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The brief tells us to create a concept of our own for this project, and use 12 weeks to make their theme into a big project that revolves around their specialist area.

We must produce multiple pieces of work, make research on artists related to our topic but also experiment with different art mediums. My unit is illustrartion and animation so I must look to illustrators and animators to inspire my project.

The key things my unit is addressing is the feeling of elation and dealing with depression.

There are 6 tasks that must be completed during this project. Initial research, project proposal, experimentation, production, digital portfolio and evaluation.

The only limitation I face is to focus on my specialist area.

The opportunity I gain from this project is to tackle any issues I want to speak on.

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My Target audience are the the people around me that are struggling with depression. I want to tell a story about how we all find happiness in different ways and it could be the most specific or obvious thing. The age range would be from teenagers to adults. The teens would connect with what is shown in the animatics while the adults would look into the deeper meaning of the animatic.

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I planned to create a large illustration of all my and the reponse's favourite things, but I scrapped this because it would save me no time to make my animatic.

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Ideas were being generated from my mind when we started the project so I decided to make a mind map of all of my ideas. The best ones were taken into consideration and put into pros and cons and the theme with the most pros was taken, which was “Elation.”

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My main ideas could not be left unexplored so before I scrapped them I went further into detail on why I had chosen these themes how I could have explored them and why they couldn’t have worked.

For my first idea, Game Concept: It was a strong interest and an easy topic to explore because of my pre-existing knowledge. My goal would be to make a game similar to the ones I currently obsess over e.g Honaki: Star Rail (turn based game). The problem with this project is that I have no experience in making games and I wouldn’t have a clue on where to start, not only that but games art is not the art path I want to pursue, so working on this would be contradicting with my plans after College.

Jellyfish and Sea Life: I have an obsession for jellyfish. Their anatomy, their way of living in the ocean and how they survive in it despite not having a mind or a heart fascinated me. In this project I would have explored them as well as other interesting creatures that dwell in the waters of the world. At the time of creating that concept I believed that it had no dept to it but I understand now that it had wonderful potential in it. The only problems that remain were the fact that I am only interested with jellyfish when it comes to sea creatures and that I wanted a project that not only impacted me, but the people around me also.

Elation: The first time I had heard this word was from a comedian in a game I play. They used the term and I wanted to learn more. When I had learnt what elation meant I knew it would be a deep and profound project that could impact many.

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Before I discarded the first two ideas I made mood boards of them because I knew I could fit them into my Elation project.

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The photographer Diane Arbus had unique themes that focused on sexuality, gender and emotion. For this project I drew my attention to the emotional aspect of her pictures. I wanted to analyse the pictures that made me feel elated. What piqued my interest the most was the fact that these people were discriminated during this era and yet they still smiled through it. The pictures evoke a powerful message about being happy despite the circumstances you are in.

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I visited the Hitchin Museum with my classmates to see the Diane Arbus Exhibition but after that we were allowed to explore the rest of the museum freely. The Museum displays the history of Hertfordshire and its achievements. I was intrigued by the wax animals and the unique technique they used to make a holograph behind a plastic building’s window. I took photographs of whatever made me excited so I could generate ideas from them.

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An illustration for my final that I did not want to complete. Will be seen as a different version in the animation- Me hugging jellyfish.

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I decided to warm up on my animation skills before I get started on my storyboard/animatic. I tried a regular style animation and a squish and stretch animation to visualise which style I might use for my project.

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An animatic cannot work without a storyboard. This sis my storyboard of my final outcome. It has old bits I did not include in the final video.

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To understand my concept properly I created a page that defines elation. Elation means to be in a state of extreme happiness and excitement. elation could be anyone or anything as the subject is very broad. I also explained why I had chosen this theme as well as creating a list of synonyms to open my mind to different meanings to elation.

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When entering the exhibition for Frank you are greeted by a dark room to immerse yourself in the art in front of you. His works always had a depressing vibe to it, I believe it was this way because of the lack of colour and the smudging of the charcoal gave me an eerie feeling. I challenged myself by using his art style to create a piece that was more uplifting and happy just like my project. I used pink coloured paper to make my piece look vibrant and i kept it simple to avoid the happy face from looking dreadful.

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My sketch of what my opening scene would be for my elation animatic.

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I made it yellow because of happiness and joy being linked to this colour. I put bubbles around it because it is a bubble text and I enjoy bubbles.

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The Somerset House had an exhibition showcase called "CUTE". It focused on the culture of cuteness and the rise of AI art. I enjoyed this exhibition because of its link to elation mostly being cute things. The rooms were decorated with pink paint and upbeat music. The mascot hello kitty was showcased as a large opening to a disco room because she is an embodiment of cute. Japanese culture was shown in the exhibition greatly, there were Japanese drama shows, anime, and manga. These were topics I could look at as cute things tend to make people feel elated.

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Two artists got my interest in the CUTE exhibition. Aka Takaro who created "The Galaxy Inside" oil painting gave me colouring ideas because of the pallet she uses in her piece. The dreamy look is supported with the pastel colours and the lineart that was strictly curved and never straight. I enjoy her artstyle because of the big eyes and small mouths, it is an embodiment of cute.

