HOW TO WRITE A DESIGN-CENTRIC PROJECT PROPOSAL?
Very cool!
So you want to know how to start this exciting journey?
To make and put your foot down to start your creative project today?
I am glad I can light some answers to you.
Now. This is not going to be a strict talk about how to write the project proposal for the academic degree in using multiple forms of research models.
No. This is all about interactive Art Experience. In DESIGN. And this is why we are so different when it comes to project proposals and knowing what we want. Or establishing our vision in the form of the description.
WHAT DO I WANT TO MAKE?
This is where it all begins. You want to know in your Studio practice for what type of creative project you want to go for. If you are the Fashion Designer you want to create a collection and design a brand. And if you are in the Communication Design you possibly want to draw the entire graphic novel. And publish your comic one day. Or to create the entire range of brand and identity design portfolio. But we want to go after something EPIC! And that is sort of the project that will be going beyond the Post Graduate level. And will easily help you to get started before and, and during the after school.
So if you are into digital sculpting or visual effects you want to tell the story. Or if you the 3D animator you want to make a two to three minute animated sequence in order to bring that voice of yours into the world. With the skills of directing you may go after the short film such as live action of about five to seven minutes. Or anything at this stage that may or may not limit your imagination. Including the spacial design, print making, web design and all sort of other design practices.
And in this entry I will be showing you and walking you though the structure of the Project Proposal in Digital Design that will establish the connection between you and your project.
Once you will have this proposal it will let you to go on for 10+ years making the project and you will know you will set for life. By enhancing the richness of your portfolio with the constantly evolving technologies. And to change career paths, creating opportunities and living your passion.
BACK END [ PROPAGATION ] NARRATIVE DESIGN
So there you have it. Possibly after asking yourself a question of WHAT DO I ACTUALLY WANT TO CREATE? once I have been given the full freedom of digital technology to practice…
Unless you are like me and have been in this for a while I will would be knowing exactly what I want to do. But I want to assure you this requires a very careful development.
But feel free to get yourself on the laptop. Start searching for images and inspirations, create a library and start writing the storyline.
Because we are going to throw this away.
And say no to you when you will decide to do it. Full stop.
This is the approach of finding exactly the perfect project that will make you successful and the absolute best in the field of design.
Once and for all you want to make a huge write up of what you want. And made it into the back story. I still remember I have been travelling for three months and creating this EPIC story. Of multiple characters, visions of the mountains, covered with snow, with the fully modelled military base, flying motorcycle vehicles and other settings. With the full blown explosion sequences, snow formations and realistic landings on the base with the attacks, and body motion capture animation with the photo-realistic digital characters of about 20 on the screen. With the sequences of climbing through the ventilations, running, actions scene, shooting scenes, medical settings and cybernetic design. With the escape sequence from the base with two characters flying on the two motorcycles extracting one of them from the trap. Where the female character in the chase scene crashes into the mountain and falls into pieces by being a cyborg in nature. And of course the male character picking up the cybernetic body of her child and walking away from the scene. With the final image of the baby as the very first miracle creation from the cyborg design.
Wow! Are you with me?
This is the Project Proposal for 1 years worth of work. And obviously something that first come to mind we simply call the back story and reverse engineer the front end narrative.
So if you are struggling with project formation this is absolutely okay. So move onto the next stage as quickly as possible!
EXPERTISE
We want to be practical with what we do. And answer the question for how your project sits within the scope of where the industry stands.
For example in Visual Effects the labour is diversified so lots of different people do a particular set of tasks by their expertise level.
At first you can call it the specialisation and then you may as well move into being an expert in this particular area of practice.
Knowing what you want to achieve with your project will give you the clear answer to how to simplify your project going from the full on what you can see in movies to what you can do within your life time. Or even 1 year of the final 12 months of the Design School. And if you are interested to do the PhD on this particular subject as well. This is where the idea of the expertise come to reality a lot more when you keep making your dream sequence, or the graphic novel or a fashion collection for years underpinned by the highest level academic degree.
And if you know the clear answer to what type of comics you like, or the particular skillset you wanted to master through this project as the strongest suit.
You have to re-design your 1St back end story into the Front End simplified version. Of making the exact version of your best vision.
RE : DESIGN
I will tell a story how I did it and then we will quickly move onto the structure of the proposal. Because once you have made these first two steps the rest is not difficult to put in place.
For me the core focus was “FACIAL ANIMATION”. I knew that this is what I want to be doing as my core research focus. And the digital design practice. So at that stage I told myself a story.
Of WHAT IF?
I though, if Facial Animation is so difficult to do that 12 months of work would only end up with 1-2 minute sequence how then I can make the story that so I do not have to entirely re-create this epic sequence. Or even two characters out of it?
