A PAINTING-INSPIRED APPROACH TO DEVELOP EXPLORATION IN 3D ANIMATION VISUAL STYLE

It has been observed that students of the 3D Animation programme at LASALLE College of the Arts tend to produce work that lacks stylistic exploration. This could be due to the conventional approach of the software adopted by students - one that involves texturing (colouring) each object individually before lighting them together in a virtual scene. When colouring each isolated object without being able to envisage the overall design, students tend to let the software dictate the visual style of their work. Taking inspiration from Woon Lam Ng’s (2016) painting approach, this research proposes that lighting precedes texturing. Students will firstly place objects in the scene and consider compositional elements such as tone and shape in relation to the whole before colouring them. The approach proposed in this paper aims to emphasize the overall picture-plane design so as to encourage conscious experimentation with visual style. 17 students from the final year BA(Hons) Animation Art programme were mentored with the proposed approach over 8 weeks. Still images from the students’ work before and after intervention were qualitatively assessed by different assessors based on a set of criteria. Further data collected from a student questionnaire and a research observation journal helped to verify the student’s intent to explore style. They also revealed challenges of the revised approach – productive efficiency and time constraints. The report concludes with possible areas of improvement to the research method and areas for future research.    

Citation:
Ang, Qing Sheng. “A painting-inspired approach to develop exploration in 3D animation visual style.” Animation Studies, vol. 14, 2019.