Yuyang Zhao

Personal Professional Presentation Pack 

Instagram: Yuyang (@rainnsunnn) • Instagram photos and videos

XiaoHongShu: rainsun – 小红书 (xiaohongshu.com)

Online portfolio: rainsun (cargo.site)

Showreel

CV and Covering letter

Professional Project Work

FMP Press Kit

Employment and progression research

English – FLiiiP-DESIGN (fliiipdesign.com)

Critical Appraisal

In this professional future unit, we had lots of chances to join in various projects to consider our career future. The Animocje Festival Promo Stings Project gave me a chance to get familiar with the requirements and limitations of producing an animation sting for a festival, it brought me lots of fun and challenges. I love their creative topic “Taste”, however, it was not that smooth at the beginning. I did some research on taste and tried to use different colors and lines to show the “bitter taste”. However, I was unsatisfied with the final effect and it would be complicated when put it into animation production. Thus, I changed a clearer and more direct way to show “taste”, I drew the mouth and tongue, then tried to trace the movement when they chewing something bitter. Also, I used the logo octopus as my main character at this time, which should be better responding to the client’s requirements. The final effect was simpler and clearer than the previous version, however, I supposed that the colors of the background could be improved further. With the limitation of the 6 colors, I tried to blend all of them to show the complexity of bitter taste. However, the mixed color was too dull and was not suitable with the front part even if I make them brighter. 

In all, through this experience, I supposed that I would like to continue doing 2D animation works. I enjoyed finding and facing the problems in the production process, though it was annoying sometimes, however, finding methods and trying to solve them again and again, was really helpful for me to improve myself, not only developing my technological skills, but also building my open-minded heart, and I believe I will become stronger and more peaceful when facing failures and some emergencies.

For the graduation show project, I was excited to visit exhibitions and gain experience in planning the settings and props then designed our exhibition show! Joining this kind of activity is a brand-new experience for me. During this period, I noticed that there were so many details that needed to be considered, such as the light and the guiding signals on the floor. When I designed the exhibition by myself, I found that it was really necessary to put ourselves into the guests’ shoes. In Yoko Ono’s exhibition, I found that her most attractive and popular work was simple and full of love for her audience. She considered the audience as a part of the artwork, the space and installations are very open, free, and interactive, she said In her work A PIECE OF THE SKY “Take a piece of the sky. Know that we are all part of each other.”

In my work, I decided to design a big table for the public to interact with, they can rest here, observe, and draw whatever they want. When they finish, they can take it away or leave it on the gridded wall for display. In addition, inspired by the curtains, I would like to design a waterfall-like long paper wall, which could display some series of highlight animation frames. This installation is close to the table, so the guests can sit on the chairs and watch them. Other than that, I tried to combine Pingfeng and gridded walls to raise the utilization of the exhibition space. The gridded wall can be used to show the puppets and toy characters in stop-motion animations. Also, the other side of Pingfeng can stick or hang some WIP pictures or illustrations. Overall, in the experience of preparing for the exhibition, I found that I was enthusiastic about planning and holding exhibitions because they need to consider and care more about people in a direct way. This reminds me of my volunteer experience of being the arts and crafts club’s supervisor, and the experience of designing art courses and holding exhibitions for the children, those kinds of works were all about care and love, and I think I would be clearer about my future paths now. 

Overall, in the professional future unit, these different collaborative projects broaden my horizon of thinking about my future paths and are also helpful for developing my communication skills. In the aspect of time management, I think it’s also important and I still need to be improved, especially working solo. 

Unfinished Animation: ： Finnal Animatic (youtube.com)

Logline：This is a story that takes place in a witch’s restaurant, and it talks about the soul swap between the witch’s cat and the chef on TV.

Synopsis：A witch who owns a restaurant in order to make delicious food that can attract customers, while experimenting with the developing magic soup dishes, her failed works accidentally drunk by her pet cat, the cat and the chef on TV soul exchange. The witch and the Chef Cat try different soup recipes in order to find a way to exchange souls back, and in the end, when the witch and the Chef Cat argue, the Chef Cat accidentally drops into the soup pot with the correct ingredient bottle, allowing the souls to exchange back.

