Above is the presentation I will be talking through to my peers, covering all the topics I have done work in for this unit.
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FMP: Powerpoint
Author: lucalucanightfever
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FMP: Final Skills Audit
Following the final days of this project as it comes to a close, I created a skills audit to compare my previous skills to my current.
Before starting this FMP, I was advised to record a skills audit. This is how I had previously envisioned my skills, during January 2022.
After completing this project, I remade the skills audit to fit my current confidence with these topics and areas in Games Design.
My FMP did not include any coding or programming, along with any Unity or Blender, and therefore I wasn’t able to brush up on those specific skills. I did, however, feel as though I significantly improved on my research. My primary research lacked greatly due to the fact that there is very little about Japanese culture where I am currently that I can outwardly obtain information through. I was able to get opinions from people in specific fields about design elements, but for the most part, it was severely lacking.
As we have not presented yet, I cannot confirm nor deny if I have gotten better or worse at this topic.
Overall, I am satisfied at the progress I have made throughout this project.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XlYtD9Nwa0NL6d-vycqXYQ_0XABlEqex/view?usp=sharing
In the link above is my final animatic for this project.
Using Clip Studio Paint to work on my transition tweening between panels, along with the creation of each frame, I produced a 15 second long animatic following the storyboard I had created previously and honing in design elements using the concepts I designed beforehand.
I was able to portray my Oni character in the way I was aiming for- innocent looking and mischievous- but I had issues with the artistic aspect of doing this in an animated manner (ie. maintaining the energy I was aiming for throughout panels) and as a result of this, the final piece is more flat than I had expected.
Another issue I encountered during final production was layer clipping for colour on my characters. Unfortunately, I was not able to fix this issue, and my final piece remained uncoloured. In more simple terms, I *had* coloured each frame, but the clipping tool that carried my colour would not respond when I went to merge my layers together, and completely evaporate from my drawing. As I had already merged the base white with my line art layer to allow my character to be visible during the creation process of the animatic (something I hadn’t used on my last project that I wanted to try), my colour layers were set on ‘multiply’, and when I merged the multiply with the white layer, the colour failed to show. I could not set the layer back to normal as it would overtake the lines, and so I was left with only a white/grey base colour on my animation. To avoid this mistake again, I would create a separate folder for each individual frame (which although would take up copious amounts of storage, would save me the hassle of fighting against my horrendously-organised layers).
I did manage to hone in with a skill technique of squash and stretch in a small portion of my animatic, allowing my character to bounce slightly, and pairing it with a key frame where she attempts to look like an innocent child to obtain free food from the vendor, which gives off the exact energy I was attempting to go for in my final product.
I went onto YouTube to obtain free-to-use audio clips with a bustling crowd as ambience for the final piece, and I screen recorded a couple of sound effects from my copy of Minecraft to use as well. These were the sounds of my character walking on cobblestone, placing stone in Minecraft (for the sound effect of the Oni putting the miscellaneous lint on the table as payment and the sound of them taking the eho-maki roll), and the eating sound effect. I chose these effects due to the silent nature of the animatic, and felt as though I needed something going on in the background.
Finally, I used a very simplified art style for this animatic. My reasoning behind this choice was that I could not choose a canvas size that would be suitable for the type of brush I use in my normal linework, and as all of my lines started appearing pixelly when I attempted to draw normally (storage issue on my part- would have increased canvas size if I could have), I decided to go for something simpler that would look charming using what brushes I had. Hand-in-hand with the unique nature of my main style and how my original style makes my Oni character look far older than I had intended, I went for the chibi (small and round) style seen in the animatic.
In conclusion, although not entirely happy with how this piece turned out, I am satisfied with the outcome. The choppiness of the art and transitions give it a unique charm which I appreciate, and I have broadened my skills for animatics in the process. This is only my third ever attempt at an animatic, and for what it’s worth, I believe it turned out better than I expected it to initially.
