Recap from Anis’ feedbacks during Ting’s class and personal reasoning
Over the summer, I began developing my Final Major Project with the intention of creating a piece that would feel more closely aligned with the kind of work I want to produce professionally: 3D motion design, title sequences and high-end commercial work.
After completing Held Together (Experimental), I wanted to push my animation further. One of the main pieces of feedback I received on that project was that, although the concept and visual development were strong, the animation itself could have been pushed further in places. This became an important starting point for my FMP. I wanted the environment, objects and camera to all feel more active and intentional, rather than relying mainly on atmosphere and composition.
My initial FMP concept centered around a silk scarf travelling through an abstract world. As the scarf moved through the environment, the world would progressively reveal itself, reorganise and eventually resolve into the final pattern of the scarf.
Early concept development
The first version of the project was based around a travelling silk scarf.
At the beginning, the idea was much more open. I was exploring ideas around fantasy environments and different worlds, but I quickly realised that this was too broad and could easily become visually generic. I did not want the project to fall into familiar fantasy imagery such as forests, magical creatures, circuses or dream-like environments simply because the scarf was travelling through a fictional space.
I started questioning what could actually justify the world visually.
This led to one of the key ideas of the project:
The world does not illustrate the pattern. The world is the pattern before it becomes a pattern.“
Instead of designing an arbitrary world for the scarf to travel through, I thought in developing the scarf pattern itself and treating that pattern as the blueprint for the environment.
The world would therefore already exist in a latent state. The scarf would not magically create it. Instead, its movement would cause different parts of the environment to reveal themselves, shift, connect or move into position.
This also helped define the conceptual idea that everything was already there, but had to be discovered.
One phrase I developed during this stage was:
“Every journey is a way of learning to read what was already there.”
Here was the presentation I prepared:
https://www.canva.com/design/DAHNBXNJyQY/bldDg82CwuJahVp9laLTUw/edit