Internship blog

Week 1 [16 Dec 2019 - 20 Dec 2019]

My first week and I'm given prop design for a children nursery rhyme animation. So I have to make everything look like toy versions of the actual item

Challenges: Making industrial item look like kid friendly toys is hard because of how dangerous the item is.

Learning:

• Look at other toy designs with almost the same type of anatomy to make it look a little more kiddish and playful.
• When putting in the colours choose colours that are very different from the character and background, a way to do this is by putting the character next to the prop colour combination and seeing if it's too similar.
• With this it's better to pick harmonious colours that compliments the character instead of fight for attention with the character.
• Be your own critique on your work to see if the design can work with the rest of the environment.
• Learned the pipeline of how things work from getting the treatment-> script->breakdown of items needed per shot.
• Lots of retakes that I think is the industry's way of saying feedback
• Put lots of references for concept so the 3D modelers will know how to model it better and also see the texture.
• Concepts may also be used in storyboarding so to be faster just go the lineart and cell shading to make it faster.
• To make a prop and pick colours, can pick one colour from the character, like an accent colour to put on the prop to make it look more harmonious.
• I worked on a knitting prop that required to be stretched and it's alright to stretch it in concept because the riggers will be able to rig it later
• I also learned about paintovers that save a lot of time in the painting process. 

Reflection: I learned it takes a lot more time to design when you have to think into a design. Also in the industry, it's best to just do the design roughly and put in a colour combination and send it all in one go to save everyone's time because everytime I finished a task, or option I would send it in to my supervisor for him to pick but that takes a lot f time so I just started doing roughs with flat colours and sending it in first. In a company, it's okay to design some slightly complicated movements in the designs because the technical people will be able to figure out how to fix it later.

Week 2 [23 Dec 2019 - 27 Dec 2019]

This week I'm given a painting job to paint a wool ball for compositing. I was also given a last minute Christmas card to do after lunch so that one is more on a time crunch. Then I also did some character design, and a scope and launcher for a sniper this week. Wow I did a lot this week.

Challenges: My polishing skills aren't very good so this was a bit difficult for me and required a lot of time for me to get it looking good. I had problems with my gradients for the values so they weren't very clean looking. I'm also not very loose when it comes to designing so my designs are still rigid and one idea.

Learning:

• Use the tools in the program, it makes life a lot easier
• Use the gradient tool to make a smooth gradient that doesn't look like a half done paint job
• Follow the nature of the material, make the shape a little more irregular but not too distorted 
• Polishing is very technical.
• When making another variation of this, I can just take one ball from the clump and stretch and reposition it to save time making another wool ball variation.
• When designing a composition, just sketch out some ideas, just do it loosely, any idea that comes into your head you sketch it out and pick one later.

Reflection: I learned that I should use the tools in the program to my advantage and to save time in my polishing process. Going back to the basics like values is always always very important when doing any artwork, it's kinda weird how I let myself get caught up in fancy brushes when all I used was the round brush and airbrush tool when to be honest those 2 tools are almost enough for everything, brushes can come along when something needs a certain texture.

Week 3 [30 Dec 2019 - 3 Jan 2020]

I continued doing the scope. I had my first meeting this week but a lot of the staff had taken leave so the meeting was really fast and wasn't very in detail.

Challenges: It was daunting at first to make the scope because I've never even played First Person Shooter games that much

Learning:

• Better to go at things step by step and finish everything according to the same theme first before moving on because your flow of thinking and drawing are gonna be disrupted 
• Layers are your best friends
• Photo bashing techniques to be able to do paintovers to make the process faster.
• Get the roughs done with minimum amt of strokes to just get the feeling, persona.
• Perspective and dynamic posing is important as in to stretch out the pose as far as you can but still see the character silhouette.

Reflection: For this week I tried to just be a little more looser when designing and I tried something different from the typical scope design and that design was chosen in the end so it was nice to see that drawing loosely can bring in more different ideas and make something more interesting.

Week 4 [6 Jan - 10 Jan]

For this week I got tasks to do 2 reporter characters; 1 cameraman and 1 female reporter. I also have to design the camera for the cameraman. Tips for the cameraman is to design the character with the prop already in the silhouette so people can look at the concept and know how he's going to carry the camera. Some feedback also came back for the wool ball for fixing. Then I started doing some backgrounds this week for the nursery rhyme animation.

Challenges: By this week my brain was a bit burned out, I really wanted to do the best work all the time 100% super fast that I think I got burned out here and couldn't come up with good ideas for the reporters. This was also my first time doing backgrounds and as I'm not the best at polishing, it was also quite hard to make it look better.

