whoops forgot to upload the final bgs for the beach and hospital!

For the last part of the work experience, I finalised the beach and hospital backgrounds, created some seaweed assets and painted a big underwater background in 4K so that Marie can zoom in and use it as a stage or pan across however she likes. I’m quite proud of how the stickers came out! I hope they’ll be used in the final.

Marie very helpfully gave me two books with gorgeous visuals of seaweed and coral, one on underwater British marine life and one called the seaweed collector’s handbook which was particularly stunning! I’m sometimes a bit lazy to collect references and use them, but I can truly see the difference in how convincing the shapes are after I’ve looked at some proper references. I’m an impatient person and sometimes rush right into drawing rather than taking time to research, but seeing the results of using references convinces me to slow down and save myself time later on. Researching for references is a good habit that I feel I could nurture.

Doing this project has really boosted my confidence as a colourist, so much so I feel like I could potentially get into it in the animation industry. Of course, it wouldn’t be my primary skill since I have never been trained as a painter or sought to develop my colour awareness very far. But it’s nice to know that I can do it when the opportunity or need arises.

That being said, I found it harder to work on the abstract underwater background, because I had less form and shapes to work with as a base and arrange them within the composition. I had to go for a more soft painterly look, which I’m not entirely comfortable with yet since I like clean edges and flat, matte shapes.

Overall, I’ve found that I really like working on a project with others, rather than independently working on my own. I like contributing to someone else’s story ideas and providing the visuals after negotiating and understanding what they need. It may be even preferable to creating alone – even though I’d have complete power over a personal project, I wouldn’t feel the same excitement of collaboration. I suppose this means I’m not cut out to be a showrunner, but that’s okay!

From March 2019 to about May 2021, I did reportage sketching at Hong Kong’s pro-democracy demonstrations. I saw clashes between protestors and riot police get increasingly violent as our government gleefully turned their backs on us to accept orders from the CCP. I did it as part documentation and a reminder to myself of what we were losing. Because everyone in the fight, though they fought nobly from the beginning, always knew it was a losing battle. I did it to remind myself that we stood up for principles of freedom of speech, freedom of thought, freedom of the press, of education decoupled from nationalism, and morality decoupled from government propaganda. We stood up even against forces vastly more powerful.

With the international community also rallying behind us, many western countries opened their borders to Hong Kongers (though for some, it was only right (looking at you, British colonisers)). I genuinely believe that if we didn’t make so much of a fuss and organise ourselves as well as we did, there wouldn’t now be as many opportunities for us to leave.

But we still lost. And I’m here in London and for my own safety, I can’t go back. I was so determined to keep going to protests, keep drawing, spread the word about Hong Kong when I got here, but now I don’t feel like there’s a point. We lost – what more is there to say?

I don’t get to go back home. I just want to be happy.

Tried out some colour keys for the murky underwater scene and sickly hospital room today. I took inspiration from Nathan Fowkes’ way of working. He starts with abstract thumbnails and just lays in a few colours in each composition. I think it leads to cohesion and also greater contrast, and it definitely looks stunning to me.

I think I wouldn’t necessarily do these thumbnails unless I was in the early stage of the process – say, if composition was already finalised, maybe I would just follow the composition and do a few colour options. But painted thumbnails are a great way of freely experimenting with mood and contrast, and the best thing is that you may even surprise yourself with a solution you hadn’t thought of before.

Certainly if I’d just gone straight to drawing the layout and colouring in, I wouldn’t play around with the hints of bright, saturated pinks/oranges/yellows/teals (which I hope are suggestive of sunlight streaming in). If I have time in a future project to play around at this stage, I certainly would.

These two weeks, we’ll be working with 2nd years on their final films for work experience. I had already previously worked with Marie on the Cardiff Animation 48 hour film festival so I requested her – and later found out that she’d also been thinking of me for background design!

Her film follows the prompt of matching visuals to an existing piece of sound design or music, and she showed me her animatic – her story is super cool and examines our responsibility/culpability? in polluting the ocean. Even as we try to minimise harm and actively help, the effects are limited if it’s on an individual level. I’m just impressed that she managed to say something so complex in no words at all!

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I’ve been asked to do some colour keys and eventually background design for 3 locations – the tropical paradise of the beach, the murky and grimy underwater scenes, and the sickly hospital at the end. I worked this morning on the beach!

This like a spot the difference game or something, but I wanted Marie to have some different options for atmosphere before I moved onto something more finalized.

She mentioned she’d do some rigging of assets in after effects too, so I made her a little tourists sticker pack in case it would come in helpful. It certainly made it easier for me to populate the scene quickly!

Worked on my lip sync animation after this and got a LOT more frustrated. Maybe I’m more suited to colour and background work after all…or at least animations without talking involved.

I am forever grateful to the Polygon Select Tool for letting me churn out some fanart when my hand is too tired to draw lines and curves. Everything underneath was select tool except for the eyes and eyebrows.

