stuffed intestines!

I wanted to do something related to eating oily food.  With an initial idea of using artery, I immediately faced the problem of getting an artery.  A quick visit to the market gave me the inspiration to use intestines instead.

Mock Up

Poster Draft (used for critique)

The white stuff is actually corn starch and water, which was a temporary replacement for mayo.

1. Misread the instruction to be MORE than 150 words.  Will change the text

2. I personally feel its not bloody enough.  Although it also takes a little while to actually get what this is.  Will experiment with different backgrounds.

3.  Will try to retake a picture with real mayo instead.  (if I have time)

4. Will also experiement with more layouts concepts from the lecture (e.g. repetition, balance)

The contents of the cover text would be how your intestines have to work harder to digest fats and oils, and that stuffing yourself with fats and oils is just like choking your insides.  Need some effort in picking out the right words and idea

I like the overall outcome of the picture. As did some of my classmate.  But I think the poster could do more work.

lecture 5 classroom exercise

we were supposed to create abstract figures that represent ideas given to us.  i was given hot and rich.  here is my work:

the coins are a little hard to identify but i think the pot helps.  the thermormeter is more straightforward though.

assignment 3 storyboard

As promised.  Do note that the final outcome differed from the storyboard,

my egg-citment wore out :(

this assignment was the first one that i was most pleased with, before going into the critique that is.  it was fun boiling, drawing and decorating the eggs.

Egg-xecuted!

I chose different colored eggs, in order to try to hint segregation.  The story is that the lighter skinned egg was discriminated and bullied by the darker skinned eggs.

Some of my classmates was actually confused with this picture, although I actually think its quite clear.  The hand requires an egg, and is about to take the white egg.  The other idea which I wished to convey as well was that the dark skinned eggs were actually hiding.  So in spite of being bullies, they were really cowards.  This idea is hard to convey, but not completely important.

The white egg seems like he will be cooked, while the darker eggs are watching.  An attempted "foreshadowing" is that the dark eggs are so near the frying pan with eggs, and thus they are the ones who will be cooked.  However, I feel that this is at best a poor attempt, just like the example given in lecture (guy cutting holding knife smacking his lips = foreshadowing of killing/eating.... really???).  Feedback from my classmates is that there seems to be a lack of focus in this picture, cos the message I intended to convey is not really clear.  Suggested improvements would be to change the angle, and to remember to place focus on the white egg.

This is my favourite picture out of my whole series.  The shadow created seems like the white egg is about to meet his demise, and the camera angle helps to exemplify this. This shadow in fact contributes to the twist, because it may seem like it is the wooden spatula.  Even so, some of my classmates felt that the fear effect could be improved by using a different point of view.

Here's where i think things start to go awry.  The twist supposed to occur here because instead of being cooked, the egg is painted on.  The egg is actually used as an easter egg.  The few problems include:

1. The painbrush is obscured by the egg, so there is no focus on the paintbrush and its hard to make the association with the previous picture

2. The link between this picture and the previous picture is hard to see.  It may seem like a sudden change.  In fact, due to the way i edited the photo, it seems like this is a darker egg.  Suggested remedies include the use of a common feature to show that this egg is the same egg as the previous egg.  I kinda over looked this when trying to make the egg stand out from the background.

3.  Its hard to tell that this is actually an easter egg.  I hope to resolve this by including a final picture with a little girl eat her breakfast and holding this egg.

This last picture is just showing the darker eggs getting their just deserts, following up on the attempted fore-shadow.  I'm quite fond of the scrambled eggs ... i mean picture as well, although it turned out much darker than I intended.

All in all, I am once again disappointed in my work :(  I found out that had I took the module last year, I would have been one of the many other egg stories.  I'm also a little disappointed that I overlooked the transition confusion from the 4th and 5th pictures.

I shall try to do better in the next assignment.  Though I'm starting to be really worried. :/ 

will upload the storyboard later tonight...

stopwatch

6 levels of abstraction

I chose the stopwatch, which was used in one of my initial drafts for assignment 1.  The stopwatch is a index for coaching, running, training.  My "company" would be a running coach company.

I began with simple sketches of just the stopwatch itself, but realised that the abstraction was minimal...

