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2025.05.19 - 2025.06.09
Qistina Nuralya Maria Binti Azly / 0354180
Animation Fundamentals / Bachelors of Design (Honours) in Creative Media / Taylor's University
PROJECT 1B: ENVIRONMENT DESIGN
Table of contents (Quicklinks)
1. MODULE INFORMATION BOOKLET (MIB)
1. MODULE INFORMATION BOOKLET (MIB)
This is the Module Information Booklet for this module:
2. LECTURES
Week 5
We learned about the animation principle of Appeal and Solid Drawing.
- Appeal: the visual charm of a character or scene design. It draws the viewer’s attention and makes characters engaging and memorable. Achieved through clear design, strong posing, and personality.
- Solid Drawing: the illusion of three-dimensionality in characters and objects. It involves understanding volume, weight, balance, and anatomy. Good solid drawings prevents flatness and keeps forms believable, even in stylized animation.
Week 6
This week's class was held online as per management's instructions because of the road closures of caused by the ASEAN Summit 2025. We learned about the animation principle of Staging.
Staging is the clear presentation of an idea, action, or mood. It directs the viewer’s attention to the most important part of the scene. Achieved through composition, lighting, camera angle, and character placement. Good staging ensures the story point is instantly understood, even without dialogue.
Week 7
We had no class because of public holiday (Agong's Birthday).
3. PROCESS
Task: Design background layouts for an animated scene using perspective. Pick a scene and make a rough sketch showing where background elements and characters are placed, using either traditional or digital tools. Then, refine the sketch with detailed lines, textures, and shading to add depth. Finally, create a colour study using a colour scheme and lighting that fits the mood and theme of the scene. Your goal is to make the layout visually engaging and supportive of the animation’s story.
3.1 Blocking and Clean-Up
Because of my character's backstory, my environment design is loosely based off of the cityscape of the 1940s. I started off with a quick sketch on Procreate using the perspective tool as a guidance. The sketch followed three-point-perspective which I later realised might be a bit too challenging for me to do so I made a more realistic goal of doing one-point-perspective but still make it interesting.
So, I went ahead and tried one-point-perspective and added a VERY rough placement of where my character would be placed within the city and decided that it would be cool to have her be leaning on a car on the side of the road smoking her pipe.
A bit of a jump in progress here (Fig 3.1.3) but I went ahead and cleaned up the sketch with a smoother and darker outline. I also heavily referenced a classic 1940s car to draw the main car in the scene. I added a bit of life to the scene by including bits and pieces of what you'd normally find in a city like a cinema or a restaurant with a "-'s" at the end of the name.
Here I made a rough but cleaner sketch of how Mira would look like leaning on the car. She's in the action of blowing out smoke after smoking the pipe so I made the action I made it so she appears more relaxed since it's a quiet night in the city.
I placed Mira in the scene and also added a few more elements into the scene like a car across the street of where Mira is. Lastly, I also cleaned up the line art because I noticed that some parts were a bit too thick.
3.2 Black-and-White to Colour
I went on Pinterest to find references of 1940s cities at night and found that a lot of them have warmer tones because of the use of incandescent lights back then; primarily vibrant yellows and reds against the blue night.
From using the method of blocking out colours in black and white first, I'm able to distinguish the contrast and depth of the buildings from the perspective of the camera; making things closer to the camera darker whilst buildings further away became lighter.
An exception I made was the furthest building in the background where I made it darker because I only wanted the silhouette to appear against the light of the moon with only lights illuminating the building.
Afterwards, I added details into the scene but adding different values to each different level of depth in the buildings and road.
A perk on working with black and white colours first is that I got to experiment with the lighting without becoming overwhelmed with whether the colours looked nice; but that worry would have to fall on future me (แต—แด—)
I then used multiple layers of coloring to achieve a very warm city scene; most were Colour layers but there was also some overlay layers as well to achieve that additional warmth-ness. And as added bonus, the warm scene contrasts with Mira's cool colour palette.
Finally, I added small details to the scene like the smoke coming out of Mira's mouth and also some "advertisements" on the buildings; of which I grabbed old 1940s movie posters to give the scene more life even if I thought it looked silly.
3.3 Final
4. REFLECTION
I am honestly not too great at background design since it's just not my forte. Especially more urban city designs since everything is very constructed and solid. I'm more to organic design like mountains or simple garden-scapes. But I will say it was an interesting experience to go out of my comfort zone and try more challenging designs. It wasn't as perfect as I wanted it to be but I liked the challenge and am proud I managed to get through it! Things I liked in this part of the project were the fact I managed to believably (at least to me) add my character, Mira, into the scene; it gave a lot of life to the scene seeing her interacting with the environment.
Overall, I liked it was challenging but I'm satisfied enough with my final work and hope that I face challenges in the future projects with as much grace as this one as well! \( ˶หแห˵ )/
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