Guu It Your Way

Monday, April 21, 2008

Assignment 7: Children's Storybook

Finally the last assignment for this module.
Basically we are supposed to form a group of 4-5 people and get a children's storybook for those aged between 6-9 years old.
It was really strenuous work as not only do we have to draw out the story in pencil, we would have to process it through Photoshop as well (tracing and the colouring, tracing using Illustrator doesn't help much maybe because the pencil I drew in was rather light, it didn't manage to capture all the lines.), plus we still have to consider the time needed to print out the book and the type of paper we wanted for the book.

After one botched printing and many changes to the original supposed final product, we finally have the final storybook up. Click on the pictures for a slightly bigger and more readable view:

The main things that were changed from the prototype was that there are now more colours to the whole book as opposed to just the dull green or black background in general due to the boy being lost and searching the boomerang in the parks etc at night. It generally should catch children's attention due to the colours of that age group and hopefully draw interest from them.
The font was also changed, basically inspired from translated Japanese manga where they always use that kind of font to type. One of the reasons why I like it is because of its ease of readability, and they are rather cartoonish without being too much or tacky which is just nice for our target group.

Anyways, hope you guys enjoyed the book!

Cheers!

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Guu it @ 9:18 AM

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Thursday, April 10, 2008

Assignment 6: Design Analysis

I had initially chosen another poster as my bad design, but because the poster has more of a content problem rather than a design problem, I decided to change to this one instead.

Some of the main issues I have with this poster is that there are too many big fonts, thus I was initially not sure exactly which is the title; they are competing for attention. Another issue is that there is no unity in the font types, at least 3 different big fonts were used thus the title issue mentioned earlier.

There are also too many figures, especially those black and white images on the left are all jumbled up together. The proximity of the images is so close together, that the audience won’t know which figure to focus on.

The unbalanced contrast of colours made me focus more on the right side of the poster whilst also lacking of control for attention as there is so much information.
No continuity as everything is packed together so I didn’t know where to start or end.

As for the good poster:

This is an example of a good design that my partner Casie came out with. The figure and the background are clearly defined due to the colour contrast. The background is not complicated at all with just the white coloured wall thus it does not compete for attention.

There is a good control of colours such that the colours differentiate the different groups of objects i.e brown for the knives, purple for the title logo.

There is not much text so it doesn’t clutter the whole poster and the tag line nicely sums up the story of what the movie is trying to convey.

Overall the poster just looks very clean and nicely organised. Good poster!

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Guu it @ 9:57 AM

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Sunday, April 6, 2008

Assignment 5: Love - Inspirational card

Ooh this week's assignment is on greeting cards that are focused on love.
I love to love so this is really a fun project for me
One thing that I had in mind was not to have the typical lovey dovey hearts all over the place, and as much as possible to avoid an overdose of the colour red.
I wanted to do something simple yet significant and that people will really want to use it.
Of course it wouldn't be up to me to decide~
Plus I like soothing images that will simply evoke love, that's what inspired me to do this two prototype cards

First Card
front:

inside:

back:

Second Card
front:

inside

The back will be the same as the first card.

Well obviously I preferred the first card as I really put in a lot of effort into it though it sort of looks simple
I had to draw the tree branches out with the dreaded photoshop pen tool so it took me a while since I have yet to master it
But thanks to the branch, I can pretty much do whatever i want with the new found knowledge of the pen tool =D
Haha anyways for the second card, I was really tired after the first card so I really didn't give it much of a thought, though I think it looks pretty good though
But yeah still prefer the first card.

After some of the suggestions from my classmates, this is the final front part of the card when it's not folded into half

Final card

They suggested that my background looked too bland and flat and to try to use some gradient so i did that and tried to achieve a little of that sunset feel to it.

