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Week 8 Project 1
Author: Bingrui Li
· make the movement snappier
· stay at every pose a bit longer, leave it enough time to show every pose.
Heavy Object Polish
Key Elements in Eyes Animation
Eyes animation helps show a character’s thoughts and emotions. The main elements are blinks, eye darts, eyebrows, timing, and facial connection.
Blinking should have a purpose. It can show a change of thought, attitude, eye direction, or head movement. Avoid blinking only to make the character move. A basic blink can be fast when closing and slower when opening.
Eye darts show that a character is thinking or gathering information. The eyes should move quickly, usually in straight lines, and lock onto clear targets instead of drifting randomly.
Eyebrows support the meaning of the eyes. Intentional blinks can include brow movement, while natural blinks often keep the brows still. Brow movement also changes the shape of the upper eyelids.
Natural facial movement often follows this order: thought → eyes → body. The eyes usually reveal the character’s inner thought before the head or body reacts. Using reference, mirrors, and frame-by-frame observation helps make the animation feel more believable.
Facial poses connection
· add a starting pose
· the eyes should be snappier
· Don’t move all the facial features at the same time; add some offset.
Heavy Object Polish
Title
Worldbuilding Across Cultures: A Comparative Study of Western and Eastern Fantasy in the Animation and Film Industry
1. Introduction
Fantasy is one of the most globally consumed genres in contemporary cinema and animation. However, fantasy is not culturally neutral. The way fictional worlds are constructed—mythology, social hierarchy, magic systems, visual design, morality, and narrative structure—often reflects the cultural frameworks from which they emerge.
This thesis proposes to examine how Western and Eastern cultural traditions influence fantasy worldbuilding in animated and cinematic works, and how these differences shape audience perception, identity, and global media exchange.
2. Research Problem
While fantasy is frequently treated as universal escapism, its worldbuilding strategies often encode cultural values. Western fantasy frequently draws from medieval European traditions, Christian cosmology, and individualistic hero narratives. In contrast, Eastern fantasy—particularly from East Asia—often incorporates Shinto, Buddhist, Taoist, or Confucian philosophies, collective identity, animism, and cyclical views of time.
Despite increasing globalization in the animation and film industries, there is limited comparative research analyzing:
- How cultural philosophy influences fantasy world construction
- How mythological systems shape narrative structures
- How globalization affects hybridization of fantasy aesthetics
This study aims to address that gap.
3. Research Questions
- How do Western and Eastern cultural traditions influence fantasy worldbuilding in animation and film?
- In what ways do narrative structures differ between Western and Eastern fantasy storytelling?
- How do mythological, religious, and philosophical systems shape representations of magic, nature, and heroism?
- How has globalization influenced cross-cultural fantasy production in contemporary animation?
This lecture we learn about camera language. There are a few vital elements while we decide how to set the camera, including focus, focal length, geometry, and movement.
While deciding the focus of the camera, the Depth of Field (DOF) is somthing we need to pay attention to, which is decided by the Aperture, Focal length and the Distance to the object.
Different types of focus: Deep focus: lots of details, able to see the whole stage shallow focus: tunnel vision effect rack focus: guides the viewer’s eye through the 3D space to follow the logic of the scene
Diffferent types of shots: Dolly, Zoom, Hand Held, Whip Pan, Establishing Shots, Arc Shot
5+5 challange is to use 5 shots, each lasts five seconds to create a small story conveying a certain emotiom. There will be no dialogue and very little character movements. Below is the storyboard i made.
The first storyboard is trying to describe a lonly man in a bar, drinking alone, i’m trying to creat a lonely atmosphere by using simple shots with slow or no movements. The second one is a celeberation secen, I will use some hand held shot, joggle the camera a little to create a euphoric vibe.
Tips: using close-up shots to show the what and who, using wide shots to show the where.
To help with the final project, due to the limited time and resources, it is meaningful to dig into short films with small narratives, one character and none dialogue, and learn about how they tell a story. Below is the animated short I find.
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Week 12 UE Project Giant’s Vally
The final result.
project link: https://syncsketch.com/sketch/IREiIjaO8Nye/
To complete this project, first I use MAYA to modle the two major characters. Then is the rigging and animating, which is also done in MAYA.
After that I use Unreal Engine to create the environment, including the lighting, terrian, and the plants. Then I import the animation file into the engine and use the engine to complete the rendering.
At last, I use Adobe Premier Pro to do the sound editing.
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Week 12 Showreel
project link: https://syncsketch.com/sketch/rdb82HDTtz2C/
I use Folliage to paint the plants, including trees, mushrooms and grass.
I also use fog to cover the mountains in the distance.
I creat a blend material to draw different texture on the landscape