Assignment 7: Making of The Adventures of Faith

Finally, we are down to the last leg of our whole course! And no doubt, the production of storybook is the most exciting project of all. This is because we get to be the scriptwriters and the illustrators of the storybook. It was also a great challenge for us as we had to race against time to continuously improve our storybook while at the same time, juggle with many other project deadlines!

My team and I decided to build a story about a female protagonist. In that, we hope to breakdown the patriarchal norms of 'Hero Saves the Day..yes..AGAIN!!' and show that girls are equally capable as boys. The genre of the story is fantasy-adventure and care was taken to also script in an underlining environmentalist theme. The look of the characters are a blend of our style and the Japanese manga style.

Some of the initial sketches:

Initially, our intention was to create a comic book with several frames in one page. However, taking our visual principles into consideration, we felt that such a layout might disrupt the flow of the readers. Hence, we decided on a one full page image, to portray a cinematic view to the children instead, like as if they were watching an animation.

The project was an inspiring one for me. I get to learn about the process of the whole production of a storybook. Initially it didn't occur to me that the paging order of a double sided book had to be planned out before we sent it for printing. After several printing trials, I learnt it was very important to prevent pages from getting messed up. Also, I learnt that all alignments and flattening the pictures should be done before it was sent to printing so that it can save time as well as money.

Also through this storybook assignment, it gave me an opportunity to familiarize myself with the programme, Adobe Photoshop. Being a person who is always bad at technology and using programmes, this assignment actually allowed me to gain more confidence in using such computing tools.

Anyway here is the synopsis of our storybook:

"The Adventures of Faith” is a storybook that features a girl who braves all odds to save her little brother from the clutches of an evil sorceress who lives in a Forbidden Forest called Trashland. She does so with the help of a fugitive stuff- bird who was trying to escape the forest. The twist comes in when the bird transform back into a boy during the "Showdown" between the good and the evil. At the end of the story, the realization that the villager’s past indiscriminate disposal of rubbish has allowed the sorceress to dominate the Forest sets them into prevention measures thereafter.

Below is the cover page precious storybook:

Random pages in the book:

Hope you guys enjoy it!

Class activity: Gestalt Principles

This week's class activity was to apply the Gestlat Principles by using 3 shapes, circle, square, triangle to display any 3 principles.

Below are my sketches:





The first picture is an example of figure and ground. The second picture is showing closure and the last picture shows similarity.

Home assignment 6: design analysis

In this assignment, we are to apply what we have learnt in the previous lessons to evaluate posters.

Below is an example of a good poster:

Composition:
The poster uses the rule of thirds hence there is selective focus on the bottom third of the poster. Also, the main character is in the central positioning, hence standing out from the rest.

Unity and Contrast:
There is unity throughout the poster due to the use of analogous colors like yellow, orange, and golden.
There is contrast because different color schemes are used to differentiate the soldiers and the leading figure: Gold vs Silver.

Harmony:
The poster is highly symmetrical. This is shown by the Queen who stands in the center of the pathway, which leads on towards the palace. Also, the text arrangement gives the poster a visual weight.

Controlling attention:
The flow is downwards, to the figure.

Gestalt Principles:
Figure and ground: There people are in the foreground while palace is in the background.
Proximity: Soldiers are closed together while there is a space between the Queen and the soldiers.
Similarity: There is an overlaying pattern of the soldiers and the lamposts
Continuity: There is pathway leads from palace to viewer.

In my opinion, this is a very good poster as it fulfills most of the theories of visual principles. Also, it gives very clean and clear image which makes it pleasing to people's eyes.

Below is an example of a bad poster:

Composition:
The poster is highly cluttered and there is alot of noise. There is a lack of selective focus.

Unity and Contrast:
Though there is unity in the rhythmic repetition of elements eg: frogs, fortune cats, there is a lack of contrast in size.

Harmony:
There is radial symmetry, however this gives the poster very little negative space. On top of that, the title fails to balance out the heavy bottom.

Colors:
Use of brightly saturated colors however, there is no contrast in saturation to make the leading figures stand out.

Gestalt Principles:
Proximity: No proximity. All elements are lumped into one big group
Similarity: There is similarity in each element, which forms as a subgroup in the poster.

In my opinion, though this poster has certain bad points, it is not entirely a bad poster. The creators of the poster could have a compelling reason to make the poster look cluttered and messy. It is possible that the intention is to create a bustling and vibrant atmosphere, hence the use of noise and bright colors. It is also realized that even though leading figures could not be immediately pointed out, it became obvious after observing a while because of the use of radial symmetry.

home assignment 5: Love is in the air!