Target Audience : Child and teengers

props design

Animatic:

Statement of intent relating to personal role:

In the Element 2 period, my main role was to improve our animatic with Yourong, also I edited it in Premiere Pro until our animatic was ready for the next stage. Before putting our animatic into formal production, I helped Yourong improve our character design. In order to simplify our witch character, I found some Chinese ancient people as our research and used simple shapes to draw the little witch, also created the turnarounds. In the sound effect design, I found some free sources online and also recorded some sounds with human voices for acting the witch. In addition, I tried to use books and papers to simulate the sound of a cat flipping through the magic book and sliding down into pieces of “paper cat”. Other than these works, I spent plenty of time doing inbetweener’s work, cleaning up, and coloring work. According to our animatic, Pat improved people’s movement and body language with line drafts, then I cleaned up with clear lines, added inbetweens, and colored them. 

Shot List

In order to put our character into formal production stage, I simplified our previous character design by Jia Wei (Sena) according to the simple shapes in Chinese Ancient drawings. However, these designs are too flat and graphic, to solve this problem, I paid more attention on designing the witch’s sleeves and created a turnaround view, and also put it into background to check if the style matches.

I found some oriental-style drawings and gestures from Buddhist illustrations as our reference, these special gestures are mysterious and suitable for our worldview of oriental magic. In our animation, we designed a hand gesture for the witch and gave a medium shot while she was cooking a new soup for the chef cat to show how she use her magic power. 

At this stage, I spent lots of time doing these works every day. At first, I thought that this kind of work was boring, and it was my first time to use procreate dreams to animate, I was unfamiliar with it. However, I was surprised that I enjoyed these works as time went by, especially coloring them, it was healing for me!

During this journey, I could work more efficiently and draw the lines easily and smoothly, also, I learned more about character animation skills from my teammates.

Sound Design （unfinished）

Backgrounds Workflow

I sorted out the background we needed according to the different shots.

Critical Appraisal

Overall, from this final major project, I have learned a lot from teamwork. At first, we couldn’t communicate with each other very well, everyone had their own idea and didn’t want to compromise. Thus, I learned to listen more, and find a win-win way to collaborate each other. The most difficult part was producing our animatic, I tried my best to combined everyone’s idea in our story, however, because of too much information, it was unclear, like the status of our team. Then, I knew less is more, Yourong and I shortened our animatic, we cut the unnecessary shots, and clarify our plot again and again, during this process, I learned to design the shots effectively, use less shots to show more information.

In addition, there are also some animation skills I still need to improve, the timing and pacing are really important in an animation. At first, our pacing was flat, so we cut shots and speeded up some parts. However, we lost some important reaction at the same time, it was unclear of character’s acting movement. In the next stage, I will still edit our animatic and adjusted our timing and pacing, also, music is helpful for telling story, so I will finish our music design part first, at the same time, inbetween, clean up and coloring work will continue to finish them.

This project gave me challenges in some animation skills and teamwork style, but also a good chance for me to clarify my position in team and my interests.  

Bibliography

Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989) Directed by H. Miyazaki [Film]. Japan: Studio Ghibli

Mandala. M (2009) Guanyin, Goddess of Mercy: SHAANXI NORMAL UNIVERSITY GENERAL PUBLISHING HOUSE Co,Ltd.

Witch & Cat Reference illustrations (unknown) Available at: (138) Pinterest (Accessed: 25 April 2024)

The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (2013) Directed by I. Takahata [Film]. Japan: Studio Ghibli

The Nine-Colored Deer (1981) Directed by Q. Jiajun and D. Tielang [Film]. Chinese: Shanghai Animation Film Studio

Three by Three Project (2×3)

Food and Bottle Project

Project Ideas from Yourong Gu and Mengchao Huang, they would like to produce an animation about a witch who loves cooking with magic and running a restaurant. 

Moodboard

Early Design

Initial character design by Jia Wei and Yourong Gu

Improved character design by Jia Wei

Environment design by Mengchao Huang

Logline：This is the story about a young witch with insufficient magical ability who gains self-identity and unravels her heart by opening a restaurant in the human world and realising that magical ability doesn’t mean everything.

Synopsis: The main character of the story, our little witch, was bullied by the magical community because of her lack of magical ability, and on the day she turns 18, she leaves the community of magician alone and travels to the human world then open a restaurant to earn a living. When the Little Witch encounters the crisis of closing down her restaurant, she accidentally meets a dead customer who was a human chef in life, and by accepting the dead spirit’s commission and fulfilling its wish, the little witch also unravels the knot that magical ability doesn’t mean everything.

