Assignment 5: Final

Here's the previous design I worked on:

Too much colours, detail, unclear words, plus no musical clues. So howwww? :( LOL. I decided to tweak it a bit. And haizzzz.... Why can't I upload my new designs? Urghhhhh... Everytime I do, it gives me this black screen. :(

This will take a while. So stay tuned...

Assignment 4: Final

After the Tutorial, I decided to pick the following design to work on, rather than the other one, as Jolene also used that same phrase.

The kite looks like it's puntured by the sunray. Plus, the fonts... urgh.... should get better fonts, plus the top one deserves a better location...

This should be a lot clearer and simpler to comprehend. :)

Assignment 3: Final

Now, time to fix this story. From what I showed during Tutorial, there were gaps in the story which my peers couldn't decipher without help. I knew I had to maek the connections between the frames clearer. It really gave me a sense of appreciation to film directors and photographers in general as it is not easy to create stories that make sense to people and allow them to understand what is going on without any verbal clues from the creators at all. Wow.

So thus here are the problems I will fix:

Ok, this is the first frame and it is a big problem. No one knows what to expect nor do they even know what it is all about. Plus, its too dark. What I wanted to say was that I was on my bed and my Teddy was missing. Hmpf. I doubt I got the message sent at all, huh? So I corrected it with this instead.

I hope this is clearer in showing that my Teddy went missing in the middle of the night. Following the story, the next bit is also a problem:

I wanted to show that in the middle of the night, my study room was lit up. Someone was using the room at night and I wanted to check it out.  But the photo is just too dark and not much details for anyone to decipher really. So I reshoot and took this:

Should be much clearer now, I hope. Now, I am going towards the room, gonna check out what's going on.

The next bit is ok i think... about me opening the door to the brightly lit room.

Now, the next bit got a bit confusing for my tutorial mates. Maybe due to the may different things that's going on. Like there's no connection.

Here was the part where it goes all 'Toy Story' and all the toys are doing their own thing in the night. Yep. But I guess it'd be better to just stick with the story of the Teddy, to simplify things. So, in the end, here is the final line-up of frames:

And the saga of Naughty Teddy is complete. :)

Assignment 1: Final

Ok, based on my previous 2 designs, I worked it out some more and came up with these final two designs. Same concept, different look.

The previous design, the one right above, seemed too cheerful for someone who hates laundry. So, I decided to 'darken' the atmosphere and make it more heck-care, if you know what I mean. I also tried to make the T more obvious by using a T-shirt. LOL! The fonts are quite self-explanatory I would think.

As for my dishes design, the first didn't make sense as it did look very clean, and I'm supposed to HATE washing the dishes. So I dirtied the dishes and cutlery up. Plus, I got rid of the confusing lines at the back of the first design. I was actually trying to achieve a dishwasher look as if one were to hate to wash the dishes, they'd usually just chuck it into the dishwasher, right? But, my peers thought it made the design more complicated and busy. So I resorted to simplifying the background and made it just compliment the design instead. Hopefully the plates show more of the 'T' as opposed to the big giant pot.

And that concludes my Assignment 1! :)

Assignment 6: The Beginning

For this Assignment, which is the actual storybook project, all of us are required to come up with a story and some rough sketches of the characters. Since I pretty much suck at sketching, I think I will try using Illustrator to 'sketch' my character out.

But before you even get to look at my character, here's the story I thought of... :)

The Gift:

This story is about a little boy named Timmy.
Every year, on his birthday, he and his parents would go to his Grandma Anne’s house and she would celebrate his birthday with them.
Every year, he would ask his grandmother for a gift.
And every year, his grandmother would give him whatever he wanted.

On his 5th birthday, he got a toy car.
He loved the toy car so much that he would play by himself all day.
“Timmy, will you come play with me?” his grandmother asked.
“No, grandma, toy cars are for boys!” Timmy responded and continued to play with his toy car alone.

On his 12th birthday, he got a game console.
He loved the game console so much he would sit in front of it and play games all day.
“Timmy, will you come play with me?” his grandmother asked.
“No, grandma, you probably won’t even know how to use this latest game console anyway,” Timmy responded and continued to play with his games alone.

On his 18th birthday, he got a laptop.
He loved the laptop so much he would be surfing the net and play online games all day.
“Timmy, will you come play with me?” his grandmother asked.
“No, grandma, can’t you see that it’s only meant for one player? Besides, I doubt you even know how to use this,” Timmy responded and continued to use his laptop alone.

For 18 years, Grandma Anne watched her young grandson grow up before her eyes. She knew that every gift she gave him made him happy. She smiled.

On his 21st birthday, Timmy felt it was time that he celebrated his birthday with his friends. But he never forgotten about the gift his grandmother would give him every year.
“I hope she was able to get me that car I always wanted…” he thought to himself.
As he was getting ready, he noticed his parents were sitting down in the living room area, his mother crying.

