Minor Project : Progress Reflection

 Minor Project

Date : December/15/2023

Name : Mabuchi Arata

Lecture : Minor Project

ID : 03515789

1, Introduction

In the Minor Project, we've done the project of design characters/background for animation project called "Sang Guardian" which is all about Malaysian schoolgirls who suddnly gained natural spirit power from being called "Buni" to become Magical Girl called "Sang Guardians". Our project was designing cakehouse where Sang Guardians gather to meet each other as school student, the nature spirit called "Buni", protagonist's mother and each Sang Guadian member's bedroom. I took the part which is all about designing Fire spirit (Buni) and bedroom for one of the Sang Guardians called "Maisarah".

2, Final Design Intendation

Due to the time issue, I am going to just copy and paste the sentences tha used in the project tracking report.

Week 1

First of all, after learning about the module’s details and objective, we formed a group for the design project “Sand Guardians”, we have discussed who’s going to be a leader and I decided to be a leader of this project, though this week, I can skim the slides about modules and project to plan what to ask and problems that I want to solve. Through the work of a leader, I wish I could learn management techniques.

Week 2

Through this week, we had 1 discussion with the collaboration team to understand more about the details of the project and we also decided the part where every teammate is going to design/do for this project. I guess the progress is still at the stage about planning the progression, but we still had a good discussion about the settings of animations and we also understand the project’s goal to achieve.

Week 3

The process of designing from finding references doesn’t go well because of lack of my understanding about the setting of Maisarah’s settings, however, I start getting to understand what Maisarah is, so I might restart getting references. The points I’d like to ask for better understanding have already come up and I have already gathered them to ask about the character’s settings in the next interview. However I also have to put all ideas I got during individual research into a Miro poster, which I need to do now. (Mabuchi Arata 15/09/2023)

Week 4

I almost forgot most of the activity I’ve done in this project, however, We had discussed the importance of settings that may influence the things to ask. This week, We had a discussion about how to interview to refer to our project.

Week 5

We had a nice brainstorm about any ideas for the interview. We had just discussed personas that may reflect the settings for characters in Sang Guardians, so we started to create a persona about people we made (although based on real life people?).

Week 6

We have discussed the details of interviews itself, they said that the quality of the interview should be improved, however I realised that I also have to find out any people who can take the interview. We also realised that the things we’re going to ask are also going to be important, but the idea itself should be made more for a better interview.

Week 7

We still had a discussion this week, and things that we had discussed about the things that are going to be asked in the interviews to create better personas. During these weeks, I had other work to do and I got too much stress, therefore I couldn’t do any work as I expected.

Week 8

It was self study week and rather than doing my work, I chose to take a rest for this week.

Week 9

I summarised all the answers I got in the interview I took in last week for my younger brother and cousin, but I did the wrong interview for them, however, I still got all ideas for Buni and bedroom.

Week 10

After the meeting about the ideas we got from the interview. We started to summarise the ideas to get stable ideas for design, we also decided key themes for each designs (cakehouse, bedroom and Buni) too.

Week 11

I had other works to do (motion graphic) and I focused too much on it, therefore I did not spend enough time to create any work this week however I still output AI images to get brief ideas for fire Buni and bedroom to design. (In my opinion, an AI image is not something to create but something to output.)

Week 12

Shamefully, I did not spend enough time to create any work for design of fire Buni and Maisarah’s bedroom in this week, however, I found that I summarised the ideas for Maisarah’s bedroom in this week. I guess week 11 to week 12.

Week 13

I guess from this week, I started to working on designing fire Buni and Maisarah’s room, however, I still didn’t have any work too show at that time and all the work I’ve done in this week was summarising the colour used in Maisarah’s design.The colour I found on the research was used in the works I designed.

Week 14

I finally moved to the real process of designing Buni and bedroom. The main focus of Fire Buni I aimed at was designing Fire Buni referring to either cute mammal animals or mammal pets. I designed them to look like fire type Pokemon, in the end, my final Buni design at that time looks like a cat called maine coon(large domesticated cat breed. (Wikipedia)) which is one of the famous cats in Malaysia, but the tool I used for design was wrong so I had to redesign afterwards.

