LostInSight

Sum up of my experience for this module

2007-04-19T09:32:00.003-07:00

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

2007-04-19T09:32:00.001-07:00

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

2007-04-19T09:31:00.001-07:00

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

2007-04-19T09:28:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-19T09:26:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-19T09:25:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-19T09:14:00.000-07:00

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:

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
Prevent digital divide - Showing the old and young using computer together
Save deforestation - Show the trees crying
Stop consuming drugs - A poster on Ketamine (one of the highest consumption drug in Singapore)
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.

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

2007-04-19T09:09:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-19T07:10:00.000-07:00

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.

Classroom Activity for Assignment 3

2007-04-19T05:35:00.000-07:00

Classroom Activity for Assignment 3: Happening (Visual Story)

Brief synopsis on Assignment 3:

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

Classroom Activity:

Within the time span of 30 mins, select an object and "freeze" the moment down onto the paper. this object/ activity must be able to tell a story. (Group activity)

This was the first time we were allowed to source for inspiration for our classroom activity out of the lecture hall. Been observing around us and we saw a person walking up the stair. Immediately this idea striked us and we drew down....

However what we had drew was not an appropriate picture to be used for narrating a story. It was just an activity which does not have any significant meaning or story behind it. After the clarification with the lecturer, we thought of a few more ideas which could be more appropriate.

For example:

A person walking up the stairs with his head turning back
a person walking up the stairs with his hand stretch out towards the person in front of him (Have not touch the other person yet)

Personally, i think this classroom activity is to enable us to have the opportunity to create scenes which enables the user to engage in. It must allow the audiences to think and create the storyline based on their perception. For instance, the second bullet point i mentioned regarding the hand stretch out towards the person in front it could be they are friends or perhaps the stranger in front of him drop some item and he want to return to him.

Assignment 2 - Needful things: Making images talk

2007-04-19T02:48:00.000-07:00

Assignment 2 - Needful things: Making images talk

Brief Synopsis on Assignment 2:

To identify a location or object and create a representative image of the object by using either indexic or iconic representation.
Distill the image to a point where by it will lose its original communication message and identity.
Create a symbol out of this distillation process and it must not only be recognized but also remembered and even reproduced.

As compared to Assignment 1, this assignment has slightly higher challenge due to the difficulties in conceptualizing the right concept and method in doing either indexic or iconic representation. I reckoned most of us were having lots of doubts while developing the prototype.

As we are the first tutorial class therefore we were only given 4 days to work on these on top of our other workloads. Although is abit tough, i do not deny the fact that this is an enjoyable process.

Apparently, my weekend was spent on this assignment. Managed to brainstorm for a few ideas and i decided to settle on , fairy. As i think most of us have a general knowledge or perception towards a fairy. A common idea will be a lady with wings. Hence i think it will be easy for people to relate and identify to the symbol.

This is my initial prototype for the fairy distillation:

I had used 6 steps to distill the message as indicated by the arrows and selected the below image my final symbol

Feedback from the class:

There are still room for distillation as the last image is still quite complicating
Selected A4 symbol have too many details. Therefore it will not be easy to be reproduce

Taking this into consideration, i proceed to modify my prototype to the following:

Under comparision, this version has greatly eliminate redundant information. I have chosen the below pic as my A4 size symbol

Lesson learned from this assignment:

This is a good way to derive a simple symbol which carrys a generic meaning that everyone can relate to.
A good and well represented symbol often needs to go through distillation before we can achieve the optimal image that can be easily retain and reproduced by others.
One thing that we have to bear in mind would be the cultural, nationality or individual diffierence which might affect the perception of individuals towards the same symbol.

Assignment 7 - Visual Narrative (Wk 2, Design Document)

2007-03-27T02:31:00.000-07:00

Assignment 7 - Visual Narrative (Wk 2, Design Document)

Brief Synopsis:

To prepare design document

This is the PowerPoint done for this week's presentation on design document.

After analyzing the above 3 grid layouts, we decided to use Figure 1.3 as the final layout throughout our storybook. Since our target audience is children from 6 to 9 years old. It will be easier for them to comprehend the data flow using this layout. The reason why we choose Figure 1.3 rather than 1.2 is because We want the children to notice the pictures first.

