Noah Nguyen | Portfolio 2024

Will-o-the-wisp (2023)

The story follows a retired witch and her hideous monster son on the run from the King's wanted quest. From this project, I shitfed from character design to the story aspect of an animation film. This was where I learnt that I should first lay out an eagle-eye view so my frames would be more coherent. After this project, I picked up colorscripting as it is one way to manage story beats.

Dragon's Well (2024)

A personal project I created to learn color keys and colorscripting. It follows the journey of a deliquent A'Qi and the rigid Master of medicines LanZhao to find and return the lost mythical Dragon tree to the Bontanical Reservatory. From this project, I further learnt how to do mood explorations better and faster, and practiced a bit on my design skills.

I learnt how to do transitions with this sequence. Because there are three possible light sources, I had to go through multiple passes until I figured out that I should prioritize one specific light sources instead of letting them compete with each other.

This is an exploration of Swallowgate Pass, the entire kingdom's communication hub. In this design, I wanted to create a sense of awe like when you see Mt. Everest for the first time. Below are some early explorations for the story's overall look.

Farewell, Camelot. (2024, on-going)

A colorscripting project I have been doing to further learn colorscripting. It is a bittersweet story of grief and moving on following Sir Bedivere on his journey to return the Excalibur to the lake.

I started out with an overview colorstrip so that color changes are brought on naturally, and then I develop key moments to explore the narrative. The textured shading is something I developed specifically for this project, as I wanted to do something more experimental.

This is how I think out loud when I do colorscripting. Farewell, Camelot. is the first project that I have to develop multiple arcs and not just one transition like in Dragon's Well, so I need to plan things out even more carefully.

Time of the day is a crucial skill for color key artists, so I have to learn to be very efficient with my process. In this frame, I optimized my process so that I can do different mood exploration in the shortest time possible without sacrificing the painterly aspect of this project.

This frame follows an experimental palette as I want to distinguish between moments of nostalgia and present. Knights from Bedivere's memories are more highkey, and I highlighted Bedivere's role of somebody who's left out from the crowd.

As the final moment of the story, I used the classic combination of blue and yellow to show a sense of hope. Bedivere has to live his own life, and the story gradually progresses towards white as it ends.