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Aubrey Beardsley exhibition

He is such a talented and excellent artist. His style is still popular even in the present day I think. He is the master of designing the layout of illustration with putting so many elements in one work and make them together in his style. The using of the line in his work is the most charming part for me. It’s clean and powerful. And the different density of these lines formed a strong style of decorative painting

This is the illustration he made for the Le Morte d’Arthur and which is the start of his career. He was only 20 at that time. I was immediately attracted by this work.

Every corner in his work is full of details and design.

This work is made after he read the script of Salome. This illustration to some extent promotes the publishing of the English version of this script. And I found the second version on the internet that he created based on the old one. This one is more concise and skilful.

And not only this one. This kind of design shows a lot in his later works, the use of blank is to make the picture more modality and unique. I feel that in the present day, A lot of designers will do the same thing as well. But he did it in the 19th century. His untimely death is a big loss for the illustraion.

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Abstract art

Some shares about abstract artworks. This exhibition reminds me of our JTU project although we are not doing it in this kind of style. I admit that although I tried hard to understand these works is not an easy thing, I only can get some inspiration from the surface of these works like the style, colour, composition and painting skills.

The streamline of these human bodies is very active and beautiful. It is hard for me to draw the human body with a sense of relaxing. I always make the outline very stiff. And the colour they use is really harmonious although including various colours. I think to some extent it depends on the area that the main colour took, that could set the colour tone for the whole work.

This work is the most interesting one in the exhibition. I stand in front of this work for a long time because of the abundant content this work including. I think abstract arts is not necessary to have an exact meaning, everybody could have different thoughts about it and this is the feature of it.

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Some thoughts of grad film.

An idea came to me after I watched this animation.

This animation really inspired me, both the story and the art style. It describes the journey of a man who suddenly met a car accident and died. He met death manager and ask for an answer. It’s not just a simple story, it discusses not just this man’s whole life also the other people’s. And it talks about the circle of people’s life so it’s a bit deep. The style of this work is really beautiful. Every scene has a well-designed composition and colour tone like illustrations.

background design in the film
nice composition

Also, the design of the death manager makes me feel its power because of the action of this character extremely fits its personality. It is powerful, seems to know the rule about this world and it shows them to this man, and to the audience as well.

powerful death manager

I find that only use the colour blocks to create characters is a nice choice. It seems smoother than the character with an outline and it may save some times for the cleanup job. I’m considering to do the grad film in this way.

My idea inspired by this film is, I also want to tell a story that happened after a man’s death and it is just a story not a discussion about the death itself. This man doesn’t want to leave his world because he made some mistakes before and he so regrets about it because he hurts someone. He begging the death to let him fix it otherwise he won’t go. So the death gives him another chance. I didn’t finish the end yet. The point is I want this story to be this man’s misunderstanding, he will find even he fix this mistake nothing will change. I want to express people should look forward and keep going.

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Some design of the JTU project

Some update of our project. Finally we decided to combine digital drawing and do background with stop-motion. We plan to do the stop-motion when we are able to access in Uni.

The style frames that Sin made which is really beautiful. We decided to use paper cut and cotton to make the background. We think paper cut and cotton have a different texture which is suitable to express the different environment. I made a papercut stop-motion work during my BA so I think I kinda familiar with this style.

Also, we developed the analysis and design of the main character. This character is a paper cut figure which I think is much easier than the human character so the animating work may be much easier. I think the most challenging part must be the shot of background because excepting some background design made with the digital software, there is nothing we can do to develop it.

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Music design and animatic of JTU

When we finished the storyboard, its kinda like a music video shows in the club. So I decide to do the music first. I divided the music into three parts. At the start of our project, I prefer not to add the music, with only the sound effect of the birdsong and wings moving will be enough. The music will start when the bird jumps off the platform and fly into the unknown. This part is very excited and with a very quick rhythm which reminds me of movie whiplash. I extremely love the drumbeat in that movie so I want to do something similar. But electric style is also suitable for the project I think. So I try them both in the Garage band(music-making application on iPad) and I find that the drumbeat is so strong and I couldn’t find a suitable melody for it. So I go with the style of the electric songs. A very deep bass sound also has a very strong effect and it works well with the drumbeats which are not that fast.

This is the drumbeats I chooses for the basic tone.

This part will end til the bird reached the bright entrance. I think the music of this part is playing in a wild and soft place which will have the echo. So I chose this melody for the base tone.

The last thing is finding the suitable melody for these two basic beat and melody.

