This assignment is based on the location drawing we made at the Tate Modern Museum. We had to choose a scene and design it as a story that could be told through only three panels of storyboards, with a beginning, middle, and end. I chose an interaction between a grandmother and a little girl, and as I look at them, the little girl is looking at her grandmother and seems to have something to say. I didn’t hear their conversation, but when I saw them standing and selling the artist manikin, I remembered that when I was shopping in the store, I made the three artist manikins into different gestures just for fun. Therefore I used this image and the artist manikins I posed as inspiration to create a story that is similar to the idea of Toy Story which the toys came alive but need to avoid human attention.

I think this activity was very interesting because it made me think that the picture I drew comes to life in another way in my imagination. In terms of what needs to be improved, after sharing with my teacher and classmates, they suggested that I should modify the first panel so that the part when the little girl sees the artist’s manikin is more obvious. This can help the overall story would be more coherent and would not be confused about what was happening.

We were asked to do the observational drawing at a certain location. However we planned to do it outside, but the weather was not good on that day, therefore we changed the location to Tate Modern Museum. I think it was a good change because we could observe people’s behavior and interaction better in the museum. At first, my friends and I chose to observe in the gallery, where we could see the expressions and movements of many people as they viewed the different works, and record them in drawings. However, later we went to the café because we could avoid some awkward situations and the people sitting in the café would stay longer, giving us more time to observe and draw.

The first part of the project we were asked to do was to simply draw people, without adding backgrounds or interactions. The advantage of this requirement was that we only had to focus on their expressions, movements, and clothing. This also helped us to practice our observational skills and drawing skills because it was difficult to draw in a short period of time so that the audience could tell what I have drawn. The reason for this was that I started out by going for details, and I didn’t finish the drawing after the people had left, so even I didn’t understand what I had drawn.

During the second part, we were asked to observe and draw a scene with people’s interaction. My friends and I chose to go to a children’s souvenir store in a museum because there were many people there interacting with children and it was all much more interesting to observe. This part is also for our last assignment, we had to choose a scene to draw a three-panel storyboard.
The scene that I choose for this assignment was the top right one in the second image, which was the interaction between the grandmother and the little girl.

I thought this activity was very interesting because I could closely see how other people interacted and acted, and I could express it through my own drawing. I could still recall the scene even after a long time when I saw those sketches I made, which made me realize the power of observational drawing.

In this activity, we practiced a lot of observational drawings, which are simple objects. In fact, I have not studied professional art in the past, but after I came to this school, I found that the foundation of art is important and I also found the benefits of observational drawing. It not only trained me to draw faster and capture the movement of people, things, and objects but also helps me to observe more on my surroundings. We also did observational drawings on the texture that we saw, I think this helped me in the way that I might able to use these shapes and patterns in my artwork in the future, they gave me inspiration.

During this class, we also drew our own hands, but we had to keep our eyes on them and not look at the paper. This practice trained our ability to position ourselves accurately while we are drawing and I think it also made me become more confident in what I am drawing and be more decisive.

The last activity of the class was to draw a large observational drawing, starting with a piece of paper, finding an angle around the classroom, and starting sketching until the edge, then continuing with another piece of paper. I found this activity very interesting because it gave me a feeling of freedom to draw and I could see from my classmates’ work that everyone has a different perspective even though we were in the same classroom.

For this class activity, we learned how to use the 3 act structure to structure our story. We started by having a practice with the movie we picked. The movie that our group picked was Kung Fu Panda, because that was the movie that I watched recently.

I think this event helped me a lot because I was able to learn how to organize a story in the most concise and clear way. Using a familiar story like Kung Fu Panda maximizes the effectiveness of this exercise. I also think it would work well for my own animation work because sometimes I get so caught up in what I’m drawing that I lose the importance of the story itself, and with this, I can easily plan my story beforehand and have a clear storyline that makes the overall work more efficient and clearer.

This was the week 1 assignment that we did for this rotation, We were asked to draw a storyboard with 20 to 60 frames for this activity, and the story needed to be about two people in a cafe. I chose the story of two friends who met in a cafe and got into a robbery accident when they went out. I was excited when I saw the robbery theme because I felt I had a personal connection with it. I had been robbed of my cell phone by a biker in the UK before and the scare was still fresh in my mind. Therefore I wanted to use this experience to create an idea of what would happen if I had the ability to fight back and caught the criminals after being robbed.

I think the assignment was very interesting and I think I learned a lot from it. First, I learned how to plan a whole story better. Because we only have 60 frames and I have a lot of stories I want to tell, it’s important to think about the beginning and the end first and then move slowly through the assignment. I like writing novels, but I used to write them without outlines, therefore I often didn’t know how the story would go. Drawing a storyboard taught me how to organize my thoughts better. The second point is composition and camera angle. Although I had drawn storyboards before, when I did that I hadn’t considered these, this time I added this consideration to this storyboard, and I think it’s more interesting and can show some emotions and character perspectives very effectively.

We shared this assignment with the class and the teacher, and I got a lot of useful comments. I think I still need to change the camera angle in some parts because I didn’t draw it at the right angle, for example, there is a scene from the top where my chair is not drawn properly. Therefore if I want to make this storyboard into an animation, it may cause misunderstanding, so I think the right angle is still very important.

In conclusion, I think this activity was meaningful and helpful as we demonstrated our learning in the lesson through this assignment. I also think it was fun because we had a lot of freedom to design and create our own scenarios, that we don’t actually need to animate out. Moreover, we had the opportunity to ask for feedback from our classmates and teachers to further our abilities.

During this lesson, we were learning about how to create a good mood board. Before I don’t really understand the purpose of moodboard. But after using it for several projects, I realised that it was really useful for organising and collecting ideas. It was like a collection of inspiration and you can easily see what you want to achieve by looking at the moodboard that you created. I also found it helpful because by looking for images and ideas, I am being inspired at the same time, although I may not put them into the moodboard, but I may used them as the reference in the future.

Moreover, this lesson really explained to us what a good moodboard should contain. This small activity was also a really good practice. The theme we choose was Alice In Wonderland but in a style of teenage and psychedelic. We decided to use a lot of bright and highly contrasting color to show the effect of psychedelics and drugs. The part I like the most was how we combined all the elements including illustration, street view, and movie screenshot, just by looking at this moodboard, I already have an idea of how this artwork might possibly looks like.

I think what we need to improve on for this mood board maybe that we need to organize it a bit more because all our images are layering on top of each other, which makes it the audience and us hard to look, also the color scheme is really similar therefore it might be confusing by the first glance.

This was the first class activity that we did in our first-week storyboard rotation. During this class, the teacher introduced to us a lot of different techniques on how to draw a good storyboard. She also showed us a lot of examples such as the famous part from the animation movie “Up” with a side-to-side storyboard comparison, it was a really useful thing to look at because it could give as an idea of how to do a storyboard that is not too detailed but can really show the main event that happens in that frame.

We learned about different things including visual literacy, composition, and cinematography, I think this was a valuable lesson because that knowledge can not only apply to storyboarding, but also in other areas such as 3D animation is still really useful.

The aim of this activity is to draw a scene in one frame, my chosen prompt was “A surprising discovery”. I decided to show depth by showing the size contrast between my two characters. I put the ants on the side to show the effect of an over-the-shoulder shot, to show an ant’s perspective. I also used the magnifying glass to highlight the size difference and give a focal point for the audience.

I think what I need to improve on first I should make the ants lower and smaller because the composition that I have now is not exaggerated enough. I also think that there are some details I need to fix and show, such as the angle of the magnifying glass does not really make sense.