In this week's assignment, we are to develop a card on the theme of love. Below are my the brainstormed thumbnails:

Here is my card designed:

I chose the second design because I wanted to portray the feeling of " First Love". The title of the card reads "showers of love", and the picture shows a boy and a girl kissing while they are holding the umbrella. The boy is electrified as shown by his strand of hair, and has even developed wings, which symbolizes him floating in the bliss of love. Pastel colors, also known as good smelling colors are adopted to accentuate the sweetness and in that the simplicity of love. The girl has warm colors while the boy has cool colors. Pink indicates love, red indicates passion, green indicates the cheerfulness and vigour while blue indicates the divine love.

In the background, I used a faded pink heart which expands like a drop of water. Comments were that the heart was too elongated and it gives the impression of two mountains behind the main objects. Also, some felt that there were too few smaller hearts.

Below is my edited version:

(Card exterior)

(Card interior)

I have made the faded pink heart shorter and added more small and more defined hearts. I also created an interior of the card.

home assignment 4: Prevent Teen suicides!

This week's assignment was to create a "save", "prevent", "kill" poster. I brainstormed a couple of ideas and grouped them according to:

1) Stop war/ stop violence/ stop abortion

2) stop anorexic children/ prevent teen depression/ stop teen suicides

3) Save water/ original works

I decided to focus on the theme of teens suicide because of the increasing coverage in the Newspaper about suicides of female celebrities like Anna Nicole Smith and Korean actress Jung Da Bin, and Singaporean students who slash their wrists. On top of that, the Dove campaign recently launched was also targeted towards giving young teens self confidence. Hence, I thought it would be timely to work on this theme.

Below are my brainstorming ideas:


Below is the first version of my work:

I included the principle of contrast by using a black to white colored gradient background. The color black and white represents death in different cultures.

I also placed the objects in a way that it has a balanced visual weight. The student on the right is balanced off by the text as well as the fallen chair. I added blood splashes onto the poster to show the morbidness and to represent a life lost. However, it was pointed out during tutorial that the blood spots were irrelevant to the hanging student since there will not be any bloodshed when one hangs himself or herself. Also, some commented that the head looked odd and seems to merge with the black gradient. It was actually my intention to show a censored face. Other comments were that the skin color of the student was weird and the white area at the noose was supposed to be black.

Hence, taking feedbacks into consideration, I improved the poster to version 2 as shown below:

I gave the student a decolorized skin, but a less yellowish one. Also, I changed the face color to match the skin color on the student's limbs and added hair to make it look less dummy-like. I deleted the blood splashes as it seems quite distracting and makes the poster look more complicated that it should. I changed the fonts of the poster to provide a more serious tone. I also resized the fonts as well to give the poster more negative space.

Classroom activity: Talking forms

Classroom exercise: Talking forms

This week we had to pick out 2 words and use abstracts to convey the messages of the words.

The first word picked is: Attractive

My abstract shows a back profile of a woman sihoulette. The flowly hair and curvy body shape is intended to accentuate the woman's attractiveness.

The second word picked is: Repulsive

My abstract shows a stick man escaping and running away from a bad smell.

Feedback from Ms Siti was that repulsive abstract was difficult to infer and identify. She suggested drawing 2 objects moving away from one another.

Home assignment 3: Visual Story with 10 photographs

Home Assignment 3: Visual Story with 10 photographs

For this assignment, I really had a tough time creating an inspirational storyboard. It wasn't as easy as it seems to tell a story within 10 frames! I guessed that most students would probably use human actions to bring out their storyline. I wanted to do something different. Hence I decided to rely on the use of toy keychains to do the narration of my storyline. I named the toys as well because I believed a story should have characters for audiences to identify with. Everything seemed perfect, but I had not foreseen 2 possible problems: Firstly, since my casts were toys, they are incapable of creating expressions! Secondly, they were too small and it was really very difficult to position them desirably. Several times I had to sprawl on the ground in order to capture them at the right angles. However, though the process of the photo shots were tiring and at even some times frustrating, it was still a memorable experience: It was one of those times that I had to ignore several curious stares of passerbys and get on my fours to get my best pictures.

Below is my storyboard sketch:

Here's how it story goes:

It begins with a beautiful sunny morning.

Mushroom girl heads for school, carrying her oversized yellow lock-bag.

A suspicious character is following behind Mushroom girl

Mushroom girl sensed that she's being stalked by someone as she sees a blur figure at the corner of her eye.

The suspicious hand reaches out for Mushroom girl

Mushroom girl jumps around to shock the suspicious Butterfly man

Mushroom girl sents the suspicious Butterfly man a deadly flying kick

Butterfly man falls to ground and a key falls out

Mushroom girl recognizes the key and picks it up: The key belongs to her!


Mushroom girl realizes it is a misunderstanding and apologizes to Butterfly man.

