Final Major Project Report

Ellysia Manuel
Introduction
Main Body:
- Presentation Pitch
- Research
- Experimental Work
- Making a 2D Rig in After Effects and Character Animator
- Modelling With Clay
- Making the T-Shirt
- Collaboration
- The Book
- Overview
- Front Cover Development
- The Order
- Issues and Solutions
- Covid 19
- Book Printers
- Techincal Issues
- Changing and Developing My Idea

- Promoting Myself and My Project

Conclusion
 Introduction
For my Final Major Project, I have chosen the role of Character Designer, alongside
my other two supporting roles which are Storytelling and 2D Animation.

My project is going to combine all three of these elements by creating an interactive

children’s story book. The book will consist of small stories, told through the voices of
the two main character and through small comic strip stories. The interactive elements
will make the book feel like a scrapbook in which the reader can create their own
ideas alongside these characters. For example, the characters will have a page where
they tell the story of how they got their first pet together followed by a picture or
drawing of this. Next to this page will be a similar template in which the reader can
also write about their experience of this and insert a picture of a pet of their choosing
or write about what pet they would like to have and draw a picture of what it would
look like. Following on from this, there will be elements in which the reader can learn
how to draw the main characters featured in the book with a step by step guide and
have a page next to that for the reader to try it themselves with a discrete
guideline to help start them off.

Another element that I want to make interactive, is to have certain elements of the
book in AR. This would mean that the reader could place their phone camera over
an image and watch the picture come to life with a short animated loop. If this
wasn’t to go to plan, then a backup option is to use a QR code which links them to
either an Instagram Page or YouTube Channel with the same interactive feature.

To help improve on my skills and to help towards this target, I am going to:
- Work on the character line of action to help push my poses and expressions
- Work on my life drawing skills
- Create Comics to help tell stories
Presentation Pitch

During my March Presentation, I pitched my working idea what

my project will be and how my work leading up to this would fit
into this. I presented my work from the start of the term which
included my character designs, research and then discussed my
Final Major Project concept.
For my FMP, at the time I planned to create an interactive
children’s book, which featured AR (augmented reality)
elements, and physical interaction including how to draw
characters, and doodle pages. Overall, the feedback was very
positive and with a few pointers, set me off on the right path
for creating this final piece of work.
Research
As part of my research, I created a selection of Mood Boards made out of related images
to my idea before creating my designs.By doing this, it provided me with reference and
inspiration when approaching the designs for things such as characters, buildings and in
particular, the book cover. By making a mood board for the cover, it helped provide me
with other designs which have been successful and with the same style that I wanted to
work towards. I felt that this really helped push the design development for my final
outcome and pushed this design further. With each change, it inspired me to make the
design better. It also showed how important this element of the book is as it will be the
thing the reader sees and will impact if they want to read it or not. Especially for the set
target audience. Some of the mood boards also included real life reference, especially for
the bear character design. In particular: how they stand, what their hands/feet look like,
and their facial features - especially looking at the shapes and how they could be
portrayed as a 2D character.

