Rodriguez – IMM Senior Thesis

Tyler Rodriguez – Prototype 3/Elevator Pitch

For my third iteration of my prototype, I decided to make a character utilizing the techniques that I learned from watching Samurai Jack. I decided to create my version of the Japanese Monster Shuten Douji. While the design isn’t exactly what I want to do for my project, it is definitely a step in the right direction. I decided to still keep elements that you would find in the respective culture, such as giving the character samurai armor. However the design is entirely in my own style and heavily inspired by the lineless character designs that are utilized in Samurai Jack. The reception I received from this design was overall positive. People favored this style much more than my original drawing not only because it aesthetically looked better, but also because it was a style I would be interested in exploring. There were a couple of things that I would like to change. Most people were immediately able to pinpoint that I was inspired by Samurai Jack. While I was happy that the style I was experimenting with was able to portray where I got the inspiration from, I also took this as a sign that I need to refine my style even further so it becomes less of a copy and more of an original take inspired by the piece of media. I was also giving some tips on how I might want to animate the characters once they’re designed. The program I plan on using is Adobe Illustrator, but I was told that I could try playing around with puppet animation rather than frame by frame like a traditional animation would. Also this style of animation could help further differentiate my style from Samurai Jack.

Elevator Pitch: Mythology has been a part of world culture for centuries. There are many rich and fascinating stories that have been passed down through time. However, stories don’t need to simply be told through word of mouth or through texts. My project plan is to create an interactive exhibit that showcases mythological heroes and villains that have appeared throughout Greek, Japanese, Hindu and Norse mythologies. I plan to have motion graphic videos that detail each character’s respective stories along with 3D models that one could interact with. My goal is to have an interesting interactive experience while teaching the viewer about mythological characters and their stories in a fun way.

Tyler Rodriguez – Prototype 2

Unfortunately, I was unable to come to class and show off a prototype for the second portion, due to illness. While I didn’t have a physical prototype, I was able to do a bit more research on the stylistic approach I wanted to do for my project. A lot of my research mostly pertained to the mythology of the characters I wanted to portray rather than stylistic approaches. So I decided to research a bit more by watching different media and seeing how they stylize character. In particular, I decided to watch a lot of the show Samurai Jack. I really love how the characters use very limited outlining and how most of the characters are made from very simple shapes. Specifically the first scene of the first episode was very interesting. It was a montage of Jack growing up and learning fighting styles from cultures all over the world. Each culture had a unique approach and color scheme. This gave me the idea that I should differentiate the characters from each culture, but still develop a unifying style that is recognizable as my own.

Tyler Rodriguez -Prototype 1

For my first prototype, I decided I would attempt to create a design for a character I plan to use in my project. My initial idea was to replicate the art styles that were used in each culture in the past and put my own creative twists on it. I decided I would test out this plan by drawing out a greek mythology character while also trying my best to emulate greek pottery art. Just to try and challenge myself, I wanted to see how well I could create a character without sketching the idea out first. The results were admittedly less than stellar. To be quite honest, I wasn’t too happy with the result, but I figured that any prototype is better than no prototype. The feedback I received was pretty much what I would’ve expected. People weren’t too keen on the designs either, but they didn’t really think they were as bad as I thought. However, doing this, I did gain some more insight on how I can improve my design process. I feel as if my biggest flaw was that I was relying way too heavily on trying to emulate the culture’s art style that I neglected the aspect of adding my own flair to it as well. At the end of the day, this is going to be my project, so I need to add my own flair to it somehow. I received a lot of insight on how I should go forward with my designing process. Stylistically, the show Samurai Jack has an interesting art style that is quite interesting. A lot of my peers have told me that getting inspiration from this with my art may help me come to a design that I really like.

Tyler Rodriguez – Prototype Plan

Design and decide on characters I want to use for my project. Try to find a distinct style or some sort of design choice to unify all of my characters together. Decide on multiple color pallets and other things I can buff out.
Create a motion graphic test animation. I want to make sure I can animate it correctly so I can implement it into my project
Create a test 3D model. I have very little experience with 3D modeling so I need to make sure I can get better for the final iteration of my project.

Tyler Rodriguez – Research Update 2

My second week of research was a little more tightly packed with other class assignments so I wasn’t able to research as much as I would’ve liked to. However, I did do a bit more research into both more mythology and into the more technical aspects of my project.