Hence, for the actual abstraction, I took a picture with a hand and the stopwatch.  Hence, in the abstraction, I was able to abstract away the hand, adding bigger jumps in abstraction level between the different images

Eventually, I chose the 4th design,  The rationale is that I felt that while the hand is gone, the stop watch was still able to connote the meaning.  In the later two levels of abstraction, I felt there was a loss in meaning as it could be easily misintepreted as a clock.

I chose red as the background because the track is red, and i omitted details such as email and address because my "company" is based online.

all in all, i felt that my work was a little too simplistic and i didn't like it.  before the stop watch idea, I had initially started working on track shoes, which was very common, and hard to abstract.  i think for the purpose of the assignment, my work satisfied the requirements, but lacked creativity and artistic flair, a common problem in all my work thus far.

abstract:
stopwatch is an revolutionary online portal that will increase your performance in running.  here at stop watch, we believe that every runner should have the right to maximise their potential and achieve  his/her targets.  stopwatch understands that the lack of knowledge stands as the greatest barrier between a runner and his/her goals.  stopwatch is here to break this barrier.


with the help of top coaches, who have excellent track records of working with runners in Singapore, our training programmes are suited to the asian climate and physiology.  our coaches have devised a customizable training programme which can suit your individual goals and schedule.  other than coming up with training programmes, we would be able to provide advise on injury management, dietary recommendations and any other topics related to running.


other than our online portal, stopwatch also organizes training groups at various location.  we understand that group training is essential in improving performance.  with the personal attention of our experience coaches at various locations accross the island, our training groups provide a different dimension of training to help achieve excellence.


time to return to the drawing block.

with all the blogs out, looking at it really shows of the talents of this batch. which is very worrying :(

my illustrator skills are really poor :(

finally i'm done. julian was right. your skills (or lack thereof) will limit your capacity to communication. here are my final drafts for my first assignment.

design 1 - the runner

i chose this design for its simplicity and unique use of the running man. like one of my classmates said during the critique, this probably will not work for any other name.

the tracing seems very rough, and the color shading is really rather poorly done as well.  although i wanted to convey simplicity, i am thoroughly dissatisfied with the colors.  will look into improving the colors, and the shadows. i dont think i will be adding a background to this piece.

design 2 - knights and dragon

i chose this design because i liked the dragon and knight. i was pretty pleased with the knight and force field, however i do not like the dragon.  i also feel that the castle is lacking detail, all 3 areas i would be improving upon.

however, the most important flaw was obvious when i printed out my work.  the force field becomes rather unobvious, and the old could hardly be made out.  i think i might try to add some effects on the back side of the force field, and make it slightly more obvious.

please give me comments!

lecture exercise

Iconogram - What you see is what you get

pictogram - Isotype representation

cartogram - topographical representation

diagram - charts

Ideagram - representation of concept

logogram - conceptual representation of writing

typogram - typogramical representation

phonogram - representation of phonics

other than the 8 -grams, most of the content from this lecture was from the preclusion modeul NM2101, which is a good revision, but not really too interesting compared to the past lectures :/

The activity at the end of the lecture was another opportunity to practice sketching :)

we were supposed to demonstrate our understanding of icons, index and symbols.

since this is an art module, i chose an artist to be the icon, the paint brush and palette to be the index, and the chinese character "yi" to be the symbolic (wasn't required by julian).

i originally thought that the painting in the first picture could be the index as well, since painting connotes painter some what?

in other news, i'm still a little slow on my assignment 1.  my illustrator is working again finally, but my end product is still less than desirable. more after the break

assignment 1 roughs - part 2

pac man (top left):

if you take a look at the thumbnails, my original idea involved using the corner of the pacman playing field to get the letter J. however, while drawing out the full scale rough i suddenly had the brain wave to include a retro TV and joy stick.  the end result was one that exceeded my initial expectations. although it is pretty simple, it achieves both the aim of the assignment pretty well (i think :P) for the font, i used the pacman font from the game.  although the piece only shows pacman, i wanted to indicated i love retro games.  i wanted to use a retro font within the TV, but the joystick out of the tv might be a little confusing. will also try to implement this piece

game controllers (top right):

this is the generic token piece for this theme.  i couldn't think of anything good for O and N so i just used the wheel controller and the wii mote with nunchuk. initially i wanted to do some flight simulator thing. but first of all thats a lie cos i dont play flight simulation games, secondly i couldn't think of anything for O and N.  all in all a boring piece.  i wanted to do a black and white for this until i accidentally started coloring it.

