Character Environment

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Project Concept

01

The idea for this project is to design and model the room of a Japanese girl who follows the lifestyle of “Lolita Fashion.” The girl, whose name shall be Nanako, is a young girl around the age of 20. Nanako originally comes from the countryside of Japan, but after turning 18, she decided to leave home and move to Tokyo, Japan so that she can fully embrace the unique fashion styles found in the city. At a young age, Nanako became fascinated with a fashion style known as “Sweet Lolita.” Sweet Lolita fashion is based on Victorian-era clothing that uses light pastel colors and cute motifs in its design. Their outfits consist of fruit or floral themes and is heavily decorated with laces, bows, and ribbons to emphasize cuteness. The style ultimately replicate a princess-like feeling. The reason why Nanako adores Sweet Lolita fashion is due to her childhood living on the countryside. In her village, fashion and cuteness is almost nonexistent. Her family, being rice farm-ers, did not care for cute stuff and adornments. Nanako grew up watching princesses and fairies on television, but was never able to doll herself up. After one day discovering that people actually dress like Princesses everyday, Nanako desired to do the same. This passion motivated her to move to the city so that she can live the “Lolita” lifestyle. Upon arriving in Tokyo, Nanako rented out a small, single apartment. To pay for this hous-ing, she spends most of her day working at a part-time job. During her freetime, Nanako ventures to Harajuku Street, the fashion center of Tokyo, to meet up with her fellow Lolita Fashion friends and buy clothing. Between work and shopping, Nanako is rarely at home. Nevertheless, her apartment is decorated in the same manner as her clothes. The room is painted in pink and decorated with frills and flowers. Nanako’s room is adorned in the Sweet Lolita style to make up for the lack of cuteness she had as a child. Despite her housing being a crammed, single roomed apartment, the Sweet Lolita decoration makes her still feel like a princess when she returns home.

~ To learn more about general Lolita Fashion, please visit www.lolitafashion.org~ A recommended video to watch is a documentary called Sugar Coated which follows four people who takes on the extreme Lolita Fashion and investigates what the lifestyle means to them. The video link can be found here: Sugar Coated

Character Environment

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Reference Gathering

02

To begin designing Nanako’s room, I first had to gather images of Sugar Lolita clothing. As ap-parent from the images below, the style heavily focuses on a pink, frilly concept. Almost every piece of clothing is patterned with a floral or childlike design. The overall feeling is very similar to a Victorian Doll. The clothing makes the one wearing it appear very young, but sophiscated.

Character Environment

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Reference Gathering

03

Next, I researched how some Lolita styled rooms already look. The majority of what I found were excessively decorated rooms, similar to the bottom-left two images. Almost every visible aspect of the room seems to be accessorized. Although the rooms were interesting, this is not the route I am going for. I want to design a room like the larger images where the rooms are more simple, yet still girly. Since Nanako is still young, I would doubt that she would be able to afford to super decorate her room.

Character Environment

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Concept Art

04

This is the concept art for her room. The room is simple; with just a bed, a nightstand, and a couch being the main piece of furnishing. The room will be primarily colored in pink. Below are the types of patterns I want to incorpate into the texturing. Two things to note are the teddy bears and the shopping bags. The teddy bears were incorpated to give a young atmosphere. Without them, I found the room leaning towards an old-styled lady feeling. As for the shopping bags, they are currently not present in the concept art. However, the idea is to scatter shopping bags here and there to represent how often Nanako is out shopping as opposed to spending time in her room. I would love to show dressed hunged around the room, but there is no time to model the dresses.

Character Environment

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Floor Plan

05

For this project, I will only be modeling one corner of Nanako’s apartment. This is due to the time constraint for the project. Nevertheless for clarity reasons, I decided to make a floor plan of Nanako’s apartment. From just the conept image, it is difficult to judge how small Nanako’s living condition actually is. In reality, Nanako lives in a small apartment. This type of housing is ironically called “Mansion” in Japan. There are several different styles mansions in Japan meant for a range of residents, whether a family or a single person. A family styled mansion is very similar to a flat in America; however, the smallest Japanese mansion is quite different. They generally feature a narrow kitchen at the entryway that barely fits 4 people. Branching from the kitchen would be a tiny bathroom where the tub and toliet basically hugs each other. To save space, the sink is almost often designed to be the toliet’s lid. The main space of the smallest mansion is the bedroom which doubles as a living room. This is where everything happens; eating meals, watching tv, sleeping, etc. This type of housing is very cheap and is often occupied by college students since Japan tends to not offer dorming.

