Assignment 7

And for the grand finale, Assignment 7, the Storybook

Theme: God created fly and forgot why (Group project)

§Design and prepare a story book for children (Ages 6 to 9)

§Number of pages - around 12

§Do not use more than 900 words for copy (story)

§Pay attention to layout and information flow

§Use appropriate type and colours

§Prepare design document

§Book Size: 7 X 8.5 inches

§Pay attention to consistence

Medium: Print

Important:

–Again pay attention to layout and information flow, and consistence

§Objectives

–Proper usage of type and content organization

–Developing skills in defining visual treatment specs

–Understanding the process and importance of creating design document

Well, the Theme is just a suggestion and not a definite one. and thus for our groups, here is what we come up with.

First, a short summary of the story:
4 Gods come together to create the world, namely the God of Earth, God of Life, God of Sea and God of time. After the creation of the world, the God of time got greedy and wanted the whole world to herself. Thus using trickery, she successfully made the other 3 Gods leave. However, the world soon deteriorate to a very unbecoming state. She apologized to the other 3 Gods and ask them to return. They did and the world become a better place.

Morale of the story? Time may be against us but the world still can be fixed. The future is in your hands and it is never too late to change.


Well, a story for 6-9 year olds. I am quite excited actually, being able to actually be the author and illustrator of a book! However, 6-9 is a tricky age group to tackle. On one end of the spectrum, 6 yrs old are usually reading books with big letters and really simple story. However, by 9 the kids would have matured enough to actually stop reading picture books (though most still does i think) and read books by Enid Blyton or even books like Goosebumps. Thus it is rather hard to settle down on how difficult the language can be, the concepts and the font size.

And so, Alden came up with the story immediately(actually according to him, he came up with it during his NS time) and both me and Jasmine agreed that it is a good story to followup on. Next up, Jasmine did the drawing and coloring. While i am in charge of touching up and basically photoshopping the whole thing.

Thus coming up, the raw prototype......






Now, the feedback we got from Siti is the block of words will be very hard to digest visually. It is very difficult to read as they are all in one chunk. Thus she suggest to us to break it into more bite sized chunks so they can be more easy on the eye. Besides that, the feedback we got is that the drawing style is very fresh and unique. Obviously we are very happy upon hearing that but credit must go to Jasmine for her wonderful drawings!

Finally, i have no idea there is so much work that goes into make a simple illustrated story book. Everything down to the smallest detail like whether the page numbering should be to the left or right or middle makes a huge different to the overall feel of the book.

Assignment 6

Well, assignment 6, Design analysis...

And so, here are the posters...

Well i think most would agree this is a bad poster(though not the worst poster around, but bad nonetheless) There is no continuity at all. The most attention grabbing part of the poster is the picture at the center and if you follow the two person's gaze, your eye will fall right off the poster. There is also imbalance of visual content, making the poster very bottom heavy, which, together with the no continuity part, will lead the viewer's eyes right off the poster. In addition, the picture in the center seemed to have no link with background of black and white. The whole poster looked like it is done in 5 minutes.

Well, enough about the bad poster, here is the good poster.



As the slides have already said, there is very good contrast between the figure and ground. Our eyes are immediately drawn to the figure, that is batman. Then there is good continuity as we follow Batman's gaze down onto the name of the movie, which again contrast nicely with the background and thus very clearly legible. The color scheme of the poster is mainly warm and dark tones, which portray the general mood of the movie, which is more of dark and solemn.


After this tutorial, i learn quite a few about good and bad posters. and thus i head back and tweaked my Poster (Assignment 4) a little.

Assignment 3

Assignment 3: UC what IC?

Description:

nU C what I C: Visual story

nVisual narrative – Telling a story with just 10 pictures.

n

Suggested Procedure:

nBuy, Beg, or borrow a camera or steal it, but don’t quote me on this…J Even 8$ disposable camera would do.

nLoad it with a colour negative roll/Memory Flashcard.

nWrite/Select a short story

nTry to communicate the story using no more than 10 visuals (no text) – I meant it NO words.

nCreate a storyboard of your idea/s in your sketchbook

nTranslate you storyboard into pictures using your camera

nGet it processed and printed (size 6x4 inches). Mount them neatly on A5 size paper.