So I did merge two characters into one. So it will be the self-dialogue. And I was inspired by Golumn how this character had two personalities in the Lord of the Rings. And decided to draw on this idea. And of course the most obvious answer came from The Ghost in the Shell of the internal voice of the machine and the idea of the artificial intelligence. Or a Ghost in the machine technology. My story was significantly inspired by the idea of body and technology. And the embodiment. So to create one face and two personalities did not mean a split personality syndrome. No. It was to bring the Ghost VS Human idea. Of someone out there speaking on behalf of the specific technological situation.
So then of course I had to think about the idea for how this situation would be set in physical reality. I did not want to of course let go my EPIC story. Because I wanted to keep it as original as possible. So I had to play with the concept of TIME in this case. To create a setting where this two character conversation may be happening.
I thought many days into the future. And you can remember my first story finished with the character crashed into the mountain. And because the character is a built cyborg of course there is a possibility of her not to die. Or be reincarnated for the purpose of the artificial intelligence or the machine technology in the future.
This is what I did. I did it to be set 100 or 250 years after this first event. And have constrained the body movement by having the character to be attached to the cockpit of the space craft. Where at first the whole sequence was set in the Mongolian mountains near Japan. On Earth. But this story was in space. When the space travel was developed. Where of course the Artificial Intelligence or the foreign to humans technologies would already have the full control of the space travel.
And this was the beauty of it. I knew there are elements of this story now where the brain of the character to be just the head is used for piloting the space craft, attached physically to the machine now giving me the chance to sustain my focus to just one digital set ( hard surface modelling ) and one character ( facial animation ).
And this is a BRAVE act. That you want to do as soon as possible in your project proposal and a design of your story. To set yourself for sustainability and success in making it realistic to accomplish.
So I would highly encourage to focus on that from the very beginning. And once you had those two shortcuts done to have a clear vision you can then move into the making a structured proposal document.
This is why you can see it was called v.2.0. Because this is the front end version of the very strong back story. And I would say you must have the back story. Because if anyone would ask you about how this story come to life, then you have the whole another story to back it up. But not just for the support purpose. But to establish that strong belief in doing what you want in life as the calling. At any time in the future. And knowing that this character and the story has a profound level of depth.
And you also do not loose any details of the First Version of the story at all. Especially the images and the design. You are moulding them around your specialisation and the sustainable development across your lifetime to fit your lifestyle.
The Proposal Structure varies from the project type. But this is where you would start. But this is the established practice in the academic research. And there are great examples. At this stage you may take on this initiate to use this structure without even knowing what type of methodology you are going to deploy in your research. Because you want to make your vision very clear across the pitch for the audiences. And most importantly yourself. But at this stage you would not even know this is more for you. And if you focus on the external motivation to impress others with your vision and simultaneously enjoy bringing the idea to life. This is the golden middle to pursue.
And for Digital Design Proposal Projects this is the general framework to follow:
- Description of the Research Area
- Research Questions
- Bibliography
- Synopsis
- Treatment / Outline
- Media Bank
- Project Timeline
- Equipment Request
- Justification
- Reference List
This is a great general structure to follow and simplify the project you are having the vision for. Once you have the story in place. Or at least some forming ideas after the first two stages of asking yourself these key questions:
What do I want to create in this world by the means of Design?
What if?
Facial Performance in Cinematic Narrative
This is the core area of my expertise. Every single word in this sentence is measured by my interests that come from the heart. Unfolding into Facial Animation. Motion Capture Technology. I did specifically used the word Cinematic in order to establish both Off-Line and Real-Time interactive mediums. And finally I wanted to focus on the Story of the project by telling the cohesive narrative for audiences to resonate with.
So it was the absolute key for me to find these 4 words that would succinct my interests for the ongoing future level of expertise in life as the professional digital designer.
And in here of course you can expand on some of them to give the extended version in supporting your area of practice. You can also outline some issues and challenges of the technology or the industry as the journey to explore via your title of expertise.
And you can have 3 research questions maximum. I would recommend to use 1 but if your area is general then you may only limit yourself in asking 3 questions with your research investigation.
For the moment the Facial Motion capture technology was very rare and not available to the user. Apart from the proprietary studio technologies in high end film and video game productions. And there was a mutual challenge between private investigators and industry level research to make a believable facial performance for screen audiences. I am writing this blog in 2021 and showing you my proposal I have written in 2011. And in the last 10 years this area has advanced by multiple elevated enhancements in the field.
Within your bibliography you want to answer the question to where my project goes to?
Does it goes into the video games industry as the contribution for the digital design practice?
Or a film industry or both?
Is this a cross disciplinary interactive research into emerging technologies across different industries of application?
The beauty and cosmetics industry for example … as well as video games and visual effects in motion picture title?
