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!

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!!!

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...

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.

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 =)

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!

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.

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 ...

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 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.

GUYS, MAI TU LIAO!!!

3 easy steps to getting/de-aggroing your girl!!!

1.Download this piece entitled "SPAMHEARTSFTW"



2.Fold in half (width-wise for morons out there) and write your mushy mushy stuff inside
3.Donate $50 to me please, visa/nets not accepted.

Guarantee you will get license to shoot!

Does this look better ???

Or ...

Assignment : Poster Design

–Pick a topic related to the theme (e.g.. Save forest, kill mosquitoes, save singlish, stop pollution etc.)
–Write a copy (text which goes on poster) of not more than 150 words
–Design the poster such that it coveys the meaning through layout (placement of visual elements - photos, text, graphics elements etc)
–Size of the artwork: A3
–Submissions should be in the form of colour print out


Objectives:
–Understanding the importance of basic visual elements and design principles in communicating a message
–Developing necessary techniques to communicate the message through form

My hasty first draft

I admit it was a rush job , I was toying around with the idea throughout the whole weekend but only sat my ass down on Sunday to turn my thoughts into something concrete ... After a round of constructive criticism , I came up with this ...

Red on black brings out the words IMO , added the black background to contrast with the middle section to bring focus to my gory picture . First attempt I was trying to use the white starkness to draw attention to the picture but the words didnt turn out good and too much negative space maybe? So I bordered up the image , did a super obvious colour contrast and added some smudges on the title to up the gore factor ... People are attracted to look at gory pictures and that's the visual element I'm banking on...

I think the font is okay , contary to what people think , it looks mangled and not clean cut which fits my general idea. And I split up the title to "Stop self" at top and "Mutilation" at bottom to sort of act as a second frame for my image , shifting everything together will decentralise the image and make distribution uneven. That's about it!

After some semi-uber photoshopping , THIS IS MY FINAL PRODUCT!!!

- At some HDB, evil lurks ... -

I used blur to ... well blur the incoming subject ...

- Thinks to himself ... "This mask will make her SCREAM!!!" *no pun intended* -

No editing here, handsome enough lol

- Ready to spook! -

On second thought the blur makes the it look like different dimensions ... Gives the feeling in 2 other worlds ... I'll decide which to print later

- He strikes!!! -

Motion blur FTW!!! Looks Jumper-ish ...

- Boo! -

Radial blur FTW!!! Sorry I keep using blur , my limited mad skillz dont allow much fancy work so I make do with what i discover

- Huh? -

Does ??? = text? I give myself the benefit of doubt in this case , the ??? maybe a bit redundant given the excellent facial expression of my female model so I can live without it if necessary. It does add a certain comic element though...

- What? Blind??? -

Tried to photoshop , but the face was too damaged to salvage anything ... I tried my best ... >_<

- The mysterious walking stick that appears only now -

I blurred the 1st and 3rd pics so that people cant see there's a walking stick behind her back . That explains the mysterious stick! Covering my backside so to speak ...

- Saddified -

It's 50/50 for this pic , I'm trying to recreate the comic effect that when characters become disappointed they turn all dark and gloomy ... Doesnt really work in this pic though ... But thats the main idea of it anyway ... I think I'll stick to the original if I lose sleep over this pic

That sums up my photoshop efforts. Big shout out to Amy for being the unfortunate blind woman , her cousin for taking photos and Colin who told me where to get that mask. Oscars here I come!

Story telling time !

Visual narrative – Telling a story with not more than 10 pictures.
This exercise is for understanding techniques of visual Representation.

Exercise:

• Buy, Beg, borrow a camera. Even 8$ disposable camera would do
• Load it with a colour negative film/Memory Flashcard
• Write/Select a short story and
• try to communicate the story using only visuals (not more than 10 pictures)
• Get it processed and printed (size 6x4 inches)
• Mount them neatly on A5 size paper

Objectives:

• Understanding and overcoming constrains/ problems of representation
• Using various representation techniques to communicate your ideas effectively

Tools:
Software: PhotoShop (if using digital camera)
Hardware: Camera Film or Digital, colour printer (if using digital camera)

Submission:
Next week. Please display your finished work on the soft board at the back of the class. You will get 2 minutes each to present your work.

Okay this is what I came up with in the first time , a quick run down of my story . Guy wants to scare random person , gets a mask , ambush his prey , turns out prey is blind , guy very sad.

Unedited photos , which were quite well received in tutorial class .