Since this is a children storybook and we want to portray a cute image. Hence we are looking for fonts with cute and round characteristics. Consequently, we thought of using Ceri Liney for the Title and Comic Sans for the body and dialogue text. The rest of the texts are not very suitable as they are either too bold or too cursive which is difficult for reading.

For colour scheme, we thought of using the combination of pastel and warm colours to reflect on the appropriate moods.

The initial visual style we had do not portray the cuteness enough

Therefore we came out with another version of the drawing .

We had tried out various ways for colouring. Initially we thought of using pencil colours but somehow the outcome is not what we desired. So we tried using combination of both Digital,water pencil colouring and wax crayon. However, the outcome is not as good as using digital. Tentatively, based on the colour prototypes we had, our group thought of using digital for this storybook. The above shown digitize picture will not be our final outcome, we will do some tweak and testing to achieve a better effect.

For spatial arrangement, please refer to the previous post on how we have arranged and alignment of the text.

Assignment 7 - Visual Narrative (Wk 2, Storyline)

2007-03-26T23:37:00.000-07:00

Assignment 7 - Visual Narrative (Wk 2, Storyline)

Brief Synopsis:

Recap on last week's tutorial comments and suggestions for our storyline.

Comments given by the class:

The story line is not captivating enough, not much twist involved.
Inappropriate usage of the dream within the storyline. Should replaced with some adventure stories instead.
Stone to act as the main character will not be able to attract the children. Not cute and interesting enough for them.
Too many actors involved in order to transport the stone form a place to another place. (Too many focus, should reduce the number of actors.)

Our group reflected on our story and took into consideration of the feedbacks.Most of them think the storyline is not interesting with too many focus. In addition, they think that the characters should be changed. Therefore, we decided to forsake the initial storyline. After some discussion, we came up with another story, The Mushroom Kingdom.

This story is about the four princes of the mushroom kingdom who are in charged of their own individual area. Due to poor communication and too obsessed with their own talents, they looked down on each other and are not united. One day, the kingdom was invaded by a monster who had killed many of their peasants. As the princes are too self arrogant, they had the mindset that they can defeat the monster alone. It was only when they finally realized the importance of unification before they succeeded in defeating the monster. However, the peace was only temporary.

Below is the prototype of the storybook. We have added in the texts, sketches and layout used to give a feel on how the storybook would look like.

Scene 1 (The cover of the storybook):

Scene 2:

Scene 3:

Scene 4:

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Scene 6:

Scene 7:

Scene 8:

Scene 9:

Scene 10:

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Scene 12:

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Scene 21:

After presenting to the class on our new story, we were being told that we should not change our storyline but improvised on the previous one. However, we did not do it on purpose as we were unaware that we were not allowed to change.We thought since most of the comments given were not positive and it sounded as if we need to come out a new story which leads to the birth of , The Mushroom Kingdom.

We should have sought for the tutor/ lecturer consultation before we changed our storyline. Is a blessing that we are allowed to retain to the mushroom kingdom story. At least our effort for developing the storyline and prototype within a short time span has not been washed down the drain.

Assignment 7 - Visual Narrative

2007-03-26T08:19:00.000-07:00

Assignment 7 - Visual narrative

Brief synopsis:

Group project
To design and prepare a story book for children(Ages 6 to 9)
No fixed storyline. To be explore by individual team
Number of pages min 12 pages with not more than 900 words for copy (story)
Prepare design document
book size: 7 x 8.5 inches

This will be the final assignment for this module, nevertheless the most weightage (30%) as compared to the rest. We were only given 3 days to ponder on the story line and development of full rough sketches. Due to time conflict among the group members, we only managed to meet up during the weekend to brainstorm and come up with the sketches.

We headed to the national library to do some research on existing children story books. To our surprised, children story books are more complicating and interesting as compared to our generation. The brainstorming process was indeed time consuming and tedious. As the initial ideology on what we perceived how children story book should be like is being challenged. Therefore it would be a challenge to come out with a story which is captivating for the children. After half a day spent in the library observing children and listening to one of the story telling sessions, we came to a conclusion.

Most of the time, parents are the one selecting books for their younger children to read
Younger children tend to be more inclined towards fairy and frictional/adventurous stories.
Those children who chose the book on their own are mostly older than 9 yrs old.
Children are more attracted to the drawings initially as compared to the text.