I decided for this week I would like to focus a lot more on Japanese mythology. There are a lot of different gods and demons in Japanese mythology. However unlike Greek mythology, a lot of the demons are not individual characters, rather they’re more akin to different species or races of monsters. However, through my research I did come across different stories of different heroes fighting villains. What interested me was a lot of these stories came from kabuki theatre plays which has a distinct costume and art style that I might want to incorporate into my redesigns of each character. In particular, there’s the story of Kintaro/Kintoki and his journey to kill the Oni(demon) king Shuten Douji. There was also an interesting story regarding the gods Amaterasu, the sun goddess and her brother Susano-o, the god of storms. After killing one of her attendants, Amaterasu falls into a depression and prevents the sun from shining. Susano-o was exiled from heaven and only allowed back in after slaying the multi-headed serpent Yamata-no-Orochi. He ends up killing him and forging a sword with his spine or back. There is also another story with the toad sage Jiraiya and his rivalry with his former pupil Orochimaru, the snake sage. I thought this dynamic was pretty interesting considering that snakes eat toads, making Jiraiya a sort of underdog hero. In fact, there seems to be a big theme of serpents being villains in these mythologies. I’m guessing it is because snakes are often poisonous and dangerous, leading to a natural aversion to them.

I haven’t done too much research on Norse mythology, I plan on doing more during my free time. However, I do like the rivalry between the well-known gods Thor and Loki. Norse mythology is pretty fascinating in that a lot of these characters, including villains make reoccurring appearances, particularly Loki. While he can be considered evil, especially as he is the main leader in the prophetic war of Ragnarok against the gods, he is a trickster god, who often causes less harmful mischief just to mess with people. I hope to read a bit more on this mythology further in the week.

I also decided to look up a tutorial on motions graphics to try to gain a bit more information on the medium. I haven’t finished it but it has been pretty helpful and has been teaching me the basics. I also plan to watch more of this tutorial during this week.

https://www.linkedin.com/learning/motion-graphics/welcome-2?u=56743753

Tyler Rodriguez – Research Update 1

During my research of different mythologies, I wanted to find something that was unifying of all these vastly different cultures despite being from totally different times and places. As I began to research different stories and characters one thing that I found quite fascinating was that there is almost always the theme of a hero trying to solve a problem, albeit a natural force or an entity. These stories always start with the hero themselves and their backstory. Then there’s always a call to action, which serves as the driving force of the hero in their journey. The interesting part of the story is at this part, as this is what leads up to the climax of the story. In most cases, the hero will achieve their goal and return back home as a hero. The way these stories are formatted are extremely reminiscent of Marvel movies. Funnily enough, Thor is a well-known Marvel hero who originates from Norse mythology himself. I started digging online about this and ran across a concept called The Hero’s Journey. This format is used in many stories and even still used to this day. While it was coined by a man named Joseph Campbell in 1949, this format has been around centuries before, quite possibly since story telling has been a thing. After doing this initial searching of similarities to unify the character choices, I decided to go with the theme of different protagonists and antagonists that are found in various mythologies around the world. After all, my favorite elements of these stories are always the characters themselves, and considering my project is going to be depicting mythological characters I feel like this would be a good fit.

I took a trip to the Library to find some books on Mythology. Here, I picked up four books all detailing the mythology and stories from four different cultures. I read A Handbook of Greek Mythologyby H.J. Rose. It started with detailing the creation myth that the Greeks believed in, with the Greek titans and how the Gods overthrow their tyranny rise in power. Zeus, the leader of the Gods is very well known and would fulfil the role of a hero with his father Kronos being the villain, but I’m not too sure if I would like to use these two. The story of how the Greek Gods rose to power and Zeus’s journey of gathering an army to fight his father isn’t very well known to many people, but Zeus himself is a very well-known figure. I’m leaning towards more lesser known characters. Regardless, I don’t have a limit to how many characters I can use so I can keep them in the back of my mind. The book details a lot of information about major and lesser Greek Gods but nothing really caught my attention too much. However, as the book got to stories of regular humans and their stories it become pretty interesting. Often times, the protagonists of the stories were often regular people who had to find ways to fight a creature or a force that wouldn’t really be humanly possible. Famous examples include Heracles (Hercules) and Perseus, but there are other relatively interesting stories such as King Minos and the Minotaur, or even just the tragic story of Orpheus. I’m planning on diving a little deeper in Greek mythology because of its popularity and massive amounts of mythological stories that can be further explored.

While doing some online researching and admittedly through playing the game Persona 5, I did find two interesting characters from Bali mythology. They believe that there is an evil witch named Rangda who causes disease and misfortune. Her eternal rival is a lion creature named Barong who fights her to death every year. The Balinese people hold a festival every year dressing in costumes of these two characters to commemorate this myth. While I was aware that the game contains a lot of mythological characters, thought it was pretty interesting that I would find direct inspiration that I can use in my project while I was initially procrastinating. Who said playing video games isn’t doing homework?

