INSPIRATION OF BAJAU CULTURE TOWARD CHARACTER DESIGN

INSPIRATION OF BAJAU CULTURE TOWARD CHARACTER DESIGN

Datu Mohamad Jur Anizam Bin Datu Raiman

Bachelor of Applied Arts with Honours (Design Technology)

2018

INSPIRATION OF BAJAU CULTURE TOWARD CHARACTER DESIGN

Datu Mohamad Jur Anizam Bin Datu Raiman 46625

This project is submitted in partial fulfillment of

the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Applied Arts with Honors (Design Technology)

Faculty of Applied and Creative Arts UNIVERSITI MALAYSIA SARAWAK

2018

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UNIVERSITI MALAYSIA SARAWAK

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Final Year Project Repol1

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Masters PhD DECLARATION OF ORIGINAL WORK

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Student's Declaration:

I DATU MOHAMAD JUR ANIZAM BIN DATU RAIMAN, 46625, FACULTY OF APPLIED AND CREATIVE ARTS hereby declare that the work entitled INSPIRATION OF BAJAU CULTURE TOWARD CHARACTER DESIGN is my original work. I have not copied from any other students' work or from any other sources except where due reference or acknowledgment is made explicitly in the text, nor has any part been written for me by another person.

Datn Mohamad.rur Anizam Bin Datu Raiman (46625)

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INSPIRATION OF BAJAU CULTURE TOWARD CHARACTER DESIGN was prepared by the above named student, and was submitted to the "FACULTY" as a • partial/fuJI fulflllment for the conferment of BACHELOR OF APPLIED ARTS WITH HONOUR (DESIGN TECHNOLOGY), and the aforementioned work, to the best of my knowledge, is the said student's work.

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The project entitled Inspiration of Bajau Culture Toward Character Design was prepared by Datu Mohamad Jur Anizam Bin Datu Raiman and submitted to the Faculty of Applied and Creative Arts in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a Bachelor of Applied Arts with Honours (Design Technology).

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Acknowledgment

I would like to express my deep and sincere gratitude to my supervisor. Ang Tse Chwan because this work would not have been possible without the guidance and suggestions from him in improving my Final Year Project. I am also grateful to all those who had been encouraged and supported me, including lecturers from the Animation Department, fellow course mate, friends family. Last but not least, thanks and praises to the almighty God for his endless blessings

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Table Of Content

Content Page

Acknowledgment v

Abstract viii

Chapter 1: Introduction 1

1.1 Background 1

1.2 Rationale and Motivation 1

1.3 Problem Statement 1

1.4 Objective 2

1.5 Research Questions 2

1.6 Importance and Significance of Study 2

1.7 Scope and Limitation 2

1.8 Assumption 3

1.9 Research Design 3

1.10 Organization of Chapter 4

1.11 Summary 4

Chapter 2: Literature Review 5

2.1 Definition of Culture 5

2.2 Bajau Culture 6

2.3 Cultural Implication Towards Animation 7

Chapter 3: Methodology 9

3.1 Movie Analysis 9

3.2 Summary 9

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Content Page

Chapter 4: Findings 10

4.1 Character Design Analysis 11

4.2 Ethnic Clothing Origin Analysis 12

4.3 Character Overview Analysis 13

Chapter 5: Discussions 15

5.1 Discussions on Research Questions 15

5.2 Discussions on Research Objectives 16

5.3 Animation Overview 16

5.3.1 Story Outline 17

5.3.2 Art Direction Development 18

5.3.3 Character Design 19

5.3.3.1 Baimira 19

5.3.3.2 Tambuakar 21

5.3.3.3 Rhino 22

5.3.4 Background Design 23

5.3.5 Props and Effect Design 24

5.3.6 Music and Sound 25

5.4 Stage of Animation Creation 25

5.4.1 Pre-Production 25

5.4.2 Production 28

5.4.3 Post Production 30

Chapter 6: Conclusion 32

References 33

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List of Figure

Figure Page

Figure 1.1: Research Design 3

Figure 2.1: Bajau Culture 7

Figure 4.1: Adaptable Aspect In Culture Toward Character Design 14

Figure 5.1.1: Art Direction Development 18

Figure 5.1.2: Comparison of Baimira and Bajau Traditional Cloth 19 Figure 5.1.3: Baimira animal transformation of proboscis monkey and clouded leopard 20