"Buggy Bear" by Alake Shilling was interesting to me because of how the implement the environment to the bear. They gave the bear seashell eyes and covered its private parts with starfishes. The colours were vibrant and I would love to try it out on my art.

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Hallucinogens are a drug that can alter your state of mind. It makes you calm and can also work as an antidepressant. Alex Grey is an artist that uses hallucinogens while creating pieces. His technique seems to be painting with limited amount of vibrant colours , the centre of his piece should be pure bright light and his area of focus should be human beings, hands, or the evolution of mankind.

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To create my own response without taking hallucinogens, I used my art program procreate and made a simple and abstract response. I created squiggled shapes and blended them together to create a sort of aura that the word elation feels like to me. I used yellow to symbolise joy, pink to symbolise hope for the future and green for underlying dread.

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Van Gogh is my top artist for this project. He was a painter that greatly influenced western art. He paved the way for a form I will be using called 'Expressionism'. I want to create pieces that focuses on my emotion and expresses it to my audience.

Van Gogh suffered with depression and took his own life. I want to create emotional pieces that show my joy and happiness to heal me from my negative thoughts and push me further to life.

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My van Gogh response was unsuccessful because I am not experienced with paining but I still wanted to push my limits as a digital artist. I got acrylic and painted swiftly all into one direction just like Van Gogh. I used only greens and made a field with bushes.

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A theatre mask I saw at a drama theatre, a flower on the floor and my teddy bear in my room.

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Practice animation with response #1’s mushrooms. Ping pong animation.

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To prepare for my final outcomes I made an illustration of my favourite characters Kafka and Himeko (Honkai: Star Rail) feeling elated together. Strong love is what elation truly means to me and that is what I presented in this illustration. I also used this as an opportunity to practice my colouring skills and my line work skills. I used multiple overlays to give it a soft feeling and the colours were all vibrant ones like yellow, red, purple because these colours feel like elation to me

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I made yet another illustration but focusing on a different type of elation: an elation you get from your family. Elation can be gotten from just being with your family so I made a piece of a mother and daughter loving one another and feeling elated together.

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I wanted to express what elation felt like in my mind, so as a warmup exercise i made a timed 5 minute sketch to communicate that idea of elation. With the time limit I was able to focus on what was important in my mind and not overthink. This sketch shows a woman enjoying the breeze in front of her and feeling free. As a black woman having my hair out of restraining hairstyles makes me extremely happy, almost elated even. I made her shirt move to the breeze because of how exhilarating it feels; another form of extreme joy.

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Art Style Experimentation & Inspiration 

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Art Style Experimentation & Inspiration 

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Quick art style study— making it simple and fast so my animatic will not take long to create.

My art style is inspired by Kiana Mai, a storyboard artist and director for Disney and Pixar.

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Kiana’s vibrant style shows heavily when you view the way she draws faces. The eyes are large and cartoony with a small hint of anime.
I love the way she draws blush on characters and how she gives them big smiles. The colours are muted and her line work is fluid, making the pieces she create look clean and professional and the lines sometimes has sharp edges like the fingers for example.

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My project had finally gotten a theme but finding ideas for it was rather difficult because of how specific the word ‘Elation’ means. I decided the first place to start was to reach out to an audience and understand what elation means to them. Doing this would give me endless ideas and a new perspective on my theme. I was able to pick up important information that would impact the rest of my project: most did not know what elation meant.

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Out of the 10 responses, I chose 5 to draw.

Response number 1 has a deep interest in mushrooms. They are fascinated by all kinds of them and love the environment around them. They like a game called Five Nights at Freddy's and enjoy listening to fan made songs of the series. They also have a fascination for collecting pins.

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Response 2 had their elation revolving on the people around them. Hanging out with friends, meeting new people, being with their boyfriend- It all resonated as one. When they are not with people they play with their pets in the beautiful spring or summer weather.

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Resonse 3 ejoys going on walks to exercise, going to the gym, and then returning home to make cute meals. After that they watch anime or listen to emo music. They pierce their face and body a lot and loves to go skateboarding.

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Response 4 enjoys gothic things with My Little Pony being their exception. They watch shows with vampires in them and also enjoy interesting backstories within a fictional character or fictional setting.

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Response 5 really loves jellyfish and sea life. They also enjoy playing video games like Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star rail. They like gardening plants, specifically Cacti and they love their Nigerian Heritage.

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The elation text is the first thing the audience will be drawn to. I would put all the special illustration in the animatics around the board and have a screen projecting my animatic beside it.

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Music: Melody of Merusea HOYO-MiX

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I thought it would be beautiful to add all the responses I got to the end of the animation. For everyone to be included and for others to see how different everyone is from one another and hopefully find their elation there too.

I also added the question “What’s your Elation?” to make the viewer put thought into what elation means to them.

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I learnt how to use soft colours and overlays to give my future pieces warmth for this project.

The characters in this piece are Sunday and Robin from Honkai: Star Rail showing two characters with the same story following different paths. They are my favourite characters and I felt extremely happy drawing them.

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I watched this tutorial to gain knowledge on how to make an animatic because it was my first time making one.