Final NM2208 thoughts
2 more days to hand in everything and I've still got stuff to print lol ... At least I'll be relieved when Wednesday comes ... NM2208 is by far the most interesting module I've taken so far, any NUS students interested in design should give this module a try. My class is pretty talented and competitive, so there's the drive to one-up your classmates and gain recognition. It's easy to understand the stuff taught, but to really master it is another matter. I feel most of my work is pretty straightforward , people can instantly understand what I'm trying to express but compared to a work thats unconventional, I think mine will lack starpower. The storybook assignment I enjoyed the most, it challenged me to think creatively and move my ass around to get stuff done lol ... I would like to thank Ms Siti my tutor , her comments are insightful and she knows her stuff. This module has motivated me to learn Photoshop and I've learnt that precise planning for a project really is important to save time and confusion.
Thanks all that have read my blog~! No plans to update anymore lol ... Cheers!
Monday, April 21, 2008
Initial Storybook draft
Just a few pages to illustrate what we did. Colin gave Kitty artistic direction while I thought of rhyming phrases , the entire draft was done in 2 days. After editing + colour ...
=)
Added a maze at the end as an addon, creating the maze in 2 hrs was pretty fun and challenging.
For some reason the images are turning out in psychedelic colours so I'll refrain from posting the entire product .
Book design was extremely time-consuming. We wanted to make hardcover, but hardcover would take 3-4 days and we did not have 3-4 days. So at the suggestion of a boss there, I decided to do DIY hardcover. Basically take mounting board as your hardcover, print coverpage+back in sticker format and paste on. Then there was the content , I had to figure out a way to stick it on the hardcover. I went with binding screws, it makes the book look like a file but who says storybooks have to be conventional lol ... Kitty and I went to print and after some complex assembly ...
The cover is too big for the content , which means I have to make another trip down to correct it. I've added a few more ideas as well, mainly a bookmark and some publishing info to make it look realistic. Plus I wrote "SDG $8.80" at the back which was spotted immediately by the boss lol ... After tomorrow , NO MORE NM2208!!!
Just a few pages to illustrate what we did. Colin gave Kitty artistic direction while I thought of rhyming phrases , the entire draft was done in 2 days. After editing + colour ...
=)
Added a maze at the end as an addon, creating the maze in 2 hrs was pretty fun and challenging.
For some reason the images are turning out in psychedelic colours so I'll refrain from posting the entire product .
Book design was extremely time-consuming. We wanted to make hardcover, but hardcover would take 3-4 days and we did not have 3-4 days. So at the suggestion of a boss there, I decided to do DIY hardcover. Basically take mounting board as your hardcover, print coverpage+back in sticker format and paste on. Then there was the content , I had to figure out a way to stick it on the hardcover. I went with binding screws, it makes the book look like a file but who says storybooks have to be conventional lol ... Kitty and I went to print and after some complex assembly ...
The cover is too big for the content , which means I have to make another trip down to correct it. I've added a few more ideas as well, mainly a bookmark and some publishing info to make it look realistic. Plus I wrote "SDG $8.80" at the back which was spotted immediately by the boss lol ... After tomorrow , NO MORE NM2208!!!
Its time to do an update of the final project, the Storybook.
First off I would like to say this assignment really stressed my limits and ate up a good chunk of my time. It's been a while since I've been so engrossed doing anything *gaming not included* and it was refreshing at first being so busy but at the end it became torture to keep thinking about it and have the book pages seared into my brain ... LoL ... Good learning experience though, there's a whole lot of thinking involved in making a simple book~!
Story draft ... So Kitty, Me and Colin sat down to come up with a story. We wanted a story to educate children , one with a moral behind and at the same time have some humor. Our initial version was smelly ignored bear, bear save animals that shunned him, animals wear GAS MASKS to coexist with him ... The gas mask was our selling point , but Kitty wanted something like bear with magical hug that brings happiness to other animals ......... Okay so we edited the original story a little and this is our final version.
Jo the Bear is kind hearted and nice. However, nobody likes him because of his smelly fur. He tries his best to wash up to no avail. Then one day he sees the animals in danger, he jumps forth to save them. He chases away the enemies with his stink. Animals grateful , together they help scrub him clean, they live happily ever after.