Figure 5.1.4: Tambuakar 21

Figure 5.1.5: Normal and Corrupted Rhino 22

Figure 5.1.6: Redish Tone Forest, Blue-Green Tone Forest, Bright Green Tone Forest 23 Figure 5.1.7: Background Picture With Actual Animation Frame Resolution 23

Figure 5.1.8: Various Props 24

Figure 5.1.9: Various Effects 24

Figure 5.2.1: Picture of Sabah References 26

Figure 5.2.2: Sketch of Baimira, Sketch of Type of Tree 26 Figure 5.2.3: Concept Art of All Characters and For Background 27

Figure 5.2.4: Various Shot from Storyboard 27

Figure 5.2.5: Various Shot From Animatic 28

Figure 5.2.6: Character Asset Background Asset 29

Figure 5.2.7: Various Shot From Digimatic 29

Figure 5.2.8: Various Shot From With In-between 29

Figure 5.2.9: Screenshot of SWF file Exported Into Adobe After Effect CS6 31

Figure 5.2.10: Various Shot From Final Animation 31

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List of Table

Table Page

Table 2.1: Different approach of definition of Culture 5

Table 4.1: Content Analysis Of Character Design 11

Table 4.2: Ethnic Clothing Origin Characteristics 12

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Abstract

Culture is part of human development which evolves with civilization from ancient times to today’s digital era. Animation contributes to the cultural industry through symbols and sign and is captured from people’s different lifestyle and various grounds including tradition, religion, belief systems, languages, politics, costumes, tools, buildings and arts. Culture is also emerging with an identity where both fundamentals are strongly connected. This research aims to identify the influence of culture towards animation films and movies. Other than a good story line, animation must have a strong character design with a good personality, appropriate costumes and accessories.

Keyword: Culture, Animation, Character Design.

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Abstrak

Budaya merupakan salah satu bahagian dalam pembangunan manusia dimana budaya berkembang sesama sekali dengan tamadun lama sehingga ke zaman digital pada hari ini. Animasi memberi sumbangang kepada industri budaya melalui tanda dan simbol dan ia diambil dari gaya hidup orang yang berbeza dan beberapa contoh lain seperti agama, sistem kepercayaan, bahasa, politik, pakaian, peralatan, bangunan dan seni. Budaya juga bergabung sekali dengan identiti di mana kedua-dua asas ada hubungan. Penyelidikan ini adalah untuk mengenal pasti pengaruhan budaya terhadap filem animasi. Selain daripada cerita yang menarik, animasi memerlukan reka bentuk watak yang menarik bersama dengan personaliti yang sesuai, pakaian dan aksesori yang sesuai.

Kata Kunci: Budaya, Animasi, Reka Bentuk Watak.

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Chapter 1 Introduction

1.1 Background

Character design has become an animation backbone. Character design developed complete with costume, weapon or accessories where all the characteristics are usually inspired by culture for example local traditional clothing and sword used by warrior represent the character’s stature. This research will focus on character design to identify whether culture influences the animation character.

1.2 Rationale and Motivation

The motivation of this research is to design a character influenced in Bajau culture for the character designer, which can follow the adaptation of culture on a characters. Also, gathering related studies research to help the animator, and creator to design a character with culture aspect.

1.3 Problem Statement

An animation that emphasis on culture approach has it own uniqueness and promote said culture. However, adapting a culture into an animation is not straight forward as it sound. Therefore, this research will focusing on how to adapt a culture into an animation properly.

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1.4 Objective

1. The Objective of this research is to create an animation character based on Bajau Culture.

2. To Research the adaptable aspect from culture into an animation character.

1.5 Research Question

1. How culture can be adapted into an animation?

2. What aspect of culture that can be adapted into a characters?

1.6 Importance and Significance of Study

This study is important towards animation industry as a reference and guideline for making an animation. In this study, animators can be inspired and understand about creating character based on culture setting. Researcher can improve what lack in this research with the help of this research as their research reference.