Oh ya one more thing is that, i drew those love birds out myself! Notice there's a heart formed from their wings and beaks??
Heee... I personally thought they looked a little weird when they were bigger in size but once I shrinked it, it's not that bad.
Okie dokies, that concludes my love card then! =)

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Guu it @ 10:35 AM

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Saturday, March 15, 2008

Assignment 4: Save This/That

We were supposed to do up a poster on saving something, be it water, environment, animals, fur, etc so it's really up to us.
Well, what I'll be doing is to save the sharks.
Not many people, especially those living in Asia, knows that sharks are fast becoming endangered due to shark finning activities for the sake of a chinese dish often served in weddings: shark fin soup~
What they do is that they will catch the sharks in bulk, cut off their fins and then throw them back into the sea, ALIVE.
Imagine the poor animals trying to fend for themselves, well they can't, and they of course will not be able to find food due to the simple fact that they were not able to swim anymore.

Thus, they die in misery.

IN FACT, what many Asians deem as a delicacy, shark fin itself is actually tasteless and has no nutritional value so I don't really know why people eat it in the first place, if they must just ask for the soup without the fins la~
It would probably taste exactly the same anyways~
PLUS it has high mercury content levels, meaning? Not good for those who eat it often~

So stop eating shark fins man!

Anyways back to the design, for my prototype design, I personally think that it's not fantastic due to my weird usage of colours and all.
I really had problems with it initially because I was thinking all so complicated.
Anyway to prove my point here's the picture:

Well it wasn't all that well received by my classmates, and in fact it might have even sent a completely different message
"It actually looks kinda delicious, makes me hungry for shark fins soup now..."
"It looks quite spicy, so it's really whetting my appetite.."

Hmmm... Not the kind of message I want to send across so I decided to to change it and here it goes:

I've decided to go for a photo that sends a stronger message than my previous ugly drawing~
It shows two dead sharks without fins lying on the reef as a result of finning~
Visually I think it gives off a stronger impact and nobody will say that it will look delicious... =)
And my friend commented that it looks sad, so I guess it works.
I wanted to write some words at the bottom of the poster because I don't want people to just see the poster and say "Oh two dead sharks... " and then walk away.
I wanted them to be aware of what is exactly happening behind that seemingly delicious shark fin soup of theirs, thus the explanation at the bottom.

Hopefully this one should be better =)

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Guu it @ 10:00 AM

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Thursday, March 6, 2008

Assignment 3: U C What I C

This is by far one of the more challenging assignments to date which I'm sure more is to come as well but I'll accept it in good faith =)
Anyway, it was tough initially because we had to think of 10 photos that will tell a story that people can understand without any words in it at all and the best part is that it has to have a twist.
Soooo, I thought "Neh, shouldn't be so tough, I love taking photographs to it's going to be a breeze!"
But nope not at all and it has got nothing to do with knowing how to take photos or not
More like I had a tough time deciding what kind of a story I had to tell plus how the twist is going to turn out
And indeed I racked my brain for at least 2-3 days before finally deciding the product
I personally don't think it's really a twist at the end, but more like you don't know what to expect until the end but I think it should work...
I was not feeling well for tutorial so I couldn't get any comments from my classmates so if anyone of you are reading this, let me know if it's okay ya?

Thankie!

Tada!
Well the story is that my friend calls me to tell me something which made me totally worried and upset so I quickly rushed home hopefully I can still tend to the problem and in the end I manage to catch my "favourite" show Pokemon...
It's not really my fav show of course but just intended for laughter which I hope it did!!
I did the black and white thing for those photos after I heard "the news" to emphasize on the feelings of distress and then the remote control thing had sort of a partial colour back to indicate "hope"... =D

When I finally thought of the story, the process of taking photos was way much easier then having to think of the story idea, though it was kind of embarrassing to do those kind of silly expressions in public
I think the hardest part was the posing portion such as the running up the stairs thingy
I didn't run per se but i just froze there
I did run along the corridor though.
And the other one would be the last third photo, where it looks like I'm reaching out for something
I had so many retakes for that one due to my innate ability to screw up my facial expression
Some of them look like I'm laughing or something when I'm still supposed to look like I'm worried while others look like I'm going to cast a spell with my hands... =\
Oh well at least it finally worked out.

