Sum up of my experience for this module

We have come to the end of the semester and this will be my last entry for this module learning journal. I would like to use this opportunity to thanks everyone who have been giving me support throughout the course. Especially to my outside friends, classmates, project mates, lecturer and tutor who have given me precious comments and feedbacks on my designs. Special thanks to Liling and Lawrence for sparing the time to help out in my Assignment 3 shootings.Without the two of you, i will not be able to complete my assignment 3 within such a short time frame.

Especially to Lawrence, despite of your busy schedule you still make time to come down for the shots after your work. Really appreciate your help.

Even thou this module lasted for merely 4 months but this period of time is an valueable experience for me. I have learned alot throughout this module. For example, the various design principles to design aesthetically appealing designs. In addition, to understand the culture or mindset of my target audiences.

I think that designers possess a special characteristic which artists will not possess. That is the ability to communicate with your audiences:

• To understand what your audiences perceived
• To understand what are your audiences needs and wants
• To understand how to communicate to them effectively
• To design from the bottom of your heart, to show respect and sincerity in your work. To enable the viewers to feel the sincerity when they view your designs.

I have also learned to handle stress and proper time management in order to complete the various assignments which clashes with my other modules projects. To be professional and be a good team player in order for the group project to be on schedule within the given time frame. This module has exposed me to the expectation of what professional designers are supposed to be equipped in the current industry.

Last but not least, i heard that this is the last semester that our lecturer, Mr Reddy will be teaching this module. I wished him all the best in his future endeavors. :)

Assignment 7- Visual Narrative week 4

Assignment 7 - Visual Narrative Week 4

Brief Synopsis:

• To present the final prototype

After collection of the prototype, we were required to present our storybook to everybody in the lecture hall. Well is quite exciting and demoralizing also, in the sense that you get to show others your hard work while there are many people who had very nice storybook too! As expected, Evan their group won the best storybook award. I am really happy for them as their storyline is really very captivating with nice illustration. Able to capture both adults and elder children attention. Applause for them!

After the presentation, we proceed to get some comments from our friends and also from the lecturer. Some feedbacks received:

• layout is not simple enough to attract young kids
• Should remove the title from every page
• Should make the colouring style more consistent

With this in mind, our group decided to make amendments for our storybook. Even thou we are not the best among the cohort but we seek to improve ourselves and take pride in our work. Hence we think since it is within our capabilities we should improvise on our work.

Ammendments that we made:

• To make the front and back cover design to have unity.
• To make the colouring style of each picture to be more consistent. As previously, it was coloured by two person. Now i will make amendments for the colouring of the monster, grass, sky, king and princes. For the crowns amendments will be done by liling.
• Yawen will be in charge of the layout, cloning and stamping of the pictures. We have amend the layouts to 2 types to make in more simplified for the readers.
• We also add on lamination for the covers to make it more durable from wear and tear.

Intial Front cover:

Initial Back cover:

Revised Front Cover:

Revised Back cover:

Some pictures that we revised:

Difficulties faced while revising the prototype:

• For some ideas, some of the group members are unable to compromise resulting to double work.
• The lamination of the book came out on the very day of submission. This is due to the poor lamination done by the binding shop.
• Modification of the prototype is done during Study break. We have to juggle between revision, preparing portfolio for submission and modfication of the storybook. Lots of time consumed.
• On my end, i have to rewrite the design document as we had made modification which is an additional workload for me within the given time frame.

Lesson gained from this Assignment:

• To understand the culture and mindset of your target audiences
• Need to know what is important and appealing to them and be sensitive towards their needs.
• Be creative and think out of the box in order to outshine from other storybooks in the market.
• It is vital to prepare design document prior prototyping, it will enable other designers who take over the project to know what do the previous designer had in mind. In addition, it enables the printer to know the exact arrangement of the layout, typography and paper used.
• It is crucial for a group to compromise and talk things out. Failure to do so will only results to double work which is a waste of time especially in the real working environment.
• Ensure the printing quality by test printing selected pages to ensure everything is on the right track. Besides that, it is important to ensure that all typography is being used correctly. As there is no space for error to be made. Once the printer start printing, we cant make modifications anymore. ( Especially true when doing mass or offset printing as large quantities are involved with high cost implications.)

Assignment 7 - Visual Narratives Week 3

Assignment 7 - Visual narratives (Week 3)

Brief Synopsis:

• Developing Prototype f0r the storybook.

Please refer to my previous post for Assignment 7 for the story development.