Needful things: Making images talk

Procedure:

• Subject: Select an object or activity or location (telephone, running, Bus stop, car, cooking etc). Try not to select an existing subject (eg. Toilet or well known sports symbols)
• Create a representative image of the object (you may choose either iconic or indexic representation)
• Distill the image through process of abstraction. (atleast 5 levels of abstraction from realistic to abstract)
• Indicate at what point in the abstraction process the object looses its specific identity and communicates generic meaning. Select that image and develop it into a symbol.

• Details:

– The process of abstraction is one of distillation, the reduction of multiple visual factors to only the essential and most typical features of what is being represented.

– Abstraction toward symbolism requires ultimate simplicity, the reduction of visual detail to the irreducible minimum. A symbol, in order to be effective, must not only be seen and recognized but also remembered and even reproduced.

The subject to be immortalised ... the humble snail ! Actually its not really humble since it's the biggest snail around , the African Giant Snail to be exact but we can overlook that ...

For the snail , I think the defining feature of it is the shell . So in my process of abstraction , I want to retain the essence of the shell and slowly simplify other areas like its body.

The first picture I started out with

High level of detail , as realistic as possible to the real deal ... Painstakingly drew the "scale-like" texture of the body and gave the shell random brown markings to give it a "crawling in and out of dirt" look.

2nd level : Reduced the body texture to give it a cleaner look , the shell has less markings , image looks more 2D than 3D now due to elimination of the "flaps" below the snail.

3rd level : The eyes have shortened , shell loses one layer and all markings now making it simple and clean , body has shortened as well . Image has a simplistic cartoonish look now.



4th level : Eyes totally gone , shell markings totally gone as well with basically the outline only . At this stage I feel the drawing loses its specific meaning and enters the generic stage as the shell doesnt look like a shell anymore . General perception is that it looks like an over-turned ice cream cone ... People wanted me to keep the eyes , but the eyes would easily make it look like an animal considering the shell outline was still there . Eyes would make it obvious it's a snail so it had to go .



5th level : Abstract stage now . I've reduced each level to separate forms , approaching a symbol look . Weirdly , this symbol doesnt really evoke a snail image when I think about it , I think its due to the thickness of the 3 shell layers compared to the thin body layer . Hence one more stage ...



6th level : Cant get more simple than this . Yet I feel its easier to see a snail with this form than the previous one ... Go figure huh ...

Final collage of the de-evolution of my snail



That's it folks ! I'll make a photoshop version later , I just found out how to scan images , thank god !

2 Hate drafts , I really liked the smoke trail one because it was evil looking and could really show the hate . Final draft was this .



I like ... Although it seems to have lost a bit of the creepy evil feeling due to the uniformity of my name . I would prefer to hand draw then scan but I don't have a scanner so I'm stuck with searching for fonts . The smoke effect is added to hammer home the point + score style points .

The 2 drafts that I chose . I decided on the left one to do my final draft because its straight to the point and nobody will mistake it . After going through some musical scores and analyzing how to morph them , I came up with this final draft .



Yellow was chosen to give a cheerful feeling , I wanted to pick purple and black to go with some IPod theme that I remembered from some time ago but couldn't find a combination that I liked . I made my name have some sort of wave to reflect the "flowy" nature of music and I used the Crochet to replace my i .

This is my first draft , kinda like a mind-map . Left love , right hate , 4 designs each .

For love , one design used music accessories like earphones and speakers to make up the words , another used musical instruments , one used musical notations and the other is supposed to be names of bands/singers making up the words but that didnt turn out well .

For hate , stick figures smoking for one , trail of smoke for another , things associated with smoking for another and the last is simply a no smoking sign replacing the 'O' in my name .

Concept-wise I think my designs are of a very safe nature , nothing radical or abstract but I feel it's super obvious and gets the point across . It was kinda validated when nobody had much comments , dont really know whether that's a good or bad thing . The problem of transferring to computer was a roadblock also , I didn't want to have grandeur visions of my design only to be stuck trying to recreate on the computer . Calling all photoshop experts , contact me !!!

First assignment of the day : Me Myself and I

- Select 2 words which best describes your character.
- Come up with 8 design concepts
- Select 2 concepts which you like most
- Produce and present your selected designs on A5 size papers.

We're suppose to do a hate/love thing and incorporate it into our names . Not allowed to simply decorate our names with it because that would be too easy and everybody would get a A+ ... So after mulling over what I really hate/love and what would be easy to draw , I chose Music as my Love , Smoking as my hate . Onwards with the show !