Project 3: Honor Competition

Assignment Brief

We are to join a competition from Honor. We join the accessories category, we need to produce an artwork, an accessories design, and an animation. We can choose concept provided from the competition and further develop it. 

Concept

I first read through the competition details, I observe the past artworks done by others. Then, I picked a theme that I wanted to develop in this project. I choose Genesis - The Future (The fusion of art). I started by gathering inspiration from Pinterest. I have a simple vision for it already and I am searching the inspiration and references that will help me to perfect my visuals. 

I made moodboards for this project. 

Concept:

I wanted to appreciate both the development of technology and art. It is because of the development of technology, people started to enjoy better life, and this is when people started to appreciate the art more, as people have the time and energy now. Through technology, art develops too, we now have so many way to express art, through spatial design, performative media, projection mapping and such. 

In this artwork, the main character is discovering new things while exploring the technology worlds. She slides through the technology world, using phones, tablets, headphones and such. The technology world is colourful and vibrant. Every part of the world has a different art element, different colour, different combination of technologies, indicating that the main character is exploring arts in the technology worlds and she is happily discovering something new. 

Sketching

After I develop my concept and find all the references and created a moodboard. I started to draw my vision out. I started with the character. Initially, I want to create an animal character. But I found out that it is better to be in human form as I want to express the relationship between human and technology. 

First character sketch:

After I have my character, I develop the surroundings design. There are a lor of floating elements on it. Some of them are technology related. 

Final sketch:

I showed my sketch to our lecturer, and it get approved. Lecturer likes the sketch and I can go on develop more digitally. 

Development board:

Outline

I use Adobe Illustrator to trace the outline. 

Colouring

Next, I colour it. In this artwork, I didn't add much shadow, lighting and such, but more focus on the diversity of colours. I use my reference board to get all the colours I want (on the left). And I fill in the colour. 

In the following class, I showed my artwork for consultation. Lecturer likes it, the artwork is fine already. For animation, the curvy part can be wiggling and and the character will be floating. For merchandise, the diamond can be bigger, maybe only the hand andand diamond will be on the merchandise. Or can use the character. Or can use the curvy part only. No need to add gradient already, since it is complex enough.

Final artwork:

Accessories Design

I then add my artwork onto the merchandise of Honor. We download the template from the Honor website and use it directly. For some of the merchandise, it is better to cover it all with artwork, and for some of them like the canvas bag, mug and etc, I feel like it is too much to use the whole artwork. Lecturer also suggested before to use partial of the artwork, I create several variations and pick the best one out of them. 

I use Photoshop for this part, I use clipping masks and blending options to blend my artwork onto the merchandise well.

Final outcome:

Animation

I struggle in animation the most. I follow the video to do the animation for this artwork, but I can't really do any wriggling effect. So, i search for other tutorials online to learn the wriggle effect. I need to convert the object into smart object, then use the transform keyframe to do free transform/distort/warp effect on it. I use mostly warp effect. I try to use puppet wrap tool as this would create a better results in my opinion but it cannot be done due to unknow reason. 

 

I manage to create wriggling effect at the end, but I have to say I am not 100% satisfy with the outcome, but I have done my best and I hope to learn more skills to create a better outcome. Other than the wriggling part, I manage to create a floating effect, and control opacity to manipulate some lighting effect. 

Animation test:

Final animation:

Reflection

In this project, I manage to learn new skills in Photoshop - timeline. It is interesting to see my artwork moves at the end. It is quite fascinating. I really like my artwork and I think I develop a quite interesting concept for this artwork. I also able to learn to apply my artwork onto a merchandise, it feels like my artworks comes to life. Now, I understand how the company create these merchandise samples. I would like to learn more to manipulate my artwork, to make it moves, apply it on other object and etc. I am not satisfy with my animation yet I don't have much time to develop it more. I would like to learn more skills to create a better animation and really show my vision on this artwork. Thank you to my lecturer and my friends who guide me through this project and gives me a lot of useful opinions.