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Props

06

BedDespite already having a small room, Nanako has a twin sized bed. Her bed has frilly bed sheets and comforter and has a metal frame which features a swirl pattern. This elegant bed is what really makes Nanako feels like a princess. On the countryside, Nanako became accus-tomed to sleeping on the Japanese floor futons. As such, sleeping on such a big bed makes her feel special.

Mr. Laying BearOn her twin sized bed is a human sized teddy bear. She bought this teddy bear to be her “Prince to cuddle” when she sleeps.

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Props

07

Vine of FlowersOn the wall around her bed, Nanako hangs a vine of flowers decoration. The flowers are not real, just artificial.

Cieling VeilOn the two sides of her bedroom, Nanako hangs a transparent, frilly veil. The veils were designed to mimic the layered appearance of Lolita Dresses.

CurtainsAt the very end of Nanako’s room, there is a large window. In Japan, these windows are made very large since most people tend to hang their laun-dry outside the window. Despite being just windows, Nanako puts curtains that drop to the floor here. This way, it doesn’t seem like there are windows behind the curtains. Nanako does this purposely because she wants to seper-ate her lolita realm from the outside.

Character Environment

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Props

08

ClockAbove the left side of her bed is a clock that is decorated in the same flowers as the vine.

Cushioned SeatAt the end of her bed is a seat. Princess rooms usually has something at the ends of the bed. This type of seating or a treasure chest are the most common decoration from what it seems.

Night StandIn between Nanako’s bed and sofa is a simple night stand.

LampThe one most childish object in Nana-ko’s room would be this lamp. The lamp has two shades; one is a simple white shade while the other is a colored shade that has teddy bear-shaped holes.

Character Environment

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Props

09

SofaSince her bedroom is also acts a living room, Nanako has a short sofa. The sofa fits only two people, but it’s perfect for Nanako if she ever has any guest over.

Mr. Other BearSitting on the sofa is another decently big teddy bear. This one is about the length of a human torso. This teddy bear keeps Nanako company when she sits on the sofa.

CarpetNanako’s room has wood-tiled floors. This is not very Lolita-like. As a result, a large carpet with a floral pattern in placed in the middle of the room to hide most of the wood tiles.

Glass TableIn the middle of the room is an expensive glass table. Since Nanako doesn’t have space for a desk, she needed a table to do work on or to eat on. A glass table for this purpose is excessive, but the glass table is the perfect centerpiece for the room when guest comes.

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Work Production

10

Below are various production process images of some items in the room.

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Work Production

11

Below are various production process images of some items in the room.

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Work Production

12

To the top is a wireframed screenshot of the room, followed by a fully rendered image with the ambient occlusion pass already added in.

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Final Renders

13

For my final renders, I wanted to experiment with a new style. In Japanese cartoons, many artists are now relying on 3D programs to more efficiently create their work. In the cartoons or comics, it is common that a scenery, such as a bedroom or classroom, is shown multiple times and in many an-gles. In order to ensure that the environment’s space is always accurate, many artists are now creating a 3D model of the scenery to render and later edit to make look 2D. By doing this, the artist can freely render out what angle of the room they wish to use as a backdrop without needing to constantly draw the same space over and over again. Since the theme of my character environment comes from Japanese roots, I decided that this project would be a good place to experiment with this post-render style. In order to create this effect, I went through the following process. First, I rendered out a beauty pass and an ambient occlusion pass of the scene. Then I took the beauty pass into Adobe Photoshop and edited the file to create three different files: an outline version, and sketchy version, and a blurry version that resembles watercolor. I took all three files, as well as the ambient occlusion file, and overlayed/multiplied them over the beauty pass. Doing this created an interesting effect where the rendered image looks almost hand drawned, but stil has a touch of 3D. To farther enchance the image, I then painted over some areas of the picture to give it a sutble colored-hue haze. I believe the final renders I created present a unique balance of 2D and 3D work. Images for this workflow can be view on the next page.

Character Environment

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Final Renders

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Order: Paint Over > Outline > Sketch > Watercolor > Ambient Occlusion > Beauty Render

Final Piece:

Character Environment

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Additional Renders

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