Category: project 2

IN this week we are planning out the animation to show the advanced body mechanics for the following five weeks by following the workflow below:

Here are a few of my notes:

Pantomime

-Mr Bean

-expressive bodily or facial movements of the performers

We want the character to be acting with the body:

(creating clear full body expression)

• Keep the animation clear and simple, use rules of third, composition and colours
• Lock the camera

Idea:

• If there is no primary idea, looking at YouTube
• Draw thumbnails
• Capturing the essence in my shot
• Pushing the pose, no tracing on my reference
• Needing a desire. Point a&b, what happened to both of them…
• About 5 seconds
• Showing the personality of the character
• No pure body mechanic
• adding more narrative, creating some anticipation, showing the contrast of the character
• entertaining

Here are my initial idea between the character, frog he wants to reach, and the mushroom as a problem between them.

Here are my combined reference video shot during in the class:

Here are my thumbnails and sketches created for the planning of it:

In this unit, I decided to visualize a world which metaphors the perspective of autistic people, from how they creatively seeing artistic things, to their fright caused by noise and flashing lights. Due to I am also developing the world for my FMP project ‘Pocket Fantasy’, I decided to keep similar assets but restructured their features and tell a different story through different movements to deliver the thought.

Here are some shots I developed in the previs for my final major project. This set is mainly an imaginary world constructed from the perspective of our female protagonist:

Here is a concept of my twisted world-building: –> What if my female protagonist has autism, and she lives in this virtual pocket world appearing in my FMP in her imagination?

• Props in this set could be anthropomorphic characters to reflect her inner world, sensory experiences, and emotional navigation.
• The girl sits curled up on a stool, arms around herself—a posture that might suggest self-soothing, anxiety, or feeling overwhelmed.
• The candy, utensils, paper and other animated objects floating around her could represent how everyday stimuli feel amplified—even normal things like candy wrappers or utensils may hold a heightened sensory impact or symbolic meaning.
• These objects have faces, hinting at personification—perhaps a nod to pareidolia or the way some autistic people assign deep emotional connection to objects.
• The bright glowing pink and red hues might reflect sensory intensity—colors, lights, and feelings can often feel more vivid or even overstimulating.
• The lighting may also represent the girl’s focus of attention—autistic perception often zeroes in on specific stimuli in a world that may feel chaotic.
• The golden retriever appears calm and affectionate—perhaps a symbol of comfort or a support animal.
• Many autistic people find solace in animals, who offer non-judgmental companionship and are easier to connect with than people.

Also, I have looked at a few animations talk about autism in YouTube, which inspired me to have this idea

This video represents a few traits of artistic people, which include their fear of unknown things, sensitivity to light and imagination, which protects them from difference.

Other references on the visual side I have used before I started structuring the concept:

Technical side, I develop the female character from turning her 2D design into a 3D sculpture in Zbrush, and then I started doing the retopology in Maya:

I used this course below to support my study of retopology in Udemy:

I will be doing the UV wrapping and rigging in next week, and soon starting to construct the world.