“What’s wrong ma?” he asked his mother softly.
“Grandma Anne just passed away in the hospital this morning,” his mother told him woefully.
Timmy was speechless. He suddenly felt very sad and guilty for all the times that he could have spent time with her.

“Oh Timmy, there’s a package for you waiting at the front door. It was delivered yesterday. From Grandma Anne…” his dad informed him.
Timmy immediately rushed out to collect the package.

It was a gift, a small box wrapped in gold, with bright red ribbons. There was a card on top.
It said, “Dear Timmy, here is my last gift to you. I hope it will make you happy. Love you always, Grandma.”

Timmy opened the box and saw that the gift was a framed picture of Grandma Anne and Timmy himself.


Moral of the story: Grandparents are a gift. Treasure them while you can.

Here's a simple sketch of Timmy at 12 years old:

I'll be creating more sketches of him at different ages, as he progresses in the story (since he's getting older and older). So it will be a fun challenge to 'age' this little cartoon boy into a 5 year old, 18 year old and a 21 year old.

I just created this, a 5 year old version of him:

Assignment 5: The Beginning

For this Assignment, we are required to create a postcard of a Musical Festival. Sounds interesting? Sure is! I mean, what a unique topic to do a postcard in. Not many around really... So this should be pretty cool to do.

Initially my first thought was to do up a postcard for an existing festival in Singapore, happening around this time.

I thought of concerts like the F1 Rocks!, Baybeats, and TimbreFest. Those 3 'festivals' were some of the ones which I know of personally. Was hoping to do them, but then I thought... "Hmmm... wonder what the rest would do..."

So I looked up the Forums for the other Tutorial classes and found that many of them are doing the same festivals! 0_0 Hmmmm... Maybe I should try to do something different...

And I went and 'shagged' the whole thing out! grooooovy huh? :D A psychedelic theme! Thought it'd be a fresh idea... I know there are others too, so I really hope mine stood out.

The 6 variations are all pretty 'red and loud' and based on the comments received during e-tutorial, it would be better if I have lesser colours, because it's just TOO colourful. Plus, I know I have to stick with 4C, I will work on this soon. :)

Another comment was the words. They seem to blend into the background, it seems. My tutorial mates commented on the words particularly, so it must be quite a problem. Think I'll make it look more obvious then.

One more thing. The flowery waves all around. They commented that it was already so shaggelicious and psychedelic enough with the van and stripes that I really don't need the flowers to make it look more... 'hip'. So I'll remove them then and instead add in some tasteful music notes or signs of 60s music into it. That was the layer I forgot to add in. The actual music. -_-. haish. I know...

Yep, so I'll be making some further changes to this postcard and hopefully it'll be good enough for the portfolio! :D

Assignment 4: The Beginning

Now, it's time for Assignment 4. This is about creating an effective poster that will capture the attention of passers-by and portray the message effectively. :) And the theme for this semester is Active Aging! Wooohoooo!

Ok ok, so I got some ideas over Recess Week and came up with two posters during the break. Only hada chance to blog about it today. But first and foremost, I thought of my so-called 'sub-theme', which is basically the topic I want to focus on that is under the category of Active Aging. I had some ideas at first, which I wrote down on a piece of notebook paper. They are mainly slogans which I found here and there and it gave me some great ideas (with my main ideas in brackets). Copied it here:

- Make your WRINKLES TWINKLE! (Emotional health)

- An apple a day keeps the doctor away (Eat healthy)

- Laughter is the best medicine / Let laughter be you medicine (Emotional health)

- You're never too old to be younger (Enjoy life and keep that child in you)

- We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing (Enjoy life and keep that child in you)

- Keep on raging to stop the aging! (Be physically active)

- Life is not measured by the nuber of breaths we take but by the moments that take our breath away (See the world, explore while you can, enjoy what life has to offer)

So from my little brainstorming session here, I thought of various ways of creating my poster. Since I'm not allowed to grab images from the Internet, I'll have to consider my capabilities on Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. I seem to be more intuned with Illustrator. Hmm...

A lot of my rough ideas were played out on the Illustrator canvas, and some of them turned out to be promising. Like this one:

I thought this was a good idea, with a short funny description of the laughter tablets on the label, and the walking stick to show that my target audience is senior citizens. Then I realised that with aging seniors, this maybe be a bit crude and sad, as I highlighted the stereotype that all old folks eat medicine. I thought of a friendlier way to put my message of emotional health across.

One problem with this. I'll need to really make the wrinkles twinkle... Right now, you can't really see the twinkles so clearly. I felt that the slogan was catchy though. My own creation! :D

So then I asked my friend for her opinion on this poster, and she personally thought it was too childish and she even felt it might be an insult to old people. She suggested something more mature and detailed.

Then I thought of this:

Simple design. Message clear (I hope). Difference in font. left side is more... old-ish (words and the man) while the right side is more childish (a kite and the font). I chose a kite as it's probably wat was played by the old man during his childhood day. The shadows ot the old man and front scene gives it the calming effect. I also like how there's a balance in the picture :)

So thus, as you can see, the two done-up posters here are my finalists... I can't decide it myself though. Would need to get the opinions of my tutorial mates.