gun, scope and controllers

before the new pac man, this was my 2nd favourite game piece.  however, its plain background makes it a little boring.  i tried to use the font from "modern warfare".  originally i tried to use empty bullet shells for the N, but then I realized that might be interpreted as I love guns.  however, even with the controller, it seems like a very tame attempt to link it to first person shooter.  i wanted to use the mouse with wire at first, but that would be copying the controller from the pac man piece.

knight and dragon

my favourite piece :)

the dragon was quite challenging, again due to the fact it had many limbs.  in the end, i took away its two hind legs and spread its wings such that it forms the line on the capital J.  originally, the knight did not have a magical force field surrounding him, thus was hard to recognize the O. the background for this piece incorporated a castle and open air.

by coincidence, i realised that Jas' piece is almost the same as me, in that he used both the dragon and the door.  but we used different items for different letters.

I tried to use the medivial font.  if i can find time, i might want to the the dragon breathing fire to spell "my name is", and use medivail font on a banner hanging on the castle for "and i love RPGs".  

please feel free to tear any of these pieces down.  although its not the actual piece of work yet, i would love to hear some feedback/which piece/idea you think its the most suitable.

currently, i would do the running man and the dragon piece (although this one would be hellish to do on illustrator).  i would want to also create the pac man and track with silhouettes to make comparism

some work done, still behind schedule - but a really long entry

the past two weeks have been a horror. murphy's law at its best. however, those are but excuses and i shall strive for improvement.

for a start, before today's critique, i caught up on everything that should have been completed LAST WEEK. to make up for my lateness, i decided to spend more time reflecting on what i'm learnt through this process

(WARNING - LONG POST AHEAD)

Thumbnails:

finally, i came up with adequate ideas to complete the 8 thumbnails required by the assignment. i felt that this was important because idea generation was a necessary part of design and i wanted to force myself to go through it.  moreover, i werent satisfied with my first designs for both themes.  for my 2nd theme, i chose games/game genres.  more on these ideas below.

Full Scale Roughs:

I chose to colour all four ideas for 2 reasons.  1. my illustrator died on me while I was doing my actual piece halfway. It was already 3AM, so I didn't want to go into critique empty handed again. 2. i took it as practice (even though i'm already running late ahaha)

running man (top left): 
my personal favourite - because it had is integrated, and i finally was able to make use of the RUNNING MAN! i have conquered my nemesis.  i think the shading/colouring for this picture is pretty important, since the J uses only the hand, while the N requires the hand and the side of the shirt.  the O, represented by the squarish number tag might also be a bit tricky to see.  the jersey colour also needs to be a simple unassuming colour, so as not to draw away attention from the number tag. also, this piece looks completely different with and without colour.

track with silhouette (bottom left):
this is my second favourite piece, being my first decent idea. although i initially felt that it kinda "took the easy way" since it simply arranged items to form the letters, julian said that in this case it had a "competition" theme, which was actually very creative. i would develop both of these to decide which is my final running themed piece probably next weekend.  a concern i immediately had was the amount of detail required to draw 12 men.  instead, i decided to use silhouettes, which are a good contrast to the red track background, and easier and more reasonable to execute based on my skill set.

shoes, stop watch and running starting (top right):
my least favourite piece.  one of my earlier ideas, which i didn't like at all.  involved the simple arrangements of items. however, the track shoes and stop watch were good practice for assignment 2 (which i've already STARTED, suprisingly). also, i tried using the Holland Football Team colours, and found that I really liked it.  The colour scheme is perhaps the only saving grace of this piece, the good contrast between orange and black colour adds life to an otherwise dead piece.

track and field (bottom right):
the last token piece to fill up 4 ideas. i got this idea while running on the track.  in this piece, i tried to make use of the surroundings more, like in the other track piece.  i found the end result too simple.  the old, represented by a discus cage was also not really easy to see.  the N was supposed to be represented by javelins, although I'm not sure if people without prior knowledge would know. i tried to practice a bit of distance/horizon drawing with the track, but its very un-obvious :(

i paid little attention to the fonts in the running theme pieces, so i decided to put a bit more effort in the games pieces.

i will continue the second theme on another post, so that comments (if people read this) can be more well targetted.