The storybook is aimed at kids 6-9, so we'll keep it short and colourful. Words will rhyme to make it fun to narrate in case the kids are lazy and want their teacher to read to them. 300 words with speech inside, so you can make your own bear noises. Simplistic drawing, something that a kid can relate to with vibrant colours to attract their attention.
The workload was split into the following ...
Storyline design: All 3
Book design: Me
Drawing: Kitty
Colouring: Colin
Looking back our team really rocks. Kitty's drawing is good , Colin excels at colouring and I love thinking of ways to make the book interesting. Everybody has their own speciality and nobody is competing with someone else to do one portion. Initial draft next...
First off I would like to say this assignment really stressed my limits and ate up a good chunk of my time. It's been a while since I've been so engrossed doing anything *gaming not included* and it was refreshing at first being so busy but at the end it became torture to keep thinking about it and have the book pages seared into my brain ... LoL ... Good learning experience though, there's a whole lot of thinking involved in making a simple book~!
Story draft ... So Kitty, Me and Colin sat down to come up with a story. We wanted a story to educate children , one with a moral behind and at the same time have some humor. Our initial version was smelly ignored bear, bear save animals that shunned him, animals wear GAS MASKS to coexist with him ... The gas mask was our selling point , but Kitty wanted something like bear with magical hug that brings happiness to other animals ......... Okay so we edited the original story a little and this is our final version.
Jo the Bear is kind hearted and nice. However, nobody likes him because of his smelly fur. He tries his best to wash up to no avail. Then one day he sees the animals in danger, he jumps forth to save them. He chases away the enemies with his stink. Animals grateful , together they help scrub him clean, they live happily ever after.
The storybook is aimed at kids 6-9, so we'll keep it short and colourful. Words will rhyme to make it fun to narrate in case the kids are lazy and want their teacher to read to them. 300 words with speech inside, so you can make your own bear noises. Simplistic drawing, something that a kid can relate to with vibrant colours to attract their attention.
The workload was split into the following ...
Storyline design: All 3
Book design: Me
Drawing: Kitty
Colouring: Colin
Looking back our team really rocks. Kitty's drawing is good , Colin excels at colouring and I love thinking of ways to make the book interesting. Everybody has their own speciality and nobody is competing with someone else to do one portion. Initial draft next...
Saturday, April 12, 2008
Latest assignment is to critique posters according to the Gestalt principles.
Good Poster
Kicks ass, nuff' said ...
Okay more to be said. According to Gestalt principles ...
Continuity : The soldiers pushing the people off the cliff , leads the viewer from top of cliff to the dropping soldiers
Closure : The black cliff separates the text from the image, bright sky vs dark cliff face makes it easy for people to read the title etc.
Proximity : Words close together to show that 300 is from creators of Sin City, title and quote wont be mixed up.
Similarity : Way of drawing of soldiers make it easy to distinguish , right got cloak and well drawn , left blurry and cant see much detail.
Colour : Dull dark colours to emphasize the feeling of war, gloomy feel
Font type : Bloody font
Quote : Has a memorable/impactful quote from the movie, relates to movie
Spirit of Movie : Overall has the bloody , in a war mood. Impactful and really grabs attention.
Continuity : The soldiers pushing the people off the cliff , leads the viewer from top of cliff to the dropping soldiers
Closure : The black cliff separates the text from the image, bright sky vs dark cliff face makes it easy for people to read the title etc.
Proximity : Words close together to show that 300 is from creators of Sin City, title and quote wont be mixed up.
Similarity : Way of drawing of soldiers make it easy to distinguish , right got cloak and well drawn , left blurry and cant see much detail.
Colour : Dull dark colours to emphasize the feeling of war, gloomy feel
Font type : Bloody font
Quote : Has a memorable/impactful quote from the movie, relates to movie
Spirit of Movie : Overall has the bloody , in a war mood. Impactful and really grabs attention.
