The Fantastic Five

 For this project, I was presented with 3 main themes as in the last semester. In this term, the themes are:

-Oriental surprise

-Primitivism

-Black

In view of these three themes, and their presentation in class, I made a reflection on what I would like to work on. So, I chose Oriental Surprise, for several reasons:

(i) it is a theme that is not similar to previous projects;

(ii) the Black theme considers that it was similar to the term 2 projects (I refer to the animation "Pandemic life" that I made;

(iii) I did not feel motivated to work with the Primitivism theme, because I did not identify with it.

Important note: I will be changing my project from 3D to 2D due to the limitations of my computer. In the last little animation I did (self-portrait), there were 250 frames to render and the video had 24 fps, which makes the video around 8 seconds. My computer did not respond well to Blender's massive, high-quality frames and took too long, and was using more battery than necessary. This is not a problem with the program. Blender recommends that people have a powerful computer for rendering.

On the oriental theme, I decided to focus on Japan. This is related to my initial inspiration for space flight (I mentioned this in my first blog post for this term). Analyzing an article written by the BBC (2020) about how Japan views robots more passionately than most people around the world, they do not see them as things, but as deities. My intention is to make a combination of two elements, I can mix the robots and space for my idea of ​​animation.

I would also like to make an Anime style for this animation because I will be touching the culture of Japan and I want to make sure that I perform the correct procedures, to understand the oriental influence. I researched to understand the meaning of anime and to do that we have to go back to the beginning of its creation. This type of animation was popular in Japan and was produced as films for the country. Anime is very different from any other type of animation, for example, the big eyes that the characters have is because the eyes in Japan are the “windows to the soul”. Later, it became an international business when people found the type of animation interesting, a great example is the Pokémon anime. (Britannica, 2021)

The title of my animation would be: Hybrid Program

I chose the name “Hybrid” for good reason. As I said before, the Japanese see robots as something to be trusted and that would help their population (BBC, 2020). So the robots that I'm going to draw are going to be a mix between a human and a robot, they think like a human but they have a totally mechanical body, so they are hybrids. The meaning of hybrid is "something that is a mixture of two very different things" (Cambridge Dictionary, n.d.)

Logo concepts and a sketch of a spaceship

I first started to draw robots that were more realistic.

I saw that these drawings went a bit far from the anime style, so I had to look for information about anime.

See the website “Concept Art Empire” to learn more about manga, for example, you know details and characteristics of a person's anatomical design, eyes, among other aspects. Then I decided to try to make an outline.

On this drawing I decided to go in a futuristic way and made the arms float around the air freely, it’s a fun concept and it saves me time on drawing arms. I also decided to draw it in an animal type of robot so the head does not go empty and the legs have more dynamic to them.

Based on what I have learned so far, I have drawn up a list of ideas with several elements that I intend to introduce in my project, namely:

-Make the robot navigate in space for explorations: He has a duty of finding new planets around his galaxy, following orders by humans;

-Robot doing just a normal routine in his spaceship: The robot is alone in his ship and he just tries to survive in the empty space;

-The robot has a specific mission to go to a planet: He’s carrying an important mission by the humans to go to a specific planet;

-Space battle: 2 spaceships battle in space;

-Failure in the ship's core engine and he needs to escape: something bad goes wrong inside the ship and the robot needs to run to an escape pod to survive.

I have not yet chosen a definitive idea, because I want to think which of these ideas is most suitable to be able to carry out taking into account the time available that I have.

References:

BBC (2020) While the West tends to see robots and artificial intelligence as a threat, Japan has a more philosophical view that has led to the country's complex relationship with machines. [online] Available from: What we can learn about robots from Japan - BBC Future [accessed on: 12/04/21]

Britannica (2021) Anime Japanese animation [online] Available from:

 https://www.britannica.com/art/anime-Japanese-animation [accessed on: 12/04/21]

Cambridge dictionary (n.d) Hybrid [online] Available from: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/pt/dicionario/ingles/hybrid [accessed on: 12/04/21]

Concept Art Empire (n.d.) How To Draw Anime: 50+ Free Step-By-Step Tutorials On The Anime & Manga Art Style [online] Available from: https://conceptartempire.com/anime-manga-drawing-tutorials/ [accessed on: 12/04/21]