Reflection – Annelie

This project taught me a lot in painting digitally as well as traditionally. I started out with poorly sketched drawings in photoshop which got better as you can see in this comparison:

It was extremly hard for me to get a feeling of the brush sensitivity. That’s why the first sketch is so blurry. The left sketch also took me a lot of time to draw where the right one took me only about 15 min.

I also got better in sketching in perspective thanks to the practice of the backgrounds that were inside.

I felt a huge improvement in painting digatally. Before starting this project I had almost no experience with painting with a drawing tablet. Here is a painting that I did a week before the project to illustrate my point:

I had no idea how to paint with the digital brushes and how to work with values. I watched a lot of tutorials to help me understand and started testing the brushes.
After my third background I would say I got a good feeling for painting digitally. It is maybe not that visible that I improved that much from the first painting to the last one but I really felt it. I was way faster and colors didn’t scare me that much anymore. I experimented a lot more and felt overall way more confident.

I also had a lot of fun painting the traditional illustrations. Even though I had experience with watercolors it was a challange for me because I had to copy the style of Chris. This taught me a lot about opening up to knew ideas. I usually don’t like stepping out of my comfort zone and loosening up from my inital idea so this was a great opportunity to experiment with that. I also felt that when I had to adjust my monsters. I learned that a group project is often letting go in order to have a better result.

Additionaly I learned a lot about maniging things. I planned my time a lot so would be the most productive and would finish earlier as I wanted to work on my other assignments. It was smart for me to do that as it was at the end still possible for me to help out Sanne. I tried to plan as well deadlines and just in general the time for our group but I noticed that that was quite hard for me. I hate confrontations and I know from previous projects that I can be quite submissive. In the end I noticed that I did the same mistakes again with my group. However I was able to manage the video for everybody at the end and was confronting when it came to the footage. Personally I learned a lot about myself in this project when it comes to teamwork. I think I will improve with time in terms of confrontation but I already felt like that I was less submissive. I often said what I didn’t like and gave critical feedback in order to improve our overall product.

All in all, this project was the perfect fit for me in terms of the tasks I had to do. I was able to overcome big challanges and I am very proud of that.  As I would love to be a concept artist or illustrator later, this project really helped me to improve and to give me some great portfolio material.

 

 

Week 9 – Annelie

This last week I did some lasts steps for the project to be finished. I firstly wanted to print the book which turned out to be more complicated as we wanted a hard cover print. We found a shop that would print it for us but it will takes some work days. Therefore we will need to hand in the prototype book that Sanne did for us.

I glued in the riddle at the end :

I then helped Sanne with the video as she was quite overwhelmed with her many tasks. I offered to do a rough cut which turned out to be very hard. We didn’t have much footage and only very little time. I did some shots while we were working together and started editing the voiceover that I got from Sanne. The illustrations from the book and the background served me as a guidance for the story. I searched some suitable music and found the soundtrack from swiss army man very fitting. My first draft looked like this:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=18dP8Qu-RJhkVyJxd2Z74pZNPa7bAxuHc

It was a lot of stress to do the video last minute and I wish I had more time to focous on it as it represents our project but it is what it is. I still tried to get a clear message across and made sure that our visuals were represented. This was the final draft I send to Sanne:

I also went with Chris to the book binder and ordered the print. We will have the book in about 3 days.

 

Week 8 – Annelie

This week I finished up the chapter for the illustrations. The last ones were easier to draw because I got a feeling for the right composition and also for Chris style that I tried to copy:

I continued to work on the backgrounds and got the sketch from Chris which I had to modify because the perspective was a bit off. I drew over the sketch:

Then I started to color it. I learned from the previous paintings that it is the easiest to draw first the base colors and then start to add the shadows:

I then added the shadows and highlights. Because it looked still a bit plain I added some fireflies to the portal and the window light. It made the scene a bit more magical:

 

After I finished the background I worked on the script prototype for Sanne which turned out to be harder then I thought. I wanted to make the story the main point of the video so it took me some time to get a good idea. I ended up writing the story + userjourney in a way that the audience would experience it themselves while watching the video. Here is a part of it for understanding:

“Once you enter the portal an animation starts playing: You are suddenly in the monster world and there is a monster running towards you. It’s the devil and he is panicking because something terrible happened.”