We were given the entire week to develop the prototype for the storybook. Hence since yawen have came up with the drawing, the colouring part will be on Liling and me. We tried to explore on the various colouring style, schemes and software. Initially we thought of using Deep paint, a free software downloaded from the net. However the tools are not very easy to manipulate despite the fact that they have loads of nice prefix brushes. Hence we thought of trying out Coral Painter but due to the short time span to equip ourselves with the skill on it we decided to use back Adobe photoshop.

As the sketches are drawn manually so there is a need to do clean up before we proceed with the colouring. After doing the clean up, we started to explore on the techniques for colouring and colour scheme. After some discussion, both of us agreed upon the colouring scheme n style. From there we divided the pictures and worked on it. In this way, it will be more efficient due to the limited time span we had.


Here are some of the pictures I coloured:

After we have finished colouring, both liling and me need to complie the pictures that we had coloured together. We used freehand to arrange the layout for the pictures and text accordingly. After which, we proceed to the binding shop for printing and staple binding. However at the printing shops we were told that printing has to be in the multiples of four. Thus we need to make some arrangement of the page layout and insertion of some blank pages in order to make it to multiples of four. Before we proceed to do the full printing and binding did some trial printing to ensure that there is not much lost of picture colour quality as compared to the screen. We also did some test print on different GSM and finished paper in order to obtain the optimal result. After some discussion, we decided to settle down with Glossy finished paper as it enhances the picture with more 3D effect(giving it the texture and shades) we had in mind while doing the colouring.

We opt for soft cover and staple binding instead of hard cover and stich binding due to the following reasons:

• Target audiences are children aged 6 to 9 yrs old. It will be much easier for them to hold the book which is light and more flexible
• Our book is rather think so it will be awkward to have thick cover for it
• On top of that, due to the quality of the paper we used for printing, it will not be suitable to pair it with hard cover binding.

Assignment 6 - Gestalt Principles

Assignment 6 - Gestalt Principles

Brief Synopsis for Assignment 6:

• Group project of 2
• 1 good and bad design in our opinion from either poster, magazine, advertisements etc.
• Analyze both designs and build a case to support our opinion.
• Analysis based on Visual principles

Our group came up with this presentation based on the following posters:

Stuart little (Good design):

• The reason as to why we chose this design is due to well conveyed message through the placement of graphics elements.
• Warm colour scheme portrays the feeling of adventure and light hearted movie.
• There is a contrast of Stuart little with the background giving the audience a main focus point to look at.
• With Stuart little on the skateboard, it shows a sense of direction of movement and reinforce to the audience that he will be going for an adventurous journey.
• With minimum usage of graphics elements yet this poster is able to convey relevant and intended meaning.

Parika (bad design):

• Unable to convey the message to the audiences
• Over cluster with information and stories. Unable to tell what is the movie about upon looking at the poster.
• Colours used are conflicting with each other. Individual objects are competing for attention of the audiences.
• No focus point and guidance for the audiences to look at.
• Graphics elements are too closely arranged together with no sense of unity.

Here is our presentation slide:

Comments given by the class:

• The wording "Stuart Little 2" seems to blend in with the background.
• However, on our computer screen, the colour appears to be fine and it does not blend in at all. We do not know if it is due to the projection of the projector that resulted to this effect.

Classroom Activity for Assignment 6

Classroom Activity for Assignment 6

Brief synopsis for Assignment 6:

• Group project of 2
• 1 good and bad design in our opinion from either poster, magazine, advertisements etc.
• Analyze both designs and build a case to support our opinion.
• Analysis based on Visual principles

Classroom Activitiy:

• Create 3 images to demostrate any 3 gestalt principles using simple shapes
• May resize, scale or change colour of the shape.
  
  
  

I have chosen continuity, closure and proximity:

Continuity:

The path shows continuity whereby it showed a path for audience to follow

Closure:

Even thou we do not see the whole complete circle but our brain still process the image as a Square on top of 4 small circles.

Proximity:

The body parts are not joint together, but because of the proximity towards each other, it appeared as one whole figure.

Lesson Gained from this class activity:

• Continuation of design can be carry over to different series.
• It is easy to remember and recollect simple shapes than complicated shapes

Assignment 5 - Theme love

Assignment 5 - Theme love

Brief Synopsis:

• Pick favorite quote related to the theme (Love, tenderness or romance etc)
• Design a greeting card sponsored by Cupid Greeting Pte Ltd.
• Card should convey primarily through colours with minimum usage of pictures and visual elements
• Size of artwork can be A4 or smaller
• Submission in colour print out

This is one of my most favorite assignments, as i can relate better to the theme. Well guess most gals will love to receive a sweet and lovely card.

