I was sidetracked by the live project. Most of what I did was essentially the style frames for the separate shots within gif 2, as well as some keyframes for each gif.

I did my best to keep the colours consistent across shots - the backgrounds will all be fairly similar with the green floors and fiery everything else, and my main priority is ensuring that the characters will stand out as the brightest parts of the composition. Something about them highlighting the Truth or justice? I'm not sure how to word that better but it goes along with having most of the first gif be dark with the highlights being the wizard's head and flames, and the third gif be mostly light with the gang being in shadow. There's something thematic there, I swear, I just can't verbalise it.

You'll never guess who ended up making more changes to the storyboard.... (it's me)

During my check-in with Sivan, we talked about a couple of things that might need changing:

Having close up shots of the characters before the third gif (aka in gif 2, since I'm still feeling good about the gif 1 composition) so that it's more clear who they are since gif 1 just has them silhouetted

Having more of a difference between gifs 2 and 3. Sivan pointed out that they are kind of hitting the same story beat by both showing the gang threatening/attacking the wizard.

I realised there was a quick straightforward way of killing two birds with one stone here: I swapped gif 3 in for gif 2 (replacing the shot of their shadows looming over the wizard with the cuts between close ups of them each attacking him), and then pulled one of my gif 3 alternatives in to give the set of gifs more of a resolution. I think that makes for a stronger story arc, and it allows for me to still fit in walk cycles like I'd originally included in my first storyboard pass.

Also I did some quick sketches for the other 3 shots that will be in gif 2.

I have the keyframes sketched out for each gif, though I probably need to tweak the timing for things a bit. I think gif 2 will have the bulk of the animating since it has 4 shots, so I'm relieved that gif 1 is on the simpler side and I'm hoping I can find a way to streamline the animation process as much as I can. I still plan on keeping the style really rough and expressive, so I just have to make sure I don't get lost cleaning up details.

Speaking of the style... I also put all 3 of my colour sketches into one big canvas to make more adjustments and finalise the style frames. Here's a before and after :)

Most of my changes were small colour adjustments to keep some colours consistent across gifs - especially incorporating the golden yellows and oranges from the first gif into the second and third ones

I updated the background of the third gif to be a more abstract representation of the city, and to have the blues from the sky blend into the darker and warmer blues of the ground

I adjusted the colours in the second gif to be more vibrant, bringing in some of those light background colours from gif 3 into the lion. The first and third gif have a lot of dark/light contrast between the characters in shadow and the light backgrounds, so I wanted to do the opposite with gif 2 by having the characters stand out against a dark background. I think I've managed to keep that while still having really saturated colours and playing around more with the hues and complementary colours to create contrast. Hopefully.

In gif 3, I also added some highlights to the characters - mostly just the eyes and blood splatters, and a bit of bounce light from the yellow brick road - to give them more definition. I want the blood in particular to stand out because I want to highlight the violence in this version of the story (which I've also done in gif 2) and also because it is the complementary colour to the wizard's greens, so there's this idea of them embracing the red/blood as they reject the wizard and his false promises.

Still kinda behind I fear.... Had to play catch up in class so let's start with that!

Moodboard:

the lobotomy corporation designs of the scarecrow and the tin man since I know I want to base my designs off of them

old German expressionist movies: mainly the cabinet of dr caligari (a movie I watched a few years ago for a university class), though I did also include the poster of metropolis as well. These are here because I want to take inspiration from the sets, and because I think the use of contrast is really well done to guide the viewer's eyes

some frames from Disney's night on bald mountain for an animated take heavily inspired by German expressionist films

a bunch of paintings from pioneers of the expressionist art movement - Edvard Much's the scream, and a couple of paintings by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. I'm really hoping to draw inspiration from the bold colour palettes, as well as the way they play around with proportions and perspective, since I tend to keep my art in the realm of semi-realism.

a couple of other illustrations that I found when looking up expressionist art - included for style inspiration.

I kind of struggled with storyboarding the gifs - mostly because it's hard to get the little details across. I wanted to show that the oz gang turned on the wizard when they realised he was a fraud, but my first storyboard pass didn't really show that moment of realisation. And I realised I set myself up for a big struggle with wanting to include the gang walking in the second frame, since that's 4 walk cycles - one of which is 4-legged. And the third gif feels like the most complicated because I couldn't figure out how to convey the actual murder part.

My second pass shows the wizard's fraudulence in the first gif, with the giant head malfunctioning in front of the gang. I think that's a pretty efficient approach. Then I have multiple options for both the second and third gifs. For gif 2, some variants of the gang's silhouettes advancing on the wizard to have some strong contrast between the shadows and the light, as well as a version where they expose him to the people of Emerald City because I wanted to keep the mob idea somehow if possible. And for gif 3, two variants of the gang actively killing the wizard, and one of them walking away from the city covered in blood (and with the lion holding the wizard's head in his mouth). I asked a friend for their opinion about which frames conveyed the story best, since I am incredibly indecisive and needed a second set of eyes.

I also did some quick character design attempts - inspired by the lobotomy corporation designs, though I put my own twist on them to make the characters (especially Dorothy and the lion) more recognizable. I decided to lean more into jagged shapes to convey their rage and aggression, and tried to do the same with colours. Not really sure how I feel about the colour attempt, it was mostly just me feeling things out while using the paintings from my moodboard as reference. I think the scarecrow came out nice, though. :)

And then I did a quick colour pass over the storyboard sketches. I took more of a painterly approach here, with a red-orange underpainting that still bleeds through a bit here and there. That element felt important to me - partly as a storytelling device (red, anger, violence, etc etc) and partly visually (very bold colour as the base to keep the gifs saturated and striking). From there I used dark blue and a bit of purple in the shadows to contrast against the bright yellows of the background, and tried incorporating some green in each background as well because... emerald city. I went a bit experimental with elements like the disembodied head, the wizard in the second gif, and literally everything in the third one. Some of it worked, I think, because the head and the wizard turned out kinda cool, but I'm feeling pretty dissatisfied with the third gif overall. The composition feels crowded and I got nervous when I was painting because I feel like it's really hard to read compared to the clear silhouettes in the other two gifs. I'm honestly considering changing it completely, I just don't know how to right now.

Had a chat with Joe because I was still so dissatisfied, and he suggested doing something with cuts between each character for the third gif. I decided that sounded like a good idea, because it feels more clear than having each of the main 4 attacking the wizard at the same time, so I did some sketches of them in various attack poses and put together a colour key/loose style frame for the lion. Pretty happy with it!

I had to miss class because I caught the flu, unfortunately. I've been super exhausted all week so I'm a little bit behind on developing my concept, but I think the plan is to go with the wizard of oz as my base fairy tale.

This project seems rather interesting to me! Mostly in a "I have vague ideas that seem cool but nothing concrete yet" way, unfortunately, so it'll definitely require a lot more brainstorming to actually settle on a concept.

My initial thought was to approach the ugly duckling through a gender dysphoric lens, since that's something that speaks to me. It would be a twist from the original tale - rather than the rest of the ducklings excluding the ugly duckling for looking different, he feels like an imposter amongst them. The majority of my personal art is warm and wholesome, as described by many of my friends, so I think it would be a fun challenge to explore body horror or just general horror-inclined visuals to show how the main character feels othered. But it's still all really vague in my head, and I've also considered working with the wizard of oz as the base fairytale. Lots more thinking to do....

I then had to miss the second part of class, but I was informed that the exercise was drawing a still life from multiple different angles and using different media/techniques so that we can create a gif from those drawings, so I did my best to recreate that at home.