Objectives:

nUnderstanding and overcoming constrains/ problems of representation

nUsing various representation techniques to communicate your ideas effectively

Important: Story should...

Aristotle’s Poetic

nHave a plot

nA beginning (hooking the audience)

nMiddle (drama, building tempo)

nAn ending (with a twist – requirement for this assignment)

- | -

First i shall showcase my failed and discarded idea.

Draft part 1

Draft part 2

The story

I dont blame you if you look at the above, wide mouth, stoned, stunned, whatever. Because none of the people that i showed it to can get the story. Zero, zit, nada, non existent. The tutorial class is absolutely stumped as to what the heck am i trying to tell through the pictures. They were at a lost as to what i can do to improve it. Thus i decided to redo the whole thing. I think i was trying to squeeze too much information into a mere 10 frames. Too ambitious. 10 frames were way shorter than i expected. I should have attempted something simple yet effective. Which hands me the lesson of : it is easy to overload on information, however to get the message across, to be a good designer, one should know what to show, what not to show and how much to show. Also, a simple but precise message is a powerful and effective one.

Oh, in case you dont know, the summary of the story is....
It is the term break. Excited, i played and played. Suddenly it is the last day of break and i had not done any of the homework. Desperate, i tried something i seen in Heroes(the TVs show). And hey pesto, like Hiro Nakamura, i traveled back in time. Armed with the new power, i played again without thinking. Soon it is the end of break again and i tried the same trick. However this time, i concentrate too much and went too far back in time to the jurassic period, oblivious to the impending danger of being eaten by the T Rex.

Yeah, crappy i know. And the length of the summary serves to remind me again that i try to squeeze too much into 10 frames.

- | -

And now, for the story that i will be using

I set out to re-shoot EVERYTHING and here are the drafts and story.

Sketch 1

Sketch 2

The Story

Well, there you go, i hope it is pretty straightforward. At first it seemed ordinary enough, two people playing chess. However at the end it is revealed that i am actually playing chess with my own. If you notice carefully, i kept two things consistent. My hand which is without the gloves and myself only appears at the right side of the frame. My hand which is wearing the gloves only appears at the left side of the frame. This is to set consistency in shots and naturally lead people to perceive as two people playing chess. The foreshadowing part is when the owner of the gloved hand is never shown. At frame, it is revealed that the owner of the gloved hand had a checkmate against me. I was shocked, before smiling to myself as i have been playing chess with myself all along. Showed it to a couple of people and they all agreed that this is much more easier to understand and flows well.



So, as i have said before, through this exercise i have learned that it is very important to be precise and simple so as to be able to communicate effectively.

Assignment 2 : Updates

Well after consultation with Ms Siti, I have changed a little for my final version of the abstraction:

I have always thought that my final two abstractions were a little weird. During the consultation, it proved to be so. The "#" symbol just doesn't fit in. Ms Siti suggested that for my chosen abstraction, i need to rethink of what to put in place of the "#" and to pull away the two straps from the watch face. After some deliberations, i finally settled on the following....

I replaced the "#" with a 2 that looks like what we see on a rather old digital clock, with straight ends and all that. I have also pull apart the two straps from the circle and make the circle smaller. For the final abstraction, i opted to change the two lines i had previously to rectangular blocks. It looks reasonably like a watch if one would follow the progression of abstraction compared to the previous one which looks like the last fishball on a satay stick.

Assignment 5

When i look at the instructions for Assignment 5, my eyes popped out and my mouth opened wide enough to swallow a python.

Why?

Because it requires two things, two things that i am VERY lacking. The two things are COLOR and LOVE.

Why oh why!

Well, i dont really have a choice so i just soldier on and hope to hit upon something. And i werent surprised by myself that i started doing something really cheesy. But first, here are the various sketches..