By Mengchao Huang

By Jia Wei

By Yuyang Zhao

Script by Yuyang Zhao

By Yourong Gu

Improved Concept

Logline: The Witch’s Restaurant is back in business and has become popular after welcoming a special customer, Ghost Chef.

Synopsis: The witch who cooks with magic opens a restaurant, but she can only make smelly food because she doesn’t know anything about cooking. One day, a ghost chef comes to the restaurant, and he needs the help of the witch’s magic to back home and reunite with his family. But the witch’s magic is not powerful for her to help the ghost chef. Accidentally, the witch’s magic food reacts with the ghost chef’s belongings, which is a photo with his family, opening the door to his home. At the same time, to appreciate the witch, the ghost chef gives her precious recipe book to the witch, which makes the food she cooks delicious and the restaurant becomes popular.

Character design and animation test by Jia Wei

Environment design by Yourong Gu

Beat Boards, Storyboard and animatic by Yuyang Zhao

Beat Boards

Animatic

Reflection

Evidence of personal role

In this project, my previous main role is editor assistant, which is to organize the story with Yourong Gu, who was our main editor and storyboard designer previously. There were too many different directions and versions of the story at first in our group, I also suggested lots of directions and then wrote a full script after we discussed and tried to help our group organized it much clearly. After a one-to-one tutorial with tutors and getting some feedback about our story, we improved it and had another version of our story, at this time, we adjusted our role assignment, and now I become the lead storyboard artist. I don’t write the script again because the storyboard is much clearer in visuals and draw storyboard directly, which is one of our tutor’s advice. I organized the tutor’s suggestions for our story and our initial concept, then produced the storyboard and made the animatic, however, because we took lots of time changing our stories in the previous time, at this stage, our animatic still needed to be improved and no sound now.

Critical appraisal with ‘Next steps’ proposals and intentions.

In the next step, we will improve the pacing of our animatic and shorten some content in order to make our story more clearer and understandable. In addition, we will add sound to our animatic so that the pace will be much easier to control. Also, when I produced our storyboard and animatic, our character and environment designer is still adjusting the characters and background, but it’s decided and clear now after our element 1 final presentation, thus, in the next step, I will transform our rough animatic into detailed version with clear character and background, also with color and some adjustments of composition, all of them would be more helpful for our audience to make sense of our storytelling. Meanwhile, we still need more proof of concept, especially the animation tests and we need to make sure our visual style as soon as possible.   

Research & Analysis

Style: We’d like to find a balance between subjective artistic narrative,

and objective interpretation of information.

Logline: A young boy who has suffered prejudice as a student grew up to

be a teacher, and he decided to contribute to society by supporting and

inspiring students with core concept of social justice in his class.

Moodboard

Initial Character Design

Synopsis

Environment Design

Initial Storyboard

We divided this film into three parts. The first part is a teacher showing a video that describes the concept of  justice to his students. The second part is the teacher’s memory that he had suffered prejudice in his student life. In the end, the teacher is committed to creating a safe, comfortable, justice and harmonious atmosphere in his class.

Script

We had an online interview with Roger, who is one of a tutor in Guildhall School. We writing the scripts based on his experience of the social injustice he suffered in music industry.

Script-Writing

Animatic

Animatic improvement

Feedback and Improvement

1. Be more attractive and dynamic.

2. The audio script is too long, the content can be shown by animation instead of the voice-over. We simplized our audio script to two sentences “We’re different, but we are equal. Everyone can be seen here.”

Character Design Development

We developed our main character Joe’s design and added a staff and Joe’s classmates’ design.

Draft Storyboard 2

Storyboard

Animatic 2

Animatic Improvement

Concept Art

Feedback

1. Be clearer and specific. 

2. Clarify the concept of social justice, safe space and belong.  

Improvements

1. Added some frame of the student’s imagination

2. Extended how staff could help students and what will it cause in order to clarify the whole idea

3. Adding more friendly scenes to connect with safe apace and belonging

Final Outcome

We are still in the storyboarding stage. This is our third storyboard.  

Reflection

In this unit, we have improved our animation skills by learning professional software toon boom harmony and having a deeper understanding of the process of producing animation by collaborating with Guildhall School of Music & Drama. GSMD is a really helpful and meaningful project to improve our professional skills not only by developing our 2D skills as an animator, but also a chance to help us get more familiar with the communication skills of how to interact with clients as an employee.