Assignment 2: Revisited

During the Recess Week, I chose to re-do my Assignment 2. Mainly because I felt it lacked the potential in abstraction despite it being unique and all. So I chose the Istana! I know, I know... People may not recognise this at a glance, but it's a place that every Singaporean should visit, as it is a national heritage. It is also the home of the President of Singapore. You'd probably recognise it if you have been there. Yep.

I picked the Istana because to me it had something special. It had a blend of 'British Colonial' feel to it and at the same time, has something that's quite 'traditional Singapore'. I'm referring to the architecture of the building. Notice the windows and how they are patterned in such a way that makes you have that 'kampung' feeling, a remnant of Singapore's fishing village past. But, at the same time, there are columns that look liek they belong at the White House. Thus, to me, I feel that the Istana is a buliding that has captured and retained the beauty of Singapore's colonial past (despite it being a  tad dark due to the Japanese Occupation and all).

So my first abstraction was a black and white outline of the whoel structure. I tried to be as detailed as possible when it came to the windows as I really thought they were unique, and made the Istana.... the 'Istana'. But then I figured it may be too detailed for a simple abstraction, so....

I took out the details on the windows. It looks a lot simpler now. Though I would have love to keep the windows. But the requirement is to simplify it as much as possible, so I had to remove it I guess. What do you think? Plus, I took out the unecessary details around the building as well to simplify the whole design.

Now I realised that there are too many vertical lines running down in the building. Pretty unecessary as even without them, it still looks like the Istana to me. I also removed a lot of the extra lines and dimensions that make the design 'pop', and kept the lines that kept the building's shape.

The design looks a lot cleaner now. I modified certain elements like the top of the building, changed the many lines to simpel rectangles to maintain the overall look, so that I do not lose the Istana look. Although there are a lot less lines, there is room for more simplification. I do intend to keep the columns, but I may want to modify it to make it simpler, merely a representation of a column...

My final abstraction! The columns are still columns as you can see, but simpler. Plus the details on the first level of the building has been simplified as well. So voila... my new abstraction :)
This time, I will comment about my design process as I go along. :)

Assignment 3: The Beginning

This has to be the hardest assignment so far. I was really trying my best to think of a brilliant storyline with a twist and all amidst my many late-nights cramming for exams plus my very-time-consuming NM3216 module, which I have spent the past 4 days working on feverishly with my NM3216 game design teammembers all night till 4am in the morning.

So, instead I came up with a number of sketchy ideas. I will scan them and put it on the blog very soon, once my scanner is up and running again.

Here are some brief outlines of possible storylines:

- Turtle Mafia: My toy zebra being ambushed by 3 little plush turtles and being kidnapped and sent to the Big Boss, the big plush turtle. Very lame I know, but I thought it was funny, as when I took some pictures of it, the zebra’s head is able to turn in a manner that suggests that it’s confused and scared.

- Bye-Bye Teddy: My teddy is seen hugging and saying goodbye to his other plush friends, with the last frame showing him leaving with me in my handbag, and me rolling a luggage bag, showing that I’m leaving.

- Fate’s Role: This was an idea from my friend which I thought was pretty cool. No, I will not imitate his work of course, but rather use it as a source of inspiration. It is basically focuses on 2 environments, a LEGO world and the real world. There are frames shot in the LEGO world, of a red LEGO man driving a red LEGO car, only to shoot a white LEGO man and killing him. In the real world, a white REAL man finds the LEGO board, which has enacted everything as mentioned, and he packs it up. He was later confronted by a red REAL man, who was about to shoot him. And the story ends here. So, here is the qn? Did he die, as predicted by the LEGO set? Or is there no such thing as destiny and fate, and all our actions are determined by us alone?

- Mystery Mugger at night: I woke up in the middle of the night to find my teddy gone from my arms. I walked out into the living room in the dark, and saw that the study room lights was on. Who could that be? Hmmmm…. So I slowly approached the room cautiously and caught a glimpse of the back of my chair. My laptop is on, readings out in the open. Wonder who is sitting on my chair? So I turned the chair around and see my teddy bear right there, staring at me, with spectacles and all…

For now, I will stick to the one that I can do at such a short period of time, for my tutorial. I will work on my more ‘philosophical’ ideas later during recess week.

I chose to do the Mystery Mugger story for now. It later turned to be more of a....'Teddy Porn' story instead. Thought it'd be more humourous... hehe...

So I woke up in the middle of the night to find that my teddy is missing... Where could he be?

I peered out of my room and saw that my study room lights were on... How strange...

I had to sneak in and see what's going on.

Lo and behold, someone-or something, is using my laptop!

O.M.G My teddy is awake and doing something on my laptop!

Naughty Teddy... I reached out to grab him...

And he turned around looking innocent when I realised that he watching some Teddy porn :P Tsk tsk tsk... Naughty Teddy!