1st sketch:

This design is meant for couples with rough sketches of a guy and gal back views sitting by the seaside enjoying the scenery. At the back of the card will be two birds flying together. Whole idea for this design is to portray that everything is complete as long as i have you by my side with the used of pastel tones to portray the soft feeling.

2nd sketch:

Upon some thinking, i think most people will use human figures and heart shape to portray love, hence i decided to come out with a new idea.

Two dolphins jumping out of the water, with the beach as the background setting. To me i always feel that beach is a very nice and romantic place with a cozy feeling especially during sunset/ sunrise. Hence i thought it will be good to use it for my design with colours similar to sunset/sunrise scheme. However, as shown in the sketches, i do not really know how to draw dolphins so i decided to forsake this design.

3rd sketch:

Decided to try out a design without the use of beach as the background, i came out with this design. Using two birds (red in colour) with the background as a very cool setting(snow falling down, as if is winter feeling). The whole concept is to portray a strong love for each other.

4th sketch:

I thought of making some breakthrough by not using traditional colour such as pink or red to portray love or romance. This resulted to my 4th design.

Love does not exists in BGR but it exists in friendship also. Out of a sudden, i recalled about a quote which i loved a lot

"Happiness is just like a butterfly,

which when pursued is beyond our grasp,

but if you sit down quietly,

it may alight beside you."

With this in mind, i proceed to design my card with butterfly as the main character. The used of orangy pink and purple to illustrate the feeling of romance, happiness and sweetness.




Prototype:

This is the prototype that i presented in class. The front cover illustrates two butterflies flying around the frame. Initially the design was only the two butterflies with the plain frame. It looked rather boring and dose not portray the soft feeling hence i specially designed motif at the top and bottom of the frame. Now it looked more enhance.

In order to have a sense of unity, the back cover i showed the two butterflies flying together to illustrate the happy ending to have you by my side.

Comments by the class:

• The design is simple and nice
• Sweet and pleasant colour which portrays the feeling of happiness
• Tutor commented that it will be good to have design for the inner card.

Revised Prototype:

Since most of the comments for this assignment were positive, i did not enhance the outer card design just that the last sentence was shifted to the inner card. Even thou, i did not change the colour setting of my card but when i printed out the revised prototype, my butterflies colour looked slightly different.




For inner card design:

Been racking my brain on how should i design for the inner card and this idea popped up in my mind. I want the audience to feel surprised and sweet when he/she opens the card. So i thought having a pop up design will be good. Been searching online on how to do a pop up design, this is the first time that i ever attempted a pop up hence my art craft might not be very fine.

The following design is the rough sketch of how i would want my pop up to be. On both left and right hand side have a shape of a simplify butterfly. They look very ordinary and simple.

However when they met, they are able to complement each other and become a beautiful one whole butterfly. This is how the butterfly will look like when the audiences open the card.





Close up view of the butterfly.

Overview of the inner card, this pop up thing, took me quite some time to accomplish but it was worth the time. I have a sense of achievements when i see my labour bear into fruits.

Please pardon the photo quality, as my digicam quality is not that fantastic.

Lesson Gained from this activity:

• Do not use all pure colours, we have to decide on the main dorminant colours and the rest of the colour changed to a lower intensity level.
• when using dominant colour, we have to use complimentary colour to compliment it to show the main colour intensity.
• Do not use more than 3 colours in the artwork as it will appear too complicating and unable to attract the audiences attention.

Assignment 4 - Save, prevent, kill poster design

Assignment 4 - Save, prevent, kill poster design

Brief Synopsis:

• Pick a topic related to the theme save, prevent or kill for the poster
• write a copy(text for the poster)
• visual layout of the poster must be able to convey the message of the meaning
• A3 size artwork.
• content of the poster must be original

Brainstorming for ideas:

This time round is to design a poster with either one of the above themes. Rather clueless initially, no idea on what to draw especially this assignment was given during CNY period. Start of with brainstorming for some ideas and ways to illustrate:

1. Save family kinship- illustrate with a clock with the numbers being replaced with work and family. This is to indicate the amount of time spent at work is greater than family
2. Prevent digital divide - Showing the old and young using computer together
3. Save deforestation - Show the trees crying
4. Stop consuming drugs - A poster on Ketamine (one of the highest consumption drug in Singapore)
5. Stop alcohol abuse - An adult walking away leaving a sad child with injuries all over.

