Rationale
After producing the animatics, I went back to character designs and style frame development. Since I considered the aesthetic of the animation as the distinct point of my project, my inquiry was also developed and refined as I continued to develop the style frame.
Context
While working on some early character designs, I looked at a couple of Chinese illustrators and graphic novel artists, Zao Dao and Xia Da. Zao Dao uses a lot of ink painting brushes as the outlines of characters combined with comparatively less-saturated colours, to create an outstanding visual outcome of her illustration; Xia Da, as a graphic novel artist, intends to use repetitive lines to depict characters and background in black and white, that inspired my drawing styles a lot.
Method
I was using Procreate for character designs and model sheets, and TV Paint for style frame explorations and tests.
Reflection
The previous inquiry was set on how to integrate fine line drawings with narrative 2D animation, to produce a visual outcome that was similar to my Studio 1 project, focusing on the use of lines and contrast of positive and negative spaces. However, the style frame I produced wasn’t exactly what I wanted, thus, I looked into ancient traditional Chinese paintings. The colour inks on silk scrolls in ancient Chinese paintings capture a retro and faded feeling which I thought would be great to integrate with animation, so I took some time exploring the colours and textures of the refined style frames and rewrote my inquiry as, to how to integrate traditional Chinese painting with narrative 2D animation.