Week 15

I was told that my tool used to design both Fire Buni and Maisarah’s bedroom was wrong, therefore I had to redesign all the Buni and Bedroom with a given brush tool in Photoshop. The previous Buni design I made was too different from what others do, therefore I had to try to redesign Buni again. Firstly I tried to design Buni from Cat-Like creature to aim looked like a Pokemon, then I tried to make like an anime style (Wikipedia said it’s style called Moe anthropomorphism, in Japanese it’s called gijinka. ) based on Sprigatito and Incineroar from Pokemon, Doraemon from Doraemon, Japan from Polandball (country ball) and Wolverine from Marvel comic, but that design too is too much different to other design, therefore I added the references from Pibby from Learning with Pibby and lumiere from beauty and the beast and I also refer to the my past rejected ideas for Buni to make a simplified Buni design. At that time I also tried to make many design as much as possible, therefore I made up too much weird design for much, such as soldier looks Buni, Muscular Buni, the Buni design refers to the Mario and Mickey and Buni looks like a Tank named “T-34”... but of course I rejected them all. For Bedroom design, I had some thoughts from observation of the character ,Maisarah. “Quiet girl doesn't have many things for her room in my opinion, therefore the design for the room is going to be simple, there is just a bed, a study desk, a small bookshelf, and a mat for sports.” and “The colour used for her room is based on the clothes she wears in guardian's costume. It also refers to the element of Buni to represent fire.”. I used these two main thoughts for room design. I researched a simple-designed room from Pinterest and then I designed a room with many photographs to make her personality as she likes to make many memories with her family, then I tried to design 3 different room design ideas for her bedroom. The point I tried to remain was to keep the design simple so as not to break my thought of her personality I researched previously. The point I regret was I should have used the straight line tool so the design might be much more neat.

3, Final Design Intendation

1 Bedroom

The moduler of this project told me that the bedroom is the only personal space for school student and sometimes the bedroom is the place where the character suddenly recognize their supowerpower at first time. Additionally, I tried to represent her personality in the room too, therefore the concept I intended to represent her persanality and element for her Buni.

The furniture used in the bedroom is aimed to look as simple as possible, this is because Maisarah is looked like quiet girl, Quiet girl doesn't have much things for her room in my opinion, therefore the design for room is going to be simple, there just bed, studying desk small bookshelf, and mat for sports.

The reason of why I used warm colour is because of the elements of Buni for Maisarah is fire, therefore I strongly aim to us warm colour that uses in the Maisarah's Sang Guardian's uniform.

2 Fire Buni

Firstly, I aimed to design Bunis as mammal pet so the audiences gets familier to them, so I started to design creatures that refers to the common animals that uses as pet so cute animals that is common and famous for being cute such as hamster, squirrel, cat, rabbit and dog, then I decided to use cat as final idea for refrences of Buni. The Buni design at that time was looked like a cat-like fire type pokemon and the cat itself is furry (covered with fur) and walk in four legs, even though I redesign it with walking with 2 legs, I still required to redesign Buni.

The shared and common actir that every other Buni Design had and mine did not have was "standing in 2 legs" and "much more personificated than mine", therefore I suddenly start to research anime-style humanization and I added extra references (Sprigatito and Incineroar from Pokemon, Doraemon from Doraemon, Japan from Polandball (country ball) and Wolverine from Marvel comic) to recreate my Buni design, but new Buni Design has been gone too far from others again, therefore I restart to design again to simplify my Buni Design. I used Pibby from Learning with Pibby and lumiere from beauty and the beast and I also refer to the my past rejected ideas for Buni to simplify Buni to look like other Buni designs, I always intended to represent Fire visually, therefore the colour I used for Buni was always orange and red, the reason why I used black and gray is I tried to represent coal and I triedd to emphasize red colours by using brighter colour and I refered to the Japanese flag colour because I used Japan from Polandball, but white is the colour that is hard to recognise, so I used bright gray instead.