Problem Solving (FMP in General)
Practical
For practical problems, I had trouble deciding on a colour for the Oni’s kimono. I came up with a few different colours that I liked but couldn’t decide which suited her the best so I asked for feedback from a few friends with backgrounds in art to guide my choice.
Another practical problem I found myself facing was the construction of the scene where the animation takes place. I needed to save time while also making something that would be culturally accurate to Japanese furniture. My solution to this was Genshin Impact’s Serenitea Pot, a function in the game that allows players to create their own scenes using items from the games world. I used furniture from Inazuma, a region heavily inspired by older japan. This allowed me to very quickly produce an inspired setting as well as get the angles I need to fulfil the animation. I edited the frames from these screenshots to clear out space on the stall, in order to have space for my characters to place down their items (buttons for the Oni girl and the eho-maki roll the vendor gave to her.)
I repeated this process in the last two screenshots in order to keep the items on the stall consistent throughout scenes.
My biggest problem was my time management when it came to the animation. After beginning the animation I realized that it would take a lot longer than I had originally planned for to create the full animation. I made the last minute decision to cut my work down into an animatic to save on time and to make sure I would finish it on time while keeping the animations length and main content.
Theoretical
For theoretical problems, I had trouble finding reliable sources of information that didn’t contradict each other so I took extra time making sure all my sources were genuine, checking for authors and dates. I found Oni’s a particularly difficult topic to get consistent information on as many different folklore tales depict Oni in different ways. I decided to look into a couple of the most well known Oni tales to get a better image of how they behave. For their appearance I compiled a Pinterest board with many different Oni designs before coming to a general conclusion of common features.
In order to get a basic feel for animation before I started my final piece, I decided to attempt a basic ball drop exercise.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1J4c0l8i509bWPkLQyRDgXLP-WjQ8_19U/view?usp=sharing
For this animation, I focused on a 12 FPS basis to attempt a squash and stretch technique to apply to my FMP. I started with a basic drop and bounce, looping the ball bounce when it got back up to the top.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zyO_xW2yK1JShkks05GPJByInIiPHwEZ/view?usp=sharing
After that, I focused on attempting a ball bounce that would move across the screen, following the same 12 FPS routine.
However, through my attempt at this, I realised something crucial for my project. What was initially a fun little exercise to reel myself into my final project turned into the sudden realisation that the animation techniques that were necessary for my final work would not come to me before the end of the project. More simply put, animation is a LOT of work, and attempting a proper animation would require more time than I had.
Due to this realisation, I have decided to go for an animatic instead of an animation. An animatic relies on minimal framework and transitions between frames, in comparison to transitions through framework for animations. This way, I would be able to properly fulfil my ideas and storyline for my project whilst simultaneously following a style that is supposed to be choppy and somewhat slow.
Having a final design set in stone for my main character, the next cause of action is to produce a story board to prepare for my animation.
Here is a (very) rough storyboard that highlights the key events for my animation, with a text description of what is happening below each panel. Creating this storyboard was incredibly helpful as now I have a clear idea of the sequence of events that will happen in my final piece, along with the different angle shots that I need to follow. I created this storyboard using Procreate.
Side Character Concept
After finishing my storyboard, I decided to finalise a general appearance for the side character that will appear with my Oni character, the stall vendor.
This headshot is the most I feel as though I have to conceptualise for him, as he will be standing behind a stall throughout the animation, and I therefore feel as though it is not necessary to touch up on full body concepts for him.
I chose some dark colours for this character, and using the research I found about kimonos, I decided to give him a muted plain red outfit (my research told me that civilians and samurai alike all favoured wearing kimonos throughout the Edo period, and the mans outfits would lack patterns and be dark or muted colours).
His design is nothing special, nor is it inspired by anything in particular, as my only idea was to create an easy-to-draw stall vendor with an NPC-like appearance for simplicity when I animate him.
Animation Backdrops
Finally, I came up with the idea of constructing my own scene with the Teapot feature in Genshin Impact. This was ultimately to save time and manage to get culturally accurate furniture to Japan, as there is a region in the game based on older Japan under a Shogunate’s rule, called Inazuma.