Here is a photo of the script itself:

I next wrote the text for the book. I kept it really simple and short so the kids won’t have troubles understanding. My roomate quickly translated it to dutch:

I also thought with Chris about how we will make it clear and obvious for the kid to go to the boardgame after the book. Chris idea was to have empty colored fields and colored letters under it. There would be 8 fields like this:

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

And the 8 letters under it would say if brought in the right order:

B O A R DG A M E

Each letter would have the right color according to the field. So the first field would be red and the first letter would be red.
But because the kids should not actually write into the book we ran into a problem. I had the idea of maybe having the letters as small cards attached to strings in the book. Like that they could easily form the word without messing with the book. Here is a sketch:

Of course we would add some tips if the kid doesn’t understand. And if the kid really doesn’t find the solution it can look it up in a note.

After another consultation with the teacher and the other group members I realized that I had to adapt my drawings to the flat design that everybody else went for. I had some troubles coloring over the shadows and it still being neat. But after I finished the first monster I realized that I could use the magic wand to select for example the head and then just bucked fill it with the right color. That saved me an immense amount of time and it looked wait neater at the end even though it could have still been better in my opinion.

I would have been happier to redraw them in illustrator to archieve a neater look but I didn’t have the time to do that as I have no experience with illustrator.

Next I had to draw the same background as before of the bedroom just in daytime. Luckly I was able to use the same sketch again so I “just” had to color it. Here is a picture:

The last background I had to draw was the room of Mr Fluffy. Chris send me a sketch so I could start working. I again drew over the sketch to make some sense of it:

Then I painted over it which took me a whole day since this was the most detailed one I had to paint. There were a lot of details and almost no things that I could abstract:

Because we had a bit of confusion about when which background would appear I made a list for everyone:

I met with Chris to finish up the book. I edited all the text into the pictures and made a inDesign document. We also crafted the idea for the riddle that I mentioned before. But we have to wait for the book to be printed in order to glue it in the book:

Book2

Lastly I started filming myself for the project video.

Short reflection:
This week was extremly stressful because I had so much things o do and to fix. I am very happy that I was capable of finishing everything. Especially the backgrounds made me very stressed out as it takes me a long time to paint them. Now that I am in week 8 I can feel that this project is slowly coming alive. I am excited to see the outcome!

TO DO:
I am mostly done with my tasks. I will send the book to Sanne because she offered that her father could bind a book for us. We will also bind one profesionally in a print shop.
Furthermore I will work with on the video if Sanne needs help.

Week 7 – Annelie

This week I worked on 2 more backgrounds, some illustrations for the book, the AR and the monsters.

The first background I drew was the background that you see when you enter the monster world for the first time. You see an overview of the landscape and the house of Mr Fluffy in which you enter later to read the book.
I started by drawing a sketch traditionally:

I then sketched it again in photoshop, which at this point, was way easier for me than at the beginning:

Next I started painting it but got stuck with the colors because I didn’t know in what colors to draw the house. This was the first attempt:

I then decided to paint the house in brown/orange colors so I I changed the background of the woods from orange to more blue-ish colors so the house would stand out. So to finish this background it took me a long time.  I also added some flowers because  it looked to plain. This was the final background:

I was quit happy with the end product even though the house bothered me. It didn’t turn out how I was planning it. Nevertheless I got some practice in drawing and painting houses which I have never really done before.

