Major Project 2
02.02.2026 - 20.03.2026 / Week 01 - Week 07
Ilhan Rayan bin Khairul Anwar / 0361205
Major Project 2 / Bachelor of Design (Honours) in Creative Media
INSTRUCTIONS
PRACTICAL
Week 1 (02/02/26 - 06/02/26)
Prior to the start of our Major Project 2, my group decided to overhaul our entire project and restart from the beginning in order to create a story that would both be easier for us to produce and something that all of us would enjoy working on since we were all very clearly tired of our previous proposal.
Figure 1.1: Hakim Sketches
Figure 1.2: Kellie Sketches
As for Hakim though, I had to come up with new designs for him that were modern compared to Kellie's older design aesthetic. I based his sketches off of outfits that me and my friends wear since they are the "modern" style that a lot of young people have so it'd make sense for Hakim to look like that.
Once I finished the two sketches, I added in a solid black layer overtop of the entire drawing and lowered the opacity so that way the portraits would look old and worn down. With the drawings done, I started working on our slideshow presentation alongside Akif since the both of us were the most free to work on it.
Thanks to one of my groupmates, she provided me with a playlist that I would use as reference for how to draw and eventually model our low-poly characters.
Week 2 (09/02/26 - (13/02/26)
Over the weekend, I started working on the turnarounds for Hakim and Kellie using a tutorial on YouTube as a basis for the low-poly character designs that we decided to do.
Figure 2.1: Hakim Turnaround
Figure 2.2: Kellie Turnaround (Ghost Version)
Figure 2.3: Kellie Turnaround (Human Version)
After I showed the turnarounds to my groupmates, I was advised to make the body less feminine looking such as making the hips smaller and the torso longer. I also started working on designing the facial expressions for them so that we could use them on the 3D model.
Figure 2.4: Hakim Facial Expressions
I started off with five facial expressions that would be able to be used for the different situations and scenes that Hakim would be involved in within the animation.
Figure 2.5: Updated Kellie Design
Kellie's updated design features thinner legs, a longer torso as well as a slightly bigger head.
Figure 2.6: Updated Hakim Design w/ Face
I attempted to do the same with Hakim but decided to keep him as he was so that there would be a slight difference between the two models and because I think the slight more weight to his model would make sense compared to Kellie's skinnier model.
Figure 2.7: Hakim Suit Design
I was also tasked with designing Hakim's suit design for his office flashback scenes, though this would end up being unused due to time constraints.
Figure 2.8: Hakim's 3D Model
With Hakim's model done, I took a short break before moving onto modeling Kellie.
Week 3 (16/02/26 - 20/02/26)
Figure 3.1: Kellie 3D Model
Figure 3.2: Kellie Facial Expressions
With the base models done, I moved onto coloring and applying the face textures onto the model so that we could animate the facial expressions using them. I also made additional updates to the original face map from Figure 2.4 by adding in additional expressions as well as filling in the rest of the white space with the skin color so that it could be mapped onto the rest of the face.
Figure 3.3: Face Texture Node View
Figure 3.4: Updated Face Map / Textures
After I showed Jane the 3D models, she sent them back to me requesting me to fix multiple issues with the models, a lot of small, minor fixes but the most prevalent one was the interior of the models as it's extremely cluttered and the amount of edges and faces inside the body would make animating a lot harder so I had to go back and manually re-edit the entire mesh to remove and fix the interior.
Figure 3.5: Mesh View (Before Fix)
Figure 3.6: Mesh View (After Fix)
Fixing the torso was the hardest part due to how many layers and elements I designed Hakim to have which lead to a large amount of edges and faces inside of the model, but once I got into the groove and figured out a plan for how to tackle this, I was able to fix the model without having to redo and remake the entire mesh from scratch like Jane suggested me doing. With Hakim's torso model fixed, I proceeded to do the same with Kellie though his model was easier to fix due to it having less meshes and edges.
Week 4 (23/02/26 - 27/02/26)
Another fix I was tasked with doing was to update the hands and make changes to the topology so that it would be easier to rig. Making the changes was fairly simple since Jane helped to guide me through the process on how to make the model more rig-friendly.
Figure 4.1: Hand Topology (Before Fix)
Figure 4.2.1: Hand Topology Front View (Before Fix)
Figure 4.2.2: Hand Topology Back View
Another fix that I was tasked with doing was to make similar edits to the feet so that they would be more rig-friendly by adding in additional edges as well as connecting the feet to the legs so that it would be one solid model.
