Monday, April 12, 2010

Final Project

For my group’s final project, we drew a storbook titled What’s Happening to Wallace?

We brainstormed for concept for the book. From the oclouring to content. At first, we wanted to create a self-help book. One of our ideas will be designing a book that educate children about divorce. Another idea was on the how kids can handle sch bullies. Finally, we decided on working on puberty, which will serves to inform kids about some of the bodily changes they will be facing soon.

The plot:

The story depict of a typical day of a child's life. The usual routine of waking up, brushing teeth, putting of change of clothes, eating his breakfast, heading to school and back from school. Along the way, he discovered many changes taking place, making im imagine he is a monster, hated by all. he does not realise that hese are actually signs of him growing up. Upon careful explanation by his parents, Wallace realised these changes are natural and there’s nothing to be afraid or ashamed about.

Designing
After coming up with the storyline, we came up with a thumbnail plot.. Here is one of the example:


From there, we slowly incorporate more ideas into it. To let our imagination flow and all. Such as the classroom scene, we decided to bring the whole scene to the outdoor:]
Observe we used grids to guide us as well:]

Developing wallace was the toughest for this whole project. In the beginning, we wanted Wallace to be a human. However, human might restrict our ability to transform him into a monster. Hence a bear was chosen in the end, as bear can be seen as either a terror, or a lovely little soft toy.
We had many sketches of Wallace and we can't decide on which is the best. The criteria for Wallace was Wallace to be a monster, yet retain its cuteness. In the end, we drew out inspiration from the illustrator of Gruffalo, and Mei Gui managed to came up with one that all of us fell for:] The following image depict out thought process:




Apart from designing Wallace, we need to colour it as well. The colouring of Wallace will set the tone and colour of the book:] Here is our exploration:]

We decided on something darker and a little bright to help Wallace stands out from the background. It should be some colour that is not commonly used as the background as well, so to help the colours speak to each other. I believe the tougest part was not colouring, but deciding on which is the easiest way to colour... Hence I devised live tracing and manually closing gaps of traces. Not the best method but its definitely less time consuming:]

Remain consistent was tricky — everyone took charge of different scenes in the bookto save on time. However problem arise when each of us has different drawing and coloring styles. We attempted to overcame this problem by leaving the shading part of the work to one person. If more time was permitted, I would recommend one person sketch the background, the oher person sketch the character, another person to colour bg, another to colour character.. and lastly one person to shade all.

Tight schedule further restricted us from evaluating each other work. But i guess we were all really responsible and created quality work. Hence, not much problem with that.

Here is the final work:]
















As mentioned, we were tight on schedule, hence for printing, we did not test print, but jut trusted our printer to deliver his work. We faced much constraint as well, since the printer has few selection of printing, and required all printing to be matte + same thickness. Nevertheless, this is compromised with the low cost of printing, around 30 each:]

For presentation, we decided to do a mini skit:] The idea originated from my biz policy class, where we had to describe the essence of the case study in 10min. Using skit is definitely most entertaining, an easiest to convey the message across. I do hope everyone enjoyed it:]
To my group members, if you happen to be reading this, thank you for the nice memories:] it has been fun slogging with everyone and I look forward to see many of your works in the future:]

Assignment 5 - Infographic

I have been cracking my head over this infographic. Is this infographic going to teach people how to fight climate change? or inform them about the seen effect of climate change?

Anyway, back to ida generation, it was drawn back to the days when i was staying in Canada.People in canada are pretty environmental friendly. We bring our own grocery bags, separate garbages etc, as an effort to reduce, reuse and recycle. This 3 R will reduce the carbon and greenhouse gases productions. Talking about rubbish, as most people have lawn and backyard, most people will buy a composter to do composting as well. therefore, it will be fun to educate people in Singapore some of these recycling habits that Canadiens have to help fight climate change.


link to denver's report:
http://www.denvergov.com/OrganicsPrograms/CompostingCollectionPilotProgram/BenefitsofComposting/tabid/433350/Default.aspx

Below is the first draft thati have came up with:


Large fonts were used to attract audience to the figures. The overall colouring of this poster is bright colours,though i do admit its a litle too colourful. for shading, the sun is assumed to be at the top left side of the graphic.

In effort to achieve balance in the graphic, i have points at the both side. However, this makes the whole infographic really clutter. Furthermore, the words used were too many as well.
hence i further reduce to this:

The compost peat was shifted to the right, occuping 2/3 of the space.. the other 1/3 will be the facts and benefit of composting, maintaining the balance of the infographic.. thefacts are delibrately shorten to aid the readers in absorbing the information. Furthermore. I attempted to highlight the facts by introducing leaves in the backgorund. However, it does not seem to work as the leaves took the attention away from the text. adjusting the colour will make not much different to it as well. Hence, i replaced it with circles again:

The use of yellow colour for circle complement the compost peat and speaks to the background, thus helping text to stand out without feeling out of picture. Shorteningof fact also allow increase in font size for greater readiblity.

The title "COMPOSTING" were created using illustrator. worm was chosen as it is the most important element in composting.

Assignment 4 - Colour Coalition:]




For this exercise, my inspiration was drawn from the above to diagram. The fish like feature is the konobori. Konobori is the "kite" that kids will fly at the door on the japanese children day (Kodomo no hi)
The target audience will be youth/kids and this postcard will be catered for the japanese schools in singapore, to promote this huge event.