When we were assigned the topic of justice in the GSMD project, we found that we were not very familiar with the concept of justice and injustice. To solve this problem, we researched the requirements of the clients, and search the relevant pictures of justice. I got an outline based on ‘What is social justice’ ‘How barriers are created’ and ‘What can we do to solve it’ from the workshop we took place in Guildhall school. We got the inspiration for social justice from Roger, who is one of a tutor in Guildhall school, and decided to design a character who is a person of color like him. In order to create a clearer storyboard, we need to know more details about student life and the prejudice in music school. We sent an email to Roger and told him about our project, and he agreed to help us, then we conducted an online interview afterward. In this interview, we know more about the injustice people of color suffered, and based on his experience, we created a storyboard as well as an audio script. Though we haven’t received good feedback on our storyboard and animatic, we supposed that we have learned a lot from the topic itself, the process of communicating with the clients and listening to their experience has indeed broadened our horizon of caring about social issues.

In the GSMD group project, I collaborated with Jinyan Yu (Pat) and a composer Luara Siu from Guildhall school. Pat is interested in character design, so I did the environment design. After we had an interview with Roger, we created the story together and she made the animatic. However, when we had tutorials with our tutor, we received feedback that our animatic is not that dynamic and the audio script is too long. Also, the clients need more details to show ‘how barriers are created’. Therefore, in order to find a balance between artistic and dynamic, and informative expression, we decided to recreate our storyboard. I offered to make storyboard this time because I have also noticed the problem that our visual expression is not that dynamic and vivid, so I think I can have a try. This time, we received the feedback that though the visual style and transitions are better, the content is still not that clear and specific, it’s not really relevant with justice. Though our process in this project is bumpy and full of challenges, I found my strength and weakness of mine as well as Pat’s, then realized that we need more cooperation with each other. I was interested in artistic and abstract expression when creating storyboards, there were always some symbolic expressions in my storytelling, so the content, and the story itself would not that clear sometimes. Pat is different from me, she is good at more realistic and practical narratives. I found that we need to find a balance with each other. It’s the third time to change our storyboard, but we are clearer and have direction now! Also, we supposed that we need more feedback from others and can be an open-heart rather than afraid to listen to suggestions. We have been keeping in touch with our tutor Su-Lynn by sending her emails and having tutorials online, we felt grateful for her encouragement. At this time, we simplified our storyboard, and Pat created the basic storyboards, then I can improved and stylized it. We are still in the storyboarding stage now, but we also feel more confident this time. In this project, I learned that teamwork needs to know each other first, especially the strengths and weaknesses, then improve the strengths together and avoid the weaknesses. The level of teamwork determines the effect of the final outcome.

When it comes to the 2D techniques, I think I learned a lot from our toon boom course and Friday tool kits. At first, I didn’t know how to make zoom- in and zoom-out effects in software, after the course learning I found storyboard harmony and toon boom harmony are very efficient to achieve the camera movement effect. Also, I was impressed with 2D animation tool kits. I have learned how to use AE to make 2.5D effect, which allows your background to look more three-dimensional. We plan to use this technique in our GSMD project to improve our background design if we have enough time.

In this unit, I found that I can have a more professional view of the process of producing animation. The main thing is time scheduling and communicating with teammates. What impressed me the most was the clients said that they would be happy to see that there is a clear schedule for them to know the progress and what are going to do next. As the clients from music school, may not know the process of producing an animation, the clearer schedule we provide, the more convincing our project will look to them, so they are more willing to work with us. In addition, we have a composer this time, producing music also takes a lot of time. Thus, it’s more important to have a clear timetable so that the teamwork can have better final outcomes.  

In conclusion, the GSMD project is a good chance to challenge our abilities to be professional animators. We improved our 2D techniques and proficiency when producing an animation to meet the client’s requirements. Communication skills also developed when doing presentations and receiving feedback. What’s more, time management skills are also needed to be emphasized in every project.

ELECTIVE 01- GAME ART

This is my mind map based on ‘magic and mysterious’. I finally decided to create a character with tribal culture.

I drew the initial sketch as well as it’s front and side view. This character is a tribal chief. However, I found I didn’t think too much about the poly count, I tried to simplify it after I received feedback on class.

I focus on 3D models and did research again. I found these models were made up of simple and clear geometric shapes.

