Final year project
The Snow Dame [Read more]
The snow dame: The line-up
The line-up of the main cast and crew of The Snow Dame. From left to right, Villain Emyr Williams, Sister/Damsel Paige Chryses, Protagonist Claudia Chryses (later Eira Williams), Animal Companion to Claudia Noelle and Love Interest Pedro Ramirez.
It was interesting to see the ways in which this new cast and crew complimented and clashed against each other in terms of colours, fashion choices, etc. when put next to each other.
The snow dame: Claudia/Eira variations
What really brought Claudia (and by extension the rest of the Snow Dame) to life was going back into the pages of the Bard and finding inspiration from there, particularly Hamlet for Claudia because of his struggles with loyalty, mental health, family and what to do in the face of the difficult situation he found himself in.
It's why I modelled her new outfit after the one Sarah Bernhardt (one of the first and most famous performances of the character, let alone a female one) wore in her performance of the titular character and had her pose while holding a skull and freezing it with her ice abilities.
And to fit with the melancholy of her character, I found myself shifting towards colder and deeper blues in these variations.
The snow dame: Paige variations
For Paige, I once again took inspiration from Hamlet, but it was more in looking at the ethereal, flowery aesthetic depictions of Ophelia in classical art inspired and trying to combine it with the portrayal of European royalty in the mid-19th century. Because like the character, her submissiveness masks deeper things that she won't ever bring out in the open and her loyalty to her family is a sure and paramount thing even after being betrayed by them, a contrast shown by the flowers I chose: daisies (innocence, cheer) and peonies (shame, bashfulness, anger).
The most important thing in this was making her look like what one would see in their heads if you asked them to imagine a Disney princess while also keeping it its own thing. Which is why I realised through the variations that I wanted much softer and more pastel-inspired colours to show her docile(ish) and easily bending nature.
The snow dame: Noelle turnaround sheet
This model sheet represents a first for me in a lot of ways since I was never very confident in drawing animals at all, let alone one that would fill the traditional mould of being an animal sidekick that so many Disney movies have been set in stone.
I knew I wanted to keep Noelle mostly in the real of reality- not just because of my newness to doing something like this but also because it wouldn't be right to give her comically large eyes with long eyelashes in a movie that's meant to be more serious and leaning towards older audiences. But I didn't want to lose the idea of feminine elegance that I wanted either, so striking that balance was the most important thing.
City in turmoil: Factions
This was a collaborative project done with Alex Carrington in our attempt to tackle the brief by Rare Studios for the D&AD New Blood Awards competition: The concept we came up with was 'City of Turmoil’, a hypothetical open-world multiplayer steampunk game with heist-style gameplay that used the usual bright aesthetic of steampunk genre pieces to actually explore the darker elements of the time periods that inform steampunk.
In keeping with that idea, building the faction system up as real political and not just occupational groups was important and this model sheet shows the 3 most prolific out of all nine of them: The Pendranghams- the wealthy aristocracy who run this city when they aren't stabbing each other in the back, the Frankensteads- scientists with a coldly mercenary philosophy who'll take any kind of work that lets them use their abilities and the Everdestons- the working class folks who are exploited to mine the metal that runs the city.
City in turmoil: Everdestons
Every single faction came with their own colour scheme, even if what colour to assign to which faction changed more and more as they developed. The Everdestons were no different, seeing as they started with the usual coding of red for passionate, working-class revolutionaries but changed to orange/bronze as new factions were added and both Alex and I wanted to change up expectations. The colour change also ended up being more symbolically poignant since it now showed how the Everdestons' whole lives revolved around that metal.
The real challenge in these colour tests/variations was striking a balance between making it clear that they were defined by orange- which is normally a bright, warm and optimistic colour- while keeping the look and feel of them as run-down and barely clinging to any kind of life. It was also a good opportunity to work with darker skin tones and experiment with digital glow effects.
City in turmoil: Trailer storyboard (still VII)
Once the world for City in Turmoil had been laid out, Alex and I decided that it was only appropriate to show some actual gameplay in the form of a demo or reveal trailer.
So in the end, we decided to focus on a self-contained story involving two hypothetical mercenaries, Mercury and Oxide (who'd stand in for the players/player characters) on a heist that turns chaotic. Alex tackled making the backgrounds, putting the video together and voicing Oxide. I drew the characters/action and voiced Mercury.
This still in particular showed a first for me in not just storyboarding longer material but also getting to stage what gameplay would look like, especially with effects like casting illusions in smoke or jumping through a mirror.
City in turmoil: Trailer storyboard (still XV)
Once the world for City in Turmoil had been laid out, Alex and I decided that it was only appropriate to show some actual gameplay in the form of a demo or reveal trailer.
So in the end, we decided to focus on a self-contained story involving two hypothetical mercenaries, Mercury and Oxide (who'd stand in for the players/player characters) on a heist that turns chaotic. Alex tackled making the backgrounds, putting the video together and voicing Oxide. I drew the characters/action and voiced Mercury.
This still in particular showed a first for me in not just storyboarding longer material but also getting to stage what gameplay would look like, especially with effects like casting illusions in smoke or jumping through a mirror.
Sunaina Hussain
Where I take one of Disney's most popular movies and use it to create my own story and characters.
My aim for this project was always centered on redesigning the characters from Frozen because it’s a movie whose aesthetic issues have always fascinated me, from how uncannily similar and doll-like the female leads look to the overall polished but bland feel of the animation.
But what started as simply making the characters look and feel more unique spiralled into a rabbit hole of my discovering problems with the story that led me to realise that I couldn’t be content with just making the characters look sharper - there had to be a story behind those designs as well.
So the final aim of this project was to design an ensemble of 4 main characters and one animal character for a hypothetical 2-D animated movie called “The Snow Dame”, inspired loosely by Disney’s Frozen.
Final year project
The Snow Dame
Awards
'10-'12 Duke of Edinburgh Bronze and Silver Awards
'12 Emirates Literature Festival Poetry Competition: 3rd Place
Experience
'11 Emirates Precast Construction (LLC): Accquired technical skills in using CAD software and learned the processes that go into the making of concrete blocks.
'12-'13 Feline Friends:
Learned Sales Management by participating in book sales on regular shifts