I built this scene from a blank canvas, using Hokkaido as inspiration for the structure, using in-game purchasable items such as buildings, trees and stools to produce a Japanese-inspired setting, similar to the vibe that I wished to fulfil for my scene.
I took three screenshots that followed the angle settings I featured in my storyboard.
The first screenshot being a head-on view from the back of the stall, where the Oni girl’s head will pop out from. (Panels 1 2 3 4 8 and 9)
The second screenshot focuses on a front view of the stall, similar to panels 5 6 and 7.
The final screenshot is a more open shot, displaying the other assets I used to build a small Japanese town. This shot will represent panels 10 11 and 12, and will also be featured in the end of the animation as the Oni girl walks away.
In order to completely transform this scene in a way that will fit the overall theme that I am going for, I will edit these background shots and recolour/fill areas that I think need work in order to follow my vision.
Overall, I believe that all three of these practical’s are fundamental for the beginning stage of my animation, and after I finish the backdrop editing, I will be able to start on animating.
After honing in all of the information I discovered through my research for my Oni character, I finally created the full body final rendered concept for her design.
I used everything I learnt about Oni through my research and merged it with my own personal twists for the character.
As this character currently lives in the Edo period and will appear in a festival-related animation, I have drawn her wearing a kimono for the occasion, as kimonos were a prevalent type of outerwear during this period. As she is a child (around 8-10 human years old in my portrayal), she is small and baby-faced, with hair shorter than typical Oni as she hasn’t been around long enough to grow it out. Her immaturity is also highlighted by her lack of ‘demon’ horns, where I gave her one instead of two as she is only young. Simultaneously, due to her childish appearance, she is wearing a long but flowy kimono with long sleeves (long enough to easily drape over a human’s arms) due to the Japanese belief that children’s body temperatures are higher than adults, and therefore they must wear long ventilating flowing clothing to avoid overheating and falling ill. My own personal twist on this character is that I decided to make her look less human with incredibly long arms, almost taking the shape of a bird wing. These are claws that I added on as a spur-of-the-moment decision, backed up by my thought process that they both make her feel out of place in comparison to the humans, and that it would feel much nicer to animate as they have a very round shape in comparison to hands, and I would like to attempt a bounce-and-stretch technique when I animate her, which means I will have to give her lots of cartoonish attributes to make her look more lively.
My original first idea and colour scheme was to make the kimono a shade of red to match the red-white combination I’ve been wanting to maintain (see above), but I decided to experiment with colours and get feedback from people around me, asking them what they preferred better- the green or the red.
My friend Key (a 20 year old American mutual online who goes to art school) told me “For me, the green stands out best. Although the red is very pretty and merges in with the design, the green suits better because of the color contrast. Its aesthetically pleasing to have a nice contrasting palette, and the chosen green both stands out and works very well with the red highlights that pop out on the character’s skin.”
My friend River, who is both an illustrator and musical artist, said “If you’re going for a more earthly feel with her, green will work best. Although you’re going for an unnatural character design in a human-dominated atmosphere, for her to wear green will allow for her to both fit in with the outside scenery and will accentuate the more unnatural features on her design, which will bring more attention to the smaller details that you did in the contrasting colour.”
After collecting these opinions, I stuck with the green. Overall, I am very happy with how her design has turned out, and I think that she will be a very fun character to animate when I get around to it, which is ultimately all I wanted.
Now that I have finalised my main character design, I will work on a storyboard for my animation and will research any extra details or conceptualise any other characters that come into my mind for the script.
Edo Clothing
The traditionally known ‘kimono’ branched off from the yukata, a piece of dress clothing that Japanese people started wearing casually at the beginning of the Edo period.
The yukata was worn casually through the 1603-1867 period of peace by samurai and ordinary people alike. It was a piece of outerwear that sat on the body without an undergarment, held together by an obi.