When I edit the animatic with the finishing music it’s really a good experience. When I arrange the pictures to fit with the music, the animatic shows strong rhythm. It’s Different from the projects I did before, we usually add music when the animatic finished. I think it really depends on what kind of animation you do. The link of the animatic: https://vimeo.com/427666651 password: MACA

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Storyboard of the Jumping to the unknown project

These are the first thoughts from me after a meeting of our group.

I was thinking about the character flying in a big black tunnel, the character moves dynamically and the background as well. And everything in this work is the geometric shape and in a bright colour. It’s very happy for me that our group keep this ‘tunnel’ idea. Maybe because of the ‘abstract’ title we got, things seem easier for us to design and create. It doesn’t have to be very logical and we could add different shapes into it.

And here is the ver 2 storyboard that natalia finished. Everything becomes more clear and the whole structure of the story was decided.

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Style references

I really love this crazy animation series’s style. With exaggerated expression and body move. It perfectly matches the topic of this animation. I think the HOLE story is a crazy one too, may suitable for this style.

And about the outline. I don’t want it to be completely clean. The line like a draft may be more active. Considering this story may have a lot of running or some big moves, so, multiple outlines will have more sense of movement.

In pour 585, I like the outline of the characters. It helps a lot when the character moving. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2LZr9ZVCCY

Another Japanese animation Mob Psycho 100 has really nice fighting scenes. The multiple outlines is very effective to show power and speed.

This is the character design of my work. Because the design of his arms and legs are all very thin, I think the multiple outlines may help following the track of his limbs’ moving and shape-changing. It could be very elastic and exaggerate. And about his face design. I try to make every feature big and obvious to express his feeling more clear.

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The bathroom

I watched this shower scene which in the film Psycho that Steve recommended.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s22lNU5jXM4

This film was shot in 1970 and this part is so classic horror style.

The first scene is the woman writing something. This part is quiet and peaceful.

And she decided to go to the shower and enjoying the hot water. This place is already made me feel uncomfortable although the character is relaxed and happy. Because she is staying in a narrow place with a shower curtain.

Then a shadow shows behind the curtain and getting closer and closer. This is what I will imaging when I bathing. I like this angle because the audience knows what going to happen except the woman.

And the killer with knife open the curtain and attacking her.

This part is showing that this woman is badly injured indirectly. We can’t see the wound on her body, only the blood floating into water. It’s different from the recent films, they always would love to show the wound so close to real that to make the audience excited. But I prefer this way it is an advanced method.

Here comes to my favourite part. After the woman falls down, the camera move to the hole in the bathtub. We can see the blood floating down with water. And camera zoom in, the black hole getting closer and transfer to the eye of this woman. It’s really a nice design for me. When the camera zooms into the hole I feel scared because it’s so dark in the hole seems can absorb everything, especially it appears after the murder. It increased the atmosphere of terror. And then it links with her eyes – without moving and life.

And we see her face with fear.

The director really good at creating the atmosphere, I could use this part for reference for the end of my black hole story which I think is the most creepy part. When the character finally looks into the hole on the can, he will flow into the hole like water, like the hole is absorbing him in. I think it’s kind of the emphasis for the strange power that the black hole has, and the character is finally trapped in the endless dark. It’s more terrifying than he thought there were monsters in it.

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some colour references

I recently interested in it this kind of high contrast and bright colour style. I think it’s really hard to control and sometimes the background will be messy because of the high colour saturation. But I would like to try something else because the colour tone of the Children’s Society project I did before is very simple and low brightness. So I use this style to finish the background design of the HOLE story.

I think the point is, make sure that the scene only has two contrast colour, and set one of the colours is the main colour tone. Then use the colours having the same temperature as the main colour to create things. Because I only use two contrast colour so the hue won’t be too complex.

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Black and unknown

The idea came up with my own experience. I am the person really easy to be scared and the interesting thing is I am so addictive into the horror story. I always think too much because of the movies or horror stories that I watched before. Especially someplace with no light on like the deep sea, a dark room with a mirror on the wall, a door opening a little and no one know what’s inside of it…

Then I realized why they are so scared because I don’t know what happens in that place. My imagination creates too many things for me. So the most horrible thing for me is the unknown and I am so curious about it as they said: Curious kill the cat. I would love to express this kind of conflict feeling through this story.

The man in my story is just like myself. He is afraid of the black hole where he can find everywhere and he can’t help looking at it. But I don’t want this story to be a complete horror one and I may add some black humour into it.