Well for this one, the heart shape is the key chain and the two keys are the male and female symbols. The concept is something like "You find love when you find the key to each other's heart"



Ok, this is meant to be a very kiddish drawing. It is suppose to look like the drawing of a child with the child holding hands with another child and both looking sunny and happy. The concept is something like "Love, as pure as a child's smile"



Ok this is two elderly couple walking off to a sunrise at a beach, leaving a trial of footprints behind. The concept behind it is "I will walk with you, till you are old, i will always be by your side" Yeah, cheesy line.



Well, this last one, is a leaf(i hope it is obvious enough that it is a leaf), with two water droplets forming a heart shape. The concept is something along the line of "Love, like water, is the source of life"

So, after much thinking, i chose the following two to photoshop on.

Version 1

Version 2

Majority of the class chose version 2 of my card. Personally speaking i like version 1 better. The obvious thing is the color of the footprints are very off! I thought they look alright to me, but well, haha, i am color blind so..... Anyway, i wanted to do a picture of a elderly couple walking along the beach into the sunrise but.... the skill required to design that is beyond me right now so i opted for a simple one. The font used for version 1 is beachtype and try as i might, even with the help of online tutorials, i cant make the written on sand effect, so i just leave it at that. For version two, the class suggested making the words more sparkly and perhaps add a heart (made of stars) at the sky towards the right as it looks rather empty.

And so, armed with new informations and insights, i came up with this for the 2nd round of tutorial critique...

Outside

Inside

After printing the card, i realized that i can see the logo at all and i like the logo very much!! And the skyline is WAY too dark compared to what i see on my computer screen. I have all along used CMYK and yet this happens. Generally the card is surprisingly ok with the class. So it is just down to the making the skyline and the cupid logo brighter so they can be seen. And thus i have this. It took me quite a while to come up with what to include on the inside of the card. I finally decided on this design and the class doesnt really have any comments on it. I think my drawing for the couple on the bench sucked but well, it is the best i can manage give that i cant draw and this is achieved entirely using the draw shape function in photoshop.

So yar, the only changes i have made is to make the skyline and the logo brighter. This teaches me to not to trust computer screen easily when i am printing something concrete like cards or poster. For simple color usage with not much design or gradient or style, the difference may not be too significant(like my poster) but for fine details like the cards i did, it matters very much. So there is my final product, using the colors to create a (hopefully) romantic mood.

Assignment 4

For assignment 4, we are suppose to design a poster with the following themes
Save,Prevent,Kill, Stop....something.

I was stumped as i had really no idea what to work with. After playing around, surfing around the net looking for inspiration, my eyes fell upon a completed jigsaw puzzle in my room and an idea formed. But first, the sketches

Nothing much, just a play on the no smoking sign but with lips in the middle instead of a cigarette. With the caption "No one likes to kiss an ashtray".

Well this one, i guess it is a reflection my mental state. I am suffering for mental constipation when i was thinking of what to do for the poster and there is totally no idea at all. So i just drew this for fun. The caption reads " Include more fiber in your diet. Too bad you cant time travel back to prevent this from ever happening." Again, this can be understood only if you have watched the television show Heroes.

I like this one very much actually. It is a poster on Stop Domestic Violence. The caption being "Think of the child. Every child deserves a better childhood". Well, my drawing skills are really really atrocious and it is reflected on the teddy bear. It is suppose to be a teddy bear bogeyman or some sorts with its shadow casting over the poor child. I like the concept, so do my other friends who saw the sketch BUT i wasnt able to convert it to photoshop satisfactorily. Well, i shall shelve this one under "Try another day when i can photoshop and draw better" then.

So this is the concept i came up with JUST when i was about to fall asleep, so i scramble up to draw before i forgot it in the morning. The concept being "We are all same pieces of the same jigsaw, stop racism." Which, incidentally is the concept i took on for the assignment. And so, here it is:

STOP RACISM!
That we are all pieces of the same jigsaw(the world) and should work with, not against, each other to complete the world. And after playing around in photoshop, this is what happens....