An obi is a sash that was typically around 10cm in width up until the 17th century, that was replaced during the middle of the Edo period for a more favourable maruobi typically for women: a sash that was around 30cm wide. However, the general go-to and most commonly used obi for the time was the hanhabaobi, a sash that was up to 15cm wide.
During the start of the Edo period, silk-making business was flourishing. This marked the start of the casual outerwear known as the yukata, which originally started as the kanako, a pattern which was woven and somewhat blocky and horizontal in its positioning, was designed for a piece of clothing called the kosode.
http://www.tumblr.com. (n.d.). The Kimono Gallery on Tumblr. [online] Available at: https://www.tumblr.com/blog/view/thekimonogallery [Accessed 22 Feb. 2022].
As fashion changed, so did the kosode. The earliest kosode were woven with small sleeves that were more often than not sown to the body of the kimono. Children’s kimono, however, did not have this feature, as it was nationally believed that children had slightly higher body temperatures to adults, which meant that they would be more prone to illness if they overheated. For this reason, children’s sleeves were open in the back for airflow, and their sleeves were larger and more flowy. This was ultimately to make sure that the children’s temperatures were regulated.
Children’s kimonos stayed like this throughout the course of time, and the woman’s outerwear gradually evolved to resemble the same flowing design, with the child-like free-hanging sleeves around 1770.
The patterns on children and womans clothing were lively and colourful, in contrast to the mens, which generally came in darker colours and usually lacked patterns.
Pinterest. (n.d.). Child kimono with Toys on Dark Navy Ground, Edo Period, Kyoto National Museum | Yukata, Obi, Textiles. [online] Available at: https://www.pinterest.jp/pin/child-kimono-with-toys-on-dark-navy-ground-edo-period-kyoto-national-museum–23643966764108388/ [Accessed 26 Feb. 2022].
Pinterest. (n.d.). Late Edo/Early Meiji Period Japanese Silk Embroidered Child’s Kimono | eBay | Japanese silk, Embroidered silk, Kimono outfits. [online] Available at: https://pin.it/1Dhysiu [Accessed 26 Feb. 2022].
Anon, (n.d.). 35 Lovely Vintage Pictures Show Japanese Little Girls in Kimonos. [online] Available at: https://www.vintag.es/2016/05/35-lovely-vintage-pictures-show.html [Accessed 26 Feb. 2022].
After doing this research, I have been able to distinguish the difference between adult kimono and children’s kimono. With the reference images I have gathered, I now have a good idea on how to go about designing the outfit I will give to my character. Using my research to battle inaccuracies in my work, I will be able to to accurately portray an Edo-style kimono for my character.
Harvard References:
Armstrong, K. (2013). History of Kimono: The Edo Period. [online] Owlcation. Available at: https://owlcation.com/humanities/History-of-Kimono-Part-4-The-Early-Modern-Period-Edo-Period [Accessed 26 Feb. 2022].
國å¸é™¢å¤§å¸. (n.d.). People began wearing yukata as casual clothing in Edo period. [online] Available at: https://www.kokugakuin.ac.jp/en/article/10729 [Accessed 26 Feb. 2022].
Following my recent research on the appearance of Oni, I created my first concept for my character, using the references I had collected on my Pinterest board to design the appearance of my Oni.
By collecting the stereotypical traits seen in Oni, along with referencing my two favourite Oni-coded characters in video games (Arataki Itto and Kuki Shinobu from Genshin Impact, the Head and Deputy Head of the Arataki Gang), I put together a general design idea for my character.
I referenced Kuki Shinobu’s mask for my character, as despite the fact that she is not herself an Oni, her design is meant to go hand in hand with a real Oni character in-game called Arataki Itto, and as a result of this, referencing her design can still be deemed as taking inspiration from Oni folklore. (Kuki Shinobu art belongs to HoyoVerse, creators of Genshin Impact.)
My colour palette was heavily inspired (although not in its entirety) by Arataki Itto (seen in the image above). To compare the colours I used for my character with him, I did a side-by-side palette comparison. Although the colours are for the most part very similar, I referenced several colours from the Oni mood board I created for a large portion of the colour scheme- not directly eyedropping them from the images, but choosing similar shades freehand. (Arataki Itto art belongs to HoyoVerse, creators of Genshin Impact.)
