My African Masks

Today, I had my African Arts Final project due, which I have created these two characters as my inspirational work from the Bwa masks of the Boni people. Their masks are quite interesting due to their simplified, geometric shapes to show the personality of the mask's spirit. Bwa masks are used for performances and ceremonial rituals for the ancestors. If you have the time, you should definitely try to read the background info about them.

These are some actual references. The brown stuff are hemp ropes. They get flung around when the performers do some crazy dancing. It's really cool!


Now here are my own mask creations:

The top one represents a Secretary bird spirit. If you don't know what Secretary birds are, they're African vultures with feathers that jut out of their heads just like the pens that stick of the back of the secretary's ears. HA, get it?? But since I made it into the secretary bird, I illustrated some of its movements as a predator. It has forceful swooping motions to portray its strength and a heavy leap as it mimics the bird's action when it's capturing its prey.

The bottom mask represents a "cloud spirit". At the top of its head shows what the character does such as covering the sun (hence the semi-circle), gives rain (the red dots), and rolls over the mountains (the jagged lines). Just like the real Bwa masks, each detail is a symbol and every single thing counts. Also, since it is a "cloud spirit" it makes wind and thunder, which I made the character show its actions by making strong, lunges as if it's blowing fiercely, and interacting with a musician with a drum to create loud booming thunder.

Overall, this project was fun to do, even it was last minute. Definitely learned new things about the African culture that I didn't know before and will try to incorporate them into my future work.

V's Sketches

Here are some sketches and in-process storyboard that I've prepped for my Character Animation final.
Since my teacher seemed to enjoy the mom character alot I'm gonna try my best to put her into the final, if time permits. Overall, I'm afraid that I'll run out of time because my animation might go on for 2-4 minutes. But oh well, I'm pretty determined to do this and gonna do whatever I can to make this work! Wish me luck!

Meet V

Hey y'all,

I just made a few character animations starring the young, energetic V, short for Vena. I must say that I've made to be quite the spunky, eleven year old girl. I got my inspiration for her from Hogarth from the Iron Giant and Coraline from Coraline, which are both fantastic films by the way. I definitely love using V as my subject for all my character animation exercises and it's always exciting to see my flat, dead character brought to life with a bit of personality and careful timing of her motions. I'm hoping that I could continue to work with her and possibly use her in one of my feature films someday. haha someday...

The first animation  is V's lipsync exercise. This is her first exposure to having a reaction with a dialogue.

The second animaton shown is V's weight exercise. I still need to add in the second part of the animation where she'll be throwing a baseball, so hopefully with enough time, I should be able to animate it and post that up soon. 

The third animaton shown is V's walk cycle with a panning background. The end is a little vague as of now, but it's V trying to scare off this little girl in the car by the object that she just picked up off the ground. The one thing that you gotta know about V is that she doesn't like it when people look down on her especially when it comes to her curiousity and creativity. She likes to be outspoken about her thoughts, but of course, she knows better to not to create a big scene about it.