Basically i was trying to let the images and arrangement of the elements in the poster lead from the globe, to the pieces of jigsaws to the Title of the poster (Stop Racism) and finally to the text. The reason i made the text rather big is because it provides the link as to why do we have a jigsawed globe and it says "Stop Racism". I showed this to a few of my friends before the tutorial and generally the response is not bad. I chose white text on a black background as i felt that it is more contrasting and luckily, my friends agreed with me on that.

During tutorial, the comments were mainly to shift my title to the top and change the color of the few jigsaw pieces to a different tone/color so as to reflect the 'race' theme. There were also suggestions to make the text smaller. So, after considering all the comments and Ms Siti's suggestion during the consultation, this is what i end up with....


I decided not to change or add tones to the jigsaw pieces as after trying to do that in photoshop, they did not turn up well and i dont really think it is necessarily. Furthermore, i am trying to tell others via the poster not to judge by appearance and that we are really all the same, so i just leave the pieces alone. Now for the changes, I have shifted the title to the top left hand corner of the poster and changed the size of the words a little. (It looks better to me, the idea came from the lesson on typography). As with Ms Siti's suggestion, i have cropped the text such that it is reasonably rectangular in appearance, to make the poster neater. The way i arranged the poster is such that there will be left and right balance in terms of visual content.

Well, as a final sign off for this post, a final few thoughts for the assignment. Keeping the visual elements(the earth, jigsaw, title, text) a certain distant away from edges is a very important part of the design. Unless there is a need or the purpose of the poster is to lead people's eyes away from the poster, i felt that this principle has to be kept in mind all the times. It helps viewers focus on the poster and not get distracted by other stuffs away from the poster. On another note, i realized that i like to use metaphors and indirect reference between concept and visual display on my works. In other words, my design style is not a straightforward one but one which try to explore and connect two seemingly unrelated things. While this style has its downfall when the objective is to deliver clear, precise and easy to understand message. However, i feel that it maybe useful in arousing curiosity in people(attention grabbing) and lead them to think about the poster more. Well it is just a case of which style for which occasion i suppose.

Assigment 3: UC what IC?

Well, assignment 3 is using 10 or less photos to tell a story.
There must be no captions or description within the photos.

Well i decided to dump by idea that i presented during tutorial class the other day.

I should do something simpler, besides that was very last minute work too.

Hmm... i may upload the flopped idea sometime.

Assigment 2

Thank goodness for CNY! One extra week to do assignment two!

For Assig 2, the task is that of an extraction. The slide below explains it all.


Before i get to that, i would like to talk about the lecture exercise that we did.


It is supposed to be pair work but i just happily went on to do my own stuff. And here is the result.


I actually drew 3 of them. With the shark one suddenly jumping into my head at the last minute. I took quite sometime to settle down on my first object, the clock. I cant really think of what to draw for the indexic part so i drew a sundial and later add on an digital clock not too different from the ones in lecture halls. The comments i got were that sundials were more indexical of time, not clocks. And my next two examples are alright. (phew)


Ok now, back to Assignment two. I actually skipped the sketching part and jumped directly into photoshop for the assignment. Here is the initial draft.

As the week is e-learning week, NM modules have their tutorials and lectures conducted online so comments and stuff are based on the IVLE forums. The general summary of the comments are that of the possibility of distilling it into a analogue watch. Some commented that the shape of the face perhaps can be changed throughout the distillation. Others commented that the stand out feature of a digital watch is the rectangular shape within the watch. There is also this general idea that the watch can undergo further distillation as my last abstraction is quite obviously still recognizable as a watch. A few commented that for my chosen abstraction, i could remove the rectangular design on the watch straps. That i fully agree upon closer look. For the rest of the comments, i feel that what is definitive of a digital watch is the digits themselves and not the rectangular shape on the face itself so i decided to keep the way it is distilled.

And thus, my final prototype looks something like...


Yes i included the stupid number sign thingy for my chosen abstraction. Still not sure if i should do that? But i just include it anyway as i decided to do an abstraction on digital watch, not a generic watch or an analogue watch.

Assigment 1

An exercise in typography.
Changing the 'font'(so to speak) of our name to show things that we like or dislike.