My next step towards the completion of my FMP will be to search into Edo-Japanese clothing culture in order to dress the Oni character appropriately to fit in with my theme of Edo Japan. I already have an idea in mind, as from previous research I have concluded that kimonos are often worn during festivals. As I progress with my research, I will be able to either confirm or deny the idea that kimonos were worn during the Edo period, and design the outfit for my character accordingly.
To start my concept designs for my Oni character, I compiled a Pinterest board with a wide variety of original designs and versions of Oni. This was a necessary step to be able to piece together the defining aspects of what other peoples interpretations of Oni look like.
Through collecting the images in this mood board, I have come to the conclusion that most Oni designs share certain characteristics with one another, such as:
- Long shaggy hair (usually black or white, although occasionally have a hint of alternative colour in them)
- One or two ‘demon’ horns on their heads (differing in sizes)
- Some form of mask, whether a full face mask or half. Follows the same principles of the folklores, where they appear fierce and intimidating.
- Armed with a weapon (katana, kanabo, etc)
- Wearing traditional Japanese clothing, like samurai armour or the kimono
Next, I created a mood board revolving purely around Oni masks. As my idea consists of a young girl Oni in disguise, I wanted to highlight the femininity and purity surrounding her design. For this reason, I decided to choose a white half-face Oni mask, which wouldn’t obstruct her upper face, with red undertones to match the ultimate colour palette of the traditional Oni, which is associated with the colours red and white.
In order to visualise what this character would look like, I will create some concept sketches next to map out their visual aspects. Simultaneously, I will need to delve further into traditional Edo-Period clothing to give my Oni character.
After taking some time to consider the progress of my FMP currently, I realised that, for what its worth, my project still requires a lot more research before I can properly crack on with finalising the storyboard for my animation. I took a while to reflect on how much more I will need to research and change before I can start, and I have come to the conclusion that I will be changing the main prompt for my animation.
I will be changing my idea from a battle scene between two characters in Hokkaido between an Oni of Japanese descent and another character from Chinese descent to an Oni causing mayhem during a festival in Hokkaido during the Edo period, as it is a period of peace. The Oni, however, will be under disguise as a human (through research I have been able to confirm that Oni can in fact shapeshift).
My initial idea is to make the Oni a child, both due to the fact that animating a small character allows me to be more expressive with their movements, and that I can make them interact with a human, acting almost like a lost puppy and then transforming back to their original Yokai form to startle them.
The festival will be Setsubun, something I have researched prior to changing my idea in the first place, and it allows me the freedom of giving my Oni character some personality. As Setsubun is based around warding off evil spirits, such as Oni, I have leeway to adapt a sneaky mischievous nature to my character, avoiding everything superstitiously negative for them, like roasted fuku mame that has been thrown over the floor.
Now that I have a more clear and (personally speaking) better idea for my project, I will need to continue to do research into a few more topics, such as:
- The appearance of Oni (moodboards), in order to be able to start conceptualising my character
- Further Hokkaido study (moodboards and analysis) to base my background on
- Structural analysis (buildings, stalls, in Japan, which will serve as inspiration and reference in my animation)
- Colour analysis for the Oni and Hokkaido (colour palettes)
- Research on the Edo Japan period and how it changed Japan in comparison to its days of war
- Civilian clothing during the Edo Japan period, along with festival wear
- Oni representation in video games
- Oni mask analysis
- Animation cycles for child characters (maybe look into younger characters in anime and video games as inspiration?)
- Ball animation cycles (My idea is to make the character look bouncy and animated due to the upbeat and energetic nature of children)
Once I have covered all of these points and necessities to the project, I will be able to create my concepts and storyboards for my final animation.
In order to finalise the change in my ideas, I rewrote the Project Proposal to follow this projects plans.
Games Design Y2 