Illustration and Visual Narrative - Task 4: Final Project

  Illustration and Visual Narrative

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|| 08/06/2025 - 29/06/2025(Week 10 - Week 14)
|| BAI ZHUO QING, 0370042
|| Illustration and Visual Narrative
|| Bachelor of Design (Hons) in Creative Media / Taylor's University 

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Instructions 

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Task 4 Final Project Requirements：

1. For the Final Project of this course, you are required to create a poetic, life-lesson animated video with caption.
2. The duration of the video MUST be between 15 – 20 seconds.
3. You are required to create at least 3 sequences of animated illustration based on a
script.
4. The scripts are included in the next slides. You DO NOT NEED to create your own
scripts.
5. You can start by breaking down your script into few parts, and plan the visuals of each
part.
6. You MUST include sound, audio narrative and caption of your script.
7. Reference attached

Final Project – Final Output Dimensions
For your Final Project, the dimension will be:
• Height: 1920 px
• Width: 1080 px
• Orientation: Portrait / Vertical

Final Project – Final Submission
Your final submission will consist of:
• Adobe Illustrator File/Files –.ai format
• Final Animated Video – mp4 format
     • Sound
     • Background Music
     • Animation
     • Script Overlay
• Documentation –.pdf format
     1. Description of inspiration
     2. Moodboard
     3. Storyboard
     4. Script
     5. Detailed information
     6. Rationale
     7. Self Reflection

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Description of inspiration：

The script I chose is:

“It has been said that time heals all wounds. The truth is that time does not heal anything. It merely passes.

It is what we do during the passing of time that helps or hinders the healing process.”

My inspiration comes from a seemingly ordinary scene: a girl's daily life. She is not the protagonist, nor a hero, but just an ordinary person who tries to live in the torrent of time.

I began to think: When the wound cannot be healed by time, how will we spend every ordinary day?

I tried to use delicate light and shadow and simple composition to record this "silent recovery".

It is not brilliant, not intense, but it is the reality that many people are experiencing. 

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Moodboard

Storyboard

Act 1 | Night | Balcony | Alone

She leaned on the balcony alone and lit a cigarette.

The night was silent, the stars were sparse, and the smoke lingered on her fingertips,

just like those memories that have not yet healed.

Some people say that time can heal everything.

But she knew that time would not really heal the wound,

it just passed silently.

Act 2｜Night｜Living Room｜Friends’ Company

She tried to open her heart, sitting under the warm light,

sitting side by side with her friends.

Although she still crossed her arms and hid her emotions in silence,

this time, she did not escape.

This is the choice she made in time—

trying to understand herself and slowly approaching healing.

Act 3 | Daytime | Supermarket | Daily numbness

Days go on as usual, life goes on.

She stood in front of the supermarket shelf, staring blankly at the milk and cans in front of her.

Everything was too familiar, and she didn't even have the energy to feel it.

This is time:

It is not violent, but it is enough to slowly drain people.

Act 4 | Late night | Bedroom | Breakdown

Until the dead of night,

she finally curled up on the bed, tears silently falling.

At this moment, she no longer pretended to be strong.

The tears washed away the numbness of the day,

and became the starting point for her to truly face herself.

Script

The script I chose was:

”It has been said that time heals all wounds. The truth is that time does not heal anything. It merely passes.

It is what we do during the passing of time that helps or hinders the healing process.”It is not brilliant, not intense, but it is the reality that many people are experiencing. 

Detailed information

Act 1: A girl smoking alone at night

Artistic style analysis:

Character design: round face, big eyes with a slightly melancholy look, simple facial features, emphasizing emotional expression;

Color application: dark blue and warm brown are used to create a night atmosphere, and fireworks colors are used to embellish the loneliness;

Expression: slightly drooping eyes and tightly pursed mouth corners show calmness and depression in complex emotions.

Composition techniques:

Center composition: the character is located in the center, highlighting the protagonist's inner emotions;

Scene stratification: the foreground character and the background night sky are distinct, creating a sense of tranquility of the confrontation between "man and time";

Color contrast: the dark background highlights the outline of the character and focuses on it.