I developed my characters with triangles to show a kind of solidity at first. My final character is a tribal seer character living in the forest. I have got inspiration from apple and added more circle elements to represent eyes and halos showing its ability of foreseeing as well as its sanctity and power.

Narrative Paragraph

There was a seer gens of the generations in the tribe living in the forest since long time ago. They have different appearance with human-being and have the ability of foreseeing disasters and blessings. At first, the residents in tribe discriminated against the seer gens because of their non-human species’ looking and the ability of foreseeing disasters. Also, they would be idle when the seer foresees the blessedness. Over time, the tribe declined. In order to better survive and continue the generations, residents gradually learned to follow the rules. When foreseeing the disasters, they prepared the protection in advance; when the blessings came, they worked as usual. The tribe is finally back to normal and even more prosperous little by little. The residents’ attitude towards the seer gens has transformed from strong discrimination to awe them as natural beings eventually. This is a trial from nature that every seer and residents generation has to be experienced from ancient times. At this time, the new generation of seer has been born, what will happen to the young seer and its residents and what is going to be the future of the tribe…

Artist Comparison

Fen Beatty

The characters in her work are creative and attractive, they are all made up of simple geometries. Also, I love the exotic and tribal style textures she used in the cube. The color are bright and well balanced with each other. The another reason I select this artist as my reference is that I think she could use colors and lights to create a magical and mysterious vibe, which is also the atmosphere I’d like to create in my work.

Mohamed Chahin

His work is also simple, well structured and stylish. In addition, the color and light is cool. I ‘d like to add light effect on my characters and I am interested in his using of light and shade. Compared with Beatty’s work, his characters have more details, however, the complex parts and the simple parts create a good contrast so that the characters could be really compelling.

Model and UV in maya

In the modeling stage, I have tried different combinations and adjust the proportion of the head part and the body many times. I want to make the head part much bigger than its body since the eye plays an important role in seer character. When the head part is bigger, it looks like a child. I think it’s also an interesting comparison.

In the UV stage, I met some problems in my cloak and wings part. They were really hard for me to unfold and always had black faces. They only made up of pieces without thickness, especially the wings, every pieces of feather were separate, so I connected the vertexes, combining them together and I add the thickness to cloak and wings, then continuing connecting, combining and removing extra vertexes, edges and faces. After solving the problems of vertexes and edges, it was much easier for me to sew, cut and unfold UV.

Sculpturing in zbrush

I didn’t give the thickness to cloak model in maya, when I tied to sculpt it in zbrush, it was broken. The wings and feathers also met the same problem.

After adding the thickness to the models in maya, I found all of them could work successfully now. I sculpted some twisted lines on the torus since I want it to look like lots of branches coming together. I’ve also tried to sculpt other parts but I was not very satisfied with the final effect. I think the torus was the only part needed to be sculpted and rest of them were better to keep normal since I think the hard and solid cloak as well as its body could better show the structures of this character, it’s good to see it stays in the low poly style.

Transform high poly into low poly in maya

I need to convert the high poly torus to low poly, it’s really convenient to bake in maya.

Add color and texture in substance 3D painter

Final effect on sketchfab

Rain Yu (@1254855938) – Sketchfab

ELECTIVE 02- PORTRAIT COLLAGE

Mindmap

• bold make-up
• funny
• transparent
• natural

Reference

Moodboard/Art Style

Visual Experiments

Storyboard

Sketches

Style Frames

Final Outcome

Portrait Collage

portrait collage – YouTube

Loop De Loop

10s Loop De Loop – YouTube

exercises on class

In this rotation, I’d like to try to construct different shapes that we have learnt on class.

develop further- reference

When I did research at the second time, I decided to mix steampunk style in my work because I think the mechanical factories and chilled steel could really remind me of the feeling I have got in winter.

some drafts

Thus, the shapes I like to use in this project are always squares and triangles. They could make my character look like heavy, solid and cold. In addition, the colors I chose were very light which feels like white snow, so I use the bright and light colors on my character as well as the background. However, the character could not jump out of the environment.

final outcome-front view and side view

That’s why I finally change a deeper color as the background

Reflection

From this project, I think my use of color needed to be improved. The proportion and value of deep and shallow are of great importance of the final effect in character design. I think I could learn further in the light, shadow and colors to improve my skills to create works better. In conclusion, I know more about how to build structures with basic shapes and also find a way I could explore and develop much deeper in the future.