In the early group cooperation, I participated in the initial character design. After reading the script and setting of the story given by the screenwriters, I found that the screenwriters gave very comprehensive thoughts on character design. But I still need to summarize it to find the keywords that I can use to visualize. So I summarized it through my personal understanding and recorded the keywords that can be used. Based on these keywords, I found some pictures as initial mind maps to describe my initial imagination of these characters. Then, I sketched the sibling’s draft .
After that, we had a meeting, and the screenwriters described in detail what they wanted to see the characters look like. I wrote down these keywords, and based on these, I drew new drafts . In the new drafts, I experimented with style. I saw that the mind map shown by the screenwriters seemed like an American comic style. This was the first time I tried to use this drawing style to design characters. Therefore, I also looked for many works of similar style to learn this style. Personally, I think I broke through my original style of character appearance, but it didn’t quite fit the genre and audience of our project. Meanwhile, they do not fit the character setting in our project, for example, the characters’ age. In addition, I only exaggerated the character’s face, and I didn’t break the traditional painting ways to draw the characters. I always keep looking for the positions of human joints and adding folds on the clothes.
Environment Initial Research & Drawing
In the original story, the screenwriters once mentioned that the planet absorbed the shape of every plant and landscape on the planet from the universe. And they described the general topography of the planet (Picture 6.). But there is little information. For example, the style of the houses/tents where the students live, the appearance and location of the summer camp, the environment of the island, etc. This was a very big challenge for me due to the lack of information. So, in my sketches, I use them to fill in these empty places. To communicate easily, I also gave different sketches to show how I was trying to describe the planet and summer camp (more Draft). I also tried to design some small animals (Picture 8.). Considering the target audience, I did give them a horrible appearance. During that time, I visited the London Zoo, and the animals there also gave me a lot of inspiration for the appearances of animals on the planet(more information about my reference).
Environment Second Research & Drawing (Full mind Map)
In the middle period, the screenwriters gave us more background settings, which also gave me more understanding of background design. Solar punk is a relatively unfamiliar word to me, so I researched the definition of this word. During the discussion, the screenwriters talked about their idea for the camp. He hoped that the camp could be combined with the cultural background of scientists, and he hoped that the city could incorporate some Asian elements.
I really like this idea. But at the same time, I’m worried that I won’t be able to finish it because I rarely draw buildings, especially buildings with sci-fi. Moreover, solar punk is a relatively new term to me, and I can’t quite imagine how these two styles can be combined. Therefore, I spent a lot of time doing research, and I found that there are many Asian-style and sci-fi buildings in cyberpunk, such as CYBER Kong and Jie. So, I referred to the appearance of their building.
Other reference animation: https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV15g41157gB/?spm_id_from=333.880.my_history.page.click&vd_source=9bc895a0e0cc8c73f311f1676793eede
However, the style of our building is solar punk, and the characteristics of solar punk are green, environmentally friendly, and solar energy. Therefore, I drew a lot of solar panels and all kinds of plants on the building to decorate the entire building. In order to show these are sci-fi architecture, I also added floating lights and numbers to the final version. Added Asian-style roof and floating lanterns. At the same time, this camp is built to attract children. To show this, I also referred to some amusement park elements in the architecture. The design of the appearance and style took into consideration the need to integrate with the character style. I deleted redundant lines and continued to use different shapes to design and summarize the entire building.
In the middle stage, I drew and adjusted the summer camp again. It took the most time to design the children’s dormitory in the camp. Because the screenwriters and I had different understandings of the summer camp. In my impression, the camp was a place full of tents and campfires. Therefore, I draw lots of tents and cabins.
During the discussion, the screenwriters showed their mind map about the camp. They want it to be like town. So I also painted a lot of tall buildings and then some small houses instead of tents. But the screenwriter thought it was a little urban. It led to me being confused about what camp looked like. It is probably a problem of cultural differences. In my daily life, I don’t know the appearance of the Western town, and I have never seen a dormitory in a real camp. Therefore, I had more detailed communication with the screenwriter and redrawn the appearance of the camp .
Style Research & development
This painting style is my first attempt. Personally, I am not a very patient person, and I don’t like using many lines to draw the background. However, during this project, screenwriters hoped we could use clean lines to draw the background. I regarded it as a stylistic breakthrough because it was the first time I drew in this style, so I referenced the line style and color style of the animation Scavenger Reign(Picture 16. ). I really like the color used by Scavenger Reign in the background. The colors in the animation are exaggerated but very dreamy. So, I was inspired by it. I tried to ignore the objective colors of the world and use subjective colors to describe the background.
But I’m not satisfied with my line drawing. I last used lines to draw backgrounds a long time ago, so there are still some problems with the arrangement of lines, such as density contrast. In the future painting process, I may need to practice this aspect more.
I learned a lot from this group collaboration. It allowed me to know how to communicate and cooperate with students from different majors. I really like the process of collision of ideas and the process of visualizing words. But it also made me realize that I still have a lot to learn about scene design. For example, after the second group discussion, I discovered a word I had never understood before, solar punk. The word was very foreign to me, so I looked up its definition, and I re-watched some films in the genre, like Black Panther and Castle in the Sky. I just discovered that I had actually seen this type of work, but I had never paid attention to their background settings. And because of cultural differences, visualization has always been problematic. It made me realize that scene design is not a very simple thing. If I want to work in this area in the future, I may need to learn more knowledge, such as novel types, architecture in different cultures, topography, biology etc., I cannot just be limited to art. In our final work, I am going to draw more concepts about each episode. And enrich the animals and plants on the planet.
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