Sunday 3 December 2017

DGA230 - Artist imitations, sketchbook rough work and life drawings


















DGA230 - "Full Rubber Robber" Storyboard panels



DGA230 - Finished artwork for pre-production projects






DGA230 - Lucid Pre-Production Bible


















DGA230 – Pre-production Bible Production Report

Dang Kuan DGA230 – Production Report

For the pre-production bible, I volunteered to help out Jack French’s project “Lucid”. His production bible group consisted of Jack himself, Vaidas Vismanas, Rory Free, Erin Clarke, Armand Taza and me. I decided to work on Lucid because I thought the artist’s style (Saul Steinberg) really resonated with me and it seemed like an interesting idea. I found the style to be simple, yet comedic and I thought it integrated with Lucid’s story really well, as it had a comic feeling to its story beats as well as in character expressions and design along with the general atmosphere and tone of the project.

We were first given the task to observe and practice Saul Steinberg’s art style and apply it to drawing the characters and environments of the project. We started off practicing how to draw the main character, as the body and facial proportions weren’t fully established yet, although the character design gave us a rough idea to work with. Jack already started working on establishing the character design as well as working on other character/creature designs for the office setting and dream world setting. Vaidas worked on character turnarounds to help establish the main character’s dimensions and proportions. Rory worked on poses and character design for the pen, as well as other creature designs. I worked on making dynamic poses for the character in order to give a better idea of how the character would interact with the environment as if it were in a final animation. My dynamic poses were drawn with mannerisms and expressions that gave the main character a confused, cautious, worried or scared look. Saul Steinberg’s simplistic style made it relatively easy to draw the character, as his style dictates that characters wouldn’t normally be anatomically feasible or correct.

I later on drew up some hand poses for the main character to establish the hand design after looking through Saul Steinberg’s art as well as the character turnarounds. Saul Steinberg’s style of drawing hands tended to look less realistic but still had a cohesive sense to them as they were generally more anatomically correct. Vaidas and Jack also established character heights, dimensions and proportions again with new character turnarounds and designs for the main character and the boss character. A colour scheme was also being developed as weren’t exactly sure how if the project should be bright, vibrant and colourful similar to a narcotics effect or a more drab and dull colour palette. Both seemed like good ways to go forward with the project, as making it colourful (particularly in the sections where the main character is in the dream world) fit the story, whereas making it drab with black and white made the style a lot more reminiscent of Saul Steinberg’s colour palette in his artwork. It was decided to make the ‘office’ sections with the main character, now given the name “Bob”, colourless to accentuate the dull theme of Bob’s day-to-day life. The dream world sequence wouldn’t be in vibrant colours, but instead a sort of beige, brown like colour scheme similar to old paper that still gave the dream world colour while keeping to Saul Steinberg’s aesthetic.

I later drew up more dynamic poses for Bob in the different settings (office and dream world). This time, with the character design and proportions being more firmly established, it melded well with the rest of the bible. I also added in colouring to the poses and hands to help flesh out the poses. The colour palette developed by the group gave a dark, brooding feeling in his office setting with dark and light greys, while the dream world setting colourises him in bright yellows and tans that make him stand out more.

I started creating concept art for the bible later on with a shot of Bob looking into the horizon of the dream world while standing on a large face in a sea, with giant flying bird-like creatures in the sky. My original idea was a variation of this in which the sea is replaced with multiple faces looking towards the sky, forming a sort of ‘sea of faces’. This concept was later changed to the singular face, as it took away a lot of focus from Bob and cluttered the canvas a bit too much. I painted the background in a sort of bright yellow with a dark aura as the background, as I thought this matched a minimalist attitude while keeping a ‘dream-like’ feel. This didn’t match Saul Steinberg’s background style very well, as it was too complex and detailed. We were originally uncertain of what kind of backgrounds would be used for the bible. It was later decided that an old paper aesthetic would be used for both settings, as this matched Saul Steinberg’s minimalist background style while keeping it from feeling too empty like with a plain white background. I later applied this to my concept art for use in the bible (the first page).

I also drew up another piece of concept art of the boss character (with cat ears) pouring Bob out of a tea kettle. I chose this and the previously mentioned shots from Jack’s animatic because I felt that these represented the project really well and looked like stills you would put on a poster. This concept art kept the style of having a yellow background with a dark grey aura as a variation from Saul Steinberg’s style.

For my test shot, I was given the shot where Bob initially falls into the sea after chasing the running pen. It wasn’t too difficult drawing the running and falling/jumping animations for the characters, as character movement cycles had been established beforehand. I thought this shot also worked well in representing a small slice of how the project would be as an entire short film, as it had the right comedic tone and atmosphere with Bob trying and failing to chase down his pen and falling into the sea.

In general I thought this pre-production bible project was interesting and fun to do, as it let me try out drawing in a different artist’s style in concept art as well as applying that to animation. It was an interesting experience researching, observing and practicing while learning how to apply different styles from different artists.

