Thursday, November 5, 2009
Group Project - Storybook
The group project was to create a storybook for children with the theme of "Parenting Our Ageing Grandparents".
Each of us in the group had to come up with a story for tutorial and pick one to eventually form the storybook.
Even before Julian revealed the theme for the book, i knew i wanted to do something unrealistic with the characters being monsters or dinosaurs or something. At first i was disappointed that the theme left little to the imagination, but i stuck to my original idea and came up with a story revolving around non-human creatures.
The story is set in monsterland.
Characters:
It starts off with Grandpa Joe Monster and Timmy Monster at Timmy's school where it is Grandparent Day. Timmy mentions that he wants to be like Grandpa Joe, who is a policeman. Timmy wonders why he was not as ugly as Grandpa Joe and wants to catch as many bad monsters as him, but all the other kid monsters were afraid of him because he looked so scary and ugly. This makes Grandpa Joe sad.
At Grandparent Show-and-Tell, Grandpa Joe recounted his experience of catching Villian Monster, the most terrifying monster who steals candy from kid monsters. After that, all the kid monsters were in awe started looking up to him like Timmy does. Grandpa Joe is happy again!
The moral of this story is to not judge a person by how they look.
In the end, my story was not chosen because the others felt that it was too unrealistic and that children cannot relate to the characters. The plot was also not as strong as the story that we picked in the end.
The story we picked in the end was Jimmy's Jam!
*Click to see bigger image*
It took me a full 3 days and 3 nights to finish colouring ALL the pages of the storybook, but the end result was well worth it! I also designed the cut outs of Jimmy and Gramps for the activity page, not pictured. I had to manually make the lines dotted by erasing a solid line since i did not know how to do it any other way.
Eeeks!
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Assignment 5 - Colour Schemes
For this assignment, we were to play with different colour schemes on a postcard for a music festival.
My first attempt at creating different colour schemes for the postcards was limited by the fact that i thought we were only supposed to use 4 colours.
Nevertheless, i managed to come up with 6 designs that are supposed to be seen in pairs. The top pair represents the warm and cool colours in the colour spectrum. The middle pair plays with the idea that objects in warm colours look nearer than those in cooler colours. Finally, the last pair deals with meaning in colours. The one on the left evokes a Christmassy feel by using the festive colours of red and green while the one on the right plays with colours that are complementary in the colour wheel.
I also added a grainy effect to the bursting rays so that the background do not overpower the box of instruments in the foreground.
After a consultation with Siti, she clarified that 4C referred to CMYK, meaning ANY colours! -facepalm-
I began to work on a new set of colour schemes for my postcard, as well as refine the look of it.
This time the postcards looked so much better and i was able to give them names according to how the colour scheme played out.
My final choice was "Guitar Pop", which uses a cool blue background and a blue box, with the instruments being in warm colours of yellow and red. This made the instruments stand out from the rest of the picture and i felt that that was important since the postcard was supposed to be for a music festival.
I chose to name the festival "Pop!" because i felt that the colour schemes i chose for my various postcards had a pop vibe rather than a rock or R&B feel to it.
This concludes the last assignment for this module! WHEW!
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Assignment 4 - Poster Design
For this assignment, we had to design a poster promoting active ageing in Singapore.
The objectives of this assignment is for us to understand the importance of basic visual elements and design.
I came up with this as my first draft. The tongue-in-cheek tag line, to parallel the word "pawns" with a slightly taboo word that sounded like it, was inspired by the picture of the old men playing a seemingly dull game of checkers using pawns that were so brightly coloured and full of life.
I presented the poster in class but Siti thought it looked unfinished. The font for the title was deemed too small and the tagline seemed wrong for the picture. The old men looked bored, so it doesn't reflect the tagline. The alignment of the body also had some problems. The contact information was too detailed and looked too cluttered.
I tried to shift the alignment of the text about and came up with this second version.
This time, Siti said that the poster was split into too many segments. There was the tag line at the top, then the picture of the men, followed by the body of text then finally the logo. This constituted a bad poster design because of too many separations.
After much frustrations and failed inspirations, i decided to remove all the complicated elements and changed the tag line altogether, incorporating the tongue-in-cheek tag line into the main title of the poster.
The font used for "Do you know?" was meant to look more authoritative and informative while the font used for the tag line was more informal, bringing across the lighthearted and funny message. I changed the background colour to pink because it brings to mind the image of the brain, and the semi-circle shape leads the eye down the poster, from the tag line to the old men.
Monday, October 5, 2009
Class Assignment
In class today, we were given a word by Julian and to draw a picture representing that word.