Figure 4.3: Feet Topology (Before Fix)
Figure 4.4: Feet Topology (After Fix)
With the feet topology fixed and the rest of the 3D models, I sent my final model to Jane who made additional tweaks on their end so that it would be easier for her to rig.
Week 5 (02/03/26 - 06/03/26)
With most of the heavy load of my work done, I was tasked with helping finishing up the storyboards for our animatics since Jane, who was drawing them, wanted to start rigging and animating so she asked me to finish it up for her.
Figure 5.1: Storyboard Page 24
Figure 5.2: Storyboard Page 25
Figure 5.3: Storyboard Page 26
Figure 5.4: Storyboard Page 27
After I sent the storyboards that I drew to Elysa, she compiled all of them and made a quick animatic for Jane and Akif to follow for when they were animating the project. In the mean time, I was given two tasks to work on alongside everybody else. The first being to draw portraits of Kellie and Agnes as well as a drawing of the castle that would be put in the background. The second being to help Elysa with the 2D flashback sequences by tracing over all of the frames imperfectly so that they would have this jitter effect when put together.
Figure 5.5: Flashback Drawings 1
Figure 5.6: Flashback Drawings 2
The system that me and Elysa had was simple, she would draw the first frame of the flashback, then I would draw the second half by imperfectly tracing over her drawing, making changes based on what would work for the animation. This would continue into the next week since there were quite a lot of frames I needed to trace. I would also have to send each individual layer as a PNG rather than one single JPG so that way Elysa would be able to resize it accordingly and so that it would work with the 3D model for the scene.
Week 6 (09/03/26 - 13/03/26)
Figure 6.1: Flashback Drawings 3
Figure 6.2: Flashback Drawings 4
Figure 6.3: Flashback Drawings 5
Figure 6.4: Flashback Drawings 6
Figure 6.5: Flashback Drawings 7
Figure 6.6: Flashback Drawings 8
With all of the flashback sequences done and drawn, I moved onto the other task which was to redraw the castle as a background as well as the two portraits of Kellie and Agnes. Drawing the castle was fairly simple, I just took a photo of the actual castle and drew over it so that it could be used for a background shot. It never ended up being used in the final animation but I'm not disappointed.
Figure 6.7: Castle Drawing
Because most of the story in our animation takes place at night, I decided to draw the entire castle normally before placing a solid dark blue color layer overtop everything and lowering the opacity so it would look dark.
Figure 6.8: Kellie Portrait
When it came to the portraits of Kellie and Agnes, I decided to reuse the colors and designs from our old project proposal since the work was already done, additionally it's a nice reference to our previous idea.
Figure 6.9: Agnes Portrait
Once I finished the two sketches, I added in a solid black layer overtop of the entire drawing and lowered the opacity so that way the portraits would look old and worn down. With the drawings done, I started working on our slideshow presentation alongside Akif since the both of us were the most free to work on it.
Week 7 (16/03/26 - 20/03/26)
Other than working on the slideshow and making the final adjustments, there wasn't much else work for me to do since everything else was tied to Jane, Akif and Elysa since they were the production / post-production team while I mainly did pre-production work.
The Castle's Ruins Presentation by Ilhan Khairul Anwar
Week 8 (23/03/26 - 27/03/26)
This week was mainly used to fix and make any changes to our animation based on the feedback we were given in our Week 7 presentation. I was tasked with drawing some effects for the animation to make it livelier and more cartoonish.
Figure 8.1: Impact Lines Graphic
Figure 8.2: Spinning Stars Graphics
Figure 8.3: Blue Arrow & Long Road Graphics
Figure 8.4: Sparkles Graphics
Figure 8.5: Shocked / Surprised Graphics
Figure 8.6: Nervous Squiggles
Figure 8.7: Inhaling Graphics
Figure 8.8: Exhaling Graphics
FINAL ANIMATION
FINAL 3D MODELS
Hakim Turnaround
Kellie Turnaround
REFLECTION
This module was very difficult for me, especially when it came to 3D modeling the two characters that I was tasked with designing and creating. Because I failed the two 3D modeling modules prior to Major Project 2, I was heavily advised to drop this module so I can retake it another semester when I'm better at the work. I chose not to simply because I did not want to have to burden my groupmates with even more work for them to do and because I didn't want to have to restart everything from the beginning again. So having to essentially teach myself 3D modeling on the go was quite a daunting task but the end result turned out well so I can't complain.
Overall this was a tough but rewarding module, it is nice to see all the work we put in together finally come together at the end and seeing the quality of our final product is satisfying to me. I'm glad I at least got groupmates that consistently did work and also kept me up to task and on track with everything that I had to do.
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