A weird result is that this image now almost looks vector based? I kinda like the style. Now if only this worked on CC Animate without me having to cut coloured shapes out from the entire stage…

facial acting. i had fun with this exercise!

Definitely can be interpreted as a metaphor for artistic burnout…

Kiki’s Delivery Service is probably my favourite Miyazaki film – initially because I dreamed of such independence and freedom as a child, but now rewatching, it’s my favourite because I relate so hard to Kiki’s burnout and depression period in the middle of the film.

The opening of the film is dominated by greens, blues and some yellows in her idyllic cottage life. This is a familiar, safe, but boring space for Kiki, though so romanticised by cottagecore enthusiasts now, probably. In leaving this place, she’ll start on a standard Bildungsroman/coming-of-age journey. I particularly adore how beautifully the backgrounds are painted. In doing so, Miyazaki makes it clear that she wants to leave out of her own ambition. She has loving parents that take good care of her, devoted friends, and a beautiful home. There’s nothing unpleasant or inherently unbearable about her life, except that she wants independence. Her motivations are initially only positive.

The big city is also gorgeously designed, with the ornate architecture and signage contrasting Kiki’s more rustic, sturdy cottage. There’s also now the prevalence of purples and warm yellows, faded reds, which help create the atmosphere of European streets. I’m thinking in particular of the painted shops and streaks of sunlight and shadows that alter those colours.

Kiki goes through some difficulties but seems to be finding her feet, until a particularly difficult delivery makes her miss her friend’s party. At the same time, she has her first genuinely unpleasant interaction with another character (“I hate Grandma’s herring pie”, etc.) She loses her powers and shows signs of depression after this – unable to understand Jiji, unable to enjoy what she used to love doing, feeling useless. She is now motivated by fear. What if she can never fly again? What if that’s the only thing she’s good at? The film pointedly connects this lack of vitality and creativity to artistic burnout. Her art friend advises her: “Then stop trying to. Take long walks, look at the scenery, doze off at noon. Don’t do anything. And then suddenly, you’ll be flying again.”

This is so important for anyone in the creative industry. Because art is so connected to the self, when we’re unable to create, it can be a crushing experience. But art is just like any other activity. There will be different seasons, and nothing in nature blooms all the time. We can’t expect ourselves to either.

Also, I doubt lawyers and tax accountants start angsting when they don’t feel passion for their craft. Why should artists?

At the end, Kiki regains her confidence and creativity, and is able to fly with her heart again. She’s able to succeed when it matters – which is all that matters, really. However, she is forever changed by this experience. Jiji never speaks to her again, meowing at her like a real cat in the last few minutes ((edit: UNLESS YOU WATCHED THE ENGLISH DUB VERSION, APPARENTLY? My British friends say that Jiji spoke again in the versions they watched >:OOO)). I think this symbolic of her maturity especially after going through her trials, but maybe a certain innocence is lost. As artists grow and improve at their craft, I guess they also lose the ability to draw with complete innocence and delight, like a child would.

Sometimes you can just tell when an animator is putting their Relatable Artist’s Experience onscreen. This one really connected with me.

I opened commissions for character model/pose sheets in November, mostly intended for dungeons and dragons players who might wanna see their OCs doing cool stuff. I do so much life drawing that working out poses without reference isn’t a massive difficulty, and I love knowing about other people’s characters.

I will usually ask commissioners to fill out a detailed questionnaire about their character (and many people give me SO MUCH information because they’re excited – it’s very cute). I then get an idea of what poses to do, and make sure I get in as many little, personalised details as I can manage.

It’s worked out really well! I’m on my 15th DND character sheet commission right now, and still reeling from the knowledge that some people actually might want to pay for my art. I’m so grateful that everyone’s been kind.

I hope I can continue doing this! I feel like it’s helpful practice for animation. And it’s paying for my living expenses, at least.

First off, I don’t know how they managed to get all the royalty rights for such popular songs? (Not even just the English ones, they played Meditacão in the background when shrek and donkey first arrived at lord Farquaad’s town. Bizarre). But the film was so tonally silly that it all worked brilliantly together.

I remember seeing Shrek in the cinemas when it first came out and knowing it was animation but thinking it was so realistic. Now it’s absolutely clear that this is old, outdated 3D. Strange how the eye develops to be able to tell the difference, like a sped-up attuning of our uncanny valley senses.

Shrek works really well as a subversion of fairy tale tropes, especially because Fiona seems initially so determined to fulfill them. She expects Shrek to sweep her off her feet and kiss her just because he rescued her from the castle, and is confused when he resists. As the audience are familiar with the tropes (kinda Disney’s fault too) they’re able to play this for laughs on a meta level as well as establishing Fiona’s motivations. Our expectations are later subverted again with the revelation that she herself is an ogre. The image of an ugly, gross, farty ogre that was played for laughs in the beginning of the movie then becomes a more serious metaphor for self acceptance and body image.

Overall, I liked the treatment of serious tropes as comedic, and comedic ideas as serious – especially when it’s dependent on the audience’s expectations.

Also, milk/waterboarding scene. Incredible stuff.