It was a tough process to select the best concept to work on among them. After some thinking, due to my skills limitation on drawing hence i reckoned for Number 2,3 and 5 i will not be able to illustrate well. So i thought it will be good to do a poster with educational poster whereby not many people know about it. Therefore, i decided to work on Numbder 4, "Stop consuming drugs"

1st sketch:

This sketch is designed with the picture of Vitamin K (Ketaime) with a banned word on it. However the design dose nott show a very strong message towards the importance of stop consuming ketamine.

2nd Sketch:

Hence i decided to add in a tagline "Your health is in your hand" to the poster. Prolong consumption of Ketamine may lead to high blood pressure and eventually death. Hence I used a sphygmomanometer (used for measuring blood pressure) with the thermometer burst showing the danger of consuming ketamine.

Prototype:

Below is my prototype for the 2nd sketch. Since human beings tend to look at things from the top to bottom, left to right, i gave more focus on the word "Stop" and a more hierachy way to zoom down the sentence all the way to "Your health is in your hand". On top of that For the sphygmomanometer design, i designed it in a way that the tube will lead the audiences to the copy(text). This will make them to stay within the frame.

Comments by the class:

I dont know if is it because i am always the last few to present my designs (due to my surname), by then most of them already felt tired that's why not much comment given for most of my assignments as compared to those who present in the beginning. Anyway my class have way too many people, we always overrun. It will be good to open up more class in the future.

Hence i have decided to ask my outside friends to give me some feedback. This is what they told me:

• By one look from far, people will not be able to tell the relationship of sphygmomanometer with Ketamine. Is only when they read the copy(text) then they will be able to relate.
• Unable to feel the seriousness of the side effect when consuming Ketamine.

With this comments plus i felt that my illustration was not that fantastic, i decided to modify the prototype by attempting to play with typography. Had came up with a few designs as shown below:

1st design:

People will be attracted to the "Cross" section over the word Ketamine from far. However this design is too boring without much contrast. People will tend to look at the "Cross" section and by pass the top sentence "Stop consuming".

2nd design:

Attempted to give more emphasize on the word "Stop" and also added a skull to represent death. Somehow i felt that this poster is over cluster with information and each of the line seems to be fighting for attention.

3rd design:

Have simplified the 2nd design and gave it a flow of information from top to down. Even without reading the copy(text). People will be able to tell the message of the poster that is to stop consuming ketamine as it will result to death. This is a simple and neat design with space for user to think and how they want to relate the skull to. Hence, this will be the final design for my poster.

I

have used black as the background as it portrays a feel of seriousness and red for the cross, "stop" and "No" as red represents danger and warning.

Lesson gained from this Assignment:

• Anything within the frame, people will tend to think that it convey some meaning. So it will be good to simplify the design
• Unity show be shown within the poster, to let people know what is the main and dominant thing within the frame
• How the layout of the elements is being placed is important. This will affects the result of the audiences attention
• Contrast can be either super big/ super small to catch the attention at the desired area.
• With harmony design, it enable the user to feel ease while looking at the poster.
• Do not overcrowd the frame and not to fill up more than 20% of the space.
• Do not allow the audiences to fall out of the poster while viewing. Always leave some breathing space at the sides of the poster.

Classroom Activity for Assignment 4

Classroom Activity for Assignment 4: Talking forms

Brief Synopsis on Asisgnment 4:

• Pick a topic related to the theme save, prevent or kill for the poster
• write a copy(text for the poster
• visual layout of the poster must be able to convey the message of the meaning
• A3 size artwork.
• content of the poster must be original

Classroom Activity:

We were supposed to form into a group of two and randomly chose two words from the lecturer. Illustrate the meaning of the words using basic elements eg. lines and dots with not more than two colors.

1st word: Wet

Have used blue color to illustrate using lines as raindrops and pools of water on the floor.

2nd word: Freedom

Drew a small butterfly with plenty of space to free around. Which illustrate freedom to fly.

Lesson gained from this class activity:

• To use minimum elements to portray the message across to the audiences.
• Able to eliminate the noise that creates additional or unwanted information to the audiences
• Take into consideration of the different culture and interpreation towards certian elements by individual.

Assignment 3 - U C What I C: Visual Story

Assignment 3 - U C What I C: Visual story

Brief synopsis on Assignment 3:

• Write and create a story
• Telling a story (visual narrative) with just 10 photos
• All contents must be original (plot to be written by ourselves)
• To include a twist to the story
  

Do you all think each Assignment is getting tougher? I wondered does anyone shares the same sentiment as me? Nevertheless this is indeed a challenging assignment as i only have four days to plan my storyboard, find actors and do shootings plus editing within this tight timeframe.

