Story in a Picture

 5-Part Story Assignment

Audition Assignment

Below are portfolio pages and some roghs

My story is about a boy who dreams to be a space hero fighting with aliens. In a coincidence, he discovers a real alien outside his room, but the alien does not look evil at all. Then, the boy meets the space hero he respects the most, but it turns out that the hero is a treasure hunter who kills innocent aliens. At last, the hero ironically falls into the trap set up to capture alien.

I spent a lot of time rethinking the story, not less than the time painting. The story was totally different at the beginning. My first thought was a story about a girl and a wanted robot who died from protecting the girl. Then, I changed the story to a scientist who did not like his robot very much. But I still could not solve the story so I changed it again to a boy and a space police. Finally, I changed the character into a cute alien and an evil space hero. Although I didn't post them above, I did many more roughs and had redone my drawings many times.

It was kind of a painful process, but I am glad than I finally resolve the story, from realizing that it would be easier to be clear about the background(location) of the story. I had problems deciding solutions and I am a little regretful about giving up original ideas too soon. Anyway this was really a great exercise and I am glad that I finish them in time.

This assignment is to create a picture of an audition, which must includes three classes of people. I misunderstood the assignment at first and the three panels below are my roughs. But I kept the original idea of a "monster(or actually kaiju)" audition.

And this one is actually the first assignment. We wrote a short story of overcoming the monster and then also made drawings along the story.

I really like this class. It was also great to see other people's stories. AlthoughI am not that satisfied with my final works, I felt I learned a lot from the class. I hope I could get better at thinking stories and also making my works to have more stories to look at.

Digital Painting - 9th Term

First assignment for this class is a custom brush exercise. I didn't spend a lot of time but it turned out to be maybe the best from other assignments. I never tried using custom brushes this way before, so it was quite interesting.

This one is using brushes with color dynamics. I didn't do this really well. I think it would be better to not be afraid to use more colors.

This assignment is to create a flat space futuristic city. This one troubled me the most, and I still am not really sure about what should I do. Anyway, it is quite interesting to learn about the photo bash technique. But I couldn't turn it into my painting successfully.

This one is to create a deep space environment. I used photo of Japanese temple as reference. Grid was quite helpful.

Creating character using Bezier curve. I designed a music robot. I like this one quite much and I am thinking to add color and more details other time.

10 Rectangles exercise

Ball exercises

Color key exercises with given drawings

And the last one is the final project, which we could choose to do anything. I chose to draw a short comic. This is a reinvented story from the famous Japanese tale "Momotaro." I didn't have much time so it was quite messy but I really had fun doing this. This is almost my first time drawing comic all digitally and also first time coloring in Photoshop. It actually was faster than the normal way I draw and it turned out not bad. I would like to try more and spend more time in the future.

Visual Development - 8th Term

 In this class, we had to create our own art direction for a feature animation of a story, which I chose "The Little Prince." Then we had to paint four characters and three beats (key moments) from the story. I did not change the story but I tried to keep an overall style and same motifs for the works.

The characters I chose to draw are the Little Prince, the Pilot, the Snake, and the Tippler.

 Below are some of my roughs

Advanced Game-Writing Studio

The game box cover for my game "The Growling Hero"

 This is one of the most fun classes and also one of the most difficult classes for me. The fun part is that the class is all about games and we get to play many games in class and for homework. The difficult part is the homework that includes both writings and drawings and also the final presentation, which is almost a nightmare to me. I kind of overcame it and realized again that I am bad at writing and making stories... Anyway, it is interesting to experience how to create a game, and below is some of my drawings for my game.

 This is my company logo

 The logos for my game and its sequels

some other rough sketches (The Wailing Hero is a previous title which I changed)

I spent most time on the writing part, but it is too hard to post all of them here so I will just make a simple introduction of my game. "The Growling Hero" is a third-person, action-adventure game set in ancient China based on Chinese mythology. The main character, Mu Kang, is a Taoist priest, whose job is to fight with monsters. However, he falls in a trap in the beginning of the story, which makes him transform into a monster. So the important part of the game is that main hero is a monster. There will be moral system in the game and the player could choose to side with human or monsters.

Same as the cover above, this is how the main hero looks like.

And this is how he looks like when he was a human.

the loading screen

 rough

 wallpaper

 

 poster

I probably spent most time on the poster and redrew it several times, although it was still not quite satisfied...

and another rough for the cover which I later used it for the back cover

As I said I spent most time on the writing part, so I did not create that many drawings, even though I hope I could have drawn more...

Actually, I did not play that many video games. I played more often when I was young, but it was like 10 years ago. My newest console is PS2... I got to know many games in this class and was amazed at how games have improved. I am really bad at playing games, but after this class I really want to play a lot of games. I hope I could get a PS3 this summer...