Creative Studio - The brief collection + final brief

Along with the journal notes during the planning stages, short draft briefs were made to help me along the process. The first was when my second discipline was still how a piano makes sound, before the newer discipline. 

draft 1

draft 2

draft 3

final brief

Creative Studio - Exquisite Corpse Animation

As a class project, we all had to pitch in an image to use as a "frame" for animation. These would then be given to someone else, and they would have to animate a transformation from their frame, to the one given to them so the entire class could create an animation altogether when the animations were combined.



This...was a bit of a pain because I had to animate from 2D to 3D -.-;;; (mind you, it turned out easier than what I made it out to be when I first received the frame...SLIGHTLY easier)

Creative Studio - Journal Notes for Brief

Showing my thought process as I worked through this assignment OTL

Initial ideas for 2nd discipline ideas

Researching for initial idea: how a piano makes sound

Research towards the inside of a piano and the important parts that contribute towards making sound.

Problem solving to find the right discipline to use for my brief. I ran into a wall for my initial idea and ended up swapping it to "how people compose music for the piano".

Research + personal knowledge on what aspects are important to consider when composing music in general, and for piano.

Tried to do research on where composers found their inspiration but this was kinda...stupid to try and research because everyone is different in thought processes and these processes can change for people also.

Notes for answering questions from the brief.

Further notes about the questions on the brief.

Creative Studio - Synthesizing

For this task, we had to join 2 of the previous ideas together to create something that represented "society at its best".

I decided to grab the character task (abstracting), and join it with the memory task (embodied thinking) to create a character that I thought represented society at its best. I decided to focus on the children of society for this task.

The reason why I decided to focus on children was because of what I see around me so often now.

A lot of childhood memories personally revolved around me playing together with other children which consisted of a lot of outdoor activity. Whereas if you see children now, a lot of them have their heads tucked downwards towards a smartphone screen. (...WHY AT SUCH A YOUNG AGE)

The details I remembered were:
-the scent of fresh nature
-a lot of energy
-air flowing past

I decided to design a rather child-like tree character with vibrant colours and many outdoor activities "attached" to him. Nature was a big emphasis on this design as I feel that children really need to enjoy the time outside when they can because
1- it is a lot healthier
2- allows for more socializing
3- you don't get as much time outside when you're older

His tail is a slight lightning bolt shape (pikachu is that you) because it would be out of vision for the character the majority of the time. I wanted this to show his focus on outdoor activities over technology for entertainment.
I don't mean to say that "children shouldn't be using these devices for fun at all". I just think that children recently don't seem to appreciate nature as much as we did in the past because they are so absorbed in their handheld devices. 

Creative Studio - Abstracting

Because my second discipline is about music specifically for the piano, I thought it would make sense to make a music note as a little creature. Piano parts have been made into his hands(keys) and feet(pedals), but in a way that it (hopefully) isn't too noticeable unless someone actually knows about the character and only viewed the model. The dot on the head is a staccato symbol used in music for quicker and jumpy notes.  

The character has the ability to soothe the souls of those who hear its music and the change in colour scheme from the dull grey to a warmer pink and yellow was used to enhance the warmth resonating within the character as it soothes a soul. The staccato changes into a heart as well ><

Creative Studio - Modelling

Representing the Past, Present and Future

I thought an hourglass was a clear way to get the idea across because hourglasses are literally used to show passing of time. The top has been left open with sand flowing in to represent events that may happen in the future, and the middle section represents the present. The bottom portrays a variety of different events such as the creation of the world and historical events including the unfortunately, multiple conflicts which have occurred.
...In all honesty, this one was pretty hard because I didn't know a way to include EVERYTHING in history so I ended up simplifying it T_T; 

Creative Studio - Embodied Thinking

Favourite Childhood Memory of Michelle Zhen
"Having fun in the Wellington Botanic Gardens when she was younger"

Michelle had given me a small brief where she explained some of the sensations she remembers from the time.
-Lots of flowers! Mainly roses
-She thinks she heard a few birds
-The large amount of flowers spreading a blissful scent
-She enjoyed it a lot because of how much she liked flowers

From these sensations, I tried to create a basic animation of a small Michelle enjoying her time at the gardens. After searching images, I replicated a simplified setting and represented the warm and soothing scent through the bright coloured roses. I made Michelle move rapidly to emphasize how she was greatly enjoying exploring the area full of flowers. At the end, I wanted to have a bit of fun and made her roll around to also emphasize her enjoyment and energy as a younger child. I added subtle animation to simplified birds to show that they are indeed alive and would have produced sound to the scene.

...This was actually pretty fun to do x'D

Creative Studio - Patterning

Finding animation within nature: water.
First, I started by rotating the video to find interesting angles I could work with. 

I actually ended up playing around with the "awkward crow" found within a lot of animation.

I had it fly across the screen with the dots trailing after it. Little did it know, the waves crashing behind it would cause panic not only within himself, but the dots trailing after him also. A lot of squash and stretch is included within the animation to give the dots their own personalities, along with emphasizing the speed the crow runs away in. I tried to include exaggeration when the crow's eyes enlarge as he panics, along with the inclusion of the comic "surprised explosion" effect. I wanted to keep the animation rather static at the beginning to stay true to the awkward crow I've come to love from a lot of shows I've watched.