Bad Poster
Text is on picture , so cant decide which is the main emphasis. Text is colourful but other than that poster is just one person many words = boring. Words too close together , ie shake it up hair spray. Entire poster is full of stuff , looks too squeezy. Way to improve , change the model like one classmate said lol
Final Word: Okay so the bad poster aint that bad, but I wanted to find a poster that either wasnt from the 1960s ( automatically bad) or those circus type posters that cram everything in and give you a headache just looking it. Those we all know are bad, no point to dissect them. So I browsed through some movie posters from 2007 and picked the first one that went "BAD" in my head and tried to explain why. The poster designers know their stuff, it was hard finding a poster that really reaked of suckitude.
On another note, many presentations had posters that were super boring. Case in point the Godfather poster. That was a Good poster and I had to disagree. Posters are meant to generate interest in the movie and that poster was a cold fish. Even if it conformed to all the Gestalt Principles, it doesnt automatically make it a good poster. I think the feel and vibe of the poster is most important, the Gestalt principles are just a guideline. I think too many classmates were obsessed with finding posters that fit ALL the Gestalt principles so some points were a bit forced.
That's all folks , next project is storybook called "JoThe Bear In A Smelly Affair" ! Stay tuned =)
Final Word: Okay so the bad poster aint that bad, but I wanted to find a poster that either wasnt from the 1960s ( automatically bad) or those circus type posters that cram everything in and give you a headache just looking it. Those we all know are bad, no point to dissect them. So I browsed through some movie posters from 2007 and picked the first one that went "BAD" in my head and tried to explain why. The poster designers know their stuff, it was hard finding a poster that really reaked of suckitude.
On another note, many presentations had posters that were super boring. Case in point the Godfather poster. That was a Good poster and I had to disagree. Posters are meant to generate interest in the movie and that poster was a cold fish. Even if it conformed to all the Gestalt Principles, it doesnt automatically make it a good poster. I think the feel and vibe of the poster is most important, the Gestalt principles are just a guideline. I think too many classmates were obsessed with finding posters that fit ALL the Gestalt principles so some points were a bit forced.
That's all folks , next project is storybook called "JoThe Bear In A Smelly Affair" ! Stay tuned =)
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Just because I'm a WoW junkie ...
Poor nightelf in the middle ... Gank!!!
Made entirely from actual game screenshots, which explains the horrible cropping lol ... I'm not gonna get sued for copyright material rite???
This design had been stuck in my brain for quite some time, finally I got the time to mess around with it. "Save Azeroth" has the familiar in-game font that's horrible to read on your mail. Huge Horde logo on the right to show my faction of choice. Middle is the Dark Portal, which is central to the storyline plus it looks kickass. I wanted to give it an invasion look , so I got many different characters in a nice semi circle shape at the bottom , all eyes on the poor nightelf in the centre. Nightelf = Alliance = Not Horde = In Trouble.
It's a bit bottom heavy given the mashup of colourful characters but I think I achieved the "greatness of numbers" look. You know, when you watch Lord of the Rings and see 1000000000 soldiers on screen and go "Wow..." ? Smaller scale here but same effect. The colour is pretty contrasting , overall colour combination came out well. Could use a bigger border though ...
That's it, hope you guys like it! For the Horde!
It's a bit bottom heavy given the mashup of colourful characters but I think I achieved the "greatness of numbers" look. You know, when you watch Lord of the Rings and see 1000000000 soldiers on screen and go "Wow..." ? Smaller scale here but same effect. The colour is pretty contrasting , overall colour combination came out well. Could use a bigger border though ...
That's it, hope you guys like it! For the Horde!
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Quick recap ...
Cover of card ... Inside is ...
Its Johnny Bravo !!! Hide your girls !!! =)
Concept : The cover is very mature and sophisticated looking , so one would expect the inside to be the same ... Suddenly out pops Johnny Bravo! Going for the comic feel this time , doing the same old theme was kinda boring ... The transition from black to blue may be a bit sudden , I have to print it out first for a first hand view ... It brings a smile to my face though lol ... Wanted to use a muscular tiko looking cupid , but I could not draw/find on internet so I took the next best thing ... JOHNNY BRAVO !!!!