Daryl and I got "Delight".
Friday, September 25, 2009
Assignment 3 - U C What I C
This week we had to tell a story using 8 photographs. After brainstorming for stories, i decided to use something that i had experienced during one of my camps as the main story.
First i did some sketches of the storyboard.
Then i went around taking photos, and this is my story, titled, "The Secret Pal".
Thankfully the class understood the storyline without much explanation and Siti said it was alright too!
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Assignment 2 - Making Images Talk
This week's assignment was for us to create a pictogram, which basically is a pictorial representation, of a location in Singapore.
As i was brainstorming for places to use, i decided against using the common locations like the Changi Airport or the Merlion. That was what made me pick the radical choice of PSA.
I chose abstraction number 3 to be my chosen pictogram because it was fairly simple and yet i think people would be able to understand that it was referring to PSA.
My first attempt at abstraction of PSA met with numerous criticisms. Some people said my cargo boxes looked like oxygen tanks (i have no idea where that came from), other people said it just looked like a black mess.
Siti suggested that i made my abstraction white-based, then it would be clearer to people, so that's what i did.
At first my cargo boxes did not have lines on them but i put them in make it more cargo box-like. I consulted Siti again but she still said that the abstraction didn't look like it was supposed to be PSA in the end. She suggested i add in something else to make it look more like the sea port that is PSA.
I was considering either adding waves to represent the sea or adding a ship at the back of my abstraction. I tried the latter but it turned out looking quite strange. In the end i decided to take on MORE work by adding a picture of a cargo ship with a 3D perspective and placing the containers on the deck of the ship.
I changed the layout of my abstractions to fit the portrait layout that i've decided my portfolio should be in. I picked the 4th abstraction as my final pictogram as it was sufficiently simple enough but at the same time retaining enough details for people to make out that it was supposed to represent PSA.
I also included how the abstraction can be applied as a sign in Singapore.
With all that work, this assignment has changed from my worse one to one of the nicest ones! Too much blood has been put into this assignment for it not to improve!
Sunday, September 6, 2009
Class Assignment
In lecture today we learnt about iconic and indexic symbols and how to adapt and simplify images into one symbol that represents a bigger idea or object.
We were tasked to form groups of 2 and create an indexic symbol from any chosen iconic symbol.
Daryl and I thought of doing one on graduation.
This is the iconic symbol.
And this is the indexical one.
Labels: class work
Monday, August 24, 2009
Assignment 1 - Me, Myself and I
Our first assignment was to communicate the essence of ourselves through object manipulation of 2 concepts that represent either our personality, character, outlook, strength and weaknesses etc.
We had to do rough thumbnails in lecture and i decided on the concepts of Music and Cheerleading.
Music thumbnails.
Cheerleading thumbnails.
Next, we had to come up with 2 roughs for each concept by the 1st tutorial and here's what i came up with.
The tag lines were "My name is... and i cannot imagine life without music." and "My name is... and i used to be a cheerleader."
I obviously liked the second set of drawings better and definitely spent more time on those. But i was a little worried as some of my classmates mentioned that the "u" and the "n" for the music one were not obvious enough. Shall try to sculpt it differently by the next tutorial, where we had to convert one set of the roughs into digital art.
Some feedback by Ms Siti was that the blue-green guy that represented my "i" looked like an alien, and i should make the saxophone look equally like an alien instrument. Even though it was totally random, i thought it would be interesting to take up her suggestion because music as a concept might be a little too common and boring, and that if i introduced the alien element, it might make it fresher.
The cheerleading concept was generally quite well received, although there were comments that the hands on the "j" and "u", and the head on the "n" letters made it less obvious that they were supposed to represent those letters. I shall tweak them for the final image.
Oh and i cannot resist posting up the originals for the cheerleading concept.
I took photos of my friend and myself, and edited our heads and limbs into the drawing. I thought it was quite cute, but apparently the class thinks it was weird. Lol.
Anyway, the following pictures would probably be the final image, but it might change before portfolio submission.
I took Ms Siti's suggestion and made it damn alienic. I also changed the tagline to fit the added alien elements. I might play around with an outer space background when i have the time for it.
For the cheerleading one, i decided to remove the tagline altogether. I also shifted the hands and head to make the letters more obvious. I'm still looking for feedback for this piece. As i said, it's not set in stone until i submit my portfolio, so feel free to comment.
Ok, this is the finalised version of the music one.
The cheerleading one remains the same.
Whew, what a long 1st entry.
Labels: Assignment 1, object manipulation