Act 2: Emotional repression in the company of friends

Artistic style analysis:

Character modeling: The red-haired girl still maintains a restrained attitude, and the blue-dressed girl has gentle eyes, a typical "contrasting emotional design";

Color matching style: beige + dark blue + orange candlelight constitutes a warm tone, highlighting the inner "coexistence of resistance and softness";

Expression design: frowning eyebrows, avoiding eyes, showing the unresolved emotional burden in the heart.

Composition skills:

Symmetry and balance: The two people occupy the left and right sides of the picture respectively to maintain visual balance;

Candlelight element: placed in the center of the foreground, forming a visual anchor point, enhancing the sense of tranquility;

Spatial sense level: the middle ground of the characters + background lamps + desktop foreground, the three-level composition is natural.

Act 3: Silent shopping in the supermarket

Artistic style analysis:

Character creation: Wearing belly-exposing clothes to show daily life scenes, but the expression and posture are obviously not in good shape;

Color application: Use milk blue, shelf orange and deep red to form a contrast, making the character more prominent;

Exaggerated and natural: The slightly frowned eyebrows and the tightly grasped cart movements are slightly exaggerated, showing psychological tension.

Composition skills:

Center composition: The girl stands in the middle of the picture, emphasizing loneliness;

Background layering: The upper and lower shelves divide the picture space, and the character is surrounded by "life pressure";

Weak symmetry but stable: The stacking of goods on the left and right is relatively balanced, and the visual center of gravity is clear.

Act 4: She Cries Late at Night

Artistic Style Analysis:

Emotional Expression: The facial lines are soft, and the tears are clear and streamlined, highlighting the "exaggeration in nature";

Color Design: Pajama Blue and Midnight Black together create a quiet but emotional night;

Blending cute style with emotional feeling: Even if sad, it still maintains soft brushstrokes, which is in line with the tone of Japanese cute style.

Composition Techniques:

Close-up shot: The picture focuses on the face and hands, and the details amplify the emotions;

Single-side light source: The faint bright surface on the upper left creates a subtle sense of light, enhancing the three-dimensional sense;

The picture has a weak sense of tilt: The head tilts slightly to the left, bringing a gentle flow of emotions.

Rationale

This series of illustrations revolves around the theme of "time and emotion". It takes the inner journey of a red-haired girl as a clue, and uses four life clips to show the psychological fluctuations and emotional struggles she has experienced in the passage of time. The picture adopts a Japanese cute style, combining soft colors and simple composition, focusing on the expressions and postures of the characters, and strengthening the emotional expression of the story.

In the first work, the girl stands alone on the balcony, holding a cigarette. The night sky is quiet and smoky, symbolizing her inner loneliness and the silent passage of time; while the second picture turns to the room, the company of her friends gives her a little comfort. Although she is still silent with her arms folded, her emotions begin to loosen, and the candlelight in the picture seems to ignite the faint hope in her heart. The third picture brings the perspective into the inertia of daily life. The girl is shopping in the supermarket, but her expression is indifferent, as if life continues to run, but her emotions have long been stagnant. The composition strengthens the "numb" atmosphere through repeated shelves and symmetrical layout. In the last work, she cries alone at night, finally letting go of her strength during the day, curling up in the dark and facing her emotions head-on, with tears becoming her truest expression.

The four pictures together form a silent but profound psychological narrative, conveying that "time itself does not heal wounds, but the choices we make in time determine whether we really begin to heal." This is a seemingly ordinary, but emotionally profound growth process.

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Process

I started by hand-drawing digitally on an iPad using a digital tablet, then used the pen in AI to create the line drawings, which I then colored.

After that, I used Jianying to create the video and added some transition effects, music, and dubbing.

Final Output

Adobe Illustrator File - CLICK HERE

Final video

PDF Documentation

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Self Reflection

This assignment made me realize that illustration is not only a presentation of painting skills, but also a process of conveying emotions and stories through visual language. In the creative process, I learned how to extract the most core emotional elements from the script and transform them into expressive pictures, giving static images narrative power.

In order to make the psychological changes of the characters more realistic, I read the script repeatedly, tried to figure out the inner state of the characters in each scene, and designed the characters' actions, expressions and colors in combination with the atmosphere of the scene. This process of analysis and conversion has trained my ability to visualize abstract texts, and also made me pay more attention to the status of "story" in visual expression.

On the technical level, I have further mastered the use of Adobe Illustrator, especially in layer management, path optimization and color gradient control. Make the work more immersive and emotionally extensible.