With these observations, we set off with the mindset to target children of the age group, 6 to 9 yrs old. Since parents tend to chose story books for this target audience. We tried to think along the line to integrate morale into the storyline so as to enable the parents to pick up our storybook for their children. In order to capture the kids' attention, we intend to use simple pictures in order for the kids to better relate. From here, we came up with a few storyline:

An adventure journey of a little boy

This little boy set off to explore the world and he had encountered many incidents and events which widen his horizon.

The obstacles

This story is about an old granny who met lots of obstacles along the journey. However no matter how tough it goes, she is determined to find a solution to resolve the problems. In the end, she managed to clear the obstacles even thou she had encountered many backset.

John and the old turtle

John was trying to cross a river with his pet but the river current was too rush and he does not have any transport to bring them over. He saw the big old turtle and wondered if the old turtle is willing to bring them across. However, the old turtle is only willing to do so if John completed 3 difficult tasks. While doing these tasks, john was severely injured, he felt very demoralized. However, he never gave up till the end and he finally managed to complete all the tasks.

The Adventure of Greyie

There was a lonely stone named greyie, he hoped to be able to see the world and not to be lonely anymore. One day, he had a dream, whereby he encountered a few incidents which made him realized that he should be contented with what he had.

Final Choice:

After some discussion, we decided to settle on the story, The Adventure of Greyie. The reason why we chose this is because, we felt that nowadays most of the parents are busy working and neglected their children. These children will tend to feel lonely and wish to have some companion. Slowly they will mix with bad companion which affects their studies. So we hoped to portray this feeling within this story. Through the dream encounters of Greyie, makes the children to realize that often there are things which they take for granted.

Storyline:

Finally we managed to settle on a story and is time for us to think of the details for the storyline. After few amendments, we decided to use the following storyline.

Once upon a time, there is a stone, name Greyie, who feels bored and lonely. He hopes to be able to go on an exciting journey. At that night, he looks at the stars and wishes that he can leave the place and able to explore the world. He kept thinking about it and feels tired after a while. (zzzzzZZZZZ)

He saw a man walking toward him. He was very happy and excited. (hoping that he can leave the place) As the man get closer who is a stone collector, put his collector bag on the ground. He reached his hand to picked up greyie and dropped him into his bag. To Greyie surprised, he saw many other stones and he feels very happy. He made a lot of new friends and start talking to them. The stone collector continued his journey to collect more stone. He found a few beautiful stones near a river. He was too excited that he dropped his bag onto the ground near the river. Most of the stones fell out of the bag and unlucky, only greyie was being rolled into the river. The stone collector didn’t notice it. Greyie was being carried away by the heavy river current flow. As being carried away, he was being banged and knocked by some objects. He was seriously injured and bruised. Finally, he arrived on a riverbed.

He meets a fairy who happened to be resting at the riverbed. The fairy saw greyie had bruised all around him and felt sorry for him, so she decided to give greyie the ability to communicate for five days. Greyie was very thankful to the fairy who gave him an ability to talk. He was so happy that his voice can be heard by other. A boy happened to pass by the riverbed; he saw greyie and picked him up.

Greyie communicate with the boy and hope that he can bring him anywhere he goes, so that he will be able to explore the world. The boy was shock that the stone can talk at first and he found it interesting too. Therefore, he replied with a “yes” and greyie was very happy and thought that he will have a very good experience journey with the boy. The boy put greyie on to his study desk (with one unbalanced leg) and starts talking with greyie. Greyie thought that he was very lucky that the boy always keep him accompany almost everyday. After five day, the stone lost its ability to communicate and the boy stop talking with him. Greyie was being ignored and put under the unbalanced table’s desk leg.

All of a sudden, greyie woke up with lot of sweat. Greyie finally realize that “What seems to be a good thing could also be your hardest experience in your life”.

Grid Layout:

After drafting of the storyline, we moved on to the layouts for the storybook. We came up with 3 layouts which will be used.

1st layout:

We have divded the page into two sections. Within each section, it has been sub divided into two sections. The bigger portion within the frame is for picture and smaller portion for text.

2nd layout:

This layout has divided the page into two portions. The above portion will be for text and lower portion for picture.