Learning:

• Try to go for a think first then artistic approach second when drawing something
• So try to study and rough out the shape wanted first and seeing if it looks fine, then only go into polishing.
• Sketching something out first to get a nice composition and to see if the shape fits well with the style wanted
• Try to use digital media to my advantage and the tools in the program to help me achieve what I want to do like using the blur filter to do blending from harsh strokes.
• If the project uses 3D, it's okay to use the same model for multiple characters but there are many ways to change the character appearance like clothes, colour, accessories, a good way to cover a character's identity is to use glasses.

Reflection: Burn out is very bad and if I want to be able to be consistent and come up with good ideas, I'll have to take care of myself because if I'm in the industry, I don't think anyone is going to come along and take care of me. I also learned being rough just to get the idea first is not something bad to do and it's not a waste of time, it actually speeds things up because the idea is out for approval faster than polishing and finding out the idea is rejected.

Week 5 [13 Jan - 17 Jan]

 This week I continued doing some background work given to me on Friday for clouds ( the client really likes clouds), then I did turnarounds for the approved cameraman and reporter woman designs  from earlier. This week the Head Concept artist (Art station: Amir Abu Bakar) looked at our portfolios and gave feedback for our works. Then I continued with the camera prop design, this time the modellers found a camera they had done before and now I just had to do a paint over to have it match the style of the project I'm working on.

Challenges: Turnarounds have to be very very detailed, everything has to be in the right place so having this attention to detail is a bit difficult at first.

Learning:

• Have to train your eye to be able to see these small details that might not match up with the other views of the turnaround.
• When scaling something, it's okay to exaggerate the proportions a bit for staging purposes and t also fit with the character's anatomy.
• I also learned the behind the scenes in the company, like how do they keep everything organised by using gun charts and softwares, and online softwares like kitsu.  gun charts and how the gun-charts are organised to have the task, person working on it, progress, start date, end date, due date. The organisation was using drop downs menus which I haven’t seen for organising. I think the company separates gun-charts and progress.

Reflection: From the portfolio review, I found out my strongest thing is lineart and that I had strong lines, I never knew that and thought it was just a small thing when it came to doing concept art or it wasn't needed at all but he showed me some of his own work that uses lineart to get the strong silhouette and design then he continued with colouring. It was reassuring seeing something I've worked hard to make strong actually be useful in the industry and I guess no matter how you draw as long as it looks good in the end that's all that matters. There was a fun Chinese New Year party for employees to gather and have fun so we all could leave to go by 5.30pm.

Week 6 [20 Jan - 24 Jan]

I was tasked to make some props this week for an oriental themed carnival. This week I learned about the modular system in making similar type of prop because I had to design some kiosks as well

Challenges: Researching for this one was a bit harder because I had to really look into all oriental cultures and make designs that looked oriental but didn't belong to any culture. Since in some cultures, certain designs mean something important so I had to look into them to make sure what I designed didn't mean anything as well. I started tensing up for this because of all the research I was doing so the designs didn't have much variety and weren't strong this time. I also got briefed to design a generator.

Learning:

• When doing a concept, take into account the lighting team as well because one of my earlier designs had fairylights and my supervisor advised me to change them into 1 or 2 lanterns so it will be easier for the lighting team.
• When designing for oriental things, it's best to go with feng shui because it's more of a general design choice.
• I learned about the modular system doing this and realised how much it's used in games and I never realised if it's done well.

Reflection: I need to relax a lot more while doing these concepts, maybe I could make a moodboard and just loosely draw. I think I'll have to try and do that

Week 7 [27 Jan - 31 Jan]

I did the generator design but it's too plain so I was advised to add more references to transformers (machine not the movie) to get some ideas. Then I worked on a tambourine and Precussion triangle and backgrounds for en episode again.

Challenges: The power generator was a bit hard to design because all the references of a generator is just a box with maybe a logo which led to a plain boring generator. It was also difficult cell shading a percussion triangle because of how reflective it is and it's material is metal, making a tambourine and planning it for the modellers is hard too because of how detailed a tambourine is when it comes to it's shingles.

Learning:

• It okay to take reference from something of a similar nature to what I'm designing, it can give a better effect and a clearer signs of the prop's purpose.
• Making the tambourine I learned I can make something simpler and also that when I design something, I'll have to think about it's original design and why it's that way, so learn to design in a more technical fashion.