After hearing about the inspiration by a girl, who used repeated patterns on postcard, I tried to incorporate simple shapes and repeated patterns to design this postcard. The clouds in the sky were circles with varying gaps.The body of the was created using circles too:] In fact, this whole assignment is full of circles:]
For colour usage, I tried to go for speaking or shouting colours as there is a need to separate the fish from the background. The outer ring of the eye is kept constantly as yellow.Below are some of the colour exploration.




The most difficult part will be coordinating the fish. They have to be speaking colour while they have to shouting/speaking colour to the background.

So below is my first prototype.

Jing mentioned that the black does not stand out from the blue.. Hence, further exploration:




This is my final submission. I like it because it achieve both speaking and shouting colours. the use of dark and light colours further help the fish stand out as were. The final font was changed as some of the classmate commented the previous font was too generic:]

Friday, March 12, 2010

hometown

May i give you Montreal and Kingston; winter to spring:]

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Amateur Postcard

A year old work:

Landed me a freelance offer.. HoHOhOoOoOOo


but now it just looks kind of amateuris. oh well

Class Assignment D

Hello.. Here is what Dexter and Me created for the previous class assignment.


Playing with lines, shapes:]


Clutter

Silent

Assignment 3 - U C What I C

UPDATES:] (earlier draft can be found below)
Some amendments were made for this assignment taking into consideration of the suggestion made by Jing and peers.

Jing mentioned it will be great to add more human sene inside. Hence i decided to come up with this to replace mountains of bag scene:]
+ =

I made some changes such as changing the toybox to rubbish to allow audiences to establish greater links between the series of photo..


In addition to rubbish bin, photo frames were used to tie the stories together as well.

Overal, dramatic lighting was used to create all these amended shots:] and we finally have this below:]

My final submission:]
The workprocess can be found at the bottom.
First Draft
As i didn;t have the opportunity to hunt for a suitable stairs, i thought i should just make do we the resources that I have. Hence, to inject more human humour/encounter, I decide to attempt this!

This assignment is using photograph to tell a story. As an avid photographer, i felt really comply to do a great job in this. took me 1 whole week to brainstorm. If i don't I will be letting myself, and my equipments(they are to serve great purpose!) down.
Getting great actors to enact a story is not really that easy. Its not just about their acting, but their attire, make up, envt etc etc.

Anyway, i came across this series of photo while doing some research. One simple plot, many ways of depicting it.






credits to Ocediis:]









I guess to make any storyline interesting there must me a punch/twist in it. HJ suggested that i should look at some creative commericals, like thai commericals, to look for some ideas.. Here is one that i really take a fancy for.







Drum rolling - Google Map Japan!!!










Awesome isn't it. When we all thought the Thais are the new generation of funny&creative, Japan still rules the world being number 1 in innovative and creativity.



Many thanks to this commerical, I have decided to settle for some inanimated object with a light hearted plot. and perhaps, using clay to create some "props" and "actors" for the shoot. However, too ambitious and costly the idea can be, I have to scrap off this thought.
One of the more prelimnary idea was to create a suicide or murder plot, which many commented it will be too guresome. So I try to come up with the saving for the rainy day plot;
1) piggy bank with an umbrella in different seasons and weather, hand putting coin into the piggy bank


2) piggy bank in the rain with open umbrella followed by a hammer appearing and smashing the piggy bank into pieces


saving for the rainy day, get it? haaa..

I thought it will be awesome since i can use those photos i have taken during my trips as the backdrop. However, in this high inflation capitalist world, my plan dooms to fail. For its IMPOSSIBLE to find a CHEAP PIGGY BANK to SMASH!! Not even Daiso sells piggy bank! And I will definitely not buy a $20 piggy bank from taka just to smash it..

Fear not, there was a back up plan and the piece I have decided to work on.





A simple story of a bear trying to find some comfort. Hundred over shots were taken for this piece of assignment, partly due to experimenting of the angles and distance of shots. There are so many instances that base on the photography "rules", this shld be the best method but I always believe that the fun of exploring always lead to some new surprises. And i was right. Here are some example to prove my point(i deleted quite a bit of them.. like the bottom up:[). Photos were edited using Adobe bridge and photoshop.
How did i manage to keep the teddy standing etc? the magic of double sided tape:]






The lighting turned out to be better than I have expected; personally I am pretty afraid of using artifical lighting, esp so in indoor envt, guess my strobing skills have improved:]

It was kind of demoralising when Jing mentioned that many students actually used teddy bear. i understand it lomography photo is in trend hence its appealing but my mea concer is whether it fit the theme of this project well.. Lots more work has to be done to the last few frames(expected for my attention span and energy only last that long). Furthermore, in my opinion, the box doesn't seem obvious. Perhaps i should use a toy box or dustin bin(down the chute you dirty bear!)..

With reference to some reviews, I'll try to create more human encounters, such as human walking down the stairs, crawling across photos or something, and more linkages to it falling back in the box.. Gotta borrow fab or liz stairs soon:]

Definitely should improve on the colour as well.. Currently its cool tone and all.. We will see...

Btw, here is a professional photographer(wedding, street, fashion shoots and year 1 mass comm student) that I'll follow once in awhile, who happened to be my bestfriend's closefriend(sounds confusing eh).. http://ra1nforest.livejournal.com/

love some of his work, hope you will too:]




first few pieces of work using film. Notice anyone familiar? haa.. I assure you he delivers so much more now.