Another element that I researched into was the Costume and Design, focusing on the
human characters. The main focus for this was for Thomas’ outfit. At first, I struggled
with the body for this character, but after looking at clothing online for his particular age
range, and placing them onto a rough sketch it helped to define the character’s body
shape. For something that I was originally struggling to do, this had a real impact on the
lower half of the character and helped get the proportions right. This also helped with the
costume colour code and showed me what works together and what didn’t. On my blog
post (FMP, Research) shows a timelapse of the different outfits being placed onto the
character.
 Experiemental Work
Making a 2D Rig in After Effects and Character Animator
As part of my experimental work, I wanted to see how I could go about creating a 2D Rig
using Adobe After Effects. I thought that this would also provide me with future reference
into how I would need to provide my characters to animators or riggers. This actually
helped a lot because it taught me from experience, how I needed to provide the files for
Nadim which turned out to really help her: Providing each body part separately, giving her
a character sheet of all the body parts so she knew scale levels, where they go and what
they were. Without this, I don’t think my collaboration would have been as successful.
After this, I wanted to see what other animation based softwares Adobe had to offer and
discovered Adobe Character Animator. This is an application that specialises a whole
range of character animating features, especially facial animation and lip sync. You are
able to link to a photoshop file of your character which needed to be layered with the
different facial features that you want to animate for example, you need the main facial
base with your eyes, pupils, eyelids and eyebrows on different layers which then syncs
with Character Animator and by using a live camera stream of your face it matches your
movements to that of the characters. You are then able to record your movements and
change them after where necessary. For the facial rig, I was able to use an Adobe
template, to see what layers I would need to create and how they needed to be organised
in Photoshop. After looking at the template, I separated the facial features for my
character Thomas and began to add them into the Photoshop file. I then created a load of
different mouth shapes for the lip sync element using reference images. When I linked this
file with Character Animator, I was able to see how it worked and what other sections of
the face needed to be created or made to have its own layer. The facial rig helped to show
me what I needed to design in addition to just a flat character pose. It was a real insight
into these extra details that I wouldn’t have thought to add in my previous designs and
and helped to develop the design with these factors in consideration.
Modelling with Clay
When designing the character turn around for Bear, I struggled to design the side and
three quarter view. What I had designed didn’t seem 100% accurate, so I had the idea to
create a model of the character in clay.

By making a model, it helped show me the different angles of the Bear which I initially
found harder to picture. Seeing it there in front of me really helped.

Making the T-Shirt

I was able to see the design from different angles and positions which helped when
creating the character pose sheet and turn around. If I was ever struggling with this, I
just look over and use a reference point.
 Collaboration

For my FMP collaboration, I was approached by another student Nadine who saw one of
my recent experimental character designs on my Instagram account. These were bug-like
characters created using shape and colour. I wanted to see how I can use a similar style to
create a design and change this by alternating the size of the circular shape and changing
the colour to depict the different body types apart from each other. I made them with the
intention of extending my portfolio and to have a variety of different design types to
show design and target audience ranges.

As mentioned before, by attempting to rig my own character in Adobe After Effects, this
gave me an insight into what I needed to provide the rigger and really helped give me an
understanding of how difficult it can be. By using this previous experience, I knew what
files Nadine would need to be provided with, so with this knowledge also created a PDF
File of all the files together to scale and labeled so that she knew what was what and
where they should go, especially as this was a character made out of shapes so a lot of
the pieces looked the same (See Blog: FMP, Collaboration). After she rigged my character,
she also created a short animation to showcase her work and by doing this really captured
the personality within the character. Overall, I feel that the collaboration was a huge
success as this benefited the two of us for both our chosen roles.
 The Book

Overview
When I first started to plan what the page layout would be in the book, I created a blank
template of all the pages that I was aiming to fill and started to pencil in what would go
where. When a page was completed, I would add this into the template, see blog (Final
Major Project, My Project) for image reference. I struggled initially with the layout and
inside page design for the book as I wanted to have a similar theme throughout.I played
around with a few different background designs and then eventually decided to use the
same yellow background as the front cover, and place a lined paper template on the page
to write on. This seemed to give the inside a more professional look and kept the bright
colour inside too which fitted with the front and back cover.

Front Cover Development

As said earlier, research really helped to influence the front cover design, looking back to
my original design which was based on a school book which the characters had drawn on
was not as successful as my final outcome. It didn’t have any real eye catching elements.
For my ideal target audience, they need something bright and colourful which will catch
their eye easily and will interest them enough to read the book.
 The Order

When ordering the book, I needed to take a lot of things into consideration. The first
element was the size of the book. I chose to go for an A4 size because of the nature of the
activities inside. Some of the pages include how to draw instructions and with the next
page designed for the reader to follow along with the steps to draw their own version of
said character. If the book was to be a smaller size, it wouldn’t provide much space to do
this. With the target audience for the book being younger children, the bigger the book
means the larger the text which will make it a lot easier for them to read. If they were to
see a lot of small text, it may distract them to not want to read it. With the
combination of one page having an image and the other being made up of text, this
should break down the amount of text for them to take it and make it easier to stay
invested in the stories. Another element that I had to take into consideration was what
paper the book would be printed onto. The default setting was to a glossed texture but
once again, if the reader wants to be able to draw on the pages, this wouldn’t have
worked so I decided to go for the closest thing they had to normal drawing paper
which was unglossed. The book also comes with a hard cover because I thought that
once again due to the younger age, it would make it a lot more sturdy.