DGA230 - "Full Rubber Robber" Pitch Animatic


DGA230 - "Full Rubber Robber" Pitch Animatic

DGA230 - "Lucid" Test Shot


DGA230 - "Lucid" Test Shot

DGA220 - 2D/3D Hybrid Animation Software Essay







Saturday 2 December 2017

DGA210 – Live Brief Production Report

Dang Kuan DGA210 – ShelterBox Live Brief Production Report

For the live brief, I decided to work on the ShelterBox project as it seemed more geared towards 2D. My group consisted of producer Amanda Chin, director Ting Ting Loh, Ross Kimber, Margarita Manukyan, Johana Mlichova and me, the last four of us working as animators, character designers, etc. The project started out relatively slow, as everyone was getting an idea of what we were going to do for the project. Ting created the initial idea of using toys as a stand-in for people affected by disasters, while Johana and Margarita incited the idea of using a beach with waves to serve as stand-ins for a makeshift tsunami. This light-hearted setting seemed well suited for a project aimed at younger children as the primary demographic.

I was given the task of creating thumbnails and character designs for the toy family that would be hit by the tsunami. After some feedback on my work, it was decided that the single toy family would be expanded into the idea of an entire village on the beach inhabited by various toys by one of the tutors. This would better establish the idea of entire communities bring affected by disasters. After this, we as a team decided to all work on some character designs for the villagers. We would later pick out the best ones to use in the final project. I also worked on character designs for the ShelterBox volunteers. Ting and Amanda would also work on the story beats and script around this time to help establish what happens in the animation. After working through various edits of the story beats and script, we were tasked with creating the storyboard. I created some reworked thumbnails alongside scenes for the storyboard as well. We all chose sections divided from the story script to create storyboard panels for, which would later make up as much of our first animatic. Ross came in as a volunteer around this time and he worked on creating 3D environments for a wave.

A lot of effort was also put into researching how the beach environments and sea would be, as well as the movement of tsunamis and how they were previously animated in other films. I was given the task of creating the keys and inbetweens for a test shot of a wave crashing down, while Amanda worked on the colouring. Some team members also went to visit ShelterBox in Truro to get photos of equipment for research in how to draw them for the animation. A colour scheme was also being developed at this time by Ting and Amanda. After some feedback, we needed to make several changes to the animatic with redeveloped scenes and shots, so I was tasked with recreating most of the animatic to better present our idea for the ShelterBox people.

Other than a select few scenes, I managed to create a new animatic for the project with improved scene composition and pacing. I also provided almost all of the cinematography and shot composition for all scenes. I also made various changes to the story beats and implemented several ideas such as how the grouped up boxes would morph into the ShelterBox logo in the final shot or how the family tent would come out of the box when it is first opened and how it morphs into the shape of a tent. We also established the finalised character designs around this time as well, and I drew up a character line-up of all the toy villagers we established would be in the final cut in order to give a sense of scale among the characters, while Amanda and Ting provided the colour scheme for the characters.

Ting also managed to recruit a member from an external party to do the voiceovers for the script when ShelterBox would be explained to the viewer. It was also around this time that the group hit its first major setback that I noticed. We originally pitched the idea that the animation would be a hybrid animation of 2D characters and stop-motion sets for the backgrounds. After Ross created a rough 3D model of the beach village for the stop-motion set, Ting and Amanda developed the set using clay, sand and cardboard. The end result would later be constructively criticised for not being as visually appealing or cohesive to the viewer. This made us decide to scrap the idea of using a stop-motion set in a hybrid, mix of animation to just straight 2D with 2D drawn backgrounds.

After this setback, Ting went on to create all the 2D backgrounds for the animation. Around this time, we were also given more standardised jobs for more visual cohesion and continuity in the final cut. I would be working mainly on scenes and shots that required water animation as I had the most experience with this type of animation with the earlier wave test shot. I did the keys, inbetweens and cleanup for the majority of my shots. The keys and inbetweens for the other shots were provided by Ross, Ting, Margarita and Johana, while the majority of the cleanup was done by Amanda. Ting also did the cleanups for all her shots. Despite the fairly good organisation of the team done by Amanda and Ting, we still had a setback in that Margarita became very ill around this time and required to hospitalisation, so we were a teammate down for a quite some time during production.

A lot of my shots took a lot of time due to the amount of work needed to make them look authentic. It was difficult at first, but I managed to create fairly authentic water/wave animations for the final cut in the end. The large wave shots also needed to show the sand castles being destroyed, so this was slightly challenging for me to animate due to needing to keep the crumbling castles, toys washing away and wave impacts/wave in synchronisation. After the completion of all my shots, I was later tasked to add a water filtration system and mosquito net pop up during the scene where the tent is first formed. I provided the keys and inbetweens for the smoke effects and particles when the objects ‘pop’ on screen. I also provided the light glow for shots in the tent interior. I also later decided to add shadows to the tent during its morphing phase to add more depth to the shot.

I would say that despite the setbacks and minor difficulties during the pre-production and production process, the project went as well as it could. On my end, I believe we had fairly good communication among the team and the director and producer managed to organise us really well, considering the setbacks, as I never truly felt that we were ever behind schedule.

