Week of 7/30

I’ve finally moved to the afternoon STA meetings!

Last week, I worked on mostly RUS412 animations and illustrations. For illustrations, I finished the Oleg’s lecture dream drawing:

Now it looks very dreamy! I’m starting a similar piece that basically reuses the background setting of the den, but I’ll change some minor details like Oleg’s sleep position, the time, and the utensils on the table.

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I also finished making a trash truck for Russian animations! The hardest part was drawing the contraption on the end of the truck because I had to improvise it instead of tracing it I also made the mistake of using object drawing while filling in the color, and that makes every brush stroke its own selection instead of the entire color area. Other than that, everything else went pretty smoothly since I’ve already made 3 vehicles so mostly it was the same procedure.

I worked on a walk cycle of the mother pulling the child away from the store after she sees how expensive the toy he wanted was.

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However, Tate and Suloni decided it looked a little weird (and after coming back to it, I agree) so I’ll be making revisions to it! Look forward to the new and improved version next week 😉

Week of 7/23

I finally finished the design for the “This is Democracy” podcast! This is the final design that Dr. Suri chose, compared with the first design I originally submitted:

The Lincoln statue was a tedious process to trace, since I was afraid that if I made it more simplistic like the buildings from before it would not be as recognizable, since the statue is of a person. But I think the shading really tied everything together!

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I also did most of the color for my illustration for RUS412, as of the meeting this is what I have:

I’m going to play around a bit more with details, colors, and shading to try to match the style better. Also, I might change the time to 8pm or so and make the sky more like sunset because I don’t think fireflies come out at 4am!

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Lastly, I worked on this animation of a mother + child walk cycle! The kid is supposed to be dragging the mom over to a store to buy a toy or something he wants, which is why he’s pointing and leaning forward more compared to the normal walk cycle. Tate got the walking (legs) part spaced out so that the two don’t step down at the same time, and I adjusted the hands so that they’re connected in every frame.

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Week of 7/16

Last week I sent out the latest batch of “This is Democracy” drafts. I had to replace the Capitol building with the Lincoln Memorial, so I retraced the new building and played around with the composition. It was a bit difficult since the Lincoln Memorial’s overall shape is a lot different compared to that of the Capitol – it’s way more boxier and fills the space differently.

On the left, we have it zoomed out, which I think makes the monument more recognizable, but there might be too much empty space. On the right, the Lincoln Memorial is more zoomed in, but I feel like it’s a little too cluttered. My personal vote goes to the first one!

UPDATE: I just found out that I’m to make a draft with the Lincoln statue instead, so unfortunately the ones of the Lincoln Memorial above probably won’t be used…

It’ll look something like this. I still have to trace it, but I wonder if it looks like Lincoln is sitting there mediating the two characters’ discussion? (Is that a good or bad thing?)

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I also created these bus symbols for RUS412. This assignment was relatively simple since I just had to trace over the bus reference image.

The wheels are separate symbols so they can rotate. I made the wheels from the back view symbols too, but I’m not sure if they can be made to rotate?

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Another task was to update the banner for the Humanities Department on Cascade, since their original one had a blurry logo and was cropped the wrong dimensions. Here is a screenshot of the final version, uploaded on Cascade:

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Finally, I’m still working on my RUS412 illustration. Kathy, Suloni, and I have changed Oleg’s bedroom to a forest den, which is much more cozy for a hedgehog :^) I still have to line the students in the lecture hall, but everything is slowly coming together! (The Olegs are just there as placeholders for now)

I spent wayyyy too long on the perspective for that classroom, since I kept trying to stick with my original sketch lines but they were so far off! It’s an interesting composition where Oleg’s den in the foreground is more of a flat perspective, while the lecture hall dream has a way more depth. I also plan to make the den setting darker (nighttime) while the lecture hall will have bright light illuminating it, so that the illustration will have even more contrast.