3rd layout:

Exactly the same division layout 2 for both text and picture frames. Just that now picture will be on the top and ext below.

If you have noticed, all the 3 layouts have something in common.

All of them were given margin to act as breathing space. This is to enable space allowance for binding and also not to let the audience fall out of the page while reading the text.
At the top and bottom of the page, we have added a small row for Title and page number.

Full Sketches:

We worked on the sketches based on these three layouts.

Scene 1

Once upon a time, there is a stone, name Greyie, who feels bored and lonely who hopes to be able to go on an exciting journey. At that night, he looks at the stars and wishes that he can leave the place and able to explore the world.

Scene 2:

He kept thinking about it and feels tired after a while. (zzzzzZZZZZ)

Scene 3:

He saw a man walking toward him. He was very happy and excited. (Hoping that he can leave the place) As the man get closer who is a stone collector, put his collector bag on the ground.

Scene 4 and 5 combined into a page :

Scene 4 text : The stone collector reached his hand to pick up greyie and dropped him into his bag.

Scene 5 text: To Greyie surprised, he saw many other stones and he feels very happy. He made a lot of new friends and started talking to them.

Scene 6:

The stone collector continued his journey to collect more stone. He found a few beautiful stones near a river.

Scene 7 and 8 combined into a layout:

Scene 7 text: He was too excited that he dropped his bag onto the ground near the river. Most of the stones fell out of the bag and unlucky, only greyie was being rolled into the river. The stone collector didn’t notice it.

Scene 8 text: Greyie was being carried away by the heavy river current flow. As being carried away, he was being banged and knocked by some objects.

Scene 9:

He was seriously injured and bruised. Finally, he arrived on a riverbed. He met a fairy who happened to be resting at the riverbed. The fairy saw greyie had bruised all around him and felt sorry for him, so she decided to give greyie the ability to communicate for five days.

Scene 10 and 11 combined into a layout:

Scene 10 text: Greyie was very thankful to the fairy who gave him an ability to talk. He was so happy that his voice can be heard by other. A boy happened to pass by the riverbed; he saw greyie and picked him up.

Scene 11 text: Greyie communicate with the boy and hope that he can bring him anywhere he goes, so that he will be able to explore the world. The boy was shock that the stone can talk at first and he found it interesting too. Therefore, he replied with a “yes” and brings him back to his house.

Scene 12:

Greyie was very happy and thought that he will have a very good experience journey with the boy. The boy put greyie on to his study desk with one unbalanced leg and starts talking with greyie. Greyie thought that he was very lucky that the boy always keep him accompany almost everyday.

Scene 13:

After five days, the stone loses it ability to communicate and the boy stop talking with him. Greyie was being ignored and put under the unbalanced table’s desk leg.
Scene 14:
All of a sudden, greyie woke up with lot of sweat.

Scene 15:

Greyie finally realize that “What seems to be a good thing could also be your hardest experience in your life”.

Comments given by the class:

The story line is not captivating enough, not much twist involved
Inappropriate usage of the dream within the storyline. Should replaced with some adventure stories instead.
Stone to act as the main character will not be able to attract the children. Not cute and interesting enough for them.
Too many actors involved in order to transport the stone form a place to another place. (Too many focus, should reduce the number of actors.)

Classroom Activity for Assignment 2

2007-03-24T11:12:00.001-07:00

Classroom Activity for Assignment 2: Types of representation, Group activity (Group of 2)

Brief Synopsis on Assignment 2:

To identify a location or object and create a representative image of the object by using either indexic or iconic representation.

Distill the image to a point where by it will lose its original communication message and identity.

Create a symbol out of this distillation process and it must not only be recognized but also remembered and even reproduced.

Classroom Activity:

This activity is done as a group of two with time limit of 45 mins.

Select an object (eg. Computer, mp3 player, cell phone)

Try to create iconic and indexic representations of the object.

Initially it was rather hard for us to come out with an object using both representations matter and agree on what to be drawn. We had came out with few objects but some how we are only able to think of one of the representation methods but not both. It was rather challenging, as we need to identify an object which is not too simple nor complex for illustration. Here are some of the items that we thought of:

Computer
Speakers
Bag
Pencil
Heels
Chair
Clock
Vehicles

After some discussion and few attempts we decided on the following two objects.