DGA210 - Live Brief Showreel


DGA210 - Live Brief Showreel

DGA210 – Crew Project Production Report

Dang Kuan DGA210 – “Papa Poule” Crew Project Production Report

For my crew project, I decided to focus on working on one third year film project. This allowed me to be more flexible with work on other modules and projects while also providing a greater output of work for the crew project. I decided to help out in the production of the third year film, “Papa Poule”. I chose this project because I thought the animation style was relatively charming and was all supposed to be done in 2D.

During the pre-production stage, the director and producer gave me my first task of drawing 10 dynamic poses for the main character in the short; Paul. I believe this task was given to help provide some practice in drawing the main character many others would be animating during production. While referencing the character design, turnarounds and expression sheets already created by the director/producer, I managed to finish the dynamic poses. While they definitely looked like dynamic poses, the director noticeably pointed out that my style of drawing the character was slightly off in terms of facial and bodily proportions in her feedback. After practicing how to draw the character a bit more, I managed to adapt to the art style and proportions relatively quickly.

I was given a production task to begin animating the key frames for a shot in the animatic. The shot in question was from a scene in which Paul puts a cap on his head. While the task seemed simple at first, as it was a close-up shot of the character, there were some areas of the animation where I ran into some problems. The first, being that I didn’t have an idea of what the cap looked like as a three dimensional shape. When I asked the director about this, I was given a general idea of what the cap was supposed to look like and I tried to draw it in the way it was described to me. The end result was serviceable enough to the director and would later add turnaround sheets for the character wearing the cap. Another problem I came across was animating how the hair gets tucked into the cap after it is put on. It was strange to animate at first, as it would not have been physically possible in real life, but I managed to fix the shot after animating the hair ‘shrinking’ while putting on the cap.

The next shot I was given would be a lot simpler, as I was to draw the key frames for a shot where Paul looks confusingly at an egg and taps on it. I was told there weren’t any problems while animating this shot at first, although much later I would need to make the shot more exaggerated and less stiff.

At this point in time, the last shot I worked on was a shot where Paul reacts to a lizard popping out of the egg and sneezing. I was supposed to just draw the key frames of the shot but I managed to do the inbetweens as well, as it was a shot without much movement. There weren’t any problems while animating this shot.

As of this point, I certainly wouldn’t mind continuing to help out in the production of this project, as I believe most problems I had with drawing and animating the character had been mostly alleviated after some practice. It has definitely been a helpful experience working on a third year’s film.

DGA210 - Crew Projects showreel


DGA210 - Crew Projects showreel

Tuesday 11 April 2017

Title sequence group project final


The final version edited and compiled by Noah Serafin (additional animation credit to the former, Jessica Wright, and Zoe Early). Full production report below.


The title sequence project was a rather challenging prospect since the beginning, as being grouped together with people I didn’t know was slightly difficult to adjust to. I took the initiative in setting up the group chat to help everyone introduce themselves (Noah Serafin, Jessica Wright and Zoe Early) and organise meetups. Although our group had a slow start, we decided fairly quickly early on that we would be choosing the “Yesterday’s Tomorrow” task as everyone agreed it would the most interesting to do. Although our group consisted of 2D students, there was some debate as to whether we were going to implement stop motion and/or live-action segments.

Getting the people in the group to decide on who would be doing what for the first few weeks was difficult as one of our members was absent for personal issues in a few group meetings, although it didn’t put any major detriment to the project as a whole. We also set up Google drives to make access to our work easier. I can say that our group managed to get along fairly well and didn’t have that many disagreements on how to do the project.

Our group got a fully realised idea of what we were going to do around midway through the project after I created a rough animatic to show how the sequence would play out. We had each contributed ideas in rough draft before this and I attempted to compile their ideas as well as mine to create the basis of the sequence. There were points during the making of the project where we debated using colour or black and white for the whole sequence.

After a few group meetings, we were able to conclude on how to split the workload and decided who would do what. Everyone had a clear idea of what they were supposed to do, and this made it easy for everyone to concentrate and focus on their segments. I decided to do more of the animated 2D segments and design the intertitle borders as I believed this was what I was most comfortable with to produce. Everyone else also managed to be in a position where they would be comfortable with what they were producing for the project. Editing and sound in particular was handled nicely by Noah as we were all confident he could do it right.


In conclusion, the title sequence project was certainly a challenge at the start but over time became easier to get into once everyone settled on who was going to do what. Luckily for us, this was a simple matter. I learned a lot from this project, as I went into it thinking I wouldn’t be able to get much work done due to miscommunication with unknowns. Providing a clear explanation through animatic helped clear these doubts and problems. If I could change anything about the project, I would put more detail into the animated sections, as I believe at least my sections could use have used more colour, lighting and detail. If anything else I’d say I managed to bulk up my team-building and communication skills.

Title sequence group project (time machine segment)


The time machine segment I animated based on the original book cover (below).


Title sequence group project (war of the worlds segment)


The war of the worlds segment I animated based on the original book cover (below).

Title sequence group project intertitle frame


For the intertitles I decided to design the frames. I went with an early 20th century silent film style for the borders to match the setting of our project.