SYNOPSIS is next …
Synopsis the one sentence summary of your story. Usually is best to look at some examples of films and video games. But it is the sort of description that will stay with you and your project in the future. And will be used to judge about your project in just one line of text by the definition of the sentence.
TREATMENT / OUTLINE
It is key to establish a relatively complete summary of the atmosphere your project is being set at. This is before you have the final script. Even if you have one you want to draw on some additional context by following the script’s order.
And I would suggest for you to look at these key specific elements of the outline. Thought the lens of the Driving Emotion, Theme, Conflict, Lesson, Intensity, Entertainment, Being Memorable and Innovative. To identify the key characteristics of your narrative design. And they will help you to connect yourself with your own story. And to understand it better.
Now we are moving onto the image bank of the proposal to bring images of the examples of the work you would like to create.
And reflect on the specific detail how this particular image is relevant to your research project in design.
At this stage of the proposal we are moving onto the concept art and very first and simple drawings of the project White Storm. And on the pages of this website / blog you will see the more detailed development of the concept art that went into the final piece published online at the moment
( 2021 ).
For me it was one of the most important element of the proposal development process to understand my character at it’s best. And I was influenced by the Ghost in the Shell. At the time I was also drawing mecha from the book. In it’s basics for how to draw mecha for comics. Using the Mecha-Mania book.
And was very inspired by the work of Vadim [ Slipgatecentral ] on N0X-2292 character for the Dominance War competition.
And of course the Battle Angel Alita the original comics.
And I have started to design the vision for how the character would look like when is attached to the fighter jet cockpit. Because of her being an airforce intelligence pilot in the past.
And with the zoom out view. Of the extension of her being a single controlled and autonomous unit. That is stand alone. To draw on how this situation of a trap may play out for the character development and the drive of the narrative. It is a paradoxical reality and seen in multiple similar narratives around the artificial intelligence theme. But I did not wanted specifically create the idea of trap for the character on the physical level. Because in the digital form the character and it’s ghost can travel through the digital network. And it is essentially not matter where they are located in the physical reality.
So now that I had that outlined I had to create the story board to tell the story in the simplistic form. Within the scope of the project proposal.
The creation of the Storyboard did both helped me to create a very first and simple version of the script. Establish the sequence of the dialogue. And to understand the key cinematic angles and frames of the story I was about to tell. It was fantastic because when I was writing my very first story I did also went on to capturing the human face for reference. That did also helped me to understand the emotion and the vision for this strong character.
And if you are creating your very first project proposal. Anything you do for your project outline is not going to be realistic. Today is 2021. And this project proposal was made within the under graduate degree in 2011. It took me 10 years to master the craft of facial animation. And to finally share this with the audiences online. And to be precise there are areas of the project to be completed within at least the next two to five years.
Therefore anything you would write in the Project Timeline section would be a projection of your understanding of the craft, time management and the technology. By the end of 12 months of my outline I did not get to all of what I have envisioned but I did accomplished a very good level of animating the character’s face and head movement, eye direction using the image based motion capture technology. Of about 8-10 seconds.
And in the Equipment Request you possibly as the suggestion would like to establish a framework and the ranges of software packages that would give you the most autonomy and independence in your Studio Practice. But if you do require the live action or green screen production, capture equipment, you can request and write about these as well. I would suggest to keep this area minimalistic.
The technologies have changed in the last several years. And you would want to accomodate the majority of frameworks that would drive your core expertise.
And then you good to go to move to the justification component of the project proposal.
With justification you want to illuminate any risk factors and establish a forward thinking mindset. Knowing you are already ahead of the curve for knowing exactly what technological solutions and approaches you would deploy in your research project. And to clearly outline why your research investigation is a worthwhile investment of time and other resources. And how this maybe helpful to a particular industry or the range of them. And the key questions the research is going to answer through this level of practice and the development of expertise in the area of commitment.
It is important to write it out in detail because this is the foundation why you are doing this project. Because it is your life. And at the level of academic research is a professional undergoing for design practice in a particular or a cross disciplinary area of the application. Plus it may be a life long commitment when you making the choice of combining your interest in the special category of the design practice with the industry standard practices.
In my case I was looking before for about six months to this particular area and knew specifically what companies and technologies I wanted to work with to bring this project to life. And drawing the outline for this now I would say 10 years later it was much more challenging than I have anticipated it to be. And of course I have accomplished well and beyond of what I have outlined in the project proposal at the world class level of the facial animation technology. Mostly because of being driven by the well designed story, the vision and the passion for digital technology in every year of elevation for the project White Storm.
PRESS P L A Y
From the perspective of the academic research I have written several papers during the development of the project. And keeping the track of the references of the bibliography / literature review sources are one of the most foundational steps you can do to make your project rock solid.
Cheers, Oleg