Do leave some comments and let me know if it works!

Ciao!

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Guu it @ 8:21 AM

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Friday, February 22, 2008

Assignment 2: Types of Representation

Hello!
This week we're supposed to pick an object, be it a living thing or a non-living thing and then create a representative image of the object
We're supposed to show the process of the abstraction that will finally lead us to the iconic/indexic representation or one that totally loses its meaning.
As I just purchased my watch which I adore to the core currently, I've decided to use it for this assignment. =D

Here is my work:

I intend to use the last second ie second row second image, as my final symbol which still gives you the notion of a watch yet at the same time the image is simplified.. Or at least I hope that it gives people this impression... Haha..
Whereas the last image practically shows the watch losing its identity...

This week's assignment is simpler to draw in terms of using photoshop than the previous assignment I have to say because previously I had to draw the ants out and trust me it was a torture
So I'm pretty glad that it turned out looking pretty dandy. =)

Till next time!

~xoxo

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Guu it @ 9:45 AM

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Thursday, February 14, 2008

Final: Me, Myself and I

These are the final products for the Me, Myself and I assignment.
Some changes had been made based on the critique during the last tutorial such as substituting the candy cane with a poisonous candy for the "I Hate Ants" part to supposedly exude more hatred for ants...

And then for the "I Love Ribbons part" I changed the "H" and the "U" so that the "U" part won't look so weird with one side much longer than the other side...
I was supposed to make the "e" more defined so that it looks more like an "e" but i really like it as it is now so I didn't change it after all.
I just feel that in art you don't have to clearly define everything just to represent what you want to express, that's why it's art right? =P

These are the only slight changes and hopefully I didn't make it uglier than my previous batch =)

And I found the vector for the lollipop which i had initially wanted to use for the "ants" part but ultimately abandoned it because I thought it didn't look good in it. Trust me, it looked weird when I placed it next to the ants...

I personally like it as it is on its own. Maybe I'll use it next time for something else... Hoho!

Cheers!

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Guu it @ 11:22 AM

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Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Assignment 1: Me, Myself and I

This is my first assignment for this module and the process has been pretty interesting if not strenuous.
You really need to put in a lot of effort to draw all this things plus juggle with your other school work
Oh well, at least I managed this time round. =)
Anyways~ We had to come up with something that we love and hate and then incorporate that idea into our name.
Initially it was really tough as we had to come up with a draft of 8 thumbnails ie 4 love and 4 hate so that we can choose two from each category for the tutorial critique.
The first time when I was doing it, I was pretty much enjoying it until I had to draw a second and a third and a forth and so on...
It's mind racking! It's really not easy at all! Haha...

After the tutorial critique, we will then either stick to the one we like or the one the class prefers.
I think it's a matter of your own preference though, unless your work really sucks big time, if you really like your own work while a small minority of the class insist that you pick the other one, then it's really up to your own judgment to decide.

I did some altering though based on the class's critiques while trying to still make it my own and here are the final products:

For the "I hate ants" part, initially i had put up "I hate insects" instead with the lollipop replaced by a cockroach (I hate ants too anyway, it's part of the insects group =D), but classmates felt that the roach seemed out of place and suggested that I replace it with a candy so here it is with the altered and more apt theme as well,
By the way i drew out the candy cane using Adobe Illustrator (which was pretty mind boggling to use at the beginning) and initially I had used up half a day to draw a lollipop where i used a real picture to try to make it into a vector.
Well it seemed too much of a success because when placed next to the ants, it looked a tad too realistic and just couldn't make the cut, so I had to re-draw another candy which is this candy cane, but somehow it still looks like something is wrong isn't it? =\
Really took up a lot of my time but it was fun anyway. Hee...

I really like my ribbons though so the only change was the first letter where my classmates suggested that i make it look more like X. =)

Some of my other classmates have some really nice designs so it might be difficult to chase up to their standards, but I'll do what I can for now. *smiles*

Cheers!

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Guu it @ 2:58 AM

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