Witch & Cat

Log line：This is a story that takes place in a witch’s restaurant, and it tells about the soul swap between the witch’s cat and the chef on TV.

Synopsis：A witch who owns a restaurant in order to make delicious food that can attract customers, while experimenting with the developing magic soup dishes, intently watching the chef on TV award, resulting in her failed works accidentally drunk by her pet cat, the cat and the chef on TV soul exchange. The witch and the Chef Cat try different soup recipes in order to find a way to exchange souls back, and in the end, when the witch and the Chef Cat is arguing, the Chef Cat accidentally drops into the soup pot with the correct ingredient bottle, allowing the souls to exchange back.

Target Audience : Child and teenagers

Storyboard

小魔女爱做饭_storyboard-1
小魔女爱做饭_storyboard_2

Animatic

animatic version 1

animatic version 2

Deleted shots

animatic most updated version

Character design

Cat design

The cat is a character we added later on, it is inspired by the stone lion, which means to protect the owner’s peace, so a stone lion is placed at the entrance of Chinese buildings for decoration. So initially it was placed in the doorway. In our story, our main character is a witch with magic power, and when we mention witches we always feel mysterious and weird. Yourong designed a one-eyed black cat. But she could not make up her mind to use it or not. But after talking to the group, we thought it was an interesting shape so we kept the design.

The design of all characters were originally Sena’s work, but due to time issue, I had designed the cat.

About Chef and Witch

At the beginning, our characters were centered around a chef and a witch, but later on the story changed to a witch and a cat. Considering the fact that we need to put them into the animation later on, we tried to simplify the witch and define the overall style of the witch based on the characters drawn by sena, while keeping the overall appearance of the witch the same. At the beginning of the change, Yourong considered four aspects, characterization, audience, story type and personal style of the members. She made some adjustments to the face of the witch, but later chose to use the original face because we’re working on an anime for children and teenagers, and it doesn’t look as aggressive as it is sinister, and it fits the character of the witch in our story better. The group mates were able to draw this type of face, so she chose not to change it.


The clothing of the witch was a difficult, Yourong wanted it to be different from her own style and easier for us to draw. At the same time, she wanted to keep the characteristic of the dress, and to be able to see that she was made up of more clearly defined shapes.

Chef design

designed by Sena

designed by me

Witch design

Designed by Yourong

Alzheimer

Introduction

Log line
How do people with Alzheimer see the world

Synopsis
It is about the last journey of an old man with Alzheimer in his home town. All he could see were fragmented memories. During his journey, he experienced his memories on friendship, love, homesickness and family. In the end, he was brought away by the photographs that hold his memories.

Pitch Pack (by Nanyue Zhou)

Character Design

Our character is based on Nanyue’s grandfather who have Alzheimer. Nanyue has discussed to use frame and photos to talk the story, so, I suggest the character could be a photographer. This is to explain why he has so many photos in his room and why he is taking a camera everywhere he goes even when he have Alzheimer. 

rough design by me
rough design by me
final design by Nanyue

Story Development

We have each given a story about the day of the old man and combined the parts we think are most relevant and special together. 

My story: the old man wanted to work at the photo studio (which is also his house) as usual but his family stopped him and start working. The old man left the house without his family noticing. He gone to the restaurant he been to but does not look like the same as in his memory. He recognized the restaurant by noticing the old tree that is next to it. Then he gone out and took photos of the sunset and farmland. He sat at a tree trunk and watched the sun goes down.Light came out from his camera and becoming people he knew andtook him away. The sun set and his family found him. 

Storyboard

my development

My part is about the memory of the old man and his lover

He gone to the restaurant that he dated his wife. He ordered two bowl of noodles and took a photo as usual, but his wife is not there

Some scenes has been deleted for the consideration of time and redrawn to make the scene more dynamic

Animatic

Style Development

We decided to make this animation black and white, and the only colored parts will be in the panels that we had out lined. The black and white part is reality, and the coloured part are memories. 

We were thinking of using chaotic lines for the black and white part to show the disordered cognition the old man had towards the reality.

We have different colour to show each section of the story as suggested by our tutor. 

Then we changed into having the panels as the old man’s cognition towards the reality and the black and white parts are how the reality is. So, we were thinking of using collage for the coloured parts, but it would be too abstract for audience to recognise the objects. 

So, we decided to make the outline part clean and realistic and thecolored part imaginative by using hand drawn animation. The imaginations will be inspired by the color. 

My research on collage

Proof of concept

We have divided our works for the backgrounds as line arts and color art

As to prevent the style difference, Nanyue is doing the outline of thebackgrounds. Shuting and I are working on the shading for the black and white part. Longqian is doing the colouring parts

We all have animated parts as to make efficient use of time.

Game Art

Mindmap

Mood board

Character Design

Draft

Design

Model

Reflection

In the game art elective, I want to discover more about 3D design and modeling as I am not familiar to these. I am hoping to discover and learn the process of 3D modeling works.

At first, we are being told to choose to design a character or an object and could think in pairs pr alone. So I had chosen to work with my friend and designed two characters. My friend and I started with a mind map to think about a rough background for the two characters in order to develop further ideas of the design. Goat and salamander are the two forms of characters we have chosen. They are enemies at first to compete who is the best chef and become friend afterwards. Then we looked for pictures of these two creatures and the imagery of chef as research to make a mood board for our design. I am thinking of finding some traditional Chinese clothes for chefs but it is quite hard to find. So I decided to mix some western fantasy clothing with some Chinese elements for my character and use the color combination that is usually used in the past in China to show the Chinese elements. I have tested and developed the clothing and accessories to show the identity (a chef) of my character. I had also tried different color combinations to choose the most pleasant one.