I honestly haven’t researched as much with the other books and mythology as much as I wanted to this week. While my focus for this upcoming week is to research more technical aspects of project, I’ll definitely keep researching more on mythology and history.

Tyler Rodriguez – Research Plan

For my research, I plan on learning more information about motion graphics and 3D printing in order to complete my project. I will also have to research more into mythology from various cultures around the world.

Books:

How Do They Do That?: Motion Graphics by David Greene

Beginning Blender: Open Source 3D modeling, Animation, and Game Designby Lance Flavell

The Greeks and Their Godsby W.K.C. Guthrie

Online Tutorials:

Lynda.com (Plenty of online tutorials on motion graphics and 3D modeling/printing)

People:

John Kuiphoff

Brett Ratner

Makerspace Staff

Resources:

Adobe Illustrator

Adobe After Effects

Adobe Premiere

Blender or other 3D modeling programs

3D Printers

Makerspace

Tyler Rodriguez – Final Concept

With the IMM senior showcases I have attended in the past, what always caught my eye were the projects that created an experience for you from the moment you entered the room. Ever since, I’ve been inspired to create my own interactive experience with my own personal twists for others to enjoy. For my thesis project, my goal is to create an interactive experience that details the stories of various mythological characters, utilizing motion graphic videos and 3D printed models.

Graphic Design is something I love, so from the start I knew that I wanted to incorporate that into my project I some way. I wanted to challenge myself and use my skills in design to try to make a motion graphics animation as its something I’m not too comfortable with, but something I really want to get better at. As started thinking, what motivates me the most is when I do projects that have to do with topics I like, so I chose to do a graphics based project that involves mythological characters. However, with just these topics alone I wouldn’t really be able to create that exhibit experience I wanted to create from the start, so I chose to challenge myself and try to incorporate something I don’t have much experience with. Through this line of thinking I decided to create 3D models and print them for people to interact with and hold, while also creating motion graphics animations that detail the stories of each mythological character. Through this, I will be able to create an experience for people to remember while also spreading knowledge of various mythical characters that people may not have known much about.

I envision my project taking up just a room. I will utilize the monitors in the room to display the animations and put each of the 3D prints either on the center table or right in front of each monitor. I will also create and print decorations to hang in the room to create a better sense of atmosphere as well. From what I’ve researched, I haven’t seen very many projects that are similar to mine. Not too many projects combine the two forms of media together and I couldn’t find any at all that have to deal with mythology like my project.

Tyler Rodriguez – Revised Concept

For my revised project idea, I decided I will combine my initial idea and my second idea together. My revised concept will be to create an interactive experience that details the stories of various characters from different types of mythology. In the exhibit, I will create 3D models of each character as well as providing motion graphics with a short animation and description of the character and their story.

My vision is to have a room decorated with various 3D printed decorations and other little things with motion graphics animations on the projector detailing back stories while I preset the 3D figures in hand for the people to physically interact with.

I initially wanted to focus on one culture’s mythology but after some consideration I think it would be more interesting to incorporate characters from a great variety of cultures instead.

I know what I will have to research a lot about mythology to make sure my information is correct. I will also need to research more about motion graphics and video animation. I will also need to research more about 3D printing and modeling which is something I’m not too well versed in. However, it’s a project that involves a lot of things that I really love so I am excited to see this project progress.

Tyler Rodriguez – Initial Concepts

Concept 1: My idea is to create a 2D animation utilizing Motion Graphics. Motion Graphics is a medium I have always been interested in learning, but I haven’t really pursued it as far as I would like. I want to create a story that revolves around Japanese mythology with characters wearing Street Fashion clothing, as both are things that interest me. Creating a sort of blend of things I like, while also challenging myself with a medium that I’m not too experienced with could provide for an interesting project.

Concept 2: My second idea is to create an exhibit type of project that will utilize graphics and 3D printing. I want to create an experience that tells the history behind mythological characters by providing graphics of said character while also providing 3D prints of them for people to hold and see. I like the idea of interacting with a sort of exhibit and 3D printing is still very new to me so I think it would make for a challenging project.

Concept 3: My third idea is to create a custom pair of sneakers, possibly from the ground up. Fashion design is something I have an interest in, but I don’t really know the first thing about it when it comes to creating an article of clothing. While this doesn’t have anything to do with my planned career choices, it’s something I’ve always wanted to do. This might be difficult, but may be a fun challenge that I can hopefully find something new to take out of.