Some classmates have pointed out that the first photograph does not seem to fit with the rest of the 9 frames. This is because, it gives an impression of a very formal beginning, while the rest of the photographs follows more of an informal and cute storyline. This breaks the flow in the story. Also, some felt that the 7th photograph does not clearly show the flying kick action. They suggested using photoshop to add lines of impact or to show the point of contact.

So here is the edited version of picture 7:

I added a twirl effect to show the impact of the flying kick. Hopefully this brings out the essence better.

A Visual Story

Classroom exercise: A Visual Story

This is a scene of a girl sitting inside the chat point cubicle located in the central library. She sits alone with her laptop and notes, and is chatting merrily on the handphone. It could be a close friend or family of hers.

She seems to be in a relaxed state as depicted in her posture: she is leaning against the wall and sitting casually with legs slightly crossed. I am guessing that she couldn't find a seat near the powerpoint at the studying area and has to use this chat point cubicle instead. She could be waiting for her project mates to arrive while chatting on the phone to kill time.

Abstraction home assignment

Second Home Assignment: Abstraction.

For this assignment, I did abstractions on 2 objects.

For the first object, I chose the ship. The point of abstraction is the 5th picture ( 3rd picture from first column). This is because, at this point, a generic meaning of the picture is achieved - the picture loses some of its essence of a ship while still retaining certain characteristics. At this point, the picture is ambiguous: At some angles it looks like a steamboat cooker under the fire, but from a different view, it looks like a boat at sea.

The second object of abstraction I chose is the tortoise. Similarly, the point of abstraction is the 5th picture. This is because it is here where the picture loses its tortoise outlook and takes on a more general meaning. Some of the feedback I got from my friends is that the 5th thumbnail looks like a mushroom or a lamp.

Eventually i decided to select the ship abstraction because I felt that it brought out the generic meaning better than the tortoise abstraction. Also, more people were able to identify the ship abstraction with the steamboat cooker.

Below is my finalized work:

I recieved comments from Ms Swati that I can further simplify the 6th thumbnail by removing the waves and the lining along the ship. This can give a second level of generic meaning as it can symbolize any kind of water transportation, a boat, a sampan, or even a float.

Below is the version 2 of this assignment:

Class activity: Types of representation

Today's class activity was an exercise on the types of representation.

The object selected is a pig.

As you all can see, the first picture is iconical representation of a pig's head.

The second picture shows an indexical representation, with a round shape to indicate the pig's body. The stout and tail are added to give context to the round shape.

The third picture is the back view indexical representation of a pig. Once again, I used the round shape to represent the pig's sihoulette, and the curly tail and legs are drawn in to give the recognition of a pig.

Lecturer's feedback was that it was not necessary to draw the body at all. The indexical representation could simply be the stout or the tail because these are self explanatory symbols. From our own context and knowledge, we can easily recognize these as parts of the pig body.

Finalized representation

I hate laundrying and love shoes!

In this first assignment, we're supposed to design and fuse the themes/objects of what we love and hate into our own name. It is a pretty interesting and challenging task because you have to crack your mind and think of possible ways to merge two things into one-which is not an easy feat! It was necessary to take into account that audiences perception: They must be able to recognize two elements once they see the design.

Anyway, when it comes to thinking about what i hate, it was relatively easy because it came to me almost naturally, and in an instant. Have you ever experienced having to do all the laundry while your siblings escapes from them? Haha, if yes, we probably share the same sentiment! So for what I hate, it is pretty much laundrying as you all can guess by now.

Alright, so here are some of the ideas in thumbnails:

Eventually, i chose 4th thumbnail because I thought the very action of doing laundry can bring out the essence of hatred much better rather than just drawing objects related to laundry. And so i developed some colored sketches and eventually came out with a colored prototype to work on:

rough color scheme

finalized color prototype

Here's the final product:

In the first tutorial(presentation of finalized thumbnail prototypes), I gained some feedback from students who felt that I should have used more sinister colors like black to show the emotions of dreading to do the laundry. I tried to change accordingly but realised it made the design less outstanding and more difficult to recognize. Hence I kept my colors and added different expressions (tiredness, hotness, anger) on stick men faces and fire above the last man's head to show frustrations.

So for the second part of this assignment, I chose shoes. It was relatively difficult to think of shoe designs that would suit alphabets, especially 'U' ,'N' and 'G'. I brainstormed a variety of combinations as seen below:

And like for laundrying, I came out with a rough color scheme and a finalized color protoype:

And presenting you my finalized work:

Some students have feedbacked that the 'T' was not obvious enough and looked more like a 'Y' instead.

Overall, it was an enjoying process though quite alot of time is spent in producing the eventual thing. My first experience with the illustrator application was not exactly smooth sailing, however, when the creation is finalized, it really gives you a great sense of accomplishment and satisfaction!