After designing it, it is time to create the model of the character. I have given my design to my teacher and being told that the model is better to be less than 2000 polygons as to simplify the process. This is because most of us are beginners to Maya and I understand that. So he advised me to remove the basket of my character and the accessories could be added in Substance Painter and no need to model them. It is a very useful suggestion to me as while I am making my model, I find out how hard it is for me. It is very complicated at first while using Maya as I do not remember the hot keys and the interface of this software, I had done loads of mistakes and I did not notice them. I was enjoying to make the rough low poly model in Maya as this is the most simple part for me. I used around one week to make the low poly model and thought I had finished it and I realized that there are many errors in my model when I am checking the points and faces of my model. I find out that I had duplicated my model many times and had jointed and moved some points that I do not wanted to. Then I used around one week to fix them and started to do the UV mapping. The UV mapping process is not very successful too. I had done it three times as there always some unexpected errors occurring after I reopen my Maya file. After asking my teacher, I notice that this is because there is still some small mistakes in my model that drives to these errors. By the help of my teacher I sorted them out and done it. Then I used Nomad to create some details for my model and import it into substance painter and to add color and more details. These part are quite successful and fun.

For the final outcome, I am quite pleased with it as this is the first time I create a character by using Maya although it is not perfect. There are a lot of improvement could be done if I am more familiar to this software and if I have more time. I did not know that I can bind bones to my character and to animate it in Maya so I have jointed my character’s arms with it body. This is because when I am creating its arms it will overlap with its body. As to solve this problem I had jointed them together as to prevent the overlapping and makes it look better. When I know I can animate it it is already too late to make the changes for me. There is also some very odd looking places on my model as I do not have enough time to do more fixing and details on it. I had used too much time on fixing my errors of the model and UV cutting of it. I will be more careful to it next time to avoid mistakes at the beginning to reduce the amount of fixing works that need to be done later on.

Living Voice

Chosen audio

Mood board

Storyboard

Rough

Final

X-Sheet

Character design

Rough design

kid’s design
man’s design
hight comparison between man and kid

Final design

Animation

Process

Final

Reflection

Living voice is an elective to learn about lipsync in animation. I have tried it in my previous works before but never animated it. The whole process of designing and animating is enjoyable and fun. It gave me a great sense of accomplishment when the lip-synch was right.

The project stated with choosing the audio clip and write down the transcript of it. I do not have an audio of my own that I am interested so I had chosen one audio being given that I can clearly recognize all the words being spoken to avoid problems later on.

Then it is character design. I have an image in my mind of a kid and a man communicating on a street. So I had researched some images and color as to make the mood board for them. I want the kid to seems like logy and idly. So I designed him as wearing a comfy sweater vest and a casual suit with wide cuff. Short pants and sport shoes to show the small age of the kid. The dominant tone of the kid is warm with brown and yellow. For the adult, I want him to be mature and gentle. So his clothing is regular suit with tie and glasses. The dominant tone being used is blue to give audience a sense of composure.

When I am making the storyboard, I am thinking to focus on their face to allow the audience to see the lipsync of them. So I was thinking to focus on one’s face while speaking. Then I realized that the time pausing on each scene will be too short and may cause confusion as changing the scene too frequently in twelve seconds. Also, there dialogue is very calm and peaceful, too much changes on scene will looks weird. So I decided to use a fix camera angle from their left top. As the man is more closer to the camera, he will looks larger in the picture. This shows that he dominates this conversation, as he is asking the kid. There is no big movement of the kid, just some small and cute movement to fit his setting and age. The man later on leans forward to express his interest of this conversation. I had also done mouth shapes for each character while they are talking as reference.

X-sheet is something that I done for the first time. It is a little bit confusing at the beginning but quite easy when you know how it works. I found it very useful to see when the movements and changes are when I was animating my work. Toom Boom Harmony helps a lot to let me know when the lipsyncs should go.

I usually done all my animated works in Procreate, it is the software that I am most comfortable and familiar with. Too much reliance on Procreate leaded me not willing to try other softwares. This is because I felt more comfortable drawing on iPad rather on computer and a drawing tablet. I found it hard to coordinate my hand and eye while drawing on tablet and looking on the computer. However, I find out that it is much easier to animate and Color the animation on Toom Boom Harmony than Procreate after trying it. Toom Boom Harmony allows me to extend each frame the amount of frames that I want and makes my life much easier. If I am animating this in Procreate this time, it will be hard to tell what frame I am working on now and I need to copy many layers if any changes is done in each frame. This always cause confusion and makes me stressed while animating. It is usable if I do not have a fix audio to work on but Toom Boom Harmony is clearly much easier to work on. I just need to create new layer for each part that have changes and draw them. If there is a frame that could be reused, I can find it in the library. This is helpful and convenient. My biggest gain in this project is that l have learnt how to use Toom Boom Harmony. I did not have many difficulties during the process of animating it with this new software that I have learnt, just need to get use to a new brush at first. I am very pleased with my final outcome and excited to use Toom Boom Harmony to animate again. The only improvement I think could be made is that my background dose not look very completed.