For 1st object:

We have choosen a clock to represent time. It was being used as the iconic representation. An hourglass was chosen to represent indexic represntation. I reckon many groups also had adopted similar concept and we thought it would be good to come out with another object to test our knowledge regarding on the representation methods.

For 2nd object:

This leads to the development on 2nd object, a car. It was being used as the iconic representation. As for indexic representation we thought of simplifying it into just the ouline of the shape without much details being given to the audience.

Knowledge gained from this classroom activity and lecture:

Many symbols are created by exploring various types of representations such as iconic, indexic and symbolic. It can also be in realistic to abstract form depending on the designers' intention. However it is vital that repesenation of the design's intended meaning is able to be recongnised and agreed by the audience.

Often, communication breaks down as designers failed to relate to the audience due to inadequate sharing of knowledge towards the same object. At times, it might be due to environment factor which act as noise that disrupted the intended message. There are alot of uncontrollable factors which will be acting as noise but designers should try to minimize the occurance of these factors.

It is essential for designers to understand the behaviour and mindset of target audiences. To understand and relate to the cultural and environmental aspects which differ from nations, races, genders and even age groups. By doing so, designers would be able to have better grasp on how do the target audiences perceive towards a particular object. From here, the designer will be able to come out with a better visual communication design which is clear and precise for the audiences to perceive and agreed upon.

Assignment 1 - Me,Myself and I

2007-03-06T08:26:00.000-08:00

Assignment 1 - Me,Myself and I

Brief synopsis:

After selecting the 2 designs, we need to develop 2 variations of each selected concept (a total of 4 roughs). After which, prototypes of selected roughs have to be developed.

1st concept - Music
Two variations for my Music concept and the key difference between these two varitions were on the alphabet -s,-p and -i.

Feedback from my tutorial group:

Alphabet -h should be given more emphasize by not colouring the notes. This will enable the linkage between the notes to be more obvious.
Most of them prefer the 1st design.

2nd concept - Bubbles
Two variations for the bubbles by using different shades of colours. For the 1st design, i have chose a warm colour scheme as it portray my love towards them. As for the 2nd design, as bubbles tend to reflect rainbow like colours under the sun. Hence i came up with this colour scheme.

Feedback from my tutorial group:

They prefer the 2nd design.

Developing Prototype

After getting the feedback from my tutorial group and peers, i started to work on my prototypes. The softwares that i used were Freehand and photoshop.

Difficulties faced while working on the concept, Music:

Initially, i thought of scanning my roughs into my computer and trace the outline of the musical notes. The design looks fine on the sketch book but actually the sketches outline were rather inproportional. Especially for the cursive part, this makes the tracing of the design very tough. Therefore, i decided to drop the tracing outline idea and to do everything from scratch.

By using Freehand pen tool, i worked on the musical notes and save them individually. This is to reduce the hassle for editing when i export over to photoshop. As i am not familiar with Freehand, therefore it took me quite some time to get the desire shapes i had in mind.

In my sketch, there isnt any shadows, but i felt that it will be too plain. Hence it will be good to add in shadows to make it more 3D.

Difficulties faced while working on the concept, Bubbles:

Even though, the colour setting, i had set as CMYK but the displayed colour was not of what i want as seen on the first picture.

Since that was the case, i tried to explore on other feasible way with the current colour. Had added background and it seems more enhanced but I was still not satisfied with the colour combination.

As the colour scheme does not portray the feel of liking towards bubbles so i thought of injecting more vibrant colours into the design. This leads to my final prototype (with the black background)

Feedback from my tutorial group:

One of them stated that i have taken into account his suggestion which really enhance the musical note design.
The bubble design is a little too abstract.

After some consideration on the feedback regarding on the bubble design, i decided to edit it.

This time round instead of using vibrant colour, i intend to use bubbles itself to do the work. Been searching online for bubbles tutorials and tried out different forms of bubbles. After a few try, this is the bubble that i have settled with. As i think bubbles portray an innocent feeling to me, so the best way is to make the design simple with a relax feel. My design focus is to convey the characteristics of bubbles which are light and gentle just like bubbles in the water. In addition, instead of using all white for my text, the word "love" is in red. This is to give the whole design a bit of warm as the dominating colour feel cold.