The next background was the background of the portal being all stormy and grey (because parents entered). I used a close up of the previous portal background. So I first thought about making it  black and white:

But that didn’t really add to the mood so I drew over the background and painted with a lot of different brushes to give a very chaotic feel:

The next thing I did were the illustrations. I had to draw all the illustrations for the second chapter which are 7 illustrations in total. I finished 4 illustrations this week but because I ran out of time I will have to draw the rest next week.
I had a hard time figuring out the illustrations because I had to copy Chris art style. I first drew some sketches but I was’t happy with them so I started new sketches and colored them:

I tried to use the same colors as in the backgrounds. I noticed that the drawings looked a little bit plain so I tried to add more contrast to some of them. For the backgrounds inside I used Chris’ illustrations as a guidline for the colors and the structure of the room:

I also drew the monsters digitally because we had to be more consistent with our art stlye. I tried to stay in the color palette and draw them liness because that was our goal. I had a hard time drawing the monsters ditially and make them look the same as my traditional sketches. But with the shadows the lighter colors I was able to archieve my goal:

Lastly I worked on the AR. I found the Website called metaverse with which you can easily create AR. I was able to create a small prototype with a monster in it:

TO DO:

Next week I need to finish the second chapter and draw 3 more backgrounds from the sketches that Chris will send to me. I will help Sanne with the video by writing a first script prototype. I will write down all the text we need to write in the book. Additonally I will have to film me creating the media so we will have footage for the video as well as finishing up the AR.

Week 6 – Annelie

This week I finished 2 of the backgrounds for the projection which was a lot of work because I don’t have a lot of experience with digital painting.
I first sketched it traditionally:

Then I sketched it on photoshop without colors. I personally noticed that I got better at sketching with the tablet as you might see from the drawings:

I personally had no idea how to work with colors in photoshop so my first attempt was not satisfying for me:

So the next day I tried it again and said to myself that I don’t want to use brown as a color in the painting so I had to draw over everything. I also limited myself with colors. Because in my first attempt you can see that I struggled a lot with my color palette.

The second background was way easier to approach for me from then on. I already had in mind what colors I would use and I had a lot more practice with drawing digitally from my first painting. I was more confident to play with the colors and the saturation. This is it:

To do:
While I worked on the backgrounds, Chris started to draw some illustrations for the book so I could then try to copy her style. So thats what I will start with next week. I am going to draw the other backgrounds and start the illustrations for the book. Additonally I will figure out the AR for our project.

 

Week 5 – Annelie

This week Chris and I roughly sketched some illustrations for the book and the backgorunds:

We decided to use watercolors for the images and that we are going to draw it as an A5 Book. I also sketched one image in the vacations:

Furthermore I did some more  gesture sketches of the monsters so the kids would have more visuals. I first sketched it, then outlined it and added some shadows with watercolors:

To do:
Next week I will start my backgrounds and hopefully be able to finish 2 of them. It will be a challenge for me because I don’t have a lot of experience painting or drawing digitally. Nevertheless I am excited to try that out.

Week 4 – Annelie

This week I brainstormed on the story and made a three act structure chart. In the group meeting we finalized the story and I made a new final three act structure for the user journey.

I also made a pinterest board with inspiration for the look and feel:

https://www.pinterest.de/annelieschulze/project-transmedia-storytelling/

We also decided on what roles we pick so for me I am now responsible for the book, the backgrounds and the character drawings for the animation. I do everything together with Chris.

Reflection
The group atmosphere is still really fun and lighthearted which is very nice. We were easily able to assign roles without someone being unhappy with their position.
At this point we are still having some problems wih our communication of our ideas because of the language barrier which is very frustrating at moments but till now we always ended up understanding and agreeing on each others points.

To do:
Chris and I are having a meeting on monday morning to find inspiration, brainstorm and to do some sketches for the book and the backgrounds.

Week 3 – Annelie

This week I started to brainstorm on monster ideas and sketches. I had to draw the 3 monsters so I first did some sketches and then colored them:

We had a group meeting and brainstormed on story ideas and after some discussion we went with my idea of a portal to the monster world.

Reflection
We work together very well so far. The communication about group meetings and just the general vibe is really positive.
What we need to work on is the elaboration of ideas. We are often confused about each others ideas because of the language barrierer. Also the brainstorming is something we should work on as we often get stuck because we discuss one idea on its realizability weather than to brainstorm more and let the ideas flow.

To do
For next week we need to finalize our story and our user journey. Furthermore we need to pick roles and start to work individually on tasks.