- Theme
In response to the theme of Play and Self, I created an interactive work by mimicking my soul separating from my body and it sneaks inside, plays around and observes my inner spirit from a third-person perspective. It is a form of play that the audience can interact with it and know about my personalities.
- Method
- I find a quiet place (my room actually), adjust a comfortable posture, play soothing music, take deep breaths and start mediation. Imagine I am looking at myself from a third-person perspective, evaluating what are the most striking characteristics of myself.
- Created four translucent boxes with different symbols of personalities inside. The red box of firing flame represents a young excitement of insisting on my interest area. The blue box of rain represents my emotional and sensitive feelings. The green box of a TV playing Tom and Jerry means that I keep a pure lens observing the world or I love entertaining. The yellow box of flowers is a peaceful and romantic corner of me.
- Add a heartbeat background audio to show the space is inside my body. Add other related audios for boxes to let the play be more immersive
- The environment is open and dark to show it is a separate space from the world
- (p.s. I created fire, rain, and floating light spots above flowers using particle systems in Unreal Engine. I made a TV model by 3ds Max, Tom and Jerry video from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJFxTsX0Ok0&t=18s , audios from EpidemicSound website, flowers are free assets from Unreal.
- Context
Chery(2017) states that self-observation is a kind of practice that which the observer transfers his focus to the inner world as a neutral person without judgments on what you’re thinking, feeling and doing.
I remember I had an amazing experience of lying in an installation named 8Hz White Meditation Box designed by Xin Wang. I was asked to put on a white cloth and hear guiding audios through headphones, lying Inside an airtight cabin with only incandescent lamps and mirrors. I followed the soothing audio to change my consciousness state and experience spiritual healing and inner spiritual exploration. It’s interesting that I felt I was dead once I was sent into the box. My soul was leaving my body and arrived in a very open wide white place without anything. But as long as I dive deeper, I would find memories and things that I believed to be important appear in front of me. And I was observing myself from a third perspective.
Not only the 8Hz White Meditation Box designed by Xin Wang gives me the idea of building another environment outside everything and observing myself jumping out of my body, but I also draw inspiration from the anime Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba. There is one episode talking about others going inside the inner spirit of the main characters. The environment inside is wide and it has things representing their psychological states, and there is also a kernel of the true self.
- Reflection
During the self-observative mediation, it is surprising that I found it is easier to describe myself from a neutral person's view after immersing myself in the mediation than directly speaking out any characteristics.
Although there are only four boxes in my responses, it provides a form of expressing self-observation by playing inside the inner spiritual space. If add aside audios that I am saying something in the tone of that specific personality to those boxes, and play them when getting close to the box, the response will express myself better. Besides, inspired by Duncan’s suggestion, it’s interesting when you stand between two boxes and hear a sound mixture to experience a combination of two personalities.
- Rationale: Intention
Considering the length of the animation. I plan to make a 2D action animation. In my life experience, fighting scenes in animation have always been my most interesting field. And fighting drama can be attractive enough in a short time. At the same time, I also want to further challenge this work to myself.
- Context: Field
My work is related to action concept drawing. Yutaka Nakamura and Chengxi Huang are outstanding animators in this field. These animators are extremely good at action scenes in 2D animation. Through my observation of their works, it is a very effective way to use the movement of the box to express the explosion scene, and can create a good sense of movement and greatly improve the production efficiency. And the role of fighting can also be simplified as much as possible because I found that the fighting movement will greatly make up for this problem.
- Method
I will use Toon boom Harmony to make animatic and the final version. The background will be finished in Photoshop. SAI is my main tool to design character. In the design stage, I will use Maya to simulate spatial changes as auxiliary software. I am going to understand the design and arrangement of fighting drama by browsing some animation or game pictures. The character will be simplified because considering this type of animation requires a high amount of keyframe painting. Sound effects and background music will also be switched according to character actions and story points.
- Production: Tools & Timeline
Software: Photoshop, SAI, Toon boom harmony, Audition, After Effect, Maya
Week1: Character design, plan formulation, action design thinking
Week2: The final draft of the character design and arrange movement coherence
Week3: Make storyboard and adjustment
Week4: Make animatic and find the right background music
Week5: Inbetweenings making and easy coloring
Week6: Prototype completion, simple compositing
- Outcome
A 40-50 second looping action animation.
1. Rationale: Intention
I intend to explore and study the interaction between sound and 3D animation. I want to explore the different ways sound and visuals can come together and interact to create captivating and emotive multimedia experiences. I want to experiment with the different ways I can create interaction, i.e through screen based user input, like a game/interactive code, as well as augmented/virtual reality interaction. This will also rely on creating my own music and soundscapes as part of my project.
The field my work will sit in are video games, 2D/3D Animation, and sound design/music. One key aspect of the combination of these fields that will play a big part in my project is specifically the idea of video game music, and video game/digital spaces that are reactive to said music. One outstanding practitioner in the field of video game music is the composer Hideki Naganuma, and his composition for the video game Jet Set Radio Future. Another outstanding practitioner in this field is Hivemind, a group that makes music videos and incorporates many 3D reactive elements into their videos.
1. Rationale: Intention
I would like to explore creating a looping animation of a character in an environment. I would like to explore the concept of combining 3D elements and models with 2D animation to see if it would be beneficial.
2. Context: Field
2D and 3D animation, 3D modelling
Practitioners/ Examples:
Nova desktop - Mihoyo
Dedouze
3. Method
Week 1: Story drafting - writing up the world setting and how the character fits into the world, creating quick thumbnails of the scene
Week 2: concept sketches of the character and environment, testing out different styles
Week 3: ideas for the animated loop, greybox the environment
Week 4: create an animatic and test how a 3D environment would look
Week 5: testing out different ways to do 2D animation - CSP, Blender - grease pencil, creating assets then animating them in after effects, etc
Week 6: continue with testing out different methods for 2D animation
5. Outcome
A collection of animation tests, trying out different styles and ways to do looping animation.