Below is my sketch for the I like Music.
Photo take with my handphone camera (since i dont have a scanner) and understandably, the quality is shitty. But yeah, had a really hard time thinking of what to sketch for the drafts as i want to avoid using the usual things like instruments or notes(which sadly i fail at not using notes). Then i figured that since i wanna use notes, i wanna try putting a little spin on it (more details later).

This is the sketch for "I like Wushu"


The sketches include using
1)stick figures holding weapon to form my name
2)using weapons to form my name
3)using the 9 dots on a shaolin monk head to form my name
4)finding letters among the chinese word for Wushu to form my name.
I actually like the last one, the finding lettings in the chinese word for Wushu. And i did thought of combining 1 and 4 but using stick figures in captured in motion to form the word 武术 and my name. But i dont know how to go about doing it and i definitely cant draw well enough to portray my idea.

Next up, is to select two from each likes or dislikes to act as the final draft.

For my I love Wushu i have....


The class picked the lower one as the preferred choice(not much of a choice, i know). I remembered one comment being that, the top one (the monk's head one), they look like love monks. That tickled me a little, i never notice that till it is pointed out! Goes to show it is important to show your works to your peers and receive the comments, cant really live in one's own world if one is into graphic design and wants to communication visually (since the word 'communicate' requires the presences of two or more party in a two way flow).

Next up, "I love Music"


Well ok, for this, the response is a little mixed. It is roughly half half according to class preference and i have to make a choice on this. I realized it didnt show clearly for my bottom draft. Actually, i meant it to be first viewed horizontally, with it appearing like a snippet of a piece of score, a normal score. Upon closer scrutiny, one realize that the score goes from right to left, instead of a conventional left to right. And if they never notice the alignment of my words, they would now. And these visual cues will prompt the viewer to rotate to view it vertically and that is when they can see my name. A little too indulgent of me to play around like this but i just cant help it.
Also it is agreed upon that the "K" cant really be seen, so it is back to scratching my head.

Finally, there are the final photoshopped works.


The comments for the Wushu piece is pretty unanimous. That on first look, it doesnt really occur to the viewer that it is about wushu and not martial arts in general or even fighting. The class commented that perhaps i can add in something that are more distinctively wushu, like the costumes they wear when performing. At first i thought, to me, it is obviously very wushu, perhaps because i have practiced it before that to me it is wushu simply because i am very farmiliar to it. This taught me another lesson about the importance of letting others critique your work. Familiarity with a said subject often blinds a designer to assume equal competence and ability of all viewers to see and interpret the same thing as the designer. One must take into account the general public and especially the intended audience to make sure they understand what one is trying to say. This again brings me to my previous sketches, the one with the chinese character of Wushu, i wondered if it would be a better choice.
Ok, now to my most stubborn piece. Despite comments of it being distracting and stuff, i wanted to keep the gist of it (a case of love at first sight which i am guilty of here). The basic comments are that the base clef is too distracting, and that will lead the viewer to think that it is part of the words being formed. In addition the vertical of the "T" cant really be easily made out. One of them suggested (correct me if i am wrong, but i think the name is Alvin?) using a rest (which is like a bar) for the vertical of the "T". And hey, it does works and work nicely, so thanks alot!

I have not really make any sort of changes to the Wushu piece as i am still undecided over adding the costumes (which i am lazy and it takes extra extra time because i cant draw well and i am new to photoshop) or trying to design the "武术" in photoshop and see how it turns out.

Update: I decided to leave the Wushu one as it is.

For the Music one however, here is my final prototype.


Some final words here. As you all notice, everyone of my photoshopped pieces are in black and white. There are two reasons for it. One is for the simplicity of it all, though colors can push home the point better, i want to see if simple black and white can convey the same meaning. Especially for the Music piece. The main objective of such an attempt is to use visual cues to direct people to view the work in the correct orientation. The second message is to say that music is very much a part of my life through the integration of my name into a 'seemingly' normal score.

Another reason for not using color is, as i mentioned, i am partially color blind. Yep it is a form of escaping from the inevitable. However, i shall just leave it at that, and see how i can turn it around when it requires me to use color. It is a lousy excuse, yes i admit that.