Do give me your comment on this revised version on the bubbles concept. Your comments are greatly appreciated :)

Classroom Activity for Assignment 1

2007-03-05T18:44:00.000-08:00

Classroom Activity for Assignment 1: Me, Myself and I

Brief Synopsis on Assignment 1:

For this assignment, we need to convey what we love and/or hate through the design of our name itself.

Select 2 words which best describes your character
Plug them in following sentence…
l(My name is name and I love word1) and/(or)
l(My name is name and I hate word2

Classroom Activity:

We were asked to brainstorm for sketches on Assignment 1.

Select two words:
Concept development: Thumbnail sketches of your concepts (4 concepts for each sentence) in sketch book (8 sketches).
Present concepts to your friends for discussion and pick 2 (one for each word ) for final development.

Before I start to develop my thumbnail sketches, I think it will be more appropriate to list down the things I like and what are the possible ways to illustrate it.

Above are the things i have listed out and i felt that certain things have more variety of ways to illustrate as compared to the rest. Through elimination, I have selected music and bubbles as the ideas which i will work on for my sketches.

Left hand side column:

This column is used for developing sketches on the idea, music.

1st row:
When i think of music, the first thing which comes onto my mind was musical notes. Hence i have used various notes being incoporated together.

2nd row:
Personally, i am a music lover so my mp3 player is always with me. Without earphone acting as a medium i will not be able to hear my favorite mp3. Moreover, earphone can be flexible and transformed into cursive shapes which suits my name alot.

3rd row:
As inspired by sony advertisement, people can listen to music at any places and situations. Hence i have explore on stick figures listening to mp3 player doing various activities.

4th row:
Of all the four sketches, this will be the least innovative design. This design is just mainly usage of the word "music" to make up my name.

Chosen design:
During the lecture, we were told that it is essential for novice designers to explore on various ideas before we settled on the final design and not to fall in love with early/first concept. However among the four designs, i felt that the first concept using musical notes was a nice idea. My name, Sophia, gives me a classy feeling and i think by using musical notes it will further enhance this classy feeling. In addition to that, using musical notes is a strong way to communicate with the rest of my liking towards music.

Reason for not choosing the rest of the designs:
In my opinion, the majority of people who chose to do music will incorporate earpiece into part of their design. Hence,i prefer to work on some alternatives which will not clash with them. For stick figures listening to music, since the idea i got it from sony advertisement perhaps it is not as innovative and new as compared to the first concept. As for the last sketch, as mentioned earlier on, it is not innovative at all.

Right hand side column:

This column is used to work on the sketches on bubbles.

1st row:
This design is supposed to be my name formed as bubbles in 3D view.

2nd row:
Small individuals bubbles forming up my name

3rd row:
Another form of individuals bubbles forming up my name

4th row:
with many bubbles at the background and hightlighted bubbles at the foreground to form my name.

Chosen design:
I love bubbles as i think it makes me feel relaxed and reminds me of the innocent childhood memories playing with the bubbles. Among the four designs, i felt that 3rd design portrays the most relaxed feeling hence i decided to work on it.

Reason for not choosing the rest of the designs:
For the first design perhaps is due to the harsh line being used, it seems to portray a cold and isolated feelings hence it was eliminated. For 2nd design, it does not portray the characteristic of the bubbles. The last design seems to be complicated for innocent feel.

Beginning of the journey... A warm welcome to you

2007-02-22T07:15:00.000-08:00

Hi all,

The purpose of setting up this blog is to act as a learning journal for NM2208 Principles of Visual Communication module. This blog will consist of the brainstorms, sketches, roughs and prototypes of my designs for various assignments. All these illustrations will be accompanied with the thoughts i had throughout the designing process. Personally, i feel that there is no perfect design in this world and we ought to religiously learn and upgrade our skills.

As this module is non-examinable, the workloads tend to be heavier as compared to the other modules I have. However, in the real world, we are expected to multitasks and juggle with few projects or reports within a given time frame. Therefore, this is a great opportunity to polish my time management skill. I will try my best to update this blog regularly with my designs and I do look forward to see your precious comments as it will enable me to improve on the design flaws I have.

Is my honor to have you embarking this learning journey together with me. :)