-Update - This version was so poorly received it was sad. Apparently people didnt feel the Johnny Bravo vibe ... I could replace the interior with the pink one but I dont want to repeat the same concept twice ... Only thing to change is to make the logo at the back smaller, it really makes a difference after I've changed it.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
I love Tuesdays ... Next day is a free day and the WoW server is down due to maintenance so I've got 6 hours to think about my nm2208 ...
Btw this is the assignment so far ...
Greeting card: Theme - LOVE
+Pick your favorite quote related to the theme (love, romance, tenderness, etc)
+Design a greeting card (sponsored by cupid greeting card Pte ltd)
+Card should convey the theme primarily through colours with minimal use of photographs and other visual elements.
+Size of the artwork: A4 or smaller
+Submissions should be in the form of colour print out.
Objectives
+Developing necessary skill in using colour palette
+Developing necessary techniques in communicating the message through colours
+Understanding process of colour scheme selection and usage
I've been churning out so-so assignments lately so I did a show hand for this one ... After a round of critique, I decided to scape my orignal design and start from scratch , keeping my spam hearts concept because I think it has potential ... My final design ...
Right side is the cover page . I finally figured out why it was so messy in the first place. I was mixing the different shades of colours on the same layer. This time round I spammed dark coloured hearts and below them was the light coloured hearts making it easier to see this time round ... A focal point was mentioned so I shifted the bigass heart to the middle.
Left side is pretty simple , although I would like to explain the small picture in the middle. My card is aimed for young couples , so my theme was BGR . Then in a moment of Eureka ... Boy = Blue , Girl = Green and Relationship = Red = Love. Its gonna be my company symbol in the future if I start a dating company lol ... Curvy writing at the end for that sophisticated touch.
The inside. My cupid plus my slogan with double meaning , Licensed to Shoot !!! Red/Pink colours since that's standard love colours ... The blank space is for a reason ...
Btw this is the assignment so far ...
Greeting card: Theme - LOVE
+Pick your favorite quote related to the theme (love, romance, tenderness, etc)
+Design a greeting card (sponsored by cupid greeting card Pte ltd)
+Card should convey the theme primarily through colours with minimal use of photographs and other visual elements.
+Size of the artwork: A4 or smaller
+Submissions should be in the form of colour print out.
Objectives
+Developing necessary skill in using colour palette
+Developing necessary techniques in communicating the message through colours
+Understanding process of colour scheme selection and usage
I've been churning out so-so assignments lately so I did a show hand for this one ... After a round of critique, I decided to scape my orignal design and start from scratch , keeping my spam hearts concept because I think it has potential ... My final design ...
Right side is the cover page . I finally figured out why it was so messy in the first place. I was mixing the different shades of colours on the same layer. This time round I spammed dark coloured hearts and below them was the light coloured hearts making it easier to see this time round ... A focal point was mentioned so I shifted the bigass heart to the middle.
Left side is pretty simple , although I would like to explain the small picture in the middle. My card is aimed for young couples , so my theme was BGR . Then in a moment of Eureka ... Boy = Blue , Girl = Green and Relationship = Red = Love. Its gonna be my company symbol in the future if I start a dating company lol ... Curvy writing at the end for that sophisticated touch.
The inside. My cupid plus my slogan with double meaning , Licensed to Shoot !!! Red/Pink colours since that's standard love colours ... The blank space is for a reason ...
Watah !!! My secret 3D card for the win! I printed out both , cut out the heart in the middle , glued some cotton wool on it and painted it bright red . Cotton wool isnt really that stable , I might use mini red paper balls to replace it when i have time . Mission accomplished!!!
This is another version I stumbled upon, I was messing around with the buttons and suddenly I was like "OMG WTF" ... Presenting the Spam Heart Card Black Version ...
This is another version I stumbled upon, I was messing around with the buttons and suddenly I was like "OMG WTF" ... Presenting the Spam Heart Card Black Version ...
This really blows my mind. Mature dark love kind of feeling. I'll think about the inside design and present both to class because I didnt have 2 samples ready but I've got the feeling this is a winner.
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