On my blog, I have found a way to display the book with flip pages on my Final Outcome
Tab. I have also screen recorded this on the printers page to show the completed product
and how it will look as a hard copy.
 Issues and Solutions

Covid-19
With the effect of the Covid 19 lockdown, I initially found it very difficult to focus working
from home as this had more distractions and was a different environment to working in
the University building. The solution to this was of course finding a working environment
that worked for me and having a quiet place or using headphones to block out any
surrounding noise. On a more positive note, being at home has given me more time to
work on my project and when I am focused I managed to get a lot of work done
including additional research which has benefited me in a way and has taken my level
of work to a much better standard.

Book Printers
When the book was sent to the printers, the first thing they came back with was that it
needed additional bleed space for the front and back covers. The files that I uploaded
didn’t seem to work and I wasn’t 100% sure how I could fix the problem. I looked into the
answer and found an adobe help page which explained how you can save a file with a
bleed space on InDesign. The first few tries still didn’t work but after multiple attempts I
managed to get the right bleed size to fit the online template for the printers. The book
was made and sent off on time but because of the corrections that were needed, it may
have delayed the printing process but also, the delivery could also be slower due to
Covid-19 delaying postal services.
Technical Issues
I had a few issues with the apple pencil that I was using which delayed some of the
creative work and the speed in which it was produced. I managed to get a replacement in
the final few weeks which helped speed up the work process during the most crucial time.
In the last few weeks, my Macbook also started to have a few technical issues and if
overworked would shut down which resulted in some of my work being lost. I have recently
found a way to deal with this issue but most importantly I had to save my work a lot
more than often just to be sure I won’t lose any again.
Changing and Developing My idea

I started to run out of time while making the project and decided to make more time
for designing the book pages and art showcased on them instead of adding in
animations. This is still a field that I want to add into the project after the deadline
and have left this open for the future by creating an Instagram page for the book
where I will upload additional work and animations for people who read it to see.

I still hope to add an AR addition to the book in the future and after the project is
over. My research into this field by going to the Tate Britain has shown me that this is
possible. Through creating an Instagram page I have a space to create and upload
additional work in order to develop this idea further, hopefully including animations.
Promoting Myself and My Project

For the degree show, I plan to showcase my work through having the book printed off
ready for when this does go ahead alongside printouts from some of the pages and the
online book present for people to look through. Alongside this, I have created business
cards for my project which links to both the social media pages that link with the piece of
work and my own personal pages. The cards display the same design as the front cover of
the book on the front, with a picture of the two main characters on the back with these
links clearly displayed. The socials medias displayed on the business card are my Linkedin,
Instagram (both for my personal work and for my project), and the personal website I
created for job applications.

Throughout the year, I have been applying for Jobs in many different creative fields from
character design jobs, to studio art department positions which involves sending them my
work and portfolio website. So far I haven’t heard back from many due everything
happening and studios not wanting to take on new people in times of uncertainty. I
applied for the Art Internship at King Studios in London late last term but this was
unfortunately cancelled due to the Coronavirus outbreak alongside a few other job
positions that I applied for.
 Conclusion

In conclusion, I feel that the project was a real success and that I am really proud of the
work that I created. At the start of my third year, I wouldn’t have seen the level of work
I was producing to improve this much and for the end result to have been to this level.
What I could have done better firstly would have been my work pace as the original speed
that work was being produced could have been a lot faster but it did start to pick up
once I had a template of what I was working towards and knew the layout and artworks
that needed to be made. Having a page design and layout really did help the design
process. If I was to do the project again, I would start designing the book earlier as I
feel that this might have then given me more time to animate. I would also have liked to
to create more comic strips as this really added to the content in the book and was fun to
make, they just look a long time. Overall, I am proud of the work that went into it and
and hope to continue on this project and make more pieces to go towards it and the
Instagram page that was made for it.