I was very excited when I learned that I was going to work on an animation collaboration project because I was eager to learn about the height and content of animation for my graduation project, and I wanted to learn something from my previous classmates. More importantly, teamwork enriches my study life.

My teammate is Lavanya Pavithran and I work really well with her. My task in this collaborative project was to draw face-turns, movements, and expressions for the characters. I successfully completed the tasks assigned to me in this project, which was not difficult for me. But I still have some work to do, so I’m relatively tight on time. The story shown in our group’s animation takes place in India, and I think the traditional Indian costume is very distinctive, but this is also the first time I’ve drawn Indian characters, and there are some details about the traditional Indian costume that I don’t know, so I found a lot of reference pictures on the Internet to complete the task. As for the action graphics of the characters, I initially planned for the camera to be head-up, but after looking at the initial rough animation made by my teammates and discussing it with my teammates, we agreed that adding some perspective shots to the action would look more vivid and reasonable.

I enjoy working with my teammates and discussing the difficulties I encountered on the project. When I get stuck, I try to solve them on my own, the most challenging thing for me is to draw a side view of the character, since I am not very familiar with the perspective relationship of the side view of the character, I will look for reference drawings online, but I have found that the most convenient way is to take a photo of myself as a model or record a 360-degree rotating video. In the same way, when I draw a character action diagram, I also deduce and simulate it myself. Since I have never drawn middle-aged and elderly characters in my past studies, I have only drawn children, young people and animals, and the posture and facial muscles of middle-aged and elderly characters and young characters are very different. Luckily, there was a body sketching class every Thursday, and there were some middle-aged and elderly models, so I was able to use the knowledge of the human body structure that I learned in the course and apply it to my own understanding. I think I did a great job in this project and I got a lot of praise from my teammates. But if I had more time, I would add color to a few of the characters I had drawn, and although my teammates didn’t assign me this task, I personally would love to complete it.

It’s about the industry I want to work in the future and it’s about character design, so the tasks I was assigned to this project were very satisfying and the ones I wanted to do the most. I will bring this experience to my practice because this collaborative experience has improved my understanding of the anatomy of the human body and I am satisfied with the work I have done. I really enjoyed the experience, it allowed me to improve my drawing skills, learn some about traditional costumes from other countries, and most importantly, improve my team spirit.