Drafting storyboard and sourcing for actors:

Due to my other modules project commitments, i only managed to came up with sketches of the storyboard on friday evening. Due to the time constraint i only had two sketches in mind. Please pardon me for my ugly drawings. As i only draw them in sketches so that i will not forget about the storyline.

1st Storyboard:

The sequence of this storyboard is from top left towards the right, follow by bottom left to right

1st scene -
A gal is talking on her mobile

2nd scene -
A guy is looking at her from a corner ( looks as if he is interested in her)

3rd scene -
He walks towards the gal

4th scene -
Start to make conversation

5th scene -
The gal blush

6th scene -
They are happily chatting

7th scene -
The guy asked for the gal mobile number (passed his mobile to her)

8th scene -
A shoe flying

9th scene -
The gal actually run off with his mobile (the reason to why the guy is throwing his shoe at her )

2nd Storyboard:

1st scene -
A gal walking up the stairs with a big shopping bag ( from the perspective of the guy's view)

2nd scene -
A guy walking down the stairs looking at her (from the perspective of the gal's view)

3rd scene -
Her shopping bag dropped and things fall out from the bag.

4th scene -
one of the item rolled down the stairs

5th scene -
The guy helped her picked up the item

6th scene-
Returned her the item and try to start a conversation

7th scene -
They chatted happily

8th scene -
The guy threaten the gal for money using a weapon

9th scene -
However she was a martial art expert

10th scene -
The guy quickly run for his life.


The final choice:

Initially i opt for the 1st sketch as i thought of shooting it in a comical way with a nice twist at the end. However i could not find any female actors who are willing to do this shot. Therefore i have to opt for the second storyboard.

Special thanks to Liling and Lawrence who volunteer to help in my shoots. Below are the photos that i took based on the second storyboard.

Feedback from the class:

For pic 5:

Some of them feel that they could not really gauge which one is the guy hand and vice versa. However from my point of view, when i took this shot my purpose is to let the audience guess who actually pick up the item

For pic 8:

This photo supposed to show the guy robbing the gal. However the position of the guy is at the wrong place as they tend to relate the right hand side for the placement for the gal based on the previous photo.

For pic 9:

Some of them commented that the impact is not there yet while some think this pic has conveyed the intended message. When i took this pic, i was trying to emphasize the facial expreession of the painess of the guy (The emotion of the guy). Therefore, i think this picture is fine.

For pic 10:

He dose not look like he is running.

Based on these comments, i have modified some of the pictures.

Modified Version:

Glad that i have took quite a number of alternative shots. Hence I have replaced with another picture with the guy on the left side, if you notice on the picture above the guy's hand is in his pocket.So that there will be linkage between pic 7 and this pic shown below that the guy is putting his hand into the pocket and take out the weapon:

Previously they comment that he dose not look like running so i have modified the photo using photoshop. This photo initially looked like this:

I have used photoshop to edit the pic to shift the guy more towards right hand side allowing him more space to run. In addition, i have rotate the guy position slightly to enhance the feeling of running better that derives the picture for pic 10 shown below:

Difficulties faced while doing this assignment:

• Is SO HARD to find people to help out in my shots due to the short time span
• Even if i have better plot, they are not willing to take up also.
• Initially for my 2nd storyboard i thought of using weapons such as knife or penknife to give it a more threatening feel. However due to the human traffic is quite high and i reckoned they will most likely mistaken it as a real robbery case, hence i replaced it with scissors.
• Nevertheless, both of them are not professional actors and there are lots of scenes where we had lots of ridiculous and hilarious actions.
• From the photos, most of you will probably think this is a secluded place but you are wrong! As one of them stay at Ang Mo Kio while the other stay at Boon Lay. So in order to compromise each other, our shots took place at Tanjong Pagar around 9pm. Never do we expect there will be so many people passing by and tourists too!!! They thought we were local tv program doing fliming. Hee what an interesting encounter.

Lesson gained from this assignment:

• It is vital to do storyboarding, as it allows the team to visualize what kind of shots a director will expect. With the storyboard, it enables the photographer/cameraman and actors to have a rough idea on what are the angels and position to stand in order to capture a good shot.
• Is always good to take few more alternative shots in case the initial shots do not fit well into the story.
• Do planning before the shootings so that there will not be a waste of time spent.
• Even thou it is just 10 simple shots, we took about 3 hours to complete it. It is never easy as many unforseen circumstances arise. Under this kind of situation, one need to be calm and be flexible to think of alternatives way to solve the problems
• If you all have noticed, all my shots had simple background as i want to portray clear and precise visual cues by reducing misleading elements. In addition i have attempted compositions such as rule of thirds and selective focus to make the photos more appealing with stronger message convey.