Reflection: This week was a bit odd because I was burned out and had to celebrate Chinese New Year every night while still going to work and planning a party on Sunday. The experience felt like a weird dream and I just went through it, came out and now some of my work is done with designs that I'm fully aware I did. I'm not sure if this is what working and celebrating feels like all the time but it was quite a first experience.

Week 8 [3 Feb - 7 Feb]

I did the tasks assigned by my supervisor from last week because he wouldn't be in on Monday. The task was to design some screen savers, games and a research screen composition. Then I had no more work to do any longer so I was put to a side project where the supervisor wanted to add to the company portfolio and he wanted me to draw anime girls roughs and concepts for them. This is also a chance for me to improve my anatomy and study it a bit more, also to help me with posing as well and getting a persona from the characters I draw.

Challenges: Learning anatomy and trying to be loose in my concepts were the hardest part for this task. The theme for the anime girls was sci-fi which is something I rarely dabble in.

Learning:

• Referencing is very important and helpful when trying to design something out of my comfort zone.
• After learning anatomy, it becomes easier to pose and do foreshorterning for a character.
• Making a persona for a character in just one pose can be quite challenging but after learning the anatomy, it becomes easier to do it.
• Form and shapes are very important in designing these characters.

Reflection: Doing this helped me improve on my poses and character silhouettes. I also realised how important form is when designing a character because posing requires a good understanding of form. From this I was able to do more dynamic posing which i rarely do because of how nervous I wsa to do all those but I think it's better for me to try and fix it later rather than never start. I also showed my colleagues my work and they advised to reference "Ghost in the Shell" for inspiration and it helped out a lot when doing this. My collagues also gave me support through the stressful time when I was having art blocks.

Week 9 [10 Feb - 14 Feb]

I continued with the anime girls and started colouring to try and find a colouring style which I was comfortable with. I also got some feedback from clients to fix the backgrounds again, and I was tasked to design a clothes kiosk using the kiosk which I did beforehand. My lecturer also did his visitation this week, it went well.

Challenges: Picking colours was always hard for me so to pick the colours for a clothes kiosk where it had to be fashional and aesthetically pleasing to the eye was a bit tough for me even with the help of adobe colour picker.

Learning:

• I learned to use colour palettes from pinterest is a fast way to get some nice colour variations in my design.
• I noticed the colours are mostly monotonous or stayed within the same temperature to keep everything harmonious.
• I learned looking at references while colouring anatomy can help enhance and give form and structure to a character's painting. 

Reflection: The supervisor said my progress is okay but I should try to sketch loosely more just to get the idea out, even if it’s ugly the idea is there just to get it out, then later I can polish it. I also learned in the industry when doing concept art, it doesn’t always have to be very polished, it has to follow budget protocol. This also depends on the workplace and how they run the company.

Week 10 [17 Feb - 21 Feb]

This was a free and easy week because the director hasn't reviewed my work yet and I haven't gotten much work from clients either because there's no new script to look at. This week I helped my colleague who is doing storyboarding on some retakes to lessen her load. I also continued experimenting and exploring on a style. I tried a completely different style which was cute and flat where I changed the proportions to something I liked and worked on making it look like it made more sense.

Challenges: Storyboarding is harder than I thought. I had to think of all the actions that would make sense. Eventhough I was working on the retakes my colleague got and drawing on her previous work, it was still hard to picture everything clearly and make sense of it. I also had to put into account of the character's personality and scale while working on this, and I also had to be fast while maintaining volume while doing this. The good thing is that Im drawing robots so their blocky form is easier to draw and understand quick but their movement restrictions was harder to picture because there wasn't a guide to their restrictions for me to look at so I had to think of the restrictions while giving them dynamic poses as well.

Learning:

• Storyboarding is hard.

Reflection: I appreciate storyboard artists a lot more now and it was actually quite fun and something that I think I might explore into deeper. It was challenging to think of everything but that was also the fun part, to think about the cool poses a character can do even with their restrictions.

Week 11 [24 Feb - 28 Feb]

This week I have been given work to polish some screen designs which I passed for review much earlier, and design a mask for a villain. Then I was given the task to make some high res labels for background items' UV.

Challenges: The challenge this week was making the mask because it had to fit in with the villain's aesthetics which is dark and complex but still look like it's made for the character who is a teenager so it had to be simple as well.

Learning:

• Looking up other references helps out a lot when in a tight pinch
• I don't always have to look like real life items for reference, referencing other people's work is also a good way to get inspired to design.

Reflection: By this week, everything has been going smoothly and I am now aware of everything needed to have my work look presentable and be entry level for the industry. I am very grateful for the attention given during this internship period to teach me into becoming a capable concept artist.