1.7 Scope and Limitation

This research is focused on the character design with culture history through observation and movie analysis.

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1.8 Assumption

Design a character with heavy culture influence are based through references of cloths, personality, accessories and social.

1.9 Research Design

This research focuses on researching the existed culture influenced character design through observation and analysis as shown in Figure 1.1:

Figure 1.1: Research Design 3

1.10 Organization of Chapter

Chapter One of this research is introducing the information background about rationale and study to research title. Identifying the research problem, objectives and the importance and signification of this research. Scope and limitation were specified in this research paper.

Assumption and research design is make sure researcher can follow accordingly with this research.

Chapter Two is a literature reviews from a journal, book, newspaper, thesis, internet and report that are related to the research title. The researcher will study about definition of culture, Bajau culture, and cultural Implication towards Animation.

Chapter Three is the method of qualitative approach (movie analysis) to found out the result.

Chapter four is data analysis on researched movie and data collection on researcher's animation.

Finally, Chapter Five is the conclusion of this whole research of inspiration of Bajau culture toward character design.

1.11 Summary

This chapter is about the studies on inspiration of Bajau culture toward character design.

Moreover, this chapter also mention about the research objective, problem statement, research question, scope, limitation and assumption to find out the final result.

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Chapter 2 Literature Review

2.1 Definition of Culture

Clifford (1988) explain that culture is a combination of many cultural identities that are selected and interpreted on a constant foundation including gender, age, ethnicity, language, race, socioeconomic class, geographic location, political status, and religion. Culture is a developed and owned lifestyle by people and is inherited to the next generation. It becomes a part of the human development which evolves with civilization from ancient times to today’s digital era.

Internationally, culture is beneficial to the country for many reasons especially for diplomatic connections. A country also represents their national looks through cultural dimensions such as arts and sports (Liana Eka, 2011). There's about 161 definitions of culture was collected by Kluckholn and Kroeber (1952) that categorized into 5 approaches as stated in the table below:

No. Approach Definition

01 Descriptive Arts, ability, believe, knowledge, tradition, law, moral and other stuff that accepted by the society.

02 Historical Tradition heritage and social.

03 Normative Lifestyle, rules, regulations, value and idea from a person.

04 Psychology Adaptation of all learning processes in a society.

05 structural Cultural organization and polar aspects.

Table 2.1 Different Approach of Definition of Culture

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2.1 Bajau Culture

According to I.H.N Evans (1992: 52), the Bajau society is one of Melayu Proto that is maritime or in other word, having strong relation with sea. D.E Sopher, (1965: 50-1) classify Bajau society as one of nomadic seafolks or boat nomads group. All boat nomads group mostly called as sea gypsies by English author and sea nomads by German and Netherlands author. Both term sea gypsies and sea nomads lead into same meaning which is a group of people love traveling on sea.

According to Sather. C (1997), the village community represents the principal focus of Bajau social and ritual life. Married couples and families (Both house and boat living) make regular return on fishing. Upon their return, groups of “House Groups” (luma) and “Cluster” (ba'anan), which together comprise the organizational context for most village undertakings

Sather. C (1997) proposed that all social group in Bajau society, which include family boat crews, House groups and clusters, are identified with and take their name from, a particular leader or group head. Also, they are the focus of ties that enmesh individual within the larger village community.

The Bajau Laut believe that the entire universe is controlled by two forces. The first is the force of good that emanates from god (Tuhan). The second is a force of evil that derives from spirits (saitan). God is believed to be omnipotent and places evil in the world in order to test human's determination to be good. Human therefore submit to the will of god and honour Him with prayers and other acts of personal devotion. Doing this the individual gains favour and repays God for the belssings that he or she has received. Moreover, most villagers feel that it is also necessary to come to terms with evil. In order to avoid misfortune, majority of villagers propitiate the spirits, at times

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even enlisting their aid to escape danger or avoid ill-fortune. (Sather. C, 1997)

Figure 2.1: Bajau Culture

2.2 Cultural Implication Towards Animation

Culture defines a specific way of life which represents meaning and values in art learning, institution and usual behavior (William, 1961). One of the famous traditional culture in Malaysia is Wayang Kulit. It is assumed that Walt Disney learn the ‘shadow play’ before coming out with his own animation (Khor Kheng Kia, 2009). ‘Shadow play’, a classical animation, started in early 1960’s. It was a culture in Kelantan to entertain the community (Dahlan Abdul Ghani, 2011). It's a traditional Malaysian theater staged opera which is a combination of performing arts and verbal narratives (Hassan Muthalib, 2003).

The process has changed along with time and technology transitioning from hand-drawn art to 2-dimensional (2D) digital with the first CGI-animation series titled Reboot in 1994. This was followed by 3-dimensional (3D) animation for the Toy Story movie in 1998 (cited by Mohd Amir,

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2011 by Faryah & Normah). Animation is basically the development of a storyline, character design, background and sound. Upin Ipin is one of the Malaysian animation that reflects local culture in terms of lifestyle and background environment (Dahlan Ghani, 2011). It had a constitutive role in disseminating ideologies, concepts, symbolism, metaphors or even portraying culture as well. According to Suzanne Buchan, animation can create a density of juxtaposition, satire, visual metaphor and other effects to support and visually underpin cultural or political agenda. Upin and Ipin portrayed more of culture environment, it provides a different domain to various characteristics that define the country of Malaysia.

Unfortunately, Hassan Muthalib (2004) as an animation pioneer in Malaysia, stated that students lack the sense of local identity through their final animation project. Leading the Malaysian animation industry unknown with the local character identity, furthermore could not even be compared with Western and Japan animations.

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CHAPTER 3 Methodology

The research methodology used for this research is through qualitative approach. By using the primary method through observations and analyzing the animations that have been selected as reference in this study.

3.1 Movie Analysis

An animations that are top pick from animation community with a strong theme on culture will be analyzed, such as Disney Pixar films - Moana, Brave, and Coco. The character design will analyzed through the criteria of cloths, personality, accessories and social. The data are determined from said criteria collected and compared with the origin of the cultures.

A table will be created consist a data of ethnic influences, cloths, accessories and personality based on the main characters and side characters of each animations. Later, characters data are compared with the origin of the culture or myth to search any similarity or related.

3.2 Summary

To summarized this chapter of methodlogy, disscussion that used to gain information from this method about the research topic. List of criteria for similar categories will be composed based on the information that had been collected.

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CHAPTER 4 Findings

As mentioned from Methodology, three characters from three different films are selected to be researched for their criteria of ethnic, cloths, personality, accessories and voice over. Two of them are main characters of the film while one is a antagonist character of the film. Those characters are Moana from Moana, Ernesto de la Cruz from Coco, and Merida from Brave.

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4.1 Character Design Analysis

Criteria Character Design

Character Visual

Character Name

Moana Ernesto de la Cruz Merida

Ethnic Influences

Polynesian Mexico Scotland

Cloth Red top crop with red sash and skirt.

White long sleeve suit with gold accent, and white skin boots.

Dark teal Medieval-style off-the-shoulder dress with long arms, gold accent, floor-length skirt, and taupe boots

Accessories Necklace, Sash Hat, Guitar, Tie Bow and Arrow, belt Personality Headstrong, sea-loving,

strong-willed, physically capable and fearless.

charming, suave, deceitful, two-face, selfish, opportunistic.

Brave, bold, courageous, daring, revellious, rebellious, and headstrong.

Voice Over Normal American Accent Normal Mexican Accent Thick Scotish Accent

TABLE 4.1 Content Analysis of Character Design

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4.2 Ethnic Clothing Origin Analysis

Criteria Traditional Costume

Sample of Costume

Ethnic Samoan Mexico Scotland

Clothing Skirt Charro Suit Kirtle

Accessories Leg flower ring, flower bracelet, necklace, head

Hat (Sombrero) Arisaid (kilt)

